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You wouldn’t know it by looking out the window, but July is right around the corner and Canada Day is notoriously hot and sunny across British Columbia. Being the optimist that I am, I’m packing my swimsuit, sunblock and summer dresses and heading to Vancouver Island on Wednesday after work for a bit of solitude.

Photo: Ian Muttoo on Flickr

Many of you will be extending Canada Day into an extra long weekend, so here’s a quick round-up of events across Vancouver Island to help you celebrate Canada’s 143rd birthday.

Port Hardy

Join the day-long party at Storey’s Beach, kicking off with a parade at 11:00 a.m. and finishing with explosive fireworks. Crafts, games and a Duck Race from the Rotary Club will keep you busy during the afternoon. [event info]

Port McNeill

A pancake breakfast, fishing derby for the kids at Port McNeill Harbour and a special airshow at the Port McNeill airport are just some of the family-friendly activities being offered. The events kick off around 8:00 a.m. and runs all afternoon. [event info]

Campbell River

Campbell River promises to be the Canada Day party destination for the North Island, starting with live music the night before at Ostler Park. Canada Day itself is packed full with a children’s festival, even more live music, a parade and the Salmon Festival before a fireworks display brought to you by Quality Foods. Also, get around to the events with free bus rides on public transit between 11:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.! [event info]

Mount Washington Alpine Resort

The Island’s only alpine destination celebrates Canada Day with the Thrifty Foods Family Fun Day, running from 1:00 p.m. until 4:00 p.m. A kids’ relay race, cookie decorating contest, bouncy castle and even birthday cake are part of the celebration. Don’t forget to take a mile-high chair ride while you’re up there! [event info]

Comox Valley

Canada Day is always an action-packed day in the Comox Valley! The 5th Street parade in downtown Courtenay, Ducky 500 race, car displays and BBQing at Lewis Park, dancing, concerts and so much more will ensure non-stop fun. This is most definitely where I’ll be spending my Canada Day. [event info]

Port Alberni

A long-standing tradition is returning to Port Alberni once again this Canada Day, starting with a free pancake breakfast prior to the 10th Avenue parade. The fun’s not done then, as all-afternoon festivities keep rocking at Glenwood Centre. [event info]

Qualicum Beach/Parksville Oceanside Region

The Rotary Club of Parksville spearheads the festivities in the Island’s premier Oceanside region, ensuring there’s something for everyone. Starting the day with a Canada Day parade, this day of fun is highlighted with a concert from Canadian rock legends Trooper at Community Park in Parksville! The day-long celebration wraps up with fireworks brought to you by Thrifty Foods. [event info]

Photo: tempest_kat on Flickr [used with permission]

Tofino

Tofino comes alive on July 1 at Village Green, headlined by the Tuff City Skate Competition. The Tofino public market will also be in full swing, as well as interactive displays, live music, a beverage garden, face painting and birthday cake. The day wraps up with fireworks over Tofino’s harbour. [event info]

Ucluelet

Uclulet hasn’t been left out of the party as they play host to the Colour Guard parade, as well as children’s crafts and activities, a family BBQ and live music. [event info]

Nanaimo

Canadian pride is strong in Nanaimo with an action-packed afternoon at Maffeo Sutton Park. Live entertainment, a flag parade and multicultural food are just a few of the festivities worth checking out. [event info]

Ladysmith

Transfer Beach in Ladysmith is the place to be to partake in a little fun in the sun. This family-friendly event is a free-for-all with events getting underway at 10:00 a.m. [event info]

Cowichan Valley

Canada Day celebrations are largely centered around cultural celebrations in the Cowichan Valley at festivities in and around Cowichan Lake. Story-telling, dancing, face-painting, multicultural music, arts & crafts, foods and a fireworks display are just a few things to look forward to. [event info]

Duncan

There’s no better place to be in Duncan than the BC Forest Museum. When you’re not riding the the steam train for free, nosh on hot dogs, jump in the bouncy castle or take in a little live entertainment. [event info]

Sidney

There’s no place more quaint to celebrate Canada’s birthday than than by the sea in Sidney. The day begins with a pancake breakfast and gets into full swing with a parade on Beacon Avenue, a family fun fair and street market before winding down the day with fireworks on the Sidney Waterfront. [event info]

Sooke

Sooke plays host to a very unique Canada Day celebration, bursting with tradition. Between logging sports competition, canine agility demos, a pie-eating contest and live music prior to the fireworks, there’s bound to be something to grab your interest! [event info]

Victoria

Our Province’s capital is no doubt home to the largest Canada Day celebration on Vancouver Island. Starting at 10:00 a.m., downtown Victoria comes alive with an open house of the coastal defence vessel HMCS Nanaimo at Ship Point in the Inner Harbour, jazz music, free historic walking tours, chalk drawing for the kids, a live ballet show and a vibrant fireworks display after dusk. [event info]

If there’s a Canada Day event happening in your Island community that isn’t listed here, feel free to leave information in the comments. For a complete listing of celebrations across the Lower Mainland, click over to Miss604.

