Happy Birthday Vince!

Tonight, Kay, Rochelle, and I headed over to the Richmond night market to surprise Vince because today is his birthday! MH, his girl, had arranged to have all his close friends and family to come out tonight to surprise him by singing him Happy Birthday and presenting him with a beautiful fresh mango cake from Maxim's. Boy was he ever surprised! It was great! Check my flickr account for photos.

In the afternoon, I had a few things to do before heading over to the night market. First of all, I had to get my car AirCare'd and thankfully I passed; I have been procrastinating and worrying myself that I would fail. If I failed, I would not be able to renew my insurance and my insurance expires at midnight on Sunday! The reason I was really worried about it? The last time I had to take my car to Air Care, I failed twice! I used to own and drive a 1988 Mazda RX-7 and it was a fun car to drive but very bad for the environment!! Thankfully, my VW Beetle passed with flying colours! After AirCare, I headed over to Fraser street to pick up a b'day card at the Dollar Store and get my eyebrows threaded. I usually get them done once or twice a month. It costs $5.00 and she is quick. I love it, no more waxing or plucking, except for the clean up in between threading appointments. On my way home, I decided to stop by Creo Bellus to pick up my custom pearl ring from Tai. Ohmygosh, it's beautiful! I love it, so perfect and it only cost me $100 for gold and labour! Last weekend, he had given me a couple of pearls on hand to choose from. One was a small black pearl and the other one was a perfect round cultured pearl. The one my grandma had given me is a natural pearl and although it's not the most perfect pearl, it's my grandma's and I really wanted to keep this one on the ring. He is so generous and I love what he did. He is awesome! Thanks Tai! I helped him make up some professional invoices so he threw in a couple of navel rings in for free. After I finished off at Creo Bellus, I headed home and waited for Rochelle. Once she finally arrived, 30 minutes later, we headed over to the night market to surprise Vince. We didn't stay too long, only about 2 hours and I managed to get to the stand that sold make up brushes and cases, it was pretty packed, but I found him and bought one of his professional make up brush kit for $40. Before heading home, we stopped by Leisure Bubble Tea House for Kay so she could pick up a bubble tea because I didn't get one for her at the food fair in the night market. First of all, the bubble tea stands make yucky bubble tea and the line up was insanely long! No thank you, I don't wait more than 10 minutes for take out bubble tea. Plus we were already in Richmond, land of the best bubble tea houses, why the heck would I want to drop my money on an overpriced and blech! bubble tea at the night market? Picked up a few drinks from Leisure, dropped Rochelle off at her apartment in the West End and headed home. Gosh I'm tired!

Mid Week Dinner with highschool friends

Tonight, Kay and I had dinner with Rhoda, Grace, and Travis at the Cactus Club in Coquitlam/Burnaby.

Kay and I drove over to Rhoda's place because we were planning to park our car at her house and she was going to drive the 3 of us to Cactus Club. She has moved into a new home and it is gorgeous! She shares a semi-detached duplex with her mom and sister, this place is so much bigger than her condo and I do not know how the 3 of them ever lived in such a small place! This new place is quite spacious yet it is filled with all of Rhoda's stuff! Literally... everywhere.... poor Jessica. This would drive me NUTS. I am so anal when it comes to clutter and Kay's room really bothers me even though I hardly ever go in there! After the quick tour and a warm hello to her mom, we headed off.

Travis and his wife, Lisa arrived first with their gorgeous little boy! He is such a cutie! I had forgotten how much work it took to care for a toddler. Grace arrived last and with her gorgeous new baby girl, only 8 weeks old. OMG, she is such a cutie! A couple more photos of Isabella.

