In my YouTube video with my boyfriend we take turns hitting each other in the face with plates filled with whipped cream. The challenge is to see how much we really know of each other. We take turns asking each other questions, and when someone gets it wrong, boom! Whipped cream in the face. Click to see who wins this challenge! Enjoy and subscribe!
Dear Victoria of 5 Years Ago:
I know that you’re not very confident, but, that’s okay, that will all change. I know you’re not sure who you are in life yet. But, in two months from now, you’ll be on your way to officially start living. You’ll be writing your first book “Five Hearts” which is going to later turn into “Mackenzie High”. It’s going to change your life forever. In the most positive way. You’re also going to be getting your nose pierced. Crazy, right? I mean, you? The girl who’s afraid of needles and pain? It was a spontaneous decision, but a year later and you’re still loving it. It’s a hoop. You moved houses which probably sounds insane. You miss your pool and kitchen and bathroom dearly. But, your room?! That shit is huge. You have two beautiful frosted bedroom doors, hardwood flooring and a classy elegant creamy colour for the walls. You have two closets, two windows, a space for your laptop to write blogs and books. You also have a hamster named Hammie. Yes, it’s okay to freak out. Congratulations! You finally got your own hamster! She’s a cutie pie, and her cage is right beside your bed. You also have two fish and a frog. You’ve learned a lot about yourself and have gained a lot of confidence. It not only shows on your outer appearance, but inner, too. You’re an honour student (I know you’re getting like 50%s right now, but hang on. You’re going to get a 98% in math and prove everyone wrong.) You kinda hate school, but you’re a part time student so it’s no biggie. You found out who your true friends are, and no doubt will you be constantly meeting people in opportunities yet to come. You have the best boyfriend ever named Jacob. He’s four years older than you and sometimes people judge you for that, but people who know you both understand. Your family life is going well, and you have a lot of potential. You’re going places. Just hang in there, because in a few years from now everything will be perfect. Oh, also, stay away from every guy who isn’t Jacob once you get to high school. It won’t be pretty. Lastly, you’ll be starting a YouTube channel called “Games with Victoria”, with hopes to become a successful gamer. (Specifically for Banjo-Kazooie. Y’know, the game you accidentally erased and then cried for hours about)? Well, I have to go work on your future some more for you. You better thank me later!
Love,
Future Victoria
Happy birthday Victoria! Today is Victoria’s 17ᵗʰ birthday. Wish her a happy birthday in the comments below!
This is exciting. We’re finally at the last part of my first ever travel blog. It’s been fun, but pretty tiring. Each blog post consisted of content that took me up to two hours to complete. Can you even imagine if they were all in one blog? This blog however will be fairly short. In part one, I talked about hotels. In part two, I talked about sights and attractions. Now for part three, I will be showing all of you bloggers some awesome stuff that I bought at gift shops, and that you can pick up, too, as well as a couple of restaurants. Let’s begin, shall we?
I went to a bunch of restaurants, but these were my ultimate favourites:
And if I had to pick from one of these, I would definitely choose The Grand Buffet without hesitation. The other ones were good, but this one just can’t be beat. It can get a little pricey, it’s $40 per person not including tax, so for just two people it can come up to almost $100 with tax. However, everything is perfect. The view, the scenery, the service, the food, the way everything is prepared, etc. This buffet has everything. No, I mean it. Ask me if they have it, and the answer will be yes. I got full on calamari rings. So tasty. They had every kind of food from every kind of culture, it was amazing. Their deserts were out of this world. IT WAS JUST SO GOOD. If you’re ever in Niagara Falls, please go there. Please. You will thank me a million times. Also, a plus is, kids under the age of 12 eat for free, so it’s great for families all over. 🙂 A part that I absolutely adored about this restaurant was the chocolate fountain. Mmmm. And, they have a balcony in which you can go out and see the falls and take pictures if you’d like.
© The Grand Buffet
The chocolate fountain having pineapple dipped into it.
