is a local Ottawa Jewellery store that has two locations, one at the Rideau Center, and the other at 799 Bank Street in the Glebe. The jewellery that is sold at Magpie is mostly sterling silver, and most off the designers are Canadian, with the few International exceptions. They have an online store in addition to their walk-in stores, where they sell many of their collections, but with fewer options.

There are some incredibly beautiful lines at Magpie. My favourite is the Silver Seasons line. I love how everything looks so delicate and right off of tree branches. I really want that clover necklace and those green leaf earrings. Oh and those intricate bangles by Holly Yashi. So beautiful.

Aside from the wonderful jewelry at Magpie, I have found their service to be excellent. Keeping in mind that there are always way too many people browsing their store, the staff at Magpie always take the time with their clients, and offer the exact same service whether you’re spending $400 or $40. In reference to the Rideau Center store specifically, the staff is always friendly, and won’t pressure you into anything. Be patient if they are with someone. They will not rush off their customers just because you are waiting. If you wait, you will get the same excellent service and time.

I have found most jewellery stores to be uncomfortable to shop in.  The store personnel always watches you and only speaks to you if it looks like you’re going to buy something expensive. At Magpie, I am unaware if they make commissions, but even with hoards of people in their little store, they are courteous and offer quality service that you just wouldn’t expect.

Magpie is my go-to place to shop for family and friends when it comes to jewelry, although I’ve really got to start shopping there for myself some day.

~Darleya~

Apples to Apples is one of those games that anyone and everyone can play.  Let’s say that you have to be at least 8 years old, otherwise you really won’t get the references. You can play up to 10 players, but with one of the expansion packs, even more people can join in.

The game is incredibly easy to play, but a whole lot of fun is had while doing so. There are two decks of cards in this game. A red deck, and a green deck. The red deck is filled with random objects, people, places, and so forth, while the green deck is filled with adjectives and descriptive words.

Everyone receives a handful of the ‘things’ or red cards, I think it is seven, or so. Each turn, someone becomes the ‘referee’, or the ‘judge’ if you will, and they must flip a green or description card from the draw deck and place it face up on the table. The rest of the players have to to pick, from the cards in their hands, the “thing card” that is the best match for that particular Description. This has to be done quickly! The last person to put a card down has to take it back and has no chance at a point.

Here comes the fun part. The judge then has to look at all the cards that were played, and best determine which card matches the flipped description. For an example, let’s say the description card was ‘romantic’., and say the cards people threw down were ‘Paris’, ‘Hot bath’, ‘candles’, ‘beach’, and “Hitler”.

These answers are not necessarily part of the game, but I’m just trying to come up with a decent example. The judge then decides what card is the winner. The people that put the cards down are allowed to fight for their card to try and convince the judge that their card is the best match.

The winner of each round keeps the ‘description or green’ card as a point.  The judge becomes the next person, and the play continues as such. The game winner is the person who gets to the allotted number of green cards. Typically, this is decided by the number of people playing, but we like to make it a bit higher so that the game lasts longer since it’s so much fun.

Often times, the cards in your hand don’t match the description card in the slightest, and this is where it can get funny. Everyone I have played this game with has loved it, and I definitely recomend it to anyone that enjoys games and laughs.

~Darleya~

OH, and this game mixes VERY WELL with alcohol

The Socializer comes with two eye  pens in which you ‘click’ out cream into a soft brush. One pen is called Bright Lights, while the other pen is called Late Nights. The premise behind having two seperate solutions is to treat the eye area differently, depending on what time of the day it is. For instance, if you worked all day long, are tired, but still want to go out at night, you’d use the ‘Late Nights’ pen to take the fatigue from under your eye area. If you partied all night(or have terrible insomnia) but have to work the next day, then you’d use the bright lights, to treat your eyes in the morning.

I was curious to see if the two solutions were actually different so I compared the ingredients. They are!

I am very pleased with my purchase of the Socializer. I’ve been using it for around three weeks now but it wasn’t until the other day that I tested the product without applying make-up afterwards to see if I noticed a difference. I really did notice that my eyes brightened up in about 10 minutes.

