The past weekend, Will and I did a road trip getaway to Montreal to celebrate his birthday. The 5-and-a-half-hour one-way drive from Toronto might sound exhausting for a short trip. But, since this wasn’t our first visit to Montreal, a 2-day visit was enough for us. We had a fabulous time eating around the city and engaging in some fun outdoor activities together in mere 2 days.

Here is a quick review of some of the great places we ate at and what we did!

Where For Brunch?

Indecisive Brunch that comes with a fruit kebob at L'avenue

L’avenue is one of the most popular brunch spots in Montreal. Line ups form quickly as soon as they’re opened. We were lucky that we arrived early just before 11 am so the wait for us was only about 10-15 minutes. The brunch spot is not your average European bistro/cafe style, instead, it’s a hip and trendy diner with giant graffiti wall mural, motorcycle hanging in mid-air, servers wearing suspenders and glow-in-the-dark bathrooms.

What to get: Duck bennys. Their duck was flavourful and saucy and their hollandaise sauce was to die for! If you have trouble deciding from their extensive brunch menus like myself, opt for their Indecisive Brunch. As the name suggests, it comes with a bit of everything. You even have the option to try the famous St-Viateur bagel to save you a trip to the shop! Go for the beer-braised ham and homemade sausage. Their brunch sets are also a great value, and include a fresh fruit kebab and watermelon infused water to start.

Be sure to check out their bathrooms while you're there as well!

Egg bennys with duck confit with grained mustard hollandaise sauce

Where For Poutine?

They say, "Montreal has the best poutine in Canada". I never believed this statement until I actually got to La Banquise and tried myself. And boy, were they delicious! The diner was packed when we arrived at 4 in the afternoon.

What to get: From classic poutine to ones loaded with meat, their menu would definitely tickle your fancy. We tried their La Royale poutine that came with pulled pork, apple and bacon. I love the crunchiness of the sweet apple slices, and the savoury pulled pork. Their fries were still crispy even though they were drowned in their house-made gravy and topped with generous amount of cheese curds!

We also ordered their La Shoot-Out just to get some smoked meat into this trip. Besides smoked meat, the poutine also came with spicy sausage, pepperoni and bacon for a maximum sodium count. So you could expect it to be a lot heavier and saltier. The portion was definitely enough to fill a person up. Besides poutine, their hamburger was also surprisingly tasty! Will kept saying it was one of the best burgers he had for a long time and he's still thinking about it now.

La Shoot-Out and La Royale Poutine at La Banquise

Where For Ice Creams?

Kem Coba is a cute ice cream joint in Mile End, an artsy, laid-back neighbourhood just west of Downtown core.

What to get: What’s special about this place is that they offer an exciting list of freshly made ice creams, soft serves and sorbets with some very rare flavours such as Pandan (La Dua) and Soursop! I got out of hand and ordered their strawberry and coconut soft serve on top of their sorbets (lol!). If our trip home was shorter, I’d probably bring home a tub of their Vietnamese coffee ice cream as well.

Strawberry and coconut soft serve at Kem Coba

Pandan (La Dua) and Soursop Sorbet at Kem Coba

Where For Bagels?

Besides poutine, Montreal is also known for their bagels. Having tried St-Viateur bagel from our brunch at L'avenue, we stopped by another renowned bagel shop, Fairmount Bagels, which coincidentally was few shops away from Kem Coba. We were surrounded by walls of bagels as soon as we walked into this little shop. I was never a huge fan for bagels but their bagels were crispy on the outside and soft and spongey on the inside with a slight hint of sweetness. Apparently, Montreal bagels were boiled in water sweetened with honey.

Where For French Food?

Modavie, located in Old Montreal is a great sit down dinner spot to wine down. This bistro is dressed up with beautiful woodwork, stone walls and a ceiling-to-wall wine cellar. What's even better is that they have local live bands performing every night. If you go, make sure to call ahead of time to make reservation as they can get really packed and busy.

What to get: Their 3-course set menu. We chose escargots as a starter, duck breast as the main and raspberry pie for dessert. Their duck breast was topped with foie gras butter and it was heavenly! The meat soaked in all the foie gras flavours into one piece of gourmet. If you prefer a la carte, their lamb rack would be another excellent choice. It had a pleasant lamby taste to it and crusted with some sesame seeds. Oh, do try their French onion soup and thank me later :)

Where For Outdoor Fun?

