What did you do over the weekend?

Before I get started with my blog today I just wanted to let you know that I spent the night updating the blog page. Hopefully it will be easier to navigate from here on. At the top left there are tabs for; All About Me, Lifestyle, Healthy Food, and Motherhood & Relationships. So if your looking for something to read in particular like an easy dinner, smoothie or lunch recipe you can go straight to Healthy Food and look through the recipes. I hope you enjoy the new look!

All About me is a new section I added and is a bio for none other than- myself. I want you to get to know me a little bit better, as well as for those who are joining my blog more recently.

This will also be my official announcement of what the blog week will look like; 

• Tuesday: What did you do over the weekend?
• Wednesday: Lifestyle
• Thursday: Lifestyle
• Friday: Quick and healthy recipe day to cap off the week

Every so often I will blog about relationships, organization and reviews of restaurants and whatever else I fancy to review (like a new bike for my son, or makeup that I bought) but it won't be too often because I'm noticing that you enjoy more of the pure lifestyle posts right now. Please let me know if there is anything you'd like to see as this blog is for you. I love writing it, so if I can go over something you would like to see (like more reviews for example) now is the time to say so :)

Because I have more viewership every week I also want to let you all know that you can follow me on Bloglovin'. If you don't know what Bloglovin' is, it's a great site where you can follow your favourite bloggers (aka: me), and they will send you emails to your email address  of my blogs when they are posted on a daily or weekly basis. I've made it very convenient to follow my blog. If you look to the top left of this page there are a few buttons; one called "Bloglovin'" click the button, and it will set you up for an account quite quickly. Also there is a Twitter and Facebook share button right underneath "Bloglovin'". If you enjoy my posts, please share them with others to help me to continue to grow my readership. Thank you! Now on to my regular blog for Tuesday!

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Here's the second addition to "What did you do over the weekend?". You all seemed to really enjoy this topic, as did I. I would love to know what you did too, so let me know in the comment section below the post!

This weekend our son was with family again so Dada and I had a chance to sleep in, and reconnect. Our life wouldn't be balanced if we didn't fit in some adventure to the relaxation would it? We started off the weekend by once again heading off to White Cliff Park- somewhere that we're very fond of going to to watch sunsets.

This picture was taken a few months ago at White Cliff Park

We then came home where my sweetie had a chance to produce some music while I flexed my blogging muscles and learnt how I could improve this blogging career that I love so much. I ended up finding this very cute blogger from the UK named Zoella. After watching some of her more recent work as a Vlogger I couldn't help but watch more than a few of her videos here. If your into fashion, beauty and lifestyle blogs- check her out. The reason I bring up Zoella is because I want to get into Vlogging in the future, so finding someone who is successful with it is someone I was on the lookout for.


We slept until 11 am on Saturday and made our way on a very unexpectedly long hike to Lynn Valley Headwaters. I've done this hike once before a year ago. Our  "light hike" ended up being a 4 and a half hour long hike with the last half being "intermediate". As in, "wear the right shoes". Well, I wish I could tell you I have hiking boots. But I don't. I used some running shoes that have been sitting in my closet for well over a year now. I'm not a runner (I try to be sometimes). I'm a biker. I love biking. Running just seems.. a waste of energy personally. I love going fast!

I digress- usually this happens. I should also let you know how clumsy I am. Of course I fell into the water with my lovely pavement running shoes! All in all, I got a bruised toe, but the show continued. I walked it off, iced it in the water and enjoyed my time in the woods.

Once we finished the unexpectedly long hike we were hungry! And I think we deserved some good food, don't you? I want to rate this restaurant in the near future as the eating experience itself is a blog post. For now, pictures will have to do over this drool worthy food at Bin 941. I must say that we entered this tapas bar muddy, and sweaty- too hungry to get ready! I felt a little more than underdressed but this restaurant was more than willing to serve us :)

So, how was your weekend? I'd love to hear! Leave me a line or 2 below in the comment section :)

All about me

Firstly, I would like to introduce myself before my titles in life.

My way of living is simple, gentle, and I am constantly finding more happiness in life, but you'll also find the flip side of me who is constantly seeking adventure and I absolutely love travel (watch me through this coming year as I hit up some rad countries- 'travel blog' section to come very soon!).