. . . did I mention yet that I loved shopping? In my other blogs, for sure, yes. Along with all of the amazing clothes, shoes, make-up, and more from Victoria’s Secret, Pink, Claire’s, etc, I also bought a lot of unique things that I want to share with you guys. Keep reading to see.
From the CN Tower, I got a beautiful painting. My room is full of paintings, I love artwork so much. This picture is of downtown Toronto during fall from the island. It’s hanging on my wall near one of my closets and my laptop area, so I can always look at it while I’m blogging. Then, I got an awesome change purse and some cool Canadian maple leaf earrings.
The aquarium was loads of fun! I got a cool shark tooth necklace, a real one. It’s anywhere between 5 to 60 million years old. Then, I got a mood ring. Ever since I was a little kid, every time I go on a trip I buy a mood ring in whatever city I’m visiting. Weird, I know, but, it’s tradition. Why ruin it now? I also got one of those things that’s full of water and has a bunch of tiny floating items in it, and when you turn it they all swim everywhere. They’re all shaped like marine animals. I love playing with those things. Yep, it can actually keep me entertained. Then, I bought a sting ray plush. Just because it was cute. I didn’t show its pattern, but it’s pink and blue and has spirals on it. Too cute!
Out of all of the places, I have to say, this is the most unique store I went to. It’s called “Spiritual Emporium”, and they have everything from voodoo dolls to perfumes. So you can go there if you want to put a hex on someone, or spray on some scent that give you “magical powers”. Haha, okay, maybe not that much. But they have stones for a bunch of different things. I bought a scent for success. You spray it on whenever you want to be successful at something. So far I’ve used it twice, and it only worked one of the times. Not sure if it works, but it’s called “Moon Beezy” and it does smell nice. I also got a stone . . . I’m going to be keeping it a secret what it does. 😉 Sure hope it works! The papers are for how to clean the rock when I feel like it’s been touched by the wrong person or hexed, and the other sticky note is of a spiritual trick that a girl that worked there showed me how to do. Again, I’m keeping this one to myself.
I don’t need to write a bunch to get the point across of how awesome this is. Instead, I’ll just write down in point form what I got.
The Hershey’s things were almost $200, just for those. But they were worth it—I love every single item.
Do you see that? Let me explain to you—that is what perfection looks like, friends. It’s the best fudge I’ve ever had in my entire life. I only had it once other than this, in Stratford when I went to go see a few plays. Then I saw that they had it in one of the large malls I went to, and I jumped at the chance to get it. They have a variety of different types of fudge. They have fudge, candy apples, cookies, truffles, and basically everything you can imagine to satisfy that sweet tooth of yours. MORE, PLEASE! It’s getting me hungry, now I want more fudge . . . 😥 R.I.P to my fudge, eaten and gone so soon. I also went to this one smoothie place, and my boyfriend and I got the peach cherry flavour. Again, can I have more?
THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR READING ALL THREE PARTS OF MY FIRST TRAVEL BLOG! It was fun, and tiring, and for some reason, I wrote all three of them between 1 AM to 3 AM. Why? Don’t ask—I guess I’m just more active at those times. Plus, I got Starbucks here with me, too. That helps. Jacob and I had an amazing/lovely trip together, and we can’t wait to do more travelling with each other in the future! Also, today’s my birthday. Happy birthday to me! 😀
UNTIL NEXT TIME,
Part two of my first travel blog is finally here! Of course, three days late, but better late than never. So, let’s do this. Part one was focusing on hotels, and part two is focused on places I went and stuff. Hopefully some of you travellers will find this helpful, and if you’re around the city you can check out these different things to do. Ready? Okay.