Water Adventures Along the Lachine Canal

After indulging in Montreal's food scene, we strolled around Old Port leisurely. We love exploring all of Montreal's cute cafes, outdoor patios and historic architecture. But, as much as I love those laid back leisure walks, I decided to join H2O Adventures for some outdoor fun along the Lachine Canal the next afternoon before we end our trip. I spent a lot of time deciding on my rental but ended up booking an electric boat that could sit as much as 5 people for $60 an hour. We love the shade and the space on the electric boat. And you don't need any license or experience to control the boat. But the boat we had was way to slow. I swore that even the swan pedal boats were faster than our boat. When we brought this issue back to the manager, he gladly offered a rental exchange for us. We went with a tandem kayak this time. And even though I wasn't prepared for this ( considering I still had my platforms on!), the tandem kayak was nonetheless a very fun outdoor activity to do as a group or as a couple. Just be aware that you might get a little bit wet.

Near the dock of H2O adventures is also Atwater Market. A farmers market with stalls of vendors, local produce, patisseries and specialities. They open all year round and offer innovative and tasty fast food during summer time. We did not spend enough time here but would definitely visit again if we come back to Montreal.

We also spent sometime at the Mount Royal Park, exploring the mountain and nature. You could follow the trail to their Chateau where you could see Montreal's city landscape.



We had a very short stay this time and focused on exploring mainly Old Port and Old Montreal within the city. While we managed to fit majority of the attractions and restaurants on our list into 2 days, there were a few that we ended up skipping. For example, Orange Julep, Schwartz's Deli and a tour inside Notre Dame of Basilica Church (they were closed for a wedding when we visited).

If you have  any recommendations, I'd love to hear about them so I could include them to our next visit!

I've been looking for a cute little welcome doormat for my house for a while now. You know those ones that have funny phrases and greetings on them? They're a fantastic way to add a dash of fun and character to a home. But, I had no luck finding a perfect saying that suits me and that is also economical. So, instead of spending a great deal of money on what my husband would describe as "impractical things", I made my own to save a few extra bucks and more one of a kind.

Easy DIY Welcome Doormat Without a Cricut Machine

Many tutorials on the web show you how to make a personalized welcome doormat using a Cricut machine. If you’re unfamiliar, a Cricut machine is a fancy printer that allows crafters and DIY enthusiasts to cut all kinds of materials. Steps are simple. It prints off your logo or greetings onto a piece of vinyl and it will also cut out its shape for you to stencil onto a plain doormat. This machine has been on my wish list but I still can't justify the price tag into buying one. I'm kind of secretly hoping that Santa would put it in my stocking this year. *wink* If you're like me, who may not have the luxury of owning one of these machines, I’ll show you how you could DIY this home decor without using Cricut.

Let’s get started!

Materials You'll Need:

• Plain doormat
• Black Acrylic Paint
• Bristle Paintbrush
• Good ol' Printer
• Papers
• Xacto Knife 
• Sewing Pins

I checked a few places for a large plain doormat and ended up buying one from Ikea for a good price. They also sell a smaller one for cheaper. But I went for a larger one for more impact.

Create Your Artwork

Start by using Adobe software or Canva to make your artwork the same size as the dimension of your doormat. Once you've done that, type in your greetings with a font that you like. Here, I used Bromello and Bebas. Save your artwork into a PDF file.

Print Artwork on Few Pieces of Paper

Now you're ready to print. But wait! You're probably thinking that the artwork is too big to be printed from your home printer, right? All you need to do is adjust your print settings so that you could break up your artwork and print them out on several pieces of paper. It’s one of my favourite trick for creating oversized stencils.

Follow the settings from the screen below:

I printed my artwork using Legal sized (8.5” x 14”) papers which I fed through using the bypass tray. You could choose to print on Letter sized papers as well. The settings would still be the same. You’d just be using more papers this way, that’s all.

In the settings dialog window, click on Poster button.

1. Enter 0.25 in in Overlap. This will create a quarter inch room for you to tape/glue the areas of the artwork.
2. Select Tile only large pages
3. Preview to make sure it looks something like this.
4. Insert your paper to the printer and print!

After you’ve printed your artwork, it’s time to tape all the pieces together so you can cut out the shape.

