Life goes so fast these days that we hardly have time to stop and relax. Daily Zen Doodles helps with that - doodling has been shown to relax the mind. This book contains prompts for you to fill in with repetitive patterns or doodles however you like; one prompt for each day of the year.


The first few pages contain prompts that are already filled in to give you inspiration with your own drawings. There is no right or wrong on how to do this. It is just an exercise to calm, clear and focus your mind. Each prompt also contains an inspirational or thoughtful quote, which you can use to incorporate in your doodles or not - your choice.

Some prompts are of actual objects,

while others are just squiggles or patterns.


Here are my first doodles. My mind seems to be a bit chaotic. Haha.

This is a nice little book that helps you bring out your creative side. Drawing takes practice and it is the same with quieting your mind; only practice makes perfect. It is a nice portable size but each page does give you enough space to draw. I love the inspiring quotes on each page. I can see myself sitting down with this book everyday with a cup of tea and let my creative juices run wild!



Disclaimer: I received a copy of the Daily Zen Doodles from Ulysses Press free of charge for review. The opinions expressed in this post are entirely my own and have not been influenced in any other way.

Sprinkles!: Recipes and Ideas for Rainbowlicious Desserts by Jackie Alpers is fascinating a book. There are lots of ideas of how to use sprinkles in different ways and in ways you probably wouldn't think of doing. To be expected, it's a fun book with colourful pictures. It's great for inspiration for fun desserts!


 Lots of different types of sprinkles.

Some of the recipes were ok like these hot chocolate stir sticks. Other ones, I thought are better on paper than real life. Nice pictures though! Sprinkles have a tendency to liven up anything and everything.

I decided to coat some of my home made marshmallows in sprinkles...it wasn't a great idea...with these sprinkles anyways. Make sure you use plain vanilla marshmallows and high quality sprinkles. I bought these Cake Mate sprinkles at Safeway and...the "chocolate" tasted like some kind of Indian spice. =S It was pretty disgusting. But at least they look pretty!

Sprinkles! is $14.40 on Amazon.ca if you are interested.



Disclosure: I received a free copy of Sprinkles! to review. No other compensation was received. The opinions expressed in this post are entirely my own and have not been influenced in any other way.

Did you know you can easily make marshmallows at home?! I just recently found that out with the help of the book Marshmallow Madness! by Shauna Sever! This book is amazing. It has a puff cover and so many marshmallow recipes from Classic Vanilla to Margarita to Maple-Bacon Marshmallows. It also covers tricks for fancy marshmallow shapes, as well as some other recipes that incorporates marshmallows. All in all a great resource for someone wondering how marshmallows are made and try their hand at making it at home - like me!

It was bake night with my friends Miche and Winw! Marshmallows are made mainly from water, sugar, corn syrup, and gelatine. That's it! The rest is flavouring. Ignore the sprinkles for now, I'll get to that in a following up post. We decided to just start off with the Classic Vanilla Marshmallow recipe though it kind of turned into the Malibu Marshmallows but without the coconut rum by substituting some of the vanilla extract with coconut extract.

Boiled a corn syrup, sugar, water, salt mixture until it reached 240F and mixed it with the rest of the corn syrup and melted geletin.

It's amazing to watch the watery mixture turn into a thick pillowy consistency!

We used a regular baking pan because that's all I had but probably better if the pan was a little deeper.


Now, you have to wait about 6 hours for the marshmallows to set. I neglected to read this part of the recipe when I invited my friends over at 8pm. XD So we had to continue making the marshmallows the next day.

Meanwhile, Miche toasted some coconut bits on the stove to a beautiful golden brown colour. It smelled soooo good!

You are suppose to coat the finished marshmallow with a corn starch and icing sugar mixture so that it's not so sticky but here we are coating it with toasted coconut.

Phew! Winw said it was like a marshmallow sweatshop!

The finished product. They are SO DELICIOUS!

Marshmallow Madness! is a great and fun cook book and only costs $13.68 on Amazon.ca if you are interested in making your own marshmallows. Happy cooking!

Last Friday, Chapters held a Holiday Product Preview for their loyalty rewards members to show off the new items available for the fast approaching 2012 holiday season. I was one of the lucky few who got to attend this special event. Chapters spared no expense when hosting this marvellous evening. Food, wine, books, live music, celebrity guests. Everything was perfect for a exclusive night of shopping.

There was a good crowd that attended.

Live music as we perused through the holiday products at our leisure.




The two wines served were two suggested from Had a Glass 2013!

Mountains of chocolates, cheese, bread and crackers. Yummy! The chocolates, cheeseboards, cheese knives and trays are all available at Chapters! I really liked the set of cheese knives: Wildly Delicious Knife Set.




Award winning wine writer, James Nevison spoke briefly about his newest book Had A Glass 2013: Top 100 Wines Under $20. This little book is packed with  It costs under $20 itself and makes a great stocking stuffer!

As well, celebrity chef, and executive chef of Cactus Club Cafe, Rob Feenie was there to promote his newest cookbook: Rob Feenie's Casual Classics, which I've bought for a friend recently (WW! I'm expecting you to cook something for me!).

And without further ado, some photos of the holiday products.


The area was decorated very beautifully with products available for purchase at Chapters. Yes, these pretty bird ornaments are also for sale!

My favourite are these snow globes. They come in different flavours: owl, deer, birds, rabbit, moose. They were the centrepieces for all the tables at the event!

Very pretty and whimsical - like a winter wonderland!

Need to decorate your holiday dinner table? Mine never looked this nice. I wish I can just live in this section of the store. So pretty! lol


Look at all these delicious treats!









 Owls are big this year! There are tonnes of owl related options to choose from.




I LOVE this stocking! There's a penguin version just as cute.



Attendees also received swag bags! Two books and chocolate!

I was also lucky at the event. I was drawn as a winner of these books! I love books!

Chapters is not just books! They have a little bit of everything; it is a one stop shop for the holiday season. If you want to learn more about Chapter's Holiday products, here's their Holiday Preview Guide pdf. Also check out their website http://www.chapters.indigo.ca; it is the season so there are a lot of sales going on!