Burnaby Heights Contest: Park It Where Your Heart Is

Add a Comment by Rebecca Bollwitt

The Burnaby Heights Merchants Association is known for its engagement with the community, especially with the annual Hats Off Day festival (which I have sponsored for the last few years). Now they’re hosting a contest called “Park It Where Your Heart Is” to highlight 20 free parking lots along the Heights and the 350 businesses who serve the area.

Hats Off Day 2011
Photo credit: John Bollwitt for Miss604

Participants may enter to win a $500 shopping spree and dozens of smaller gift certificates between Wednesday, March 27th and Friday, April 26, 2013. You can enter using the online entry form and by answering a trivia question about the community.

Receive additional entries by following Burnaby Heights on Facebook and Twitter to get clues to find out where vouchers for gift certificates are hidden. You can also receive bonus entries by tweeting and sharing their updates. Note: Only one entry per email address, per social media network, per week.

Every Wednesday throughout the campaign they will be posting clues on their social media profiles leading to where you can find a voucher for a gift certificate in four different parking lots. Once the lucky winners find the vouchers, they must come to the Heights Merchants Association Office (4019 Hastings Street) to redeem them. At the end of the contest, participants will know exactly where all of the Heights’ free City parking lots are located.

Burt’s Bees at Best Buy Giveaway

Comments 189 by Rebecca Bollwitt

Known for its electronics selection, Best Buy has recently expanded its online assortment to include new product categories such as Health and Wellness, Baby, Beauty, Fashion, Home and Lifestyle and more. From luggage, baby blankets, and bedroom furniture to exercise equipment and lipstick — you can now get it all at Best Buy online.

One of the most recent additions to the online collection is Burt’s Bees products and for a limited time when you purchase $25 of Burt’s Bees products online, you can receive a free tinted lip balm 2-pack.

To celebrate this new offering, Best Buy has offered up a Burt’s Bees prize pack (valued at $150) for me to give away to one lucky reader that includes:

Here’s how you can enter to win this prize pack:

  • Leave a comment on this post (1 entry)
  • Post the following on Twitter (1 entry)
RT to enter to win a @BurtsBees prize pack from @BBYCanada & @Miss604 http://ow.ly/jAXNn

I will draw one winner at random from all entries next Saturday, April 6, 2013 at 12:00pm. Follow Best Buy Canada on Facebook and Twitter for more information about their new online product selection.

You can have Best Buy online orders shipped right to your door or available for in-store pickup. Locations in the Vancouver area include Cambie (at 6th Ave), Best Buy Mobile at Pacific Centre, South Vancouver (8133 Ontario), Best Buy Metrotown, Best Buy Lansdowne Centre in Richmond, and Best Buy Mobile Central City (Surrey).

Update The winner is Sheryl!

Les Miserables Vancouver Pre-Sale

Comments 1 by Rebecca Bollwitt

Broadway Across Canada recently announced its 2013/2014 line-up of musical theatre productions that they’re bringing to Vancouver over the next year including Les Miserables June 12th to June 23rd, 2013.

Les Miserables
Photo credit: Deen van Meer. “One Day More” The Company of the New 25th Anniversary of Les Miserables.

Cameron Mackintosh presents a brand new 25th anniversary production of Boublil & Schönberg’s legendary musical with glorious new staging and dazzlingly re-imagined scenery inspired by the paintings of Victor Hugo. This new production has been acclaimed by critics, fans and new audiences and is breaking box office records wherever it goes.

Based on Victor Hugo’s classic novel, Les Misérables is an epic and uplifting story about the survival of the human spirit. The magnificent score includes the classic songs “I Dreamed a Dream,” “On My Own,” “Stars,” “Bring Him Home,” “Do You Hear the People Sing?,” “One Day More,” “Master Of The House” and many more. Les Misérables will be at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver from June 12th to June 23rd, 2013.

Pre-Sale Code

The pre-sale date for Les Miserables in Vancouver is Friday, April 5, 2013 and THIS LINK will only be active at that time. Be sure to bookmark this page so that you can reference it on that day. My pre-sale code is: ONE. This pre-sale link will be active on Friday, April 5, 2013 ONLY from 10:00am to 10:00pm.

Season Info

You can subscribe for a whole season of Broadway Across Canada productions either by signing up online or by calling 1-866-542-7469. Individual show tickets will be on sale at a later date. Billy Elliot is also coming up April 2nd to April 7th and tickets are on sale now. Follow Broadway Across Canada on Facebook and Twitter for all show and ticket information.