Enjoy your Canada Day, have fun, celebrate and practice safe sun! To my American friends and readers, I wish you a fantastic Independence Day on Sunday! In the immortal words of Wang Chi and Jack Burton, “here’s to America’s colors, the colors that never run. May the wings of liberty never lose a feather.”

Finally, after seemingly endless days of eating, cooking, baking, wrapping, unwrapping, smiling, drinking and running around, I’ve had a day to do nothing. It’s 4:20 p.m. and I’m in my pajamas – still. I briefly dressed myself long enough to take the dogs for a long, long walk, after which I could feel the workout in my ass and thighs. Nothing has felt tight in days, except perhaps my jeans. I love winter weight.

Lately I’ve become pitiful at taking photos of things as they happen. That’s not to say I haven’t snapped any, but this is all you get. Let’s begin with three photos of my niece intriguing herself with one of the gifts her favourite auntie bestowed upon her, shall we?

It’s a musical octopus. Each tentacle plays a different note in the music scale. The best part? It’s lightly vanilla-scented (no word of a lie).

Years ago my mom was happy to resign herself from baking and cooking duties, leaving the responsibility to myself and my sister-in-law. While Laura took care of Christmas Eve, I pulled out the stops on the big day. I like to call it my Ziggy Stardust Christmas Banquet Table. Yes, that’s gold lamé that’s blinding you.

I also managed to bake four dozen fluffy buns from scratch, roasted a turkey, chopped and cooked sinfully delicious stuffing with sides of yams, garlic red-skinned mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and roasted brussels sprouts with walnuts. You get the picture.

Kinda excessive, no?

Chillin’ with my buddy.

Each Christmas, my mom gives my brother and I an ornament that’s usually reflective of the past year. This one’s pretty self-explanatory.

This one represents my love of the ocean…

And apparently I enjoy shopping from time to time.

Anyone who knows me (and by that I mean knows me) understands the inexplicable affinity I have with First Nations culture. I have, in fact, been known to leave the First Peoples Gallery at the Royal BC Museum in tears simply because of overwhelming feelings. A few years ago my mother gave me a Haida sun from the reserve in Comox.

Daddy-O still joins us every year. I think he kind of looks like Jerry Springer.

Oma and Opa are always there too.

I’m basically obsessed with everything and anything that’s made by Wilton for baking. Sprinkles in my stocking.

My aunt bought me the last two seasons of my favourite sweaty, naked and incarcerated men. It’s HBO at its finest.

I have a plan for these…

Jordy matches everything at my mom’s house.

I really need to hurry up with this blog post so I can get moving on to more important things. I’ve opted for SNES with The Legend of Zelda.

You can’t actually tell, but the skirt of this dress was in three layers, each with a different pattern. I saved up many weeks’ allowance to buy it from Zellers. Be jealous. Be very jealous.

Guess who.

We popped open Christmas crackers with dinner and I found a blue fawn in mine. I’m thinking it’s a sign that my cake just might win the Interfaith Baking Competition.

Mom gave me a grey knit endless scarf for Christmas. I think I’m in love.

My brother and me.

This is how we roll.

Clearly I have a lot to look forward to in the next year, so I’m not filled with that dreaded “what now?” thought that usually takes over like a tryptophan nap. One thing I’ve traditionally done in January is execute a mini makeover in my home. This year I’m picking up an industrial shelving unit, storing all my cooking and baking wares on it to make more room in my too-cramped kitchen. In a few months it may be present time to me. My current lease is up at the end of March. With that, I’ve decided to stay another year in the studio I’m currently calling home before moving to a more spacious casa with a large kitchen and an actual bedroom.

It’s time to end the rambling and save the princess.

For the first time in all my years, I’ve begun to realize what Christmas shouldn’t be about. As a child, it’s fun to indulge in the Santa Claus tale, but for whatever reason, that tradition has kept on rolling in my family.

The thought struck me the other day that if it’s Jesus’ birthday we’re celebrating, why do I still get a truckload of gifts at this time of year? It makes zero sense to me as someone who celebrates Christmas based on its true origin, and I’m really not doing much of anything to honour that. However, sometimes it’s too little, too late, but I am dead-set on making huge changes next Christmas and throughout the coming year in this regard.