Our very first day—after getting off the train and eating some nasty KFC—we stopped at a gym that was the fanciest gym I’ve ever laid eyes on in my life. Called “Lifetime Athletic”. It was incredible, and the price isn’t bad for all you get. It ranges from $80-$100.00/month per person, and there’s also family deals. We just walked inside and got a tour from one of the staff working there that day. It’s too bad that there’s not one in Windsor, because the gym I go to is really crappy in comparison, and it’s $40.00 monthly. But for those who live in the Toronto/Mississauga area, I highly recommend that you go check out this gym. It has: rock climbing, indoor pool, outdoor pool, classes, personal trainers, indoor basketball court, indoor soccer field . . . I’ll stop there. But, it’s crazy. And there’s also a restaurant inside the gym, as well as a juice bar, waiting room with HDTVs and massage chairs and get this . . . there’s a makeup/beauty store in the gym. Now that I think is going a little overboard. Click here for more details on how you can get a membership today.
Makeup & Beauty Store
Outdoor Pool
And then, I had to go back a week later to this:
© GoodLife Fitness
Indoor skydiving! Personally, I’m the type of person who’d rather have the real authentic deal, so this doesn’t really appeal to me to much. Besides, it really wasn’t as awesome as it looks. I was so excited to go, because it’s a big building, so you’d think you get to drop from the ceiling, right? There’s this little tube you go into and air blows you around and that’s pretty much it. It’s over $80 per person for two flights, and over $100 for four flights, and there’s also family package deals for about $180+. You also have to go through a couple hours of a course, so they can teach you what to do and how to put on your skydiving outfit properly and all the techniques and stuff. You get approximately four minutes to fly, and you get to fly twice with your package. I want to say this place is really awesome, but the truth is, it’s kinda a money waster. But if you’re looking for a few hours of fun, and want to kill some time, I’d say, check this place out for sure. Here’s their website for more information: Click here.
This isn’t too special. Even most small cities have movie theatres. But hey, they were sure a lot fancier than the movie theatres I’m used too. They were huge and had a whole bunch of goodies in them. It was cool. I don’t want this to turn into a movie review blog, but here are the movies that we saw:
The Fault In Our Stars
Maleficent
Like I said, I don’t want this to turn into a movie review blog post but I will go over what I thought of the movies. We saw Maleficent first, and I really liked it. My boyfriend didn’t really like any of the movies, but he liked this one more than the other one, haha. Maleficent was what Sleeping Beauty should have been. All very good actors, all very beautiful, an interesting story. However it was very predictable, but that’s okay. It was definitely the better version of Sleeping Beauty, and Angelina Jolie looked awesome as for usual.
My Rating = 7.5/10
Jacob’s Rating = 6/10
And I’ve never read the book for “Fault in our Stars”, but I was definitely expecting something different. I was really excited to see this movie, and the whole day I bugged my boyfriend about how much fun it was going to be and jokingly he’d obviously say he wasn’t excited at all. The whole movie had one tone: depressing. Personally I believe that a good movie should have a whole variety of moods to keep the viewer intrigued. Happy, sad, angry, excited, etc. But the entire movie was basically “Oh my gosh I’m going to die life sucks” and even when the two lovers met it just felt stale. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hating on it at all, I think it was very well planned out and has good characters that were written strongly. But it just isn’t my cup of tea. What’s funny is my boyfriend had a cold that night, so he was sniffling every minute and at the end he said, “I tried to hold it in because I didn’t want anyone to think that I was crying.” Haha. He also jokingly called the movie “disgusting”—but he always does that, just to make me laugh.
My Rating = 7/10
Jacob’s Rating = 5/10
Hit up Flickster to discover what movies are playing in your area today. [I keep writing it “Flickerster” . . I must be exhausted.]
I absolutely adore canoeing. I go several times per summer, sometimes during the fall and spring, too. I love it when you’re out on open water, hardly anything surrounding you. Everything’s calm, it’s just you and the boat and a paddle and everything’s serene and pure. Plus, I love Canadian geese! They’re little cuties, and we got so close to them! And we saw them run on water, which was also the most cutest thing in the world. I’m sorry to all my readers out there but I don’t remember what the name of this park was! But to go canoeing, you can just search up online the closest parks to the areas in which you live in. Also, if anyone knows what park this is, you can drop me a comment in the box below. We also had a BBQ, even though we burnt the corn, it was still delish. We had salted butter. Yes.