Living a simple life is not always easy, but that's what life is for- learning. I tend to see the glass half full- meaning I can see things from a lighter perspective on most days- and I think that's a great quality to have. I love writing and after 29 years I have finally started delving into this aspect of my life.

Some of my titles include; mother, fiance (of 3 years and counting), and student of life. I dropped out of school at around the age of 15 and lost my way, but I've been building my own foundation since then. 

I like to think my lighter perspective has taken me out of some pretty deep holes in life. I call them "my light bulb moments". These have been pivotal moments that changed my life forever. 

Since the age of 15 I graduated high school, became a cosmetologist- meaning I am a fantastic hairstylist, and used to do some pretty killer facials and massages in my time. I then took half a year off after realizing what a shallow life I was living. I wanted something deeper, something really meaningful, but I ended up going so stir crazy from boredom that I jumped into university to try and make a career out of my outdoor hobbies. So I completed a sport & recreation management diploma. Don't ask me what I would've done with that, I didn't know. If you were to ask one of my siblings, or my father they still wouldn't remember what the hell I went to university for. I loved river rafting, adventure, water sports but I just didn't know what to do with myself.

Thank God for honesty. I had a professor and teacher who guided me to the light. They told me to complete my diploma, but to look in my actual field.. what was my field? 

Wellness. Wellness is where my life changed drastically. I attended a private wellness college and became a certified life coach and wellness counsellor. What I got out of it was a better me.

I stopped taking shit from everyone around me. Built boundaries, and created a life that I wanted for myself.

Since then my life looks brighter, happier and more profound everyday. I am so blessed to be able to follow this blogging career while raising my son at home. The balance isn't always easy, but I like to follow my sons lead as much as I can. 

I strive for health, happiness, lots of adventure and travel when I can find it and healthy life hacks all over the place, and I want to share all of that with you.

Quick, healthy pizza

As promised, here is the pizza recipe I was talking about earlier on in the week.

Once again, I'd like to add that you can modify any of my recipes with what suits your needs. I have a highly restricted diet that keeps me away from a lot of unhealthy options. So a part of my journey is finding quick, but also very healthy food that I can eat.

I started off with a pre-made pizza dough by Sans Gluten Free. I've used so many different types of pizza crust, and this one is by far my favourite because it caters to all of my needs.

Gluten, corn, egg, gmo, tomatoe, and dairy free. Who would think that someone could make a good pizza crust without all of those ingredients? (P.S. This package is a "pizza kit" so it does include tomato sauce if you want to use it for this quick meal). 

You can opt for any other healthy, whole grain pizza crust at your favourite grocery store if that suits you, and just buy pizza sauce for this recipe.

Next on the list is the ingredients:

• A handful of spinach
• 1-2 handfuls of mushrooms
• Pesto sauce (or tomato paste)
• Coconut oil
• Goat cheese (or cheese of your choice)
• Salt and Pepper

And sometimes I like adding turkey bacon if I have it in the house. I'm in love with turkey bacon :)

Preheat the oven at the temperature suggested on the package.

Slice up the mushrooms and cook with oil, salt and pepper. After mushrooms have cooked for about 8 minutes or so, add the spinach, season again, and cover for 2-3 minutes to let spinach wilt (I found if I just add the spinach to the pizza in the oven it doesn't taste as good so I like pre-cooking my vegetables so it tastes better).

Prepare the pizza crust with

1. Sauce
2. Spinach (should be under other ingredients so it doesn't dry out
3. Mushrooms
4. Cheese

Cook for a few minutes in the oven, and viola! Add a glass of white wine (I had Lindemans 2013 Chardonnay) for hot summer days- you've got yourself a perfect, healthy dinner that takes about 15 minutes to make with very little mess!

6 steps to organizing the perfect day

Photo is courtesy of 2nix/ freedigitalphotos.net

Well, I decided to take back the reins of my life yesterday after what felt like a mini meltdown. It was great to do a self-care night with healthy food, a good book with wine after my day.

