My Weekly Adventures: Wrap-ups, Beginnings, And Reviving Updates

Welcome back to another My Weekly Adventures.  I should change this to biweekly adventures, right? I will, for the next one. I probably won’t be scheduling anything more than every two weeks.  We are in a huge update post today!

I’ve been thinking about the blog a lot lately.  Well, I always think about the blog but its nearing the end of the year and my choices of how to continue the blog become more prioritized than the past few months of the year.  Especially  now that the wedding is over and everything is settling down, I’m really getting back to feeling a little more myself.

So let’s jump into the updates!!

1) DONE: Halloween Marathon!

Can you believe it? It was shorter than expected but we got the entire highlight series done and reviewed.

There was two horror-ish book review posts, and two movies from Netflix A-Z (4 if you could Nanny McPhee as a witch and wrap up into the Halloween-ish thing). And then a few other movies.  Along with that, our podcast over at That Moment In was all about Halloween as well.  We covered Tremors (which I also did a review for) and 28 Days Later. Then we ended it with having some fun more casual posts.  One was about Halloween as a celebration (not the franchise) and Scary Moments in movies. Overall, I rather success month of horror (even if it was technically like 3 weeks or so).

If you missed any posts, check it out at the page HERE!

2) Halloween Haunted House!

Since Halloween marathon is pretty much done and I’m being lazy, I’m going to skip doing an entire post on my Halloween activities.

We did something different this year and other than doing the MTL a Table with friends, we also headed to visit some haunted houses. I did one of them and the other one, I skipped because I wasn’t sure if I’d survive it 😉

1st : Westmount area of Montreal

I kid you not, this house was pretty much pitch black outside and inside was eeriely designed and full of movie referenced rooms from newer ones like Cooties to older movies like The Ring and I think, Christine.  Maybe even some Halloween/Michael Myers thing.  It was a last minute decision and this place has been putting up 41 years of haunted houses on Halloween.  This is its final year so it deserved a visit and it was so worth it! 🙂

Second one was a little closer to my place on the suburbs in La Prairie area and it was done a lot more “Hollywood”-esque as my friend called it.  More noise, more lights, more people dressed up during the walk.  I didn’t do this one because I wasn’t sure if we’d go through the house and they had some funky designs up in the windows.  Look up..yup, zombies? Excuse me…*shakes head* no.  That’s all I’m saying.  And they even had this ending where they had a zombie with a briefcase walking down the alley.  It was crazy. Huge applaud to the efforts.  My friends thought it was a bit loud but got startled a few times.

That was my Halloween nights. Did you do any Halloween haunted houses?

3) BEGINNING: NaNoWriMo!

With the end of the Halloween marathon and waving goodbye to October, we arrive at November.  For some of you who have followed me for the last few years, every year since 2012 or so, I’ve been joining into NaNoWriMo.  While I seriously contemplated giving it up this year, I just couldn’t because I honestly think I finally have a really good idea.  Maybe you may have had brainstorming hints in fifties over at my other blog, Days Nights & Daydreams. If you haven’t, I have been working on three storylines so far. Which did I choose? Well, that’s a secret 😉 If it becomes something I like, I’ll probably edit it and release it chapter by chapter at my other blog though.

I haven’t had such a charged idea or ideas in a long time.  Usually they leave my mind and then I get lost while I’m writing.  I feel really enthusiastic about any of these plots. It’ll be fun! I’m absolutely psyched about it!

Its GO time! The goal this year (as it is every year): STAY ON TRACK! 😉

If you are doing NaNoWriMo, Best of luck to you! Happy writing! 🙂

4) RETURNING: Projects, Baking, Cooking!

Going back to the thought of thinking about the direction of Tranquil Dreams.  I’ve been focussing a lot on movies and books.  Its great and I love it! Talking movies and books with all of you is fantastic.  But my roots are photography, baking, cooking and artsy crafty things. Moving and being disorganized has honestly stopped me from catching up on these things. The house is finally getting organized and the last room to do our own organization is the kitchen where I can get all my baking stuff in one spot and in cupboards that I can reach.  Its still a work in progress but we added this little baking counter to solve a good bit of my problems!

And I have baking and cooking projects tentatively scheduled to go up.

First priority goes to the Disney Baking Project that I haven’t done much with.  What I will do is post up a few more reviews for Disney movies and move through the baking side accordingly. Its a little more creative so I need to give a little more thought before diving in.

Fact is, I feel a little lost without simply baking.  I’m a little more stressed and more worried about everything without it.  Its weird that baking takes me into that space of sweet joy.   Everyday I think about it and then realize how I’ll get frustrated because everything is gone and vanished and it’ll take triple the time it used to to make something as simple as banana bread or cookies, so I stop and sit down to do something else.

But, things are picking up and we’re reviving all of those things.  I even want to do a little drinks section.  Its a desire at most now.  We’ll see what happens 🙂

Tranquil Dreams is heading back into the days of Glow in the Dark Cupcakes and Cloud Cakes and Hamburger Cupcakes.  Are you excited? Because I sure am!

5) WordPress: Home of Tranquil Dreams for 5 years!

This is nothing official.  I didn’t start using the blog and making it active with posts until January 19th or something so thats my actual blogiversary but I always love seeing WordPress notify me every October 23rd of how long this has been my blogging home. The friends I’ve made and the posts I’ve read.  The inspiration all of you and this space has been in my life.  I’m evening getting the opportunity to branch out into doing podcasts.  It seems like this 5 year milestone is marking a lot of new beginnings and it makes me love every bit of it more.  As you can see, I’m revamping the blog a little for 2016 right in time for the official 5 years celebration.

With all that up there, I may be planning 2016 and there might probably be some changes.

6) Events this month!!

In November, I like to prove that I’m superwoman. What can I say? Somehow, this year, I’m rather pumped up about it. So, I might end up skipping Le Grande Degustation.  We’ll see the scheduling.  All depends on my husband since I refuse to drink THAT much wine tasting by myself. At a certain point, it won’t be enjoyable anymore.

However, we do have plans set for MTL a Table (which has already started) and we will likely be heading to Sherbrooke mets a table.  This is probably the equivalent of the MTL a Table food festival but in the Sherbrooke/Eastern Townships area.

If there are any other festivals, it’ll be a surprise 😉

UPCOMING:

• Resuming Netflix A-Z: next letters Q, R, S, T (at least)
• Disney Baking Project
• Music Obsessions & Pinterest Therapy