When you first apply the cream, you have to rub it in gently. Once it starts to sink in, you’ll feel the very slightest tingly or cooling sensation. This tells me that it’s doing something. I believe that this product works over a few hours based on my experience with it. Your eyes will continue to ‘de-fatigue’ as it progresses. It is by no means a miracle worker, but I can certainly tell the difference.  Once it settles into your skin(about 2 mins), you can continue with your regular make-up routine.

At $40, I am pleased with my purchase. I feel that it is worth the investment because I always have tired eyes, I need all of the help I can get. You can buy The Socializer online at the Elizabeth Grant store. It comes in the cutest silver tube that has a fashionista that can change outfits when you turn the tube. A very nice touch, if you ask me.

Once my creams run out, I will not hesitate to buy them again.

~Darleya~

At first I looked at this game and was shocked that it’s premise is about chopping off various noble’s heads for points. Gory, right? And how about inappropriate? Maybe a little. But it was already purchased and brought home, so I gave it a chance as I do with all games. The game’s premise is comedic, and not actually meant to offend anyone. It is for ages 12 and up due to its theme, although I think a mature enough 9-year old could play.

Guillotine happens to be a clever and competitive card game that’ll make you laugh. The game-play is not difficult, and not long. You have character or noble cards lined up, waiting to be executed. At the end is the guillotine. The characters are worth different amounts of points, based on their popularities. The goal is to score as many high ’noble heads’ that you can to win. There are also cards with negative points as they may have been innocent! Since the guillotine was used during the French revolution, the comical characters in this game are all from that era and area. For example, a high in card is the lovely Marie Antoinette.

The game also has another deck of cards which changes how the game is played. You may scramble the characters in line, move better ones forward, or ruin your opponents chances by attacking them, or stealing cards from them.

The game mixes both strategy and luck, although is weighed more on the luck side, since good cards can make all the difference. The game is different every time, and with varying numbers of players, the outcomes are also always different. I have yet to play with 5 players, but have played with 2, 3, and 4, and all games have been very amusing.

I enjoy 2-player games because they are very useful for couples when you are bored of your routine, and want something different. Plus, it’s always great to beat your spouse at anything. Guillotine is by no means difficult to learn, and only takes around 30 minutes to play.

Enjoy!

~Darleya~

Salt Water Taffy is an American specialty that originated in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Although it originated in New Jersey, Salt Water Taffy is also a known specialty of Salt Lake City, Utah.

A friend of mine was kind enough to send me a large bag of them a while back, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on it.

Despite the name, salt water taffy is not made with sea water.  It is instead made with sugar, cornstarch, corn syrup, glycerine, water, butter, salt, flavor, and food color.The candies are very sweet and soft. You can either chew them, or let them slowly dissolve. I enjoy letting them dissolve, because they do stick to your teeth.

The bag I received contained around 15 flavours. I was actually quite shocked at how remarkably well they mimicked the flavours of different fruits and desserts. The flavours for pear, peach, and blueberry were my favourite.

There’s pretty much a flavour for everyone in the bag I received. It also had Neapolitan, peppermint, and black licorice among others.

I found a Taffy store in Utah that also seems to have numerous other gourmet flavours to try. It is called Taffy Town; have a look.

If you haven’t had a chance to try salt water taffy, then I suggest you do. You will be pleasantly surprised at how delicious they are. Just don’t forget to brush your teeth!

~Darleya~

It seems that healthy non-plastic bottles are the craze nowadays, so of course I had to jump on that bankwagon. Browsing for nice-looking non-plastic water bottles is a bit of a chore, I found.

Most of these water bottles are expensive. Who wants to pay between $20-$40 for a water bottle? Certainly not I. Even though so many of them are very beautiful; as beautiful as a water bottle can be, I opted to find one that was priced more reasonably.