Before I hit the sack that night, I decided to get my life back on track by organizing a perfect day. It was quite a simple one at that (you can also check out more information on organizing your life in a later post I did called To do list)

1. Make a green- fatty smoothy for breakfast- I'll recipe this one at a later date and give you more details on the 'fatty' aspect of it- also, prepare my sons breakfast
2. Clean my house
3. Have a cup of coffee and blog for an hour
4. Get outside with my son 
5. 5 minute meditation (with my 5 min relax app)
6. Exercise and read my new book while my son takes his afternoon nap

And I accomplished every single one if those! My silent chant after I finished my list (silent because the last of it had to be accomplished while my son Toli slept) was "I did it, I did it, I did it!!" And boy was I a happy camper! I felt good about my day. I got my sweat on with this HIIT workout that I talked about recently, got all my work done and most importantly-contributed to natural stress relief with meditation which is very calming, and also got some endorphins running through my body again. I like to think that I'm very proactive when it comes to getting out of a funk. I don't like staying down very long, even if its only a day I go a little bonkers- so I'm glad I had my 'to-do' list ready.

I find that writing things down on paper helps so much when we need to get stuff done. Just the act of scratching it out makes me feel accomplished. What helps you get through tasks of the day?

Paying attention- in Relationships

Photo courtesy of Photostock/ Freedigitalimages.net

One of those 'off' days. A day you wish would just end so you could start over again tomorrow..

That's how it felt. I was reading an article yesterday called The shape of days. It discussed how we can graph the way our days turn out. Some days we can start on a high, or wake up on the wrong side of the bed, and it goes on from there.

Yesterday I started off by managing my social media, along with reading articles, and blogging. It was a pretty good start to a relaxing day with a nice cup of java in hand. I also had coconut yogurt, local raspberries and hemp hearts for breakfast. I could say I was having an awesome day- starting on a high. Then, one event tumbled into the next where things just weren't going my way at all. Appointments had to be cancelled, dates rescheduled. My relaxation quickly turned into stress (or the low end of the graph as discussed from The shape of days) before noon even hit.

Thank god for an awesome relationship! I was supposed to go to Whitecliff park (see photos in this post where I talk about the Sunset at Whitecliff Park) with my fiance when he arrived home from work, but to top off my already crappy day he had a work event he needed to attend. 

I felt like the wave/ shape of my day just hit its lowest at that moment. It was at what I called the trough of my day, and I made it known. But something so wonderful happened. 

He listened

I forgot before that moment came just how powerful being heard is. In that moment I was able to pour my heart out, get rid of every little nuance of my day, and the most fascinating thing happened right after that 

I took a deep breath.. and everything was OK

He asked me if I wanted him to come home, or if I wanted to join him. I said 'no'. 

He said "have a glass of wine", and I did. 

It was beautiful! How my day had shifted back into peacefulness after just being heard. Thankfully I had already begun making my favourite comfort food :) Gluten/ egg/ tomato/ dairy/ gmo free pizza with spinach and mushrooms, and a glass of chilled white wine.

I'll post my recipe at the end of the week if your looking for a quick, healthy pizza idea. My son loves it- as do I (it can always be used with wheat/ dairy/ tomato if your not on a restricted diet like I am).

When your having a crappy day, what do you do? 

In this article One of those days I talk more about different ways to get through a crappy day if your looking for more ideas!

What did you do over the weekend?

This past weekend was full of relaxation, excitement, new creative cold drinks for the lake, followed by more relaxation.

My grandparents house was packed full of family in an air conditioned home as the heat reached 42 degrees this weekend- yes it was a HOT one!

We started our extended weekend off by driving to Lytton, BC on Thursday night with our toddler. Let me just say, travelling with a 2 year old is much more challenging than it has been- he no longer sleeps the 3 hour trip there but wants to be entertained the whole time. Luckily, this mama is an avid Pinterest follower so I'm always finding new ways to keep him occupied (or he's just dancing to the music), and if all else fails we have a couple of toddler apps on my phone that I keep handy.

Friday was lake day for this mini fam jam. We have a 5 person raft, which has suited our needs perfectly, with an electric motor and speakers for music. It has been a BLAST!

