While anticipating for this foodventure with Annica and Julian,  I had visited Outpost Mini Donuts Co. for a third time with my mother and have realized my adoration for the donut. Or, in Lucky's case: doughnut. As is a nut, meaning 'nuts and bolts', made of dough (just guessing on that one). I love donuts, and I love really cute and picturesque cafés, so naturally I was excited to visit Forty Ninth Parallel Coffee Roasters & Lucky's Doughnuts.



The café is more than picture-perfect with its 50s vintage style with a modern rustic twist. The dimmed light bulbs adds to the character, but the abundance of windows and outdoor tables ensure the inside doesn't lack in lighting. Being avid photographers, all three of us took a good 10 minutes taking pictures of our food before eating it.




Julian paired his donut with a cappuccino, and Annica ordered a latte. I'm not a big fan of coffee, but while taking cute coffee drinking photos with Annica's cup, I decided to take a sip. Good thing I had some of my donut left over to take out the taste.






Disclaimer: This post is not sponsored.

Just wanted to come on here to bring back our themed posts, starting with a quick Tips for Tuesday! While scrolling through tumblr, I found this painting of three dresses painted very messily and abstract. I found it so pretty and the fact that it's very abstract inspired me to create my own version of it. I tend to become very frustrated and stressed whenever I draw or paint, but recently I've been enjoying some abstract painting because of it's easy-going and open-ended nature.

This is a really easy style of painting to recreate, and I think even the most artslexic people can give it a go. I am nowhere near a professional artist, but I'm all for passing on the inspiration.

via Tumblr

To avoid my perfectionist tendencies, I went straight to painting the dresses instead of sketching it with a pencil, but you can sketch out some dress outlines if you prefer to do so. I used acrylic paint, though the ones I own do not dry textured like the one used above.

Some tips to recreate this style of painting:

• Try experimenting with the wetness of your brush. This type of painting specifically uses a brush with little excess of water, which will result in a messy look: colours not blending together seemlessly, broken and spotted strokes of paint, and build-up of paint resulting in bumps.
• Have a set of two paint colours for the base of each dress. Only two. This will limit your options and will keep the painting simple. Once both colours are on the canvas, a wet brush can be used to blend the two together to create a new colour, though accidental colour mixing is part of the style.
• Work with your mistakes. It's practically encouraged to make mistakes when abstract painting, so if you make one, then pretend it's supposed to be there.
• Use a limited amount of brush strokes. It adds to the messiness and lack of seamless colour blending. When you have a loaded brush, stroke just enough to get the paint on the canvas and move on.

Before we jump right in, you may have noticed the change in title for this second installment of the series. Realizing that the posts will be mostly food related, I decided to rename the series to Foodventure instead. A simple but descriptive name, I stole it from my buddy Julian who first named his food reviews Instagram blog The Delicious Foodventure before changing it to ChowTown Richmond. (Go check it out, because he knows what he's doing.) Nonetheless, because of him we always call our eating excursions 'foodventures' so it seemed fit to call it so on my blog.

Moving forward...



Today I spent the day with Annica in Richmond, aka my hometown of 10 years and my childhood lover. I often visit Annica (and Julian) in Richmond during free days off school, but today in particular I had to attend a meeting at my old school, and so I crashed Annica's house in the early hours before my mother's work.

I took this picture when I first visited the shop in January. The shop has gotten more flavours since then and now has 10 flavours to choose from.