Let me start off by saying that the CN Tower is definitely one of my favourite things to do when visiting Toronto. Every time I’m there, I make an effort to go at least one time. I’m not afraid of heights, but sometimes it makes me queasy. Especially when you’re on the elevator and you’re going up thousands of feet and you feel your ears popping. The whole elevator is glass. The floor, the sides, everything. It can be a little overwhelming for people who get nervous around heights, so I wouldn’t recommend this to everyone. There is also a fee to go up. The rates vary.
The CN Tower is spectacular. The views are incredible, you can practically see all of Toronto. For several years, the CN Tower was the world’s tallest building. Now, it’s the third tallest. They also have three different restaurants. Horizons, 360, and Le Café. All are pretty expensive, the most expensive is 360, then Horizons, then Le Café. Reservations are recommended. Also, I absolutely loved the gift shop there! But then again, I love gift shops anywhere! Also, you can rent rooms here for special occasions. See the website below for more details.
THE GLASS FLOOR (aka one of my favourite parts of the CN Tower).
Lying down on the Glass Floor.
For more information on the CN Tower located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, click here.
I know I say this for basically everything, but . . . THIS WAS SO COOL! Of course I’d say that. If you know me, I’m a fish maniac and I love sharks and pretty much everything that lives underwater. Again, there is a fee to go in, but it’s around $20-$30 per person and never more. Let’s take a look at some of my fave pics, shall we?:
And as for always, here’s the website: Click here.
Another funny thing that happened, was, as I was taking pictures of the entrance and of the CN Tower, a girl was also taking pictures. We collided, and she started apologizing like I was going to kill her. She looked at me, basically screamed, and said: “Oh my God, no, no, are you okay?! I AM SO SORRY! I AM SO SORRY! ARE YOU OKAY?!” She was cute, I don’t know if I looked intimidating or she just had a bad experience, or she was just overly friendly. We’ll never know.
© Lakeshore Mississauga
Now, I’m terrible with directions. Absolutely horrible. So I don’t know exactly where Lakeshore is, but I can tell you (obviously) that it’s somewhere in the Toronto area. Lakeshore is basically a suburb, but a really pretty suburb. With tons of cute restaurants, stores, beaches and a lake with boats and yachts and a bunch of birds, ducks, and geese. We went shopping (more to come in part three of my blog). I also finally tried Second Cup for the first time. I had a frozen hot chocolate, and it tastes exactly like a real hot chocolate, but cold. It was incredible. I also went shopping and got a lot of cool things (I blew two whole pay cheques on my vacay.) All I have is pictures of the adorable birds/geese/ducks we fed. It was amazing, some got so close to us. We even taught one how to jump!
What can I say? I’m a total animal lover. And I bought them their very own soft salty pretzel. ‘Cause that’s what I do.
Also known as, one of the prettiest and most touristy towns in all of Canada! It is gorgeous here, and there is so much stuff to do. Have to be honest, this is the place where I think I blew most of my money. We did so much amazing things here, that I’ll only mention a few. What’s your favourite thing to do in Niagara Falls?! The falls? The shopping? The hotels? The food?
Only in Niagara Falls do they have “KEEP CALM” soap.
The view from our hotel room.
WARNING: Shopaholics will never want to leave. Oh! And chocolate and sweet lovers, too. It’s a good world sometimes. They’re not the same store, but they are connected to each other. They’re the only ones in all of Canada, and by far, I bet they make the most money of all the stores in Niagara Falls. It’s always packed. I won’t mention it in this blog, but part three is all about stuff I bought. Stay tuned, world.
HERSHEY LOVERS, CLICK HERE! COCA-COLA LOVERS, CLICK HERE!
Some of the rides were on top of the hotel and some were in the downtown area of Niagara Falls. The above pictures are the views I had from some of the rides! Way too fun. They also had an arcade in the hotel. I went and played Glow Golf, and a whole bunch of other games. We were also going to stop at the 4D movie theatre, but we didn’t have time with all of the cool stuff that we were up to.
