Wow! It feels like a long time I haven’t done a Weekly Adventures. This past month has been extreme festival season here and with wedding planning and keeping up with everything, its been really crazy. Mentally and physically draining in many ways but things are settling down. While that is the case, I still have little thoughts of having just a week off from the blog to catch up on things, notably sleep. If any of you thought I didn’t sleep before, now its even less.
Regardless, lets hope I can fit this all in one post. This month was really eventful and probably a few of these deserve their own posts but we’ll deal with it here! 🙂 So warning: it will be long but I’ll keep the words less and pictures more formula.
1) Fantasia Festival
Fantasia Festival is over! Which means its been at least a month since I’ve posted my last Weekly Adventures. I made it to all the movies even though there were a few I started wondering if I was starting to get sick especially when it was bouncing back between our heat wave and then rainy weather. 11 movies and a lot of decent choices. There were some disappointments but mostly there were pleasant surprises.
If you missed any of my reviews, here they are:
- Kung Fu Killer [China, 2014, Crime Thriller]
- The Hallow [Ireland, 2015, Horror]
- Cooties [USA, 2015, Horror]
- We Are Still Here [USA, 2015, Horror]
- Observance [Australia, 2015, Horror]
- Anguish [USA, 2015, Horror]
- Tales of Halloween [USA, 2015, Horror]
- Cop Car [USA, 2015, Thriller]
- Bite [Canada, 2015, Horror]
- Antisocial 2 [Canada, 2015, Horror]
- Dark Places [USA, 2015, Thriller]
What might have shined other than the movies were the short films. The Morrigan, Black Eyes, What Doesn’t Kill You, Point of View were all really good. A fantastic festival and I look forward to next year. I did miss a few that had some scheduling issues but I look forward to hopefully finding them on Netflix 🙂
2) Unexpected Retweet!
I think the busiest time during my site is during Fantasia Festival season and Halloween marathon time. The site kind of takes off a little. Its that whole horror genre thing, I guess. Its okay. I’m just happy that it does because themed months makes me work double as hard and I plan in advance as much as I can. Regardless, I had some fabulous people retweet me. The best one was for Cooties. Elijah Wood retweeted my post! Excuse me. I’m still a little shocked. And that brought a ton of retweets from probably his fans and followers which made smile a ton!
Then the second one was Tales of Halloween where one or two people of the crew liked the post.
I never expect much from my posts but I do try to link them up for the Festival so that its a little more exposure for them. I just never expect these things to happen to my little blog. Anyways, happy times, happy surprises! 🙂
3) Ottawa Asian Night Market
Living in Canada, we don’t always get to savor the authentic Asian cuisine. Montreal doesn’t hold a lot of it so I usually head out to Toronto to get some better Chinese food. This year, located in Lansdowne Park in Ottawa there was the Asian Night Market. For one, it was a zoo! One line could take up to 90 minutes wait time. We had to separate and conquer in order to eat efficiently.
The lamb skewers were possibly the best ones. There was some potato tornado or something like that. It was really good. Unfortunately, my phone died on the way there so I didn’t take any pictures…
4) Festival Orientalys & Just for Laughs Festival (Take 2)
One of my friends has a booth out at the Festival Orientalys the weekend afterwards selling Japanese street food: Takoyaki, Kakigori and Okonomiyaki. After that, we headed out to Just for Laughs Festival for a second take to eat more food. I’m telling…I ate on and off for about 3 hours. It was crazy! It was also fantastic weather so I had a lot of delicious drinks to try out. We got to watch some shows down at the Place des Arts area for the Just for Laughs Festival. It was an awesome time!
5) Fireworks: Madonna Tribute + Dinner in Old Montreal
The Montreal International Fireworks Festival runs for about a month or so. I haven’t gone to see any of the showings in a few years. For the last show that wraps up the festival, we went to go see the fireworks with my fiance and a bunch of our friends. We went out and met up for dinner beforehand. After some discussion, we decided to go to Holder’s Restaurant in Old Montreal.
And for some Fireworks highlight!
6) Brossard Cultural and Gastronomic Festival + (more) Fireworks
My goodness, these festivals, right? And you can start asking, why is she always eating? I’m sorry. I should be losing weight for the wedding but umm…I just can’t resist. Brossard Festival has been around for a few years now. I’ve only started going this past few years. I had skipped last year though. This year, they added food trucks and we got there later so that we could catch the fireworks finale at 11pm.
The process to get there, especially that last 45 minutes was painful. No disrespect to the highlight band, La Bottine Souriante which is a Quebec folk band, but it was a clash of loud music which was balanced so bad that it sounded like a thousand pots clanging at the same time. On top of that, the lyrics were absolutely hilarious and somewhat creepy (in a weird stalker-ish way). Anyways, no disrespect. It wasn’t for me and it was fun watching everyone doing their version of jigs and jumping up and down.
But the fireworks, although only 15 minutes long was fantastic. It was simply beautiful
7) Wedding Planning
I guess I’ve kind of kept it pretty quiet. I had shared some details with some blogging buddies here and there. Wedding planning on a tight time schedule between ALL these events is what is going on. We had some invitations snags which are all ironed out. You can see my invitation package below! 🙂
If only all of us blogging friends weren’t so scattered around the world, there’s a lot of you I’d love to invite. Imagine a meeting at a wedding, now that would be so cool! Unfortunately, I’m not rich so I can’t fly all of you in. Sad because a lot of you have been a consistent part of my life the last few years and to me, you are all my friends 🙂 If you do want a bit more details on it, you can always drop me an email.
The past Sunday, I went shopping with my girl friends for my wedding dress and their bridesmaids dress. I have a lovely friend being my celebrant so we were looking something for her as well! All in all, it was a long and exhausting day of shopping BUT, GOAL ACHIEVED! I found my wedding gown after just two dresses! It had everything I wanted and met all the criteria! Now for a few touch-ups and its ready to go! And, we even found my two girls their dresses with a lovely color (they called it eggplant). And I found my second dress! 🙂
Things are rolling into place but tentative schedules, details, centerpieces, bouquet, my mom’s dress, and of course, wedding bands: all still on our to-do list. The date is rolling really close, my friends! I’ll probably drop one more update before the wedding! Two months countdown has started!!!
8) Upcoming….
- Baking Through Disney Project: Snow White theme baked goods (my plan for this weekend)
- Unloading my vacation pictures from May (I know its late but things got a little crazy)
- Music Obsessions (possibly!)
- A few book reviews
- I’m planning a new way to get rid of some movies on Netflix and I’ll talk about it on the next movie review (right after I wrap up all the posts I owe fellow bloggers)
- Maybe a Wedding Planning themed Pinterest Therapy (for good measure)
And to end it all, since I didn’t do a workout update, although I’m still running, Zumba and doing a 4 week Nike Training Club Workout Program. In the heart of Zumba, one of the instructors use this as our cooldown song so it always makes stretch and do the cooldown routine when it comes on. I wasn’t a huge fan but listening to it over and over kind of grew on me.
Happy Friday, my lovelies!! 🙂
P.S. Drop by later! I have something awesome coming up!!
Tranquil Dreams 
Congratulations on the dress, the whole dress shopping and planning the wedding must be so stressful! Invitation looks beautiful too, really happy to see all the fun stuff you’re doing this summer!
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Thanks! 🙂
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