Water bottles by Kerplunk are just that. They have a wide variety of designs, are 100% stainless steel, and have the convenient looped lids for easy carriage at the gym. When you’re transporting weights around, it’s nice to be able to just loop your water bottle with an available finger, rather than having to have a hand handy. Hand, handy. I like that.

In addition to the health benefits of stainless steel, it also keeps your water cold much much longer. A piece of advice: Do not forget one of these bottles in the freezer filled with water. They can explode, as my friend’s did.

The Kerplunk water bottles are $10. This is very reasonable, considering that so many are overpriced. Kerplunk is a brand by The Madison Company from Toronto. These bottles can be found at many retailers. I found mine at Home Outfitters.

My bottle is light green with a pink cherry blossom branch on it. Very girly, but I like it. The lid on mine is different and smaller than the bottle pictured, but has the same design.

Enjoy!

~Darleya~

The restaurant is a Spanish tapas place in the evenings, and serves Canadian breakfast in the mornings.

I went there with my family a few weeks ago and so naturally, I enthusiastically suggested this new little local place.

The look of the restaurant is fine, nothing fancy though. Yellow walls with a few accent Mexican decor pieces. The staff was friendly, but disorganized.

I will not be returning to this tapas place. The menu was very limited, even for a Tapas place. The selections were also similar in nature, so variety was lacking.

We managed to pick out a few things and had a pitcher of Sangria. The Sangria was made with very cheap red wine and didn’t taste like much else was in it. It had apple pieces in it too, which we thought was odd. The pitcher was small and not very good at all.

When we saw our dishes arrive we were so very unimpressed. Tapas portions are small; yes. These portions were so very minuscule, especially the artichoke dish. On top of that, the artichokes were clearly from a can, and the sauce was certainly just a jar of regular mayonnaise with some spice thrown on top. The descriptions of the food sounded delicious, but the delivery was the complete opposite. It was very very bad. We also had 2 chorizo platters, which were pretty much the same, but with minor differences. I felt like I was eating leftover scraps that would best be served to the dogs.

Nothing felt like authentic cuisine, and none of it was fresh. We ordered 5 dishes at the start, and wished we’d only ordered one. When the 5 dishes were done we left that dump and went for some Fritomania Poutine next door.

Do not venture into this place, it isn’t good at all.

~Darleya~

(p.s my August banner is coming…this weekend)

For this music review, I’m going to do a song by song discussion. Christina Aguilera’s latest album is again totally different from her last ones. As the title suggests, Bionic has much more of a hip hop dance vibe to it rather than ballads and a focus on her strong voice. I also have to note that I find it interesting that she has dedicated the album to her son, when she is naked in most of the album pictures(with small things covering her bits up). It’s still sweet that she mentions her son.

Aguilera does not need to do the weird digital voice-tweaking that’s in all of hip hop nowadays, but she does it in Bionic. The album does not do any justice to her actual talent, rather, it is filled with a bunch of club songs(for the most part). I don’t know why she chose to do this when her voice is meant for powerful emotional ballads (like Hurt), but here are my thoughts.

1) Bionic – Borderline Cool. She sort of raps in it which is different for her, but I prefer it when she sings. The beat is pretty fun, but, the chorus is lame.

2)Not Myself Tonight – Definitely a good dance song. It reminds me slightly of the Car Wash song she did a few years ago though. Again, it’s not anything spectacular, but a fun car ride song.

3)Woo Hoo feat. Nicki Minaj- Has a hip hop vibe and reminds me of something Fergie would come out with. The parts she sings are nice, and it yet again has a good beat to it. I’d never heard of Nicki Minaj, but I like her rap part better than X-tina’s. This song  does make me want to do some good reggae dance moves.

4)Elastic Love – Love the beat in this one. Definitely something to turn up the volume to. Alright so it starts off strong. I’m not used to her using her voice so plainly, almost like she’s just speaking. I’ll give her one thing – it’s very TODAY.

5)Desnudate – Go figure she’s singing ‘get naked!’. It’s a very fun song though, I love the occasional latin lyrics and beats.