My wristband from the water park.
© Fallsview Indoor Water Park
As you can tell, I had a pretty good time here. We spent two whole days here. The water park was on top of the hotel. It rocked. It had so much to do; we were always laughing. It also had a kid’s area, and a hot tub, and an indoor and outdoor pool and tons of water slides Some of the water slides I was too afraid to go on. I ended up going on all except one, the yellow one. I met two awesome girls there that encouraged me to go on the slides. But, I plan to be back for the yellow one. And I will.
For their official website, please click here.
Hello everyone, it’s Victoria again, thanking each and every single one of you personally for reading my blogs. Sorry these are so long. The purpose of making three parts is so it wouldn’t drag on forever. Can you imagine if all of this was in one post? Ugh. It just wouldn’t work. My hotel blog (view here) is already up, and my food blog is coming soon, where I talk about the restaurants I’ve been too and the things I’ve bought. Again, thanks so much for reading! xoxo (also, my birthday is coming up on Thursday.) 😉
Love — Victoria Hecnar
So I’m pretty excited because (I’m going to call it a sneak peek) of Mackenzie High is now out. I call it that because it isn’t officially published yet, and there’s still some work left to do on it and I am still looking for a permanent publisher. But for the meantime, we have the sneak peek and I’m pretty happy with the way it all turned out. I also want to thank those who have purchased a copy of Mackenzie High and have provided me with some feedback. Everyone seems very engrossed with it and have both deep love and hatred for the characters, which is exactly how I wanted it to be. And—as mentioned before—this is only the beginning. There’s lots more to be done before Mackenzie High is released, but the journey has been awesome so far!
Here’s a look at:
The front cover . . .
© Copyright Mackenzie High – Victoria Hecnar (2014)
The back cover . . .
© Copyright Mackenzie High – Victoria Hecnar (2014)
The spine . . .
© Copyright Mackenzie High – Victoria Hecnar (2014)
And, last but not least, a picture of the inside of the book . . .
© Copyright Mackenzie High – Victoria Hecnar (2014)
I’ve been giving away several copies of books to my friends and family, but you can always check out my store if you click here. Soon there will be Mackenzie High merchandise available. A big thanks to everyone once more!
Connect on: Facebook & Twitter & YouTube/Google+
Hey everyone! My book Mackenzie High is now available to buy on Lulu and Amazon (hopefully in stores soon, too.) I have given 40% off for everyone when they order Mackenzie High on Lulu! (No code necessary.)
To gain an extra 10% off, add Mackenzie High to your shopping cart on Lulu. Then, at the checkout, use the promo code:
For an additional 10% off! You can get Mackenzie High for 50% off! Promo code ends on July 31st, 2014 at 11:59 PM. The 40% off will still remain. Happy readings everyone, and enjoy the summer!
To Buy On Lulu For Your 50% Off Discount, Click Here.
To Buy On Amazon, Click Here.
Hey, everyone! It feels so great to be able to say this; Mackenzie High is officially complete! This is not the last revision, nor is this the last edition of the book. I know I still have a long way to go before Mackenzie High makes it big, but for now, this is certainly a start! This is the third time I have written a book. The first one in 2009, Five Hearts, was discarded, and rewritten as Mackenzie High in 2012, now the latest edition of Mackenzie High was written in 2014. I call Mackenzie High my first novel, though, as the characters from Five Hearts are basically the same.
Most of my novels took me only two months to write, but for this edition, I wrote for several months to make sure it’s perfect. Or, as close to perfect as it can be for now. I never have any spelling mistakes, but sometimes my grammar goes funky. And not the type like “your” or “you’re”, but sometimes I misuse words and therefore the sentence does not run as smoothly. For example, I wrote “coach” instead of “couch” and “make” instead of “made.” Yikes . . . I permitted myself to have 5 mistakes in this copy. If I find anymore then five, I swear, I’m going ape-shit on someone. There will always be fixes and new editions coming out, so the mistakes will be corrected. [I really hope it’s less than 5 this time.]
