It was a beautiful day to send these Brandon Firefighter Paramedics up onto the roof of 2 Hall to kickoff the 6th Annual Brandon Firefighter Rooftop Campout, which is raising money for muscular dystrophy and cerebral palsy, along with raising money for the firefighter/paramedic’s charity fund. If you’re in the area, stop by 2 Hall (located at 13th St and Queens Ave), drop some money in the boot, and give them a big wave on your way by! Photos by: Liam Pattison Photography

Photographer Caley Brown has captured the beauty of Brandon and area in winter, giving you more reasons to head outdoors and experience for yourself.  Follow her photography page if you would like to see more incredible photos, or if you would like to order prints.

It is early March and college/university students are starting to think about where they are going to live and work during the summer. Of course, much of this is based on whether or not they are going to keep their apartment. With major project deadlines approaching and the need to prepare for final exams, it is a busy and stressful time. Having to make the major decision of whether or not to give up your apartment is not one to be taken lightly. Many students will choose to return to their hometown as the school year wraps up. After all, it’s appealing to have the comforts of home (aka less Kraft Dinner) and live rent free for a few months with mom and dad. However, there is a flip side and it is often best to weigh all the pros and cons of moving back home versus staying in the city. Even though you might be looking forward to free Internet and your mother doing your laundry for you, it often comes down to dollars and cents (and what truly makes sense!). Let’s assume, for example, that a student is living in a $1,200 per month apartment with a roommate, therefore between the two of them they are paying about $600 plus $50 for electricity in terms of housing costs. If the students give up their apartment for April 30, they would save on rent for three months, so the savings would equal approximately $1,950 ($650 x 3 months). The cost of moving is usually minimal as parents will often bring the horse trailer, cube van or pickup truck to move the furniture that needs to go home. Let’s assume there’s a minor cost of $200 for gas for the trip here and back. We will also work on the assumption that there is room at the parents’ home for the furniture and that it can be stored for free. We will also assume the cost to move back is the same, about $200. In this scenario, the student would be ahead by $1,550 ($1,950 - $400 for moving expenses), plus the cost of food for the three months without rent. In August, when it is time to find a new apartment, many students often decide to ditch the roommate and take on a place of their own. The cost of living on your own increases and the new apartment may be $975 plus hydro for a total of $1,100. This may seem great, however, when they return to school in the one bedroom unit they would actually be spending $450 more a month during the entire next year of school. From August through to April, this ends up being $4,050. So, if they had decided to keep the apartment (and the roommate) for the three summer months, it ends up being cheaper in the long run. There’s also a lot less hassle. Even if you’re just moving a couch, your bed, a dresser and your personal belongings, it can still be stressful and inconvenient (there’s only so many times that your buddies will lend a hand). Also, by keeping the apartment you don’t have to worry about looking for a new place to live or settling in. Instead, when September hits, you’ll be organized, refreshed and ready to hit the books. I only wish someone had mentioned all of this to me when I first started my post-secondary education. After my first year of university, I did the same thing. I packed up all of my stuff at the end of April and moved back home. After that year, I realized there was little to be saved by doing this. Now, I also see the panic in our prospective tenants that do this when they come back to the city in August. They quickly discover that there are few options remaining as many of the spaces that were vacated by students in April and May had been filled over the summer. It’s more important to be focused on getting back into the groove of studying, rather than worrying about where you’re going to live and how to make up for added costs. Vionell Holdings Partnership (VHP) provides rental housing and property management for an array of residential and commercial customers, including Condominium Management. VHP currently has over 3,500 units under management in Manitoba.  For more information please visit www.vhproperties.ca.

A one day only pop up Bridal Sale (Opportunity Bridal) selling only new wedding dresses and accessories (veils, belts, tiaras etc) for the bride is scheduled to take place inside the Victoria Inn on June 2, 2018.  Save up to 90% off the MSRP. Hundreds of wedding dresses, from some of the best international designers, will be on sale with prices ranging from $199-$899. Dresses (500+) are stocked in a wide array of sizes (from 2-28) and will be available on a first come, first served basis. Show runs from 9am - 4pm with last admission at 2:30pm.  Admission is free.

You don’t get anything in life for free, that is something you hear all the time. From a young age, the adage, there is no such thing as free lunch is drilled into you. You start to find out, as your grow up, that there seems always to be a catch or a sinister reason why companies are offering you deals that seem great. Surely they are doing something to catch you out. Surely they have a reason for giving you something for what seems like nothing.   This has been proved many times by research. Those offers like 3 for 2 and buy one get one free always look great, but studies show that they usually aren’t. We see adverts on TV for things like Black Friday or for huge price cuts, but when you do a deep dive, they turn out to be not so great. As usatoday.com have noted in a story, Black Friday is actually a very bad day to shop and one that lulls you into a false sense of security and gets you to part with your cash based on a false assumption that you are getting a bonus of some kind.   This can mean that we start to treat all deals through suspicious eyes. We start to wonder if a good deal does actually exist, we consider if companies are always tricking us and we can never be rewarded for being good customers. When offers from casinos come up we are particularly suspicious. Doesn’t the house always win, we think. Do casinos not always come away with our money? Does anyone actually win at casinos.   Unfortunately this can mean we miss amazing deals like the ones at the-casinobonus.com which can help you to make bets, to win money and to have fun playing great online casino games without having to put any of your own money on the line. People should make sure to put their worries to one side and consider some reasons why casinos are giving away these bonuses, there are reasons that, if you understand and then use them to your advantage, that can help you to win big.   The key reason, is competition and new competition from inside the sector. In the old days, before casinos were online, they were usually very big places with little competition for miles around. Outside of city hotspots like Vegas or Atlantic City, very few casinos existed close to each other. This mean that if a customer wanted to leave or try a new place, it was very tough for them. They could not just easily switch over to a new casino, that would mean trying to find somewhere and then travelling there at great cost and hassle.   Now though, that is no longer a problem, if you are bored with the online casino you are using, you can just go to a new one, it's simply a click of a button away. You don’t have to drive anywhere, you don’t have to do much research, you just need to do a quick google and then you are away. This means that online casinos need to do something to keep you, they need to entice to them and then charm you to make sure you don’t change. This is the main reason they give you bonuses, to inspire loyalty and to try and get you over to their site and then stop you from changing. If you are smart, you can use websites that give you information about bonuses and then keep switching providers. You don’t need to stick with one place, the internet has empowered us in new and exciting ways and it is important that we take advantage of that.   Another reason they need to offer bonuses, is to make sure that you feel like you are ahead, if you don’t know when to stop playing, starting off with free money and winning can make you feel invincible and spend more than you want to. You need to be patient and quit when you are ahead. Gambling is about being responsible, its about not spending too much and it's about keeping a level head   If you can do that, as well as be willing to swap providers to use up as many different bonuses as possible, then the new age of online casinos can work very well for you.