6)Love & Glamour – An intro of Christina speaking about love and glamour like they go together. It’s stupid.

7)Glam – Paint your face like a movie queen. What? Yeah. Another club track, with her speaking in it in her whiny fake voice she does. When she goes ‘Now snap’, I find it quite lame, sorry.

8)Prima Donna – Another club track. Nothing special about it again. Christina, what are you doing? If you’re a prima donna, then please sing. Thanks.

9)Morning Dessert – Intro. I’ve never liked intros. This one is no exception. What’s the point?

10)Sex for Breakfast – The title of this song just screams cheesy to me. The song itself isn’t so bad, at least she actually sings in this one. It reminds me of something from her Stripped album. Again, it’s a totally forgetable track, one of the ones that usually go at the end of an album when you’ve got nothing good left.

11) Lift me Up – This song is pretty, but doesn’t manage to move me like other ballads of hers have. It is still one of my favourites in Bionic.

12) My Heart – another intro, but it’s cute because her son(I’m guessing) says mama in it.

13) All I Need – This one is also a favourite of the album. She actually shows her talent in this one. It’s very relaxing and pretty. I like it a lot, it’s a song about being a mother.

14)I Am – I like the orchestra music in the background of this song. The violins give it a different light. This one is another great track on this CD.

15)You Lost Me – I love this song. It is so beautiful. Songs like these are what Christina’s made to sing. I get chills with this one.

16) I Hate Boys – Another wannabe Britney/Gaga Song. Another waste of time.

17)My Girls feat. Peaches – There’s a retro 80s dance vibe to this one; at the start. It then ends up sounding like a Ke§hia song or something. Not good.

18) Vanity – This one sounds like she’s just yelling again. I don’t like it.

Overall, the club music just doesn’t suit Christina. My favourite songs of this album are the slower ballads that have meaning in them. it lacks inspiration. I don’t know why she succumbs to the need to make meaningless pop, but, I guess that’s what she hasn’t really done yet(not counting her first album). She doesn’t need to try hard to make a musically powerful album, and yet, she tries way too hard to stay current when in fact; she’s so talented that she doesn’t need to. The album is overall a disappointment, but I do love the last few songs, so I’ll keep playing the last few tracks of the album to justify my purchase. The dance songs are still fun, but aren’t her specialty.

~Darleya~

Walking into a Kettleman’s you’ll see people working away at the large stone oven and rolling bagels like it’s nobody’s business. They are like machines and usually have headphones on, listening to their music while working away with their hands. It’s pretty cool to watch them go. You can purchase bagels by the dozen, bagels to go, or eat in and be served.

The service is always friendly and quick. One of my main reasons for going to kettlemans besides the delicious bagels, or rather, THE main reason I go there; is for their hot pepper cream cheese spread. I am obsessed with this spread. It is simply fantastic! I always get them to put heaps of it on my bagel because I can’t get enough of it. You can also buy their cream cheese spreads in tubs to bring home, which I’ve obviously done.

The unfortunate thing for me is that bagels are difficult on my digestive system, but I certainly indulge anyway on occasion.

The local Kettleman’s are found at 2177 Carline Avenue, 912 Bank Street, and 1222 Place D’Orléans Blvd. In addition to bagels and cream cheese, they also make a wide variety of bagel sandwiches, and have some additional pastry treats, like knish’s. Mmmm.

~Darleya~

This review is for their baked eyeshadows.

Stila’s baked eyeshadow trios are simply stunning. The colors are bright, and go together wonderfully. I purchased the trio called ‘champagne glow’ (pictured)which features soft pink, cool taupe and rich brown shades. It is my absolute favourite shadow. It has a very nice sheen to it, too.

The trio’s represent a base, the crease, and liner, so that you don’t have to think of what colors are needed to create very pretty eye effects. I purchased one for my mother as well, and she just loves it.

Because the eyeshadow is baked, it is much less likely to crumble and break. The baking of the shadows also makes the application much creamier and smoother. I have managed to drop my palette already, and to my luck it has remained intact.