Trace Artwork with Xacto Knife

I used a Xacto knife and traced out the shape of the words. For letters that have a free standing centerpieces (such as in letter O, L, E, H) that aren’t attached to anything, remember to put these pieces aside as you’d need them later. Once you’ve finished tracing the words out, place the stencil onto your doormat and add in those centerpieces back to where they belong.

Secure With Sewing Pins

To secure the stencil artwork onto the doormat, place a few sewing pins in various areas. This way when you’re dabbing the paint, the stencil will not move around. 

Dab Acrylic Paint With a Bristle Paintbrush

It’s important that you use acrylic paint that is fluid enough. Those little tubes from your local dollar store or craft store would work. I started mine with the tub of acrylic paint that I use for painting on canvas and it did not work well at all. The paint was too thick making it tough to cover the fibers evenly.

With your bristle paintbrush, hold it vertically upright and start to dap paint all over the stencil. I first started with a foam brush and found that the foam did not do a good job in transferring paint onto rough texture. I was also unable to get paint in between the fibers. So I’d recommend using a bristle paintbrush to dab paint while also holding the stencil in place with the other hand at the same time. Once you've got enough coverage and letters are bold enough, you could remove the stencil.

If there’re any rough edges around the letters, you could dab over using a finer bristle paintbrush to darken and fine tune them. Just make sure you're still dabbing and not painting over!

And that’s it! This is a simple way to stencil your doormat without having to use a Cricut machine. Now, you have a cute and personalized doormat for your front door to welcome all your guests. I’m sure it’ll put a smile on anyone’s face.

Hope you enjoy this tutorial!

Pin this for later~

Check out my other DIY home decor ideas!

  DIY Spring Wreath for Your Front Door

DIY House Number For Your Home

DIY Succulents Home Decor

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I was never a big fan of running. The only time I ever enjoyed running was back in primary school on sports day (I don't even remember if that's how we called it back then). And, for some reasons, I always qualified to the finals for short track running and was able to pick up a medal or two for the event. And, for short track events, I meant like 50 metres, at most 100 metres. I was never able to build enough endurance for any long track events. Even when I got older, I couldn't run for a long period of time. It wasn't until I put on some weight that I decided to include some cardio exercises to my workout routine.

Starting on the Treadmill

I started stepping onto the treadmill at a local gym in my work building about 2 years ago. The experts say that you need some cardio to warm up before doing any weight training. So I ran the bare minimum, only 20 minutes at a pace of 5 miles/hr every time I was at the gym. It lasted for about half a year or so. My body had gotten used to it that it wasn't doing anything for me. Then, one day at work, I got an email invitation to join a running club. An email from a friendly colleague who I had never even spoken to.

Joining a Running Club

I decided to join with a few of my other colleagues who I went to the gym with. It was a huge step forward for me. And I find that my colleagues really played a big role in terms of giving me the motivation I needed. I knew I wasn't doing this alone. We strove. We struggled. We pushed each other. Just seeing them trying hard pushed me to not give up that easily as well. Every Wednesday, we'd go outside of our workplace and ran along the sidewalks. And I must say that running outdoors was very different than running on the treadmill. Elevation, pedestrian, weather, traffic, wind, humidity, road conditions etc. all could impact the performance. I only ran around the block for about 3 kms and I already felt like giving up. But of course, it eventually got better. I took fewer strides whenever I struggled. And I slowed down my pace to take a breather. The running club changed my life that Summer. Just as I had made some progress in my running, winter hit us. And I had to be back indoors on the machine.

Gradually Increasing Duration and Speed

That didn't stop me from continuing my run though. After experiencing outdoor running, running on the treadmill got a lot easier and more comfortable to do. So, I up my speed to 5.5 miles/hr and ran for longer about 30 minutes. And even still, I wasn't feeling much progress to my body. Will kept saying that I wasn't running fast enough, that's why I wasn't seeing results. So, I did more research and watched more fitness videos. The shocking news that I found out was that the body does not start burning any fat until after 30 minutes. So all my effort up until this point wasn't enough! I then, began to run at a faster pace at 6 miles/hr for a duration of 45 minutes.

Run in Intervals

Let me tell you, it wasn't easy. I had to slow down for a 2-minute fast walking to catch up my breath before I could continue running again. I ran during my lunch break for 3 times a week consistently. And I increased my duration of running the faster pace from 15 minutes to 20 minutes non stop before I slowed down to 3.5 for fast walking. Eventually, I didn't even need to fast walk for 2 minutes anymore and could just reduce my running pace to 5.5 only if I needed to.