Vancouver Photos of the Week: Rainbows

Add a Comment by Rebecca Bollwitt

Rainy days are just a part of living in Vancouver and when the sun shines for a few days in a row — revealing lush, green, natural views — we all remember its benefits. In fact you could almost say that the best part of Vancouver is all the rain because it makes us appreciate the sun that much more (although I won’t get ahead of myself on that). Another perk of a shower-filled day is that on occasion it ends with a blazing sunset or better yet, a sparkling rainbow or two. These multicoloured ribbons are the focus of this week’s photo feature from the Miss604 Flickr Pool:

Stormy sky with geese and a rainbow
Photo credit: Gordana AM on Flickr

Rainbow at Cleveland Dam A Boy, a Dog, and Two Rainbows
Photo credit: Wynonna & kpwerker on Flickr

Today is my one day a year celebration
Photo credit: Eyesplash on Flickr

She's A Rainbow Nikon COOLPIX S800c Sample Photo (5 of 5)
Photo credit: Clayton Perry Photoworks & Michael Kwan on Flickr

BC Ferries
Photo credit: bcbusinesshub on Flickr

Finding a Rainbow I was too slow to get the leprechaun and his pot of gold
Photo credit: Photocat62 & Eyesplash on Flickr

The pot of gold can be found at Canada place Pot of Gold found in Financial District
Photo credit: Eyesplash & Tom Wiebe on Flickr

[038/365] Promise in the Sky
Photo credit: kardboard604 on Flickr

Seventh Heaven. Spring Rainbow
Photo credit: kardboard604 & Clayton Perry Photoworks on Flickr

WestEnd Rainbow North Shore Rainbow
Photo credit: TylerIngram & kardboard604 on Flickr

Follow the Rainbow
Photo credit: colink. on Flickr

As always, please click through on these images to view more work from the photographers and feel free to share your own photos with the Miss604 Flickr Pool. View all photo collections here.

Blogger Profile: Urban Sketcher Sigrid Albert

Comments 1 by Rebecca Bollwitt

Over the years I have profiled bloggers from the Northwest Territories to the Fraser Valley, anyone that interests me and that I hope will interest you as well. A few years ago I started asking a standard set of questions and on occasion I send these out to local bloggers to continue the series. Click, share, explore, and enjoy!

Sigrid Albert

Blog: Urban Sketcher

urbansketcher

How long has your blog been around?
I started my blog urbansketcher.ca in October 2012, just a month before I moved to Berlin for 3 months to live and work from this exciting city.

What is your role?
I do everything on the blog: owning, writing, photography, artwork, design, functionality, and software updates.

What does your site do/what is it about?
I talk about my practice of urban sketching, which I started back in 2010, and show the resulting sketches of my hometown Vancouver as well as the places I travel to. The impetus to start this blog was my 3-month Berlin stay from November to February — I wanted to document what I was doing there, mostly so I would remember it, but also for my family and friends in Vancouver to stay up to date on my activities while I was over there. So the first 3 months of the blog are chockfull of my Berlin experiences, a bit like a travel/sketching journal. It was a giant head rush to move overseas for a period of time, you feel like a newborn baby.

What can people see, read, and do when visiting your site?
It’s really a random collection of thoughts and sketches, mixed in with travelogue, observations about my hometown of Vancouver and the places I visit, my opinions on life. But everything is loosely centred around the theme of incorporating art into my daily life. For the purpose of this blog, the art is mostly in the form of decidedly lowbrow drawings of my surroundings.

Why do you blog?
I can think of five reasons right now:

  1. I blog first of all for myself: the blog is an artistic journal for me, and sometimes a travelogue. I find it easier to build on something when I know where I was coming from last year, last month, last week. Often, a thought or a sketch leads to a creative inspiration, which leads to another.
  2. I don’t have the best long-term memory, so the blog helps me to remember things I did and thoughts I had.
  3. I also enjoy writing, so I often write for the fun of it. I like to amuse myself with my writing, and I am thrilled if it entertains other people as well. The blog is a perfect outlet for combining my imperfect writings and imperfect drawings.
  4. I want to promote my Meetup group, Vancouver Urban Sketchers, and get people to come out and draw the city with me, to overcome their artistic self-criticism and just enjoy sketching at whatever level they’re at. I don’t really believe there is a “bad” drawing. You just have to get beyond the urge to see realism as “good”. If you want a realistic looking picture, take a photo! But don’t even get me started on how unrealistic photography can be.
  5. Finally, I hope to inspire others to be creative and to pursue their passions in life, whether that is making art or moving overseas for 3 months like I did. It was a breakthrough for me, a breath of fresh air, to move to Berlin at this stage in my life. We often limit ourselves, even without any hindrance from others, thank you very much, so I hope my readers get inspired to push beyond self-limiting beliefs.

What is the ultimate goal for your site, how would you like to see it grow?
I don’t have definite goals for my blog, apart from being committed to continuing it. But I hope to be open to whatever develops from it. For example, this interview with you has been a cool development — next thing you know, I’ll be on Oprah. Or whatever it is that Oprah is doing now. 😉

Read all entries in my Blogger Profile series and feel free to suggest a blogger for possible feature in the comments of this post.