Saturday was a Mama & Dada adventure day where we finally made it back to my current favourite river run The Nahatlatch with Fraser River Raft Expeditions which I talk about in River Rafting in BC. 

To finish off the weekend we chilled in the backyard with Toli where he watered plants for his Great Gramma aka: "Gramma", and played around his mini park. I also made my own wine spritzer which I sipped on while watching my son play which only consisted of half red wine, half club soda and a few ice cubes to keep chilled in the blistering heat.

How was your weekend?

River Rafting in BC

We'll, I'm sure glad I apologized in advance about not posting much this week. Thank you for being patient with me! The move went as smooth as it could've, and now we are making our way to Prince George to drop off Toli to stay with my parents while we go to Mexico. 

I've been thinking about posting for days but with no internet you can imagine how hard that has been. So here I am sneaking in a post before a long and treacherous road trip with Toli and my Gramma (who volunteered herself- she likes road trips, and Toli especially so she really wanted to come).

Since it's been so long I wanted to start off my week with a bang. If you're into adventure like I am, I'm sure you'll appreciate this post/ story- it's a good excuse to get out of the city, and try something new. 


Some of the most relaxing times I've had are at my grandparents. We drive 3 hours out of the city, and into the mountains to Lytton, BC.

This photo is extracted from an earlier post Wishing, hoping daydreaming...

Lytton is nestled in between mountains, and my grandparents just happen to have the best view from their house (I also talk a little more about Lytton in Wishing, hoping, daydreaming) of the Thompson and Fraser river, which join into one big river flow- called a confluence. The cool thing about having the two rivers come together is the colour difference. When your close enough you can see which river is which- one is a very pretty blue contrasted by a muddy green'ish colour. Many a time have I gone down this river flow in a river raft (one of my absolute joys in life!).

Coming to Lytton is something I've done ever since I was born. My great grandmother 'Nanny' used to have house in town here, and my brother and I would spend our time running around in the garden, or playing in a little pool to cool off. Lytton is known to some as "God's pocket". Why you may ask? Well, because it gets so darn HOT during the summer- it'll usually come up as the 'hot spot' on local BC news channels.

It's almost been 6 years since I introduced my fiance to my joy in life- river rafting. There are a few things in life that can keep a perma- smile on my face; biking, river rafting, and most recently snowboarding now that I'm getting the hang of it again. 

I'd been 'dating' Rom a total of 3 months, and within that time, we barely spent a minute apart aside from him working. Those 3 months were full of adventure, and lots of surprises. We loved surprising one another. 

Here's a bit of back story to connect what I'm about to say; my family gets together every year at the end of summer for good food, tomato jarring, card playing, and lots of laughs. Rom hadn't met my family yet, and wasn't really thinking about it either. I had planned a surprise rafting trip (which he'd never done before), but it was near my grandparents place. So I thought "well, why not bring him into all the fun?". It seemed like a really awesome 2 for 1 deal. Meet my family, AND go river rafting! Lets just say he was more than surprised to find out he was walking into- a family get together. And it wasn't just my grandparents. It was my step mum, father, uncle's and aunts.. probably would have been good to have a heads up now that I think about it, but at the time I thought it was a fabulous surprise!

This is a flashback photo of Rom and I on one of our rafting adventures with Fraser River Raft Expeditions

And one of the most recent photos from last year with Kumsheen 

Kumsheen is one of the very first rivers I've ever been on, and great for any beginner who is looking into trying it out. 

But I decided 6 years ago that I would take Rom on one of my favourites the Nahatlatch River run with Fraser River Raft Expeditions, this run is a class 4+ in July (meaning fast, fun, and just plain awesome!).

Here's short video of the Nahatlatch run that's putting a smile on my face, and goosebumps on my skin- I need to get back out there! 

So if your looking for something awesome to do, or are looking for a new river to try out, I'd highly recommend coming to the interior of BC. Fraser River Raft Expeditions is based out of Yale, BC. They run the Nahatlatch river between May and July, and it's considered one of the best runs in the province. It's been a couple years since I've been on this one (having a youngling in the household has made it difficult to be here in time for the run), but I haven't been disappointed yet!