After dinner, we headed back to Rhoda's place and Rhoda had a few more items for Kay! Gosh, Rhoda and Jessica always have an endless supply of clothing for her, it's like she's got her own very cool stylists! Jessica came back from her boyfriend's when we arrived so Kay and I stayed a little bit longer to chat with Jessica and Rhoda's mom. Rhoda showed me all her cool fashion pieces, she is developing her own line of clothing and jewellery. She is super talented and made some really cool and funky stuff. She even learned how to knit! Very cute knit skirt! I ended up picking up a really cute pair of earrings for a really great price - long time friend price ;)

It was a really great night and it was good to catch up with such a long time friend! We haven't seen each other in years before the last few months and can you believe she works 1 block from my office?!? Check out the really cute earrings I picked up!

Tiffany's

Today, I met up with Jas for lunch as we haven't seen each other in weeks. She noticed right away that I had lost some weight, she said my face thinned out. Sweet! All these salad lunches/dinners are working!! Plus all the walking I am doing is helping too, I bet! We met up for a quick bite in the food fair, she introduced me to the Salad Loop and I was able to make a yummy salad for less than $4.00!! Plus there are so many items and I didn't even imagine what I could add to my salad. I really love fresh spinach and this is now my current choice for a salad (I have been eating Spring Greens for a month and half!). As we were catching up, she told me she wanted to head over to Tiffany's to look at a charm bracelet. I agreed! I have been searching (online) for a Tiffany ring. To my surprise (or not!), I ended up walking out with a pretty blue bag :) I had decided to buy a Tiffany ring (a new item not even available online yet!) and she (the more reasonable one) decided to wait until payday to buy herself a charm bracelet. Now I own a little piece of Tiffany and it's so beautiful. I decided it is a Valentine Gift for me :) Beautiful, click to see.

PS: We also headed over to Louis Vuitton to see if the heart purse was available but it did not come in and there was a very long waiting list. I decided not to put my name on the list because I would be very disappointed if they came in and I didn't get one! That happened to me once and I have never put my name on the waiting list again. I did find something I would love to have and I did scare Jas a bit but in the end I walked out without a brown bag.

Happy [Heart] Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

It's never fun when your love one is not here to celebrate this day with you but HonHon has a pretty darn good excuse and he better bring me something back real nice! IMO, this day is marked as a Hallmark holiday and can be a little bit overrated but I decided to go with the holiday and start a new tradition for Kay. I had spoken to a few people in the office and these ladies have been given or giving V'day gifts to their daughters and sons, usually it's jewellery for girls and t-shirt or a new toy for the boys. I thought it would be nice to start Kay off with a lovely necklace, something reasonable but pretty and not too over the top because she is only 12 years old. Lots of people were doing their last minute shopping and me, being one, was in a massive panic in trying to find the right gift for my special baby girl. Lucky for me, Winners had this beautiful sterling silver necklace with a pendant, the pendant consisted of two angels holding onto an aquamarine stone, very beautiful and perfect my little angel. After picking up the gift (and a cute Hello Kitty V'day card), I headed home to pick up Kay so we could head over to Boston Pizza for heart shaped pizza. Kay decided to invite her best friends, Tyler and Olivia to dinner. I didn't mind as long as their parents gave the permission. The kids are really good kids, slightly mischievous but very well mannered and behaved kids. We were at the Boston Pizza and there were lots of families there with screaming kids running around (or crawling on the floor!) UGH... with all the kids around me screaming, I felt like I really needed a Bellini but did not order one because I was in the company of three kids, two of them not being my own! Boston Pizza was super busy and it took 25 minutes for our pizza to reach our table and to my surprise, the pizzas did come out heart shaped! Very cool. Throughout the evening, the girls were really bugging poor Tyler. Girls can be pretty mean and they did some funny things to Tyler like dumping sugar and Parmesan cheese in his water, flicking him with their fingers tips and they were all into tickling each other. Very funny kids! I told him this was easy and it only gets worse when you get older. After dinner, I took the kids out for gelato and they were playing double dare at the parlour. Daring each other to do silly things like keep the freezer door open until the buzzer goes off! OMG, what a bunch of clowns. After a couple of hours with them, I was ready to send them home. All in all, it was a great Valentine's Day and Kay is a really good girl.

Caught some good moments on my camera even though it was hard to catch them as they were clowning around!