I’ve created a lot of the characters when I was eight years old; that was eight years ago. And I wrote Five Hearts when I was only twelve. So this book and its characters were there for me when I was growing up. They’ve become such an important part of my life, that I don’t know what I’d do without them.
. . . and hopefully you will, too!
Mackenzie High is 665 pages at the moment. It’s such an amazing story with a really deep message, and I can’t wait to share it with all of you. I am so excited for my friends and family to read it. I’m giving away several copies to them! To order your own copy, you can either search “Victoria Hecnar” on Amazon or you can scroll to the top of my website, and click the “Store” button. Or, for direct access, click here.
Unfortunately, my publishers said based on the weight and material of the book, the book price had to be $55.00. But I am giving all of you a 40% off discount, dropping down the book to only $33.00!
Mackenzie High means the world to me. In the future, I hope for it to be my career. Seriously, how cool does a world book tour sound? Answer: Very! Right now I’m just blessed to be given an opportunity to write my heart out, and I am also very thankful for being blessed with a talent of having a wild imagination, strong writing, and fast typewriting skills (LOL). Thank you so much to everyone reading this right now. Enjoy!
NOTE: MACKENZIE HIGH IS RATED 14+ FOR HEAVY LANGUAGE, VIOLENCE, DRUG/ALCOHOL RELATED CHAPTERS, SEXUAL CONTENT & PROFANITIES. Also note: there are no actual sex scenes in my book. Just wanted to clear that up.
Happy Canada Day and Happy 4th of July! I hope you all had an awesome time this past week. Us North Americans gotta stick together!
© Wikipedia.org
A few weeks ago, I went to the annual fireworks show at the Detroit River. They were the best this year out of every year so far! Some of the fireworks were shaped as hearts and smiley faces, which was pretty cool.
at the Detroit River.
I hope you’re all having an awesome summer so far. Sincerely,
[Victoria Hecnar]
Image Credit: USA/Canadian Flags, Wikipedia.org © & ARC Gritt on 24 November 2006
Why are the snails always the first ones to die? And why do they die, one after the other? So prior to writing this blog post, I wrote one about my favourite fish, Engelbert, who passed away. There, I mentioned a few new aquatic friends that I got. Snails, one named Milly, and one named Jude. If you read the previous post, you’d know that I had a mother and a daughter snail before. The daughter snail would always ride on the mother’s shell, it was the cutest thing – then, the daughter died, and the mother refused to eat so she eventually died, too. The same thing happened; Milly and Jude were really close (I don’t know if they were relatives). And Milly died several weeks ago, and just a few days ago, Jude died, too. He again, refused to do anything, and ended up dying. This always happens to me! I absolutely love every single one of my pets, and I get really sad when they die.
For fish (sometimes), dogs, cats, and small animals, it can be easy to tell why they passed. Illness, age, etc. For snails, I never know the reason. But, what I do know, is that every single animal has feelings. I’ve known people that think animals are “soulless”, and don’t have any feelings whatsoever. I’ve had pretty much any pet one can have, and spend tons of time with animals. I’ve learned that everything has feelings; even snails. The connections that they can make with one another and the emotional attachment they have to each other is beyond incredible. And no, they were not mates. They were the same gender and never had baby snails. So, there must be some sort of relationship between them, right? They must be able to feel some sort of emotion. It may not be quite like the relationships between humans, but everything definitely feels something. [One of my pet peeves is actually when people step on garden snails just to be cruel….grrr. Probably making a blog on pet peeves, soon. It could be interesting.]
In conclusion, losing your pets is sad, but I always look forward to getting more pets and learning more about animals! They’re awesome. 🙂 Also, sorry for not blogging much lately. Working, online courses and spending time with family/friends/Jacob is really time consuming. My new job is awesome, though; tons of fun! I’m teaching English to 13/14 year olds and am a tutor.
Hope to see ya in the blog-univerise soon,
Victoria Hecnar xoxo ❤
VictoriaHecnar.com 