Use a Running App to Track Progress

Another thing that helped me continue on with my running journey is that I used a running app. The app I've been using is RunKeeper. Every time I finished a run, I'd take a picture of my workout summary and entered in my pace and duration on the app. When I ran outdoor, the GPS tracking would automatically track my pace and distance. Being able to see that I've been making progress motivated me even more. I love that accomplishing feeling whenever I was able to break a record. I was able to run a full 45 minutes at a pace of 6 miles/hr consistently non-stop on my good days. That was about 7 km on the treadmill.

 

Left: My record in May 2017. Right: My record in May 2018

Invest in the Right Gears 

Having the right gears was especially important for me to make my run more enjoyable. In the past, I was using wired earphones that connects to my ipod (ya a bit old school, I know) that I clipped onto my shirt. I had to tug in my cable inside my shirt so that it wouldn't get in my way when I run. So, when I decided to get more serious into running, I invested in better gears including a new pair of runners, a gym pouch for my phone and a bluetooth headset. My new pair of runners were so lightweight that I could hardly tell that they are there. My bluetooth headset made me more carefree without having to worry about the wired cable and ear plugs falling off my tiny ears when I run. All I needed to do is connect my phone to the headset and Spotify. Easy peasy!

If you're curious why my baggage tag is not my actual name, it's because I took over Ada's spot.

Sports Bra // Winners, Pants // Winners, Runners // Nike, Gym Pouch // Winners (similar), Bluetooth Headset // Amazon

Participating in a 10K Fundraising Run

I originally had no intention to run a 10K because I thought the distance was so far fetch for me that I wouldn't be able to finish it without killing myself. But, 10K was my next goal based on my records so far on the RunKeeper app. So I gave it a shot and signed up to the annual Sporting Life 10K Run with Will together to raise funds for Camp Ooch. If I were to make this kind of effort, it better be for a good cause. But, I was glad that I joined because there were so many side benefits that I could never had imagined.

Ever since I signed up, I found myself pushing even harder at the gym, especially on the treadmill. I'd run around my neighbourhood whenever I could and noticed my endurance had already improved significantly from when I first started. I couldn't even get a good sleep the night before the race. I think I was either too excited or anxious. But I believe I was both mentally and physically ready.

Photo Credit

Photo Credit

Setting Specific and Realistic Goals

Over 19,000 participants joined the race that morning to help send kids affected by cancer to Camp Ooch. Even though, the race was said to be Canada's easiest and one of the fastest 10K course, I made sure I set myself 2 goals to achieve at this race. One goal was to complete the race without stopping or walking. Another goal was to complete it in under an hour. I was feeling pumped up as I ran along Yonge Street with fellow racers, where the volunteers and even the police officers were there to cheer you on. Although I was running at my treadmill pace, passing other racers who were ahead of me was something I could never get from running on a machine. The downhill course definitely helped with my pace and made the run easier. I even managed to speed up at the last 100 metres and sprinted towards the finish line. Completing something that you've never achieved before was the greatest feeling in the world! I made it through without stopping and finished the race under my target time at 58:54! 

No words could describe how amazing I felt after I completed the race. I felt energized, rejuvenated and fantastic that I achieved my 2 goals all while doing for a good cause. Now, I actually wanted to run again and improve on my time next year.

I'm so excited for May to finally arrive! It's going to be a busy but fulfilling month for me. I've got a bunch of fundraising events all happening this month! And I'll be sure to tell you all about them later here on the blog! On top of all these events, Mother's day is also coming up. I've always enjoyed creating meaningful and unique gifts for my mom for Mother's day, whether it be cooking her a nice dinner, baking her a cake or giving her a bouquet of chocolate Ferrero Rocher flowers (see tutorial here). And today, I'm sharing with you this Coupon Book printable to gift for Mother's day. She could redeem the coupon at any time of the day or throughout the year as she wishes. All you need to do is print it out on a letter-sized paper and assemble based on the instructions below.

I hope you enjoy this printable!
Also check out my free Mother's Day card colouring printable here.

Check out my other handmade gift ideas!

{DIY} Happy Mother's Day Card Colouring Printable

Let's Bake Some Love Cupcakes {Tutorial}

Ferrero Chocolate Bouquet {Tutorial}

Bunny Cake Pops Bouquet {Tutorial}