Photo: jenny downing (r&r) on Flickr

I think that the best gift we can give our families and our friends at this time of year, with or without money, is not presents but presence. There is nothing more I am looking forward to than being with my family, laughing joyfully with them, eating food that’s been lovingly prepared, putting good mileage on my stretchy pants, drinking wine, resting my body, resting my mind and making memories. I’m sure I’ll manage to squeeze some SNES in there too.

To all of you, my friends and readers, I want to wish you the very best that this season has to offer you – no matter what or why you’re celebrating. Be there with and for the people you love and the people you have yet to love. Bring it all back to the place it should be about.

Living today – in the moment – has become my “thing” lately. I could elaborate but let’s not get boring, shall we? Anyway, if I don’t live in the moment, all the things I’m pumped about next year will be here before I know it and the little things will pass me by. In fact, so much is coming my way in 2010 that I’m already exhausted thinking about it all. Oy vey.

In no particular order…

10. No specific target date has been set, but I will be officially debt-free. Feel free to hate on me, but I’ve worked hard at it.

9. Celebrating my sweet-as-a-peach niece’s first birthday.

8. Shortly after that, celebrating one whole year with my love bug.

7. Fingers crossed that the Phoenix Suns will once again rock GM Place with another exhibition game during the pre-season, a game at which I will be screaming, yelling, cheering and jumping up and down in my jersey.

Photo: taminator on Flickr

6. TORONTO! Or, you know, a suburb-thereof. I really need to see this lady again. (Except let’s not hang with those guys, okay?)

5. Seeing John Mayer in concert on April 1 for the second time. (Don’t be surprised if I disappear for a few months after the show. It’s my hope that I’ll charm my way backstage, after which he and I will embark on a passionate and heartbreaking love affair. I suspect we will exhaust each other by summertime.)

Photo: Flickred! on Flickr

4. Love thy self: I’m one of those people who incessantly say “I want to…” and then never actually do it. I want to cook more gourmet food, drink more wine, have more parties, take more day-trips, rent a car sometimes and do anything and everything that makes me happy.

3. My first visit to New York City. I plan on leaving my heart there.

Photo: miss604 on Flickr

2. Get sporty. I don’t miss going to the gym but getting active makes my heart go ga-goong in more ways than one. I want to join a co-ed drop-in basketball league or just hit the courts with friends. Bueller?

Original Photo: Fernando Ariotti on Flickr

1. Embarking on the next decade of my life, a trip that someone special to me will also be taking this year.

Your turn: tell me what would make for your “Perfect ’10″. Feel free to make this a meme.

Every girl should have a brother. If not to protect her when she’s older, then definitely to terrorize her when she’s younger.

Sweet and nearly angelic as a toddler, Trevor and I were extremely close right from the start. I wasn’t even the kind of sister that made him play dress-up. Usually it was just building blanket-and-pillow forts under the dining table, creating mud pies, swinging on monkey bars and trying to out-do each other at constructing the most stellar of Lego houses.

My brother was the ultimate “shit disturber” as he got older, as so affectionately called by my Oma. I’m sure she said it in German, so he was none-the-wiser.

I’m quite sure his pinched-cheek smile was incredibly calculated to off-set all the ways in which he delighted in causing my temper tantrums. Though can you blame me? When he wasn’t drawing, um… poo, with a jiffy marker on my ceramic piggy bank, he was sneaking into my bedroom and slapping stickers on the faces of all my pin-ups. (I do apologize for that, Patrick Swayze… and Joey MacIntyre, Bono, Simon LeBon and all your friends.)

And sometimes people grow up. While a few years ago if I thought I’d ever have any kind of relationship with Teenage Mutant Ninja Trevor someday, I’d have said no. Never did I imagine he’d become one of my best friends.

Today he is every bit the man I’d always hoped he’d become. Always brother and son, but now also husband and father. That’s still a bit of a trip to think about.

While time has passed and much has changed in both our lives, some things will always remain: such as his undying love for Venkman, Spengler, Stantz and Zeddmore, the way he still eats his Honey Nut Cheerios out of a casserole dish and his uncanny knack for busting out fart jokes at the most inappropriate of times.

It’s amazing to me to consider that today he celebrates his 25th birthday. While I wish more than anything I could be with him to chow down on DQ ice cream cake and beer, I’m instead thinking about all the more milestones and memories to come between brother and sister. I couldn’t be more proud of him.

Today is a very special day.

My lovable, sweet-as-pie, kind-as-candy and darling friend Ashley is celebrating her birthday.

Friends for nearly a decade, there aren’t a lot of adventures we haven’t been on. We’ve ridden roller coasters, drank wine stashed in thermoses in the park, soaked in the Banff hot springs in matching bikinis, eaten most likely litres of Island Farms ice cream, talked under the stars, clung to each other during horror films and consumed our combined weight in Cupcakes. Ashley has even been a motherly hand to hold at the dentist’s office when I got an abscess on vacation.