The aluminum compacts are very stylish too. You can purchase these shadows at Sephora among other places, and they cost between $20 and $28 depending on the sheen factor. This is pricey when you compare it to drug store brands, but the difference in quality is very obvious. The shadow can also be applied wet with an eyeshadow liquifier.

The one thing I will note with these shadows is that the pallette tends to spin around in the container, so you have to be careful when you use your brush on it. I use MAC brushes to apply the shadow. You don’t need a lot on your brush as a little goes a long way.

Enjoy!

~Darleya~

Since I have been eating ketchup all my life, this brand war is a bit difficult, because the taste of Ketchup is the taste of Heinz Tomato Ketchup.  I’m trying very hard not to discriminate and will solely be describing the flavours.

President’s Choice Tomato Ketchup

This PC ketchup is always around 50 cents cheaper than Heinz when no specials are on. President’s Choice is a Loblaws company brand that typically manages to execute copied recipes very very well. The President’s choice ketchup does not quite hit the mark on taste. Although the ketchup lists the very same ingredients as Heinz, the flavour is a tad more bitter with less sweetness. I am guessing this means less vinegar and more sugar, but there’s some sort of odd after taste that reminds me of cloves for some reason. The exact listed ingredients are: Tomato paste, (made from fresh ripe tomatoes) liquid sugar, white vinegar, salt, seasonings. While the PC ketchup is not horrible, I won’t be buying it again, at 50 cents cheaper than Heinz.

Heinz Tomato Ketchup

The Heinz tomato ketchup seems to have the perfect balance of vinegar and sugar, which makes it quite irresistible to me. Its exact ingredients are: Tomato Concentrate From Red Ripe Tomatoes, Distilled Vinegar, Sugar, Salt, Onion Powder, Spice, Natural Flavoring. Perhaps it is the added quality of their ingredients, and the fact that Heinz grows its own tomatoes to make its ketchup, but the taste of Heinz is rather imprinted in my taste buds as how ketchup is supposed to taste. Buying the other brands for this brand war has been difficult, because we’ve had to finish the ketchups from the other brands. Also, the Heinz ketchup website has a widget where you can squeeze a ketchup email to a friend. Try it here.

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Great Value tomato Ketchup

Walmart has its very own brand of Ketchup as well. The Great Value Ketchup is the cheapest of the three in this brand war. The Great Value ketchup differs the most in its ingredients: Tomato Concentrate, Distilled Vinegar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Salt, Onion Powder, Spice, Natural Flavoring. It is much less healthy than the other two brands, however, I will say that the Great Value ketchup had a better taste than the President’s choice. I was the most skeptical about this brand, but after tasting it, I am more reluctant to try other ‘great value’ products. The difference for this one, is that it tastes a bit sweeter than the Heinz, which is likely attributable to the high fructose corn syrup. If you’re on a budget, then I’d recommend the great value ketchup since it is so far the closest taste to the real deal.

This brand war is slightly skewed, because I’m comparing the two different brands to the Heinz taste. I will say that the Walmart Great Value ketchup was much better than the president’s choice ketchup, which shocked me. It is much cheaper. Unless I’m on a tight budget I will keep buying Heinz, but it’s nice to know that I have options if the case were otherwise.

What do you put ketchup on?

~Darleya~
]]> http://www.stuffedashes.com/2010/07/14/review-of-ketchup-a-brand-war/feed/ 6 http://www.stuffedashes.com/2010/07/11/review-of-star-gate-universe-again/ http://www.stuffedashes.com/2010/07/11/review-of-star-gate-universe-again/#comments Mon, 12 Jul 2010 02:29:28 +0000 Darleya http://www.stuffedashes.com/?p=837

I’ll admit that it was starting to get a little soap opera-esque by mid-season, but they rightfully brought it back to its sci-fi goodness after the break.

I was really excited when I first saw it, because hey, the name Juan is an authentic Latin name, this place MUST be good.