{Click to enlarge}

Our lovely Saturday

Today, Kay and I spent most of the day with my mom and brother. First off, we had to head back to Creo Bellus to pick up some of mom's pieces and my custom made peridot earrings. We also planned on having lunch and running some errands. My earrings are so beautiful and the details are amazing. The earrings came up to $400 with a family and blog discount! I didn't realize they were going to come up to this much but I do have to say, they are def. worth every penny, lovely peridots (my birthstone) and 5 point diamonds (3 on each earring).

We didn't realize how long we ended up staying at Creo Bellus because after a couple of hours, our tummies were starting to growl! Since my brother would not be coming with us to run errands (he apparently doesn't need any food) and had plans to attend a friend's birthday bash, we only had a couple of hours before he needed to be back in Richmond to get ready for his party. We decided to stay close by, on Main Street, at a Hong Kong style cafe which is known for cheap and fast food. I don't really like this kind of restaurant esp. on my new diet but decided to have something really simple and what I normally will not eat. Instant Noodles in a satay base soup with satay beef strips. It was pretty tasty except for the fact I could taste all that MSG in the soup! After our meal, we said our good byes and mom and I headed back to her place to drop off her thousands of dollars worth of jewellery as we were going to head over to Metrotown and she did not want to carry all the pieces wth her. We decided to head over to the Superstore in Metrotown because I had to check HonHon's mail as I have not done so in weeks! Boy did he have A LOT of mail! Oops!! After checking his mail, we headed over to Metrotown because we needed to pick up a gift for C's birthday party (at the Garage Clothing store), we bought her a nice pullover top with a lacey tank top to match. After Garage Clothing, we headed over to Superstore to pick up a few items as they did not have everything we were looking for (this Superstore is terrible, they are never ever up to date with their stock!). After a while, we realized it was getting late and we still needed to pick up take out for dinner. We headed over to the newly renovated T&T Supermarket on the other side of the shopping centre. Gosh, I had not realized how large it has become and it is looking very "Richmond' like! I cannot believe how many Hongers and Chinese people now live in the South Burnaby area, it almost feels like a mini Richmond!! I do have to say though, I am loving this new and large T&T Supermarket except that I am no longer living in the area so I won't be visiting it too often. The closest T&T for me in the Cambie area is the one in Chinatown and that one is not very big and it hasn't been updated or renovated since it first opened. At T&T, we picked up a few more items missing from our list and picked up some sweet & sour pork and chicken for dinner. We headed back to mom's place and KD was still around packing her stuff (she's moving out of my mom's bsmt suite at the end of the month). We chit chatted a bit and caught up on life, she finally found a receptionist job at a Kia dealership in Richmond which is better than her call centre job (paying only min. wage and contracted for 6 weeks). After speaking with her, I headed back upstairs to eat dinner with mom and grandma. Kay and I stayed around for a bit and we finally decided to call it a night by 10.00pm because we were both really worned out from today.

Check out the below photos of my custom earrings and winning prize!!

I won!

I just got a call from Tai (Creo Bellus) telling me that I won the necklace draw from the Grand Opening! How cool is that? Plus, my birthstones / diamonds have arrived and he is making my earrings as I type this, it should be ready on Saturday. How exciting, I can't wait to see them!

Oh yes just one more thing to mention, this for a steal price!

Facials and Jewellery

Today, mom and I had appointments to get at home facials with a couple of representatives from Sunrider. At first, I was a little bit skeptical about this because it sounded like a pyramid scheme but after some researching, I found that this wasn't as what it seemed. It is a direct sales company and they carry a lot of herbal products developed and researched in USA, Taiwan, China and all around the world!

