Happy Monday! It's another long weekend for me, so I'm staying warm indoors today away from the snow! Hope everyone had an awesome weekend and you're all recharged for this new week!

Has anyone head of the CND Vinylux nail polish line? I heard about the polish when it first came out but never really cared about it since I'm pretty loyal to my favourite OPI & Essie nail lacquers. However, the lovely team at Nail Polish Canada sent me the CND 7 piece Forbidden Mini Collection to try out and review!

The CND Vinylux polish was is marketed as a weekly nail polish - meaning it should last on nails perfectly chip free for a week. Crazy, right? The CND Vinylux polishes don't need a base coat and have a special top coat to use with all of their polishes. Apparently, exposure to natural light overtime actually strengthens the polish, increasing the resistance to chips. Again, crazy! But oh so intriguing. So I decided to take the polish on a wear test.

The 7 piece set I received comes as a box of six nail polish shades and one top coat. The first one I tried from the collection is called Dark Dahlia. It looks black, but actually is a very dark blueberry purple shade which I love! Those almost-black finishes get me everytime. So above, I applied two layers of polish without a base coat, and finished off with the supplied top coat.

So on Day 7 I took a picture of the progress of my nails and you can see that this polish isn't perfect. My index finger had quite a bit of chipping, while the remaining fingers had very subtle chipping which I can let slide. On my ring finger there is a substantial amount of chipping at the nail bed, but that is totally my fault. I had cut my finger on day 2, and the application and removal of bandaids throughout the week removed the polish. Oops!

On day 7, you can see that the chips on my index and ring fingers both progressed, as did the small chip on my pinky finger. But honestly, I'd have to say this polish did pretty well for one full week of wear. Had I not had to apply bandaids to my ring finger, I'd think my manicure would have looked pretty good with exception to my pointer finger. Upon removal, the polish was surprisingly easy to remove, and there was no staining of my fingers without the use of a base coat.

So for being marketed as a one week chip free manicure, the claims weren't true, but the results were way better than I would have expected. The CND Vinylux polish system is a great alternative to the Shellac manicures, as you're able to have prolonged wear without the exposure to UV light setting. I'll be wearing and testing the remainder of the polishes in this collection - we'll see if maybe one polish does better than the others! In the meantime, if you'd like to purchase Dark Dahlia in full size, you can do so here via Nail Polish Canada.

*Disclosure: This product was sent for consideration of a review.

All you can eat (AYCE) sushi that is good is so hard to find in this city. Actually scratch that, good sushi is hard to find in this city. Edmonton is surrounded by fields with no large bodies of water nearby so it's hard to get fresh fish. And if you get fresh fish, it's going to be expensive. So a while back when friends were telling me they went for all you can eat sushi in Edmonton, I had to try it out for myself.

Sushi Garden Japanese Restaurant - 10401 Mayfield Road - Edmonton AB

Located in the west end of Edmonton, Sushi Garden is a large restaurant kind of tucked away from the main road. My boyfriend and I decided to drop by for a quick lunch to see what their all you can eat menu was about.

We entered the restaurant on a Thursday around noon to find the place just about empty. A huge restaurant with tons of tables and only one had other patrons seated and ordering food! We ended up being seated close to the kitchen and were provided with an AYCE menu right as we sat down.


Salmon Pizza
AYCE at lunch runs from 11:00-3:00 pm, costing $15.99 per adult and $10.99 per child (aged 3-10) from Monday to Thursday. Weekends and holidays have a $2 surcharge added to the individualized price. For the dinner AYCE, adults cost $24.99 and children cost $16.99 with the same $2 charge on weekends as well.


Agadeshi Tofu
Looking through the menu it seemed like there were lots of choices available to order. Different sections on the menu indicated that they did have a wide variety of dishes available: Soup & Salad, Sushi Rolls, Sushi Pizza, Hand Rolls, Vegetarian Sushi, Nigiri, Tempura, Appetizers, Stir Fry, Teriyaki and Noodles in Soup. However, I felt that everything was very repetitive. The same combinations were available in rolls and hand cones (for example, California, spicy salmon, volcano, spicy tuna, etc.). The greatest variety available was in the selection of cooked foods - everything sounded great, but I don't go to AYCE sushi so that I can eat cooked food. And I think a majority of people would tend to agree.


Nigiri
For lunch AYCE, Sushi Garden does not offer any sashimi on the menu. None! I was surprised as other places will often offer it but limit the quantity that can be ordered at lunch. So we had no choice but to order nigiri for raw fish, but had to force ourselves to consume the rice that came with it. And as I mentioned, there wasn't much variety within the sushi section so we ended up ordering quite a few items off the cooked food menu.


Assorted Sushi
The food at Sushi Garden is alright, but if I'm going to have AYCE I expect to be able to eat the fish I want and not have to order a ton of cooked side dishes to fill the void in my stomach. The sushi available to order was very typical and boring, and I didn't even feel excited to order anything. By my standards, the AYCE menu is pretty poor and makes Edmonton's all you can eat options look pretty bad. The upside? The lunch menu is cheap if you're looking to fill up on a variety of cooked Japanese dishes. For me, I'm going to save my money and appetite for better AYCE options outside of the city - be it Sumo Sumo or out in Vancouver. Otherwise, I would much rather pay more money to sit down and have quality sushi a la carte at another Japanese Restaurant in Edmonton. The dinner AYCE may be a different experience, but I can't say the lunch menu exactly gave me a reason to check out the dinner menu.

F21 Light Chambray Shirt (similar) | Old Navy Rockstar Jeans | Sam Edelman Gigi Sandals | Coach Chelsea Crossbody (old)
Coach Watch, Rings & Sunglasses | H&M Necklace
The fact that there is snow on the ground outside right now and that the temperatures are below zero is making me think back to warm summer days. I was going through my pictures from the summer the other day and noticed I never got around to posting these! As I've mentioned in the past, one of my favourite things about the summer months is the outdoor farmers markets. This set of pictures is from a Thursday night visit to the 124 Street Grand Market in Edmonton, where local vendors and food trucks unite! There's live music, delicious food, and you get to support your local producers with every purchase - why wouldn't I make a date night out of that?

So here's to all of you in the southern hemisphere who are just heading into summer, or those of you lucky enough to live in a place where there's no snow. I'm willing to trade places with you - can we?