Unfortunately, I was highly mislead. Not only is this place  not authentic, but it is way overpriced with horrible service to boot.

The first time we went there, we went for lunch. While the service wasn’t horrible that day and just slow, the food was not good, and again, overpriced. We ordered the Chorizo entrée, and it was very very dry, with little to no flavour. I’ve cooked some mean chorizo sausages before, and this was crap. Handmade my ass!

The second time we went was for a friend’s birthday dinner. We were a large group of people. Some people arrived at varying times, but everyone was ordering drinks and appetizers until everyone got there.

I don’t understand how you can get snotty attitudes from servers and management when you’re spending a lot of money. The two just don’t go together in my eyes. They gave us evil looks like ‘how dare us cause them to work a little harder’. Some of us had to go to the bar to get a drink because they were not coming back. We weren’t even being rowdy. I mean, we were a bunch of 30-year olds, and two very young children that were being well-behaved.

When we finally ordered, they messed up many people’s dishes, and charged extra for things like hot sauce, when in most Mexican places, those things are unanimously free. I do not think that this was a one-time bad experience. I wasn’t one member of the staff, it was all of them.

I will not be going back there ever. Not only do I not recommend this place, but I pray that you do not go there, so we can finally get a decent Mexican place in Orleans. Until then, I will stick to my wonderful Pancho Villa downtown.

(side note- I saw the new Mexican Café on St-Joseph, but I have yet to try it so I’ll keep you posted)

~Darleya~

I went a little nuts and tried three different kinds because they were on sale.

Smucker’s Butterscotch

The Smuckers Butterscotch topping is my favourite out of the three. The sauce is thicker than the syrups. It’s very sweet, and goes very nicely with french vanilla ice cream.

One thing you should not do with this butterscotch topping, it top it on your ice cream cone. It seemed like a good idea at first, but, one little dabble goes a long way…down the side of your cone.

A sticky mess indeed.

I found a recipe that uses this butterscotch off the Smucker’s website that sounds very delicious that I’d love to try. Pumpkin Roll with Butterscotch Cream. Check it out and tell me that doesn’t sound devine.

Smucker’s Strawberry Sundae Syrup

The strawberry syrup was the one I was the most skeptical about, but, I bought it for my husband. I was actually pleasantly surprised by its flavour because I typically don’t like any artificially flavoured strawberry things.

This syrup tastes much closer to your average strawberry jam, which tastes like real strawberries. It was very flavourful, and again, very sweet.

I decided to find a recipe for this as well, and the smuckers website offers a few. They called this one, the Canada Day Strawberry Trifle, but, I think it would be delicious all summer long. It also looks very easy to make! Yummy.

Smucker’s Chocolate Sundae Syrup

The Smuckers chocolate sundae syrup was actually my least favourite of the three. I found that sort of tasted like Neslté’s Quick and perhaps a little too strong and not chocolaty enough.

It’s still better than having nothing on your vanilla ice cream.

The recipes aren’t as enticing either. I think I’ll try their microwaveable hot fudge topper next time.

These three smuckers ice cream toppers are not something that you give to your kids all the time, but, once in a while it’s a great treat to make them happy, or keep them quiet.

Enjoy!

~Darleya~

is an internationally available Internet-based free music provider. You can listen to full albums of streaming music for free simply by performing a search for your favourite artist or song.

The website is very user-friendly, and you don’t need to download anything in order to use their service. You can create and save as many playlists as you like if you create a free user account.
You can even steal your friend’s playlists if you know their usernames.

I like it especially for the office, because I get tired of the music I bring in, so like this, I can continue to be entertained while working by listening to brand new music.

I highly recommend this website, especially if you can listen to music at work, and have access to the Internet. It’s wonderful, and it’s free! There are no lags, you’d think you were listening to the CDs themselves.

For more information about Grooveshark, check out their wiki page here.

You can look up my playlists under username ‘stuffedashes’.

Enjoy!

~Darleya~

Effaclar astringent  micro-exfoliating lotion is supposed to help instantly unblock and reduce pore size.