TIPS & TRICKS

PACKING TIPS AND TRICKS 

1.
 Rolling your clothes rather than folding. Not only is this great for saving space but its also great for wrinkles! Rolling your clothes will leave less wrinkles in your clothing so when you arrive to your destination there is no need to iron anything!

 2. To go along the same lines as my first tip, I find rolling my clothes by outfit helps with keeping things organized and also saves space! I do this by lying the largest piece of clothing down first and then lying the other articles of clothing on top and simply folding and roll it all together into a little ball! 

3. This tip is great for people who are going to be backpacking. I like to roll all of my clothes and then put them into packing cubs. Instead of using packing cubs I used plastic bags! Saves you money and also keeps your clothing dry if your bag gets wet. I like to organize my bags by tops, bottoms and bathing suits. This way when I reach into my bag and I need a pair of shorts I can easily see which bag I need to grab. The bags are also great for creating a somewhat dupe for a vacuum seal bag. Just roll and fold the bag as tight as possible! This saves you a ton of room!





4. Another small tip I usually use when traveling anywhere, even on a weekend vacation, is bringing a pillow case or extra bag for dirty laundry. I am a clean freak so I need everything to be organized and tidy and I find this helps me a ton! I love knowing all my dirty items are in one bag!

5. A little tip while packing is to make sure that you have an extra outfit or two in your carry on bag or if you're traveling with someone else, put an outfit in their bag or carry on in case your luggage gets lost!

I hope those 5 little tips and tricks helped while you pack for your next getaway! I will definitely be updating these tips and tricks as I continue to travel because I'm sure I will think of a few more!



DIY FIRST AID KIT 

I wanted to share my do it yourself first aid kit for backpacking! 

Sometimes buying a first aid kit can get expensive and I was on a budget so I thought of another way to make my own! Most of these items I already had around my house so this was super easy to throw together! 

A good thing to remember is that depending where you are traveling you will likely be able to buy most of this stuff there. However, I am a crazy OCD freak and I didn't want to be stuck somewhere and not have the things I needed. Im also insanely cheap and knew I did not want to purchase things in another county when I knew I already owned them. 

Below is a picture of my DIY First Aid kit & how I organized it.






So now Im sure your wondering what exactly I packed and why?! So here goes, here is a list of everything I packed and beside why I packed it. 
Firstly, I packed everything in a 1 quart clear zip lock, this was because it will be way easier to get through airport security in a clear bag. Another reason why I chose a zip lock bag was because if anything leaked it would be easy to change the bag & it wouldn't get all over anything else I packed. 


SIDE NOTE - As you can see in the first picture I also put things into smaller individual bags so that it was easier to find the things I needed. For example, if I was sick with the flu I have a little flu bag or if I was cut I have a small first aid bag with band-aids etc! 

This also helps if anything were to spill or leak it will keep the mess to one contained area. 



WHAT I PACKED 

* Tissues - For obvious reasons, also for washroom situations where there might be no toilet paper since here in Canada Kleenex and toilet paper is a luxury item. 
* Vaseline - This was for my fiance as he gets bad chafe and the Vaseline is good for when your legs are rubbing. I also love Vaseline for chapped lips so thought it would be a great item to bring.

MINI FIRST AID BAG 

* Plysporin - Great for cuts 
* Burn cream - I get horrible sun burns so this is from my doctor, great for sun burns and or cuts! 
* Benadryl Cream - Great for cuts. burns, anything really! 
* Band-Aids - Obvious reason 

SICK BAG 

* Advil - I get horrible headaches so this was a must! 
* Halls Lozenges - Awesome for soar throats, or if you start to get sick 
* Benadryl Day & Night Pills - In case we get sick 
* Diarrhea Pills - Self explanatory..... 

OTHER MINI BAGS 

* Q-Tips - Good for applying any medication & also for our ears (mainly my fiances) 
* Eye Drops - Good for dry eyes or allergies 
* Clove Oil - In case we get tooth aches, clove oil helps with the pain - use q-tips to apply to tooth 
* Davids Tea - Cold 911 - Amazing for nipping a cold in the butt! 
* Tea Bags - To use for the tea or in case we need to make our own coffee
* Small Sewing Kit - For our clothes or if our bag breaks. 
* Extra Hair Ties and Bobby Pins - Just nice to have on hand! 

& That's it! Be sure to check back once we arrive in Thailand to see if I ended up needing any of these items and how useful this was! Again, all of these items I already had lying around my house. All I needed to do was put them into bags and draw a little first aid sign on the main bag! 

Thanks for reading! 
alicia xox 

FINDING CHEAP FLIGHTS


Hello Everyone, welcome back to my travel blog!
I wanted to share some of my tips and tricks on finding cheap flights. These tips and tricks are great for international flights and even domestic flights!
My fiance and I got our tickets from Toronto to Bangkok for $625!! That's a great price considering when we used to live in Jasper, AB our flights from Calgary or Edmonton to Toronto were roughly the same price! To fly within Canada is pretty expensive so if your not planning to travel internationally, hopefully these tricks can help you!
If you were curious as to which company we booked our tickets and which airline I will list that below:
We booked our flights with FlightNetwork and our Airline is EvaAir. We almost got our tickets from FlightHub and found it consistently had the best prices however, flight network had a sale and lowered their tickets $10 cheaper so we jumped on them and purchased!
Here are some of my tips and tricks!

TIP ONE: 
The best tip I could offer would be to consistently search different sites and see which sites are offering the best deals, I will list some of my favorite search engines - Flight Network, Flight Hub, CheapOAir, Travelocity, JetRadar, Kyak & Trip Advisor 
My favorite site was probably Kyak - Kyak allows you to search all of the above sites in one search engine and shows you which company is offering the best deal! Its fantastic!
TIP TWO:
When searching for flights make sure when you are searching your clearing your browsing history and cache, this is because the companies are tracking your browsing history and they will increase the prices of your flight if your consistently searching for the same flight. So once a day or even after a few hours of searching just delete your search history and open a new internet browser and continue searching!
TIP THREE: 
This one goes hand and hand with the first tip, I found this to be very helpful when I was searching for flights. I would download the apps onto my Ipad from each flight network company. This was I didn't have to clear by browsing history and it was easy to search flights everyday and see which company was offering better deals * Kyak was by far my favorite and the most useful app!
TIP FOUR: 
Sign up for notifications! I signed up with both FlightNetwork and Flight Hub to receive notifications when the flight I was looking for dropped in price. Sure they only email you when it goes down by a few cents but in our case the flight had dropped $10 and for us to save $20 each that's 2 nights stay in Thailand! So a penny saved is a penny earned!
TIP FIVE: 
Booking your flights on a Monday or Tuesday are the cheapest of the whole week! & not just cheaper by a $30 or so they are cheaper by hundreds of dollars! For example, our flight to Thailand on a Friday-Sunday was roughly $1300 and on Monday and Tuesday it was $600-700!

& those are a few tips and tricks that I found help me while searching for flights! Make sure to do your research when looking for flights! It took me about 2 months to find the flight I wanted and the price I was happy with! Remember, last minute flights are great but dont wait too last minute or else sometimes you'll end up paying more!
Hope some of these tricks help you out next time you fly!

Alicia xox 

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