Enter to Win #KeriChristmas Giveaway Extravaganza

Over $200 of gifts can be yours!

Behold this beautiful bounty.

Highlights include:

JD Honey – I take this to parties, because it’s really new and a guaranteed crowd pleaser

Marks Work Warehouse – Functional AND fashionable, which is why I like ’em, Mark’s will be keeping your hands and feet warm with their 100% Canadain awesomeness

Nella Bella Bag – Another Canadian company, made in downtown Toronto, that has reinvented classic, and in a vegan fabric to boot

Chobani Yogurt – This is America’s #1 Yogurt and has just arrived in Canada, and you’ll be on of the first to try it because you’re going to get a dozen delivered to your door.  No fat, actual real ingredients, created by passion woah just realized: almost all the companies are family-run here NICE.

A 9-step pouring kit from Stella. There’s an art and methodology to pouring a Stella.  I’ve been trained in it actually, and can pour you a perfect pint, then level the foam with much flourish.

To Enter: tweet the hashtag #KeriChristmas

Winners will be drawn Monday at 3pm

(PLEASE NOTE: I’m sorry, but you have to be in Toronto to win, because I have to drive it to you, unless you wanna drive here, that’s cool too)

My blog brought me a ton of fun stuff from great companies this year, and I wanted to share with you, that’s what’s happening here, because I appreciate you stopping by my blog, and thanks for pushing play.

The Last Business Friday of 2011

My entire amount of Christmas encapsulated here:

The blue sticky on the wall lists the last 3 items to pick up.

Two colours of tissue paper from the dollar store wraps everything.  I set it up like an assembly line.

Christmas conquered.

I quit Christmas in 2005.  

I’m not being dramatic.  I’ll show up empty handed to your Christmas party and not feel bad about it.

But I can’t escape it completely. Family only.  If we’re not direct blood, like if you’re not my brother, you’re out; nothing personal.

I add up the receipts every year and compare my total against the mean average.

I still spent $313 this year on 4 people.

Average Amount Spent / Person on Christmas

Canada – $1 137
USA – $646*
Australia – $1055
England – $900

 

* I had trouble finding this stat; if you have a better source leave it in the comments, seems way too low

Cool graph of how much countries spend on average here.

When that was done, I sat down to unbox this crazy nice new gear come ON.

When I relented 2 years ago and acknowledged I needed a real camera, not just blog with my phone, I bought an Olympus Tough: waterproof, smash proof, you can stand on it it won’t break, Keri-proof.

Olympus then heard about my trip and kitted me OUT, upgraded my Tough camera and added their new PEN, sweet eh, and it’s RED, check out all the possible accessories here.

I’ve never had a lens before… my first lens!

Took this during purging, this is my toolbox. There’s practically nothing you can’t do with needle nose pliers.

Here’s the video I’m referring to in the above video, it’s one from my ‘Just a Minute’ series.

How a Year Really Is:

 

Night, ttyt.

 

 

 

I Love #hohoTO, I Go Every Year

If you are on Twitter and live in Southern Ontario, come!

It’s the holiday season’s classiest event, and it raises money for an important cause: feeding hungry Toronto people, because charity starts at home.


(photo by hyfen)

Founded in 2008, HoHoTO has been called, “the party that Twitter built”, it’s closing in on $200 000 raised for the Daily Food Bank, and is run completely by volunteers on a budget of nothing.

Queen Rania of Jordan has even used HoHoTO as a shining example of social media influencing online do-gooding.  So cool eh.

Here’s my Twitvid from last year inside the party, which is dark, but you can just feel the fun.

Come ready to buy raffle tickets and donate heavily, make sure to have your photo taken by Photojunkie, cabs home you know the drill, and don’t be shy… this is always the kind of crowd who’ve all been in that boat…. “hi, I know you from Twitter and the internet…”, say hi!

Me last year:

HoHoTO

follow along on Twitter @hohoTO

Thursday December 15, 8pm

at The Mod Club

benefiting the Daily Food Bank

Here’s a relational chart I made using the search “hohoTO”, for fun.

