Photoshop Work

I am trying to learn different photoshop techniques. This is what I've done. Can you tell the difference? I gave Mr. Q a skin revitalization job! Even Yuan looks fluffier.

Before:


After:

Mt. Seymour Hiking Trip

On the BC Day long weekend, we took mom for a hike just to change her routine itinerary and lighten up her mood. Q looked up for various hiking trails and found one that got lots of reviews and recommendations. The trail name is called "Dog Mountain" and it is up on Mt. Seymour.

It is rated as an EASY trail route and takes 2 hours to get to the peak. To the south-west, there's Vancouver, with Stanley Park, the Lions Gate Bridge and Point Grey. That sounded like a great choice, so there we went.

We arrived at the top of Mt. Seymour where is actually the bottom of the ski hill and start of the hiking routes.


Since it's the first time for all 3 of us, we expected to walk on a fairly flat pebble surface with a wide trail where people can take their dogs for a nice long walk. Surprisingly, it turned out to be narrow trail where we had to step through mud, tree roots, some rocky steps and even un-melted snow!


After walking for over an hour, we finally reached the First Lake. Instead keep going, we took a detour to Dinky Peak and back to where we started. In total, we've walked for over 3 hours!


Since we were in North Van, we stopped by Mom's friend's house. They were so nice and welcoming. They took us to a local popular Greek restaurant. The food was authentic and delicious.

Q's 30th Birthday

Since we have to attend a friend's wedding on Q's birthday, we celebrated a little in advance. On Friday, I left work a little bit earlier and went on a "tiger hunt". You must wonder what exactly I was hunting for. I wasn't hunting for a stuffed animal tiger nor hunting for a zoo to take Q to see a tiger. I was hunting for an ice-cream flavour named "tiger"- orange and black liquorice. You can imagine orange blended with stripes of black liquorice makes a tiger fur pattern. Q has told me a long time ago that "tiger" is his favourite flavour of ice-cream. I always paid extra attention when I went to the supermarkets but never had any success of finding it. My theory is that it must be a weird flavour that nobody likes and ice-cream manufacturers eventually got rid of this unprofitable product. I went to Safeway, Superstore, Save-On and finally found it at IGA by our home. To kick it up another notch, I grabbed a Duncan Hine's Devils Food cake mix and AAA Angus Prime Rib steaks with Asparagus for a nice romantic homemade birthday dinner. I then rushed home as fast as I could and baked the cake. I might be a good cook, but never good at baking. My cookies are known as "hocky pucks" and my muffins often turned out as small cupcakes. I gave up on baking about 10 years ago. But, for my dear husband, I thought nothing could go wrong because Q likes EVERYTHING I make. He always gave me lots of praise even when I didn't like the dish I made myself. After putting the cake in the oven, I quickly made a birthday card for him and prepare the steaks and asparagus for the grill. Although Q had to BBQ the steaks (because I had no idea how to operate our BBQ), the romantic backyard dinner went well with tiger ice-cream chocolate cake for dessert.

Here are some photos:

Happy Bokeh Wednesday!

I have been addicted to Flickr for a while and recently discovered a new type of photo style called "bokeh". According to Wikipedia, Bokeh is derived from a Japanese word bokeaji ボケ味, "blur". It is a photographic term referring to the appearance of out-of-focus areas in an image produced by a camera lens. Different lens bokeh produces different aesthetic qualities in out-of-focus backgrounds, which are often used to reduce distractions and emphasize the primary subject.

Here is the bokeh I took last night while we went for a stroll in the neighborhood.


We also walked by a gorgeous house that is on sale. Gotta work harder and find a way to own a house like this one day.

It's Time to Go Green

It's time to go green everyone!

If we don't do something to save the Earth, it'll be either we die or the Earth dies.

Make your commitment to do at least the following 8 things in your daily life:

1. Recycle Aluminum and Steel Cans
- you can save 414 lbs of CO2 in one year.

2. Recycle Newspaper and Magazines
- you can save 581 lbs of CO2 in one year.

3. Wash Laundry on a Cooler Setting
- you can save 349 lbs of CO2 in one year.

4. Switching light bulbs to low-watt energy savings light bulbs
- you can save 500 lbs of CO2 in one year.

5. Turn down the temperature on the Thermostat
- you can save 1300 lbs of CO2 in one year.

6. Follow the Speed Limit
- you can save 15% fuel and 1500 lbs of CO2 in one year.

7. Turn off electronic devices that are not in use
- you can save 1608 lbs of CO2 in one year.

8. Change home appliances to green-power products with Energy Star sign
- you can save 75% energy and 20,508 lbs of CO2 in one year.