What I love most about my “sister” – besides our uncanny knack to dress alike without even planning on it – is her unconditional love. No matter how different our viewpoints or opinions or thoughts are, she’s always there to love and respect me. Ashley is one of the few people I can be my true self with because she does not judge.

This past Sunday was our third anniversary. Jordy and I have spent the last three months together, though it actually feels more like three years. I was forewarned of his potential issues, but my little Mango Monkey (he gets that nickname based on the way he smells after a bath) has done nothing short of constantly amaze me with his resiliency and ability to adapt.

The best part of it all is seeing his true personality start to shine now that he’s become truly comfortable with his “mommy”. Jordy loves to wake me up just moments before my alarm with a few kisses and some burrowing under my pillow. He truly loves to cuddle. Surprisingly, he does well with kids and is even gentle with sweet Sienna-bear. Jordy can’t get enough peanut butter and knows the Jif jar when I bring it out of the cupboard without a word. The little guy plays somethin’ fierce with his squeaky toys and shows no shame in farting around me – a lot.

Few people know this about him, but sadly, his first owner had him de-barked as a very young puppy. The sounds he made when he first came into my home were nothing above a whimper, but now he really tries to communicate with his voice and he’s built up quite a sound for himself. It’s my hope that he’ll learn to truly bark once again.

And lastly, if you’ve met Jordy, you know he’s an introverted dog. He’s not afraid of other dogs, but initially he never, ever interacted with them. We’ve been visiting dog parks several times a week and even found one that tends to be frequented by other pomeranians. Very cautiously he’s beginning to leave my side to go and interact, and I have no doubt he’ll be running and rolling on the grass with the rest of them in no time!

I can’t even begin to tell you how much joy he brings into my life on a daily basis and how lucky I feel to have found him. Check out Jordy’s set on Flickr for more pictures snapped last night at the park.

Tomorrow marks a very special lady’s very special day. My dear friend Jenny is celebrating yet another birthday and couldn’t be in a better place to do so. While she’s busy hopping a jet plane for sunny SoCal, I hope Jenny knows how many people in Vancouver wish they could be helping her celebrate.

Forever fashion-forward, endlessly empathetic and unwaveringly wonderful, Jenny has proven to be a keeper one hundred times over. She’s a friend I can always count on to be up for adventure while at the same time will offer something as simple as a shoulder to cry on (or tin bucket to puke in) when needed.

To my dear Jenny, I wish you nothing but absolute joy, resolve, courage, laughter and surprises in your 28th year. And for my own sake, here is to many more memories made within a friendship that is our very own. Much love to you.

Photo: jenniferlstoddart on Flickr

I recently had a lengthy pow-wow with my financial advisor. With so many other aspects of my life on a fast track to exactly where I want them to be, I knew it was high time my finances followed suit. I know that I’m not the only one of my social circle struggling to come to terms with an often crippling student debt load, but I also know that I have the ammo to annihilate it.

Photo: frugg on Flickr

After sitting down with my advisor, we charted out the big picture and proceeded to number crunch. When I got home, I spent two hours mapping out my budget for the next three months on a spreadsheet, something I plan to do every 90 days to keep track of all the ins and outs.

To be honest, budgeting in such a meticulous manner – or any manner – is a new concept to me. No one ever taught me the specifics of the fine art of money management, so it’s something I’ve taken upon myself to gain control of.

The next six-to-eight months will be tight with the next three being especially painful. This means continuing to eat all my meals at home, eating out only once a month, bidding farewell to Starbucks entirely, going to the movies only once a month, kiss shopping for clothes good-bye, switching from Bumble & Bumble to Lush shampoo bars (yes, I know – I can’t believe it either), abstaining from my red wine habit and eating a lot of tofu and noodles.

Sound painful? I’m actually celebrating!

The benefit will be so incredibly worth it. Not only will I be free to travel and open RRSPs, but I’ll be essentially debt-free before turning 30. And even better, by this time next summer I’ll be able to start bankrolling a mortgage down payment.

That said, please don’t be offended if I say “no” to any invites that require more than walking on the seawall over the next year or so. Homemade Christmas presents for everyone this year!

I’ve been blessed to know Angela for a few years now, and today I am honoured to wish her a very happy birthday.

Lover and champion of animals, fierce friend, vegetarian, role model and all around beautiful girl. Here’s to a humble woman who graciously lives her life with integrity and a true, selfless love – with a side-dish of spunk and wit!

Angela is a woman whose heart has been captured by a jewel known as India, and if I could have one birthday wish for her it would be that she’d have the chance to experience it once again someday. Happy Birthday to my dear friend. Namaste…