(click on it to zoom, get more info, drag stuff you’ll figure it out)

See you Thursday!

Spent Labour Day in Kingston, Where It’s Awesome

Spent the long weekend in Kingston, Ontario, visiting friends, a photoshoot with Suzy (I’m not allowed to show you anything yet) and celebrating a 60th birthday.

If you would like to get away for a weekend, come here.  There’s 1000 Islands, 1000 things to do, and Kingstonians are known as party-ers.

Let’s start with these four places:

1 – Go there for a beer – The Toucan

2 – Buy your books there – Wayfarer Books (smells so good)

3 – Pan Chancho – get a coffee and chocolate croissant

4 – I never go here, it’s for hippies, but green arrow: she’s _still_ there :O

Or, you could go see me on the walls of here.

My favourite ever army suprlus store is here – Smith Army Surplus.  If you’re lucky Kyle will be working, say hi.

I cruise through, sift through the patches, talk shop and swap lies.

You can shoot in Kingston, too.  Well I can, you might have a bit harder time.

This was S&R – Canada’s oldest (50+) independently owned department store.

It closed two summers ago, which I went around for weeks proclaiming sad and wrong.

I wish I had video of inside here; places like this don’t exist anymore.  I heard some mid-level-restaurant-franchise is going in.  Golf claps.

70% of all Kingstonians own something from here, maybe one of those glass balls, likely received as a gift.

I’m being dramatic, but not really.

Where you should be buying gifts from is Dwell Boutique, which I should have taken a photo of.

It’s a great place for Morning Drive.

YA BUDDY!  THE STUDIO LIVES!

Thanks Claus! <3

He also gave me silver dollar.  I put it on my fridge.

I left it there though, my car.  It’s no longer fit for the highway, not even I’m that wacked.  So kinda cool eh….

Me – “Pardon me?  Oh yes yes, I do keep a car in Kingston” :|

Ha.

This place below is my personal real estate brokering deal dream… it’s the old Psyc Ward down on the water.

Executed correctly, it could be one of the premiere mini-areas in Southern Ontario.

Kingston is a good-sized city that you’ll be leaning on a wall texting, someone strolls by you know, now you’re on a patio making jokes.

The streetlights are an inside joke.

Kingston is filled with buildings like this, Canada’s very first bank.

The arrow is pointing to my old apartment. I was the last person to live in it before the City took it over.

There was a restaurant on the main floor, who’d pass me ahi tuna on my way up the stairs, which I’d eat on the fire-escape (they removed it), from which I may have once thrown handfuls of mini-bouncy-balls from, to see what would happen (fun happens).

Go to Kingston, you’ll love it!

 

 

 

Things From My Break

Thursday night I’d had it, that familiar feeling of GAH.

So Friday I packed a bag, walked down to the closet car rental spot (I’m still without wheels) and said, hi one car please.

Ended up with a Jeep. Won’t be buying a Jeep.

If you need a car though, go here and see Bedi, he’s awesome. It was his last vehicle, which he scrambled to get me, because as he said, “I want you to be able to walk down like this and know you’ll get a car”.

I got in and drove it all over.

I took tons of photos, here’s one.

That’s it for now, because I invented a Keri On Security episode using them, so I’ll post them in a couple weeks.

Great city to return home to.

I decompressed using:

My Summer’11 routine…I walk down to the water, see the yellow arrow? I tuck in behind there (you can’t see me from the path), and I make a sushi picnic.

Walked home and settled back into my plotting.

I’ll explain more via video next week what you’re looking at, basically it’s my masterplan for my two shows, and I was deeeep into it.

So I’m flipping between excitedly Sharpie-ing up calendars and spreadsheets, to very still, deep, concentration.

Hand over mouth always.

Like my nomenclature?  Haha, I kill me sometimes.

And that’s how I didn’t notice the extreme storm coming in through my balcony door.

It’s almost okay today. That thing is old, a decade anyway. It’s the first ever Chameleon couch with wheels. They sell them with that option now, and that was allll me.

Can’t wait to start sharing my ideas with you, this security blog of mine, oh man, wait till you see. Haven’t been this excited in a while.