If you love nature and mountains like I do, but live in the GTA Lake Placid is a great place to go for a weekend trip. I highly recommend it. Only a 6 hour drive away it is perfect for a long weekend trip. 

The Road Trip 

For anyone who has done a super long road trip before, I think we can agree that 6 hours is nothing. I'm the kind of person who doesn't mind waking up super early or driving there super late. So this drive works for us. We usually split it up 3 hours each person and we only really make one pit stop along the way for gas. The route takes you mostly through Canada so gas prices aren't too crazy. We pulled over a few times on the drive there because the views were so beautiful, it got us really excited for the weekend ahead. 

Place to hike: Mount Jo

This hike takes about 1 hour to the top. If you follow the trail head, go up the longer but less steep way. Once at the top it will all feel worth it. The look out is unreal. We brought a blanket and some snacks, just sat out at the top for an hour or so and hung out. It was awesome. 

Another Place to Hike: Rainbow Falls

This trail was different than the Mount Jo trail. It was a completely flat, gravel path that takes you almost directly there. It is a LONG walk, it is a full day hike. When you get about 6 minutes from the small rainbow falls trail you will see a really beautiful lake that has two mountains meeting in the middle. We stopped and ate lunch there and it was my favourite spot. The falls is a really short hike through the woods from there. You will know when you get there because you will feel it spraying you. It was for sure one of the cooler waterfalls I have seen- we explored inside of it and took out time leaving.

Another place of interest is the Big Crow Trading Post. A cool little shop in a cool little town. For sure leave some time to explore the town itself. We pulled over a few more times to get some shots of places we thought were nice. Will for sure go back at least once more this summer. 

Accommodations:

We stayed in a cool little cabin we found on air bnb and it was pretty cheap, around 300$ for the weekend. We saw two hostels while we were there that we said we would check out the next time we came back.

Cookie Sandy's

My mini cookie sandwiches were a hit with my boyfriend and his family as well as the vegan crew at our little potluck over the weekend. They were super easy and described as "the best desert I've ever made" so here is the recipe. You're welcome. 

Ingredients

Cookies:

• 1/2 cup vegan becel (you can get at most grocery stores)
• 1/2 cup vegetable shortening 
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 tbsp of egg replacer (can be bought at most health food stores as well as bulk barn- found where the bob's red mill stuff is)
• 2 tbsp vanilla extract 
• 2 cups all purpose flower (i used bobs redmill flour for my gluten free babies) 
• 1 tsp corn starch
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder 
• 1 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips 

Icing:

• For my icing I either do two things:
• (1) mix together vegan becel, vegetable shortening and icing sugar until you get the right consistency 
• (2) betty crocker fluffy white icing - it's vegan and it is good when you're out of time

Method

• For the cookies i mixed together the wet ingredients, and then the dry ones - I did it all with a fork and it took about 10 minutes
• Heat the oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper
• I scooped tablespoon sized scoops on to the baking sheet and baked them from 10-15 minutes
• Once they were done baking I took them off the parchment paper and put them in the freezer in a tin
• Once totally cooled I put the icing into a piping bag and piped a squirt into the center of half the cookies and covered them with the other half 
• I put them right in the freezer after to keep the shape of the icing (it melts when it's hot out)
• Take out of the freezer 10 minutes or so before serving so they can thaw a little bit.

ONE

HELLO :) I am Nicolina.

I honestly could not think of a name for this blog... but I figure I should just make a move. Stop thinking about all the things I could be blogging about, and just start. SO, lemons and summer it is. They are two of my favourite things, it is as superficial as that haha.

The majority of my time is spent doing random "busy" things. I have about one million hobbies and interests. I love to talk about them and share my life on Instagram so I thought it would be really cool to go more in-depth about certain things on a blog!

I live in the GTA and love going on hikes and mini road trips. So I will be posting about those. Talking about the lengths of different drives, how much money was spent, cool places to look for and things like that. Home decor and making little things to go around my apartment really interests me as well. I LOVE making food. Love it. A goal of this blog is to spread the vegan message in a peaceful and easily approachable way. I get so many of the same questions (let's call them that) about how "hard" and "expensive" it is to be vegan. BLAH IT IS NOT GET THAT OUT OF YOUR HEAD RIGHT NOW. It is the cheapest, easiest and healthiest diet to follow. I will address this all in a future post to clarify. If you don't agree, you are probably just a casein addict muahahaha (you suck). I love animals.