Eva, mom's friend, came over to talk about the products and what a difference it can make to your personal well being. As I had already done some of my own research, I didn't really focus in on everything she was telling us. Another reason because she was speaking in Cantonese and I could not understand a word she was saying. But I already knew the product lines were hugely successful and many people who used it, seemed to be better from using the products. I signed on as a member because I was interested in the facial products and also the herbal tea bags in which help cleansed you internally. The membership fee is a little high but it's a one time fee and a lifetime membership. I am willing to pay the price if it will improve my skin as I have been having problems finding creams/cleansers for my face. Besides, calculating the cost of some of the products I have spent over the years is by far lower than what I paid into the membership.

After our facials, we headed over to Creo Bellus to meet my brother and pick up my mom's jewellery. The last time we were there, the backroom was not completely finished and still in the process of being set up with the working stations. Wow, it looks so professional now and they even have their own little "barista" in the hallway. Josh still works at Starbucks once or twice a month because of the awesome benefits he gets for being employed with Starbucks. I asked him if he could pick up the cute pink heart mug for me the next time he was in the shop as I have been eyeing this one since it came out but I don't want to pay the retail price for the mug. I think he gets 30 or 40% off the retail. They did an amazing job at cleaning and restoring my mom's jewellery! I was so impressed that I asked Tai if he could clean my rings. He did an amazing job, both of my rings look brand new! As if I just purchased them today! I wish I had a photo of the before and after but I don't. My mom gave my brother a really nice diamond men's ring but it was set in yellow gold. At first when my mother gave him the ring (last week), he didn't seem to be all that fond with it but after Tai cleaned up the ring, the difference is incredible! You cannot tell it's the same ring! After Tai cleaned off my beautiful white gold rings, we were able to convince my brother to re-polish the yellow gold ring and make it into a white gold ring which will make the diamonds POP! It was really cool to watch my brother's ring turn from yellow to white, I wish I had my camera so I could record it and post it. Of course, the white gold will not last forever and eventually after wearing it, it will eventually return to its original colour (yellow) but all he has to do is bring it back to Creo Bellus for a replating. I also discussed my earrings with Tai and changed the design on my earrings again! But he was super nice about it and wanted me to be completely happy with the final design. No pressure and genuinely cared about all the details of my earrings.

We finished up so the boys could get back to work, we wanted to take them out for dinner but they decided to take a raincheck because they still had a lot of work ahead of them. We headed over to a not so great but cheap chinese restaurant on Victoria. After dinner, we headed back to my mom's and my brother stayed to trim my mom's hair while I decided to head home. I am almost ready to go to bed!

Grand Opening - Creo Bellus

Today, we (mom, brother, Kay and I) went to our family friend's Grand Opening to help celebrate their new jewellery store front. My brother's friends, Josh and Tai, have opened up their new business in a store called Madison. Madison and Creo Bellus partnered up to open a store on Main Street and although this is Madison's second store, it's a first for our dear friends! How exciting and I can't believe how grown up those two are! It doesn't seem that long ago when they were still running around and skipping school. Wow, life can move so quickly, you blink your eyes and poof it's a few years gone by. I can't believe these boys are now grown men running their own business but in my eyes, they are still my little brother's bratty friends! Just kidding! Anyways, congrats and good for them! I am very proud of them.

During the opening, we stuck around for almost 2 hours! There were a lot of people coming through and business was good! They had already sold some pieces in the display case and both were already writing up many custom orders. My mom brought in a few pieces of jewellery for resizing and cleaning. I spoke to Tai about a pair of custom earrings with my birthstone/diamonds. I am very excited to see the final product, I can't wait. I know it's going to be a beautiful piece esp. since it will be done by hand. He has impeccable workmanship and has been in the business for 12 years! Wow, I still can't believe how grown up they are.

If any of you are interested in a custom piece of jewellery, please go see our good friends, Tai and Josh at Creo Bellus. (FYI, Creo Bellus Fine Jewellery - Vancouver has no relations to Creo Bellus Fine Beaded Jewelery, a couple of girls who handmakes beaded jewelery from South Burlington, VT)

Contact Info:
Creo Bellus Fine Jewellery
5690 Main Street
Vancouver, BC V5W2S7
(inside Madison)
Tel: 604-324-0015
Send an email to Josh and Tai