As of today, you officially have 2 weeks to start planning your Valentines Day. If you wait too late, Valentines Day can easily become one of the most expensive holidays of the year. This article can be used as a guide for cheap Valentines Day ideas. From cheap gifts, flowers and date ideas, we have you covered to maximize the wow factor at Valentines Day without going crazy spending a lot of money.

Cheap Valentines Day Date Ideas

Below are a list of ideas to have a cheap date on Valentines Day. Since nobody knows your lover better than yourself, you will need to pick one of these dates that best suits their personality:

Parisian Theme Date – Almost every girl I know has some secret obsession with Paris. This is most likely due to it being the international city of romance. To pull this date off try to decorate your place in somewhat of a Parisian theme: nice white table-cloth, nicely decorated table, a single rose in an empty bottle of French wine and candles. Next do your best to play the part by speaking with your best attempt at a French accent and dressing very nicely. If you can convince a friend to act as a waiter even better, though remember to kick them out after dinner is served! Finally prepare a dinner with a french menu and let the romance continue after dinner!

Wine Tasting – If you and your Valentine are wine lovers, why not host your own wine tasting for the two of you. To do this, buy a few different wines. To make this as economical as possible you can buy a few cheaper wines (around $10) and pair them with some nice cheeses. You can create your own scorecards for each of the wine and compare your thoughts at the end. By the time you are done you will both more than likely be feeling the effects of the wine and can see where it takes you next! Continue Reading »

Whether you are planning a date, or need to entertain someone for a day in the city but don’t have any money to do so, there are a lot of cool things that you can do in Toronto without spending a dime! It takes quite a bit of research to find a lot of these things, so we have carefully put together a list of ways to have fun in the city for FREE. We will continue to keep this list updated and if you know anything that we missed, please leave a comment below! Here are some the best fun FREE things you can do in Toronto:

YEAR-ROUND

Free Brewery Tours – Amsterdam Brewery offers a free tour of their brewery every Saturday from 1-5pm and Steamwhistle Brewery offers free tours of their brewery if you check-in using Foursquare for the 1st time
Swimming – The city has many pools around the city where you can swim for free. There are even some indoor pools that are open year round as well as outdoor pools for the summer.
Skating – The city has many outdoor rinks that are open during the winter as well as many indoor rinks open year round!
St. Lawrence Market – Take a walk around the market and sample various items at different vendors. Continue Reading »

Today marks the start of Winterlicious, a once great event in the city of Toronto. In it’s early stages you used to be able to go and get a great deal at some high end restaurants around the city that would typically cost a lot more. Over the years instead of making it affordable for customers to experience these “great” restaurants, I believe it turned into somewhat of a joke. Instead of getting a deal on your meal, you basically got a free dessert, smaller portions and shitty service. Here are my reasons why I no longer attend Winterlicious.

UPDATE: After some thought, I believe this post is more directed towards the restaurants charging the higher prices ($35-$45/dinner). There are some good deals to be found on the list of restaurants participating in Winterlicious, but you need to do your research.

1) Price – When Winterlicious began, the most expensive restaurants were $35. This has since increased to $45 yet many of the restaurants and menu variations have remained the same. While $10 doesn’t seem like much, going from $70 to $90 for a table of 2 before even ordering a drink makes a good deal go bad very quickly. When you really do the math comparing the regular menus to the Wnterlicious menu of many of the participating restaurants, you will notice that in many cases it works out to you getting a free dessert (if that). As someone that never orders dessert anyway, I don’t care. Continue Reading »

Rose and Sons is one of the hottest new restaurants in Toronto located at 176 Dupont Street. I had wanted to go check it out for some time, but as I am with many new restaurants it took some time to get there. Last Friday I decided to check it out with my girlfriend Amanda and our friend Jo to see if it lived up to all the hype.

We went early Friday and arrived at the restaurant around noon. Our first impressions were the place looked kinda like an old sketchy diner, but who really cares as long as the food is delicious! Because there isn’t a lot in the area (that would draw a lunch crowd) lunch time is probably one of the easiest times to get in to get a seat quickly. I’ve read that other times you can often experience a lineup for over several hours. Fortunately there is a bar right next door so you can go drinkin’ while you wait.

We were sat at the bar which I thought would be a good experience as you get to interact with the staff more and have a view directly into their kitchen. Unfortunately one of my biggest complaints is this restaurant appears to be designed for midgets because my 6’2 legs sure weren’t going to fit under the counter. Even some of the shorter members of my party were struggling with their knees as well. We thought about maybe switching to a table but really didn’t want to wait and they didn’t appear to have much more space.

Our view from the counter right into the kitchen.

Continue Reading »

When I first started this blog, writing a post on the best cheap eats in Toronto was very high on my list of ideas. Unfortunately when I started to write the post I didn’t think I had tried enough places to put together a really good post. So, over the last year and a bit I have tried to get out and try many places known for having great cheap food in Toronto. As I began to research I started to realize that there are probably 100’s if not 1000’s of places in Toronto that do something really well for a great price. To write a post with them all could take forever to finish as there are constantly new places popping up all the time. So instead of trying to cover everything, I have decided to put together a list of my favourite cheap eats in Toronto along with some other places that come highly recommended by others.

Cheap Eats Toronto for 2013

Cheap Eats Under $5

Nguyen Huong Food – Banh Mi (Vietnamese Sandwiches) – Chinatown – At the corner of Spadina & Dundas you will find several banh mi shops selling some tasty Vietnamese sandwiches for about $2 each. The ingredients are somewhat suspicious, but the sandwiches have some good flavour. Don’t get me wrong, these are nowhere as tasty as the ones from Banh Mi Boys down the street, but at a fraction of the cost if you need a quick fill up there isn’t really a better deal out there!

Randy’s Takeout – Beef Patties – Eglinton Ave. West – This one has been recommended to me by several people but I still haven’t got around to try Randy’s beef patties. They are regarded as the best patty in the city and at just $1.35 each ($13 for a dozen) the price is definitely right! Continue Reading »