My March Adventures!

Welcome to the next Adventures! On a real life level, March is usually a temporary break month where there’s less deadlines but a lot of catch-up happens left over from the previous 2 months of craziness. Much like the trend of the past year, this month was much busier than expected. I’m going to say right now that not much happened so this should be a fairly short post.

The pandemic in Montreal seemingly seems to be better as a lot of stuff is opening up but yet, while the daily case increase was on a downward trend in the beginning month, its starting to go up again so I’m still not sure about this rather aggressive reopening plan. I feel like the impatience sometimes is what makes this even harder to overcome.

Plus, its my 35th birthday today! Let’s go!

Bathing Our Cat

Probably one of the most adventurous things for the month was giving my cat a bath. She’s been having some skin problems and we’ve been going through different home methods to try to figure out what’s the problem. We ended up giving her a bath with some cat shampoo to moisturize dry skin which definitely helped. We say its adventurous but actually it turned out to be a rather calm experience since she actually didn’t mind it too much except for the rinsing part when she didn’t really like more water on her. Overall, it ended up being much more pleasant than how we anticipated it would turn out. My cat is an odd one to say the least. She doesn’t like accidental water drops but apparently, wetting her completely is fine.

Streaming!!

I believe that I had mentioned in the beginning of 2021 that one of my plans is to start streaming! After a lot of thinking and trying to find time, I finally did one stream to kick things off. Currently, as this post goes up, I’m streaming Sea of Solitude. You can check out my Twitch channel here.

Plus, some good news on two other streamers. The first being my husband, who got Twitch Affiliate recently. You can check out his channel if you are interested HERE.

As for my friend and streamer who I do horror streams with, he also got Twitch Affiliate recently. It used to be on Mondays that we streamed together but its going to be moved to Friday for horror streams soon. You can check it out HERE.

Birthday Month

Its been a birthday month in our family, not just the husband and I but for the family. Its the second year for us March babies that we’ve been living through the pandemic. Still, we’ve found our ways to make things happen. My husband reached a birthday milestone (at least the family did feel that way). We didn’t really do much but he did get a few gifts this year that he wanted. As for myself, I got a plant delivered to me, which was quite cool. The plant above is apparently is rather pricey (according to my husband) called Monstera (aka Swiss Cheese Plant). I joked that its more suitable for my husband considering I’m lactose intolerant and can’t have cheese. This plant is temporarily set there for now as I look for a plant stand so that it can stay out of the reach of my cat as its toxic for dogs and cats. I do say that its a cool- looking plant overall. Any tips for Monstera if any of you have this plant?

Tranquil Dreams Podcast

Aside from that, Tranquil Dreams Podcast is moving along in a rather changed format as I try to catch up with the weeks that I missed. While its on some funky release schedule as I can’t seem to find time to record and edit on time however I am slowly feeling like I’m getting back in the groove. However, each time that I say that my work suddenly goes nuts and then I don’t have time again so picture me, knocking on wood right after I write that so that I don’t jinx myself. 😉

You can check out the latest podcast episode HERE.

That’s it for this March adventures!
No cute kitty as already have a fluffy cute cat pic above 😉

What have you been up to?

My Weekly Adventures: Birthday Post!

Welcome to the weekly adventures!

I’m 33 today! Just taking it easy like every other year. Some plans are postponed to next week and some keeping to this one. However, this post might seem a bit long although very suitable that its a food heavy post seeing as I love to try new things and hang out with friends over meals.

Festival G: Perles et Paddock

Kicking off was the replacement for Battle of Ingredients in March and we went to check out Perles et Paddock and their menu for the Festival G, a new festival in Griffintown area of Montreal. I’ve already talked extensively about it in a post before so I’m not going to talk too much about it.

You can find the post HERE.

Casino de Montreal: L’Instant

My office move finally happened after much delay. Its a whole lot of adapting and such. I have no pictures as I don’t really want to share that part of my life. However, after that early start, things wrapped up a tad early as well and my friend who eats some expensive meals at the casino wanted to redeem some points so picked me up from work and we went to eat at the deli there called L’Instant. I hadn’t been there since it had been renovated. I got the pasta quattro which is a fairly good deal at $15.95 for pasta (where you can choose out of 4 types of pasta, 3 kinds of sauce and 4 groups of ingredients), soup, garlic bread and a drink. I like the whole having a choice to DIY your own pasta.

March Birthdays Group Celebration

Last Saturday, we had a big family party as the whole in-laws side (almost) has their birthdays in March, just like myself. We got together for a delivery chicken meal like previous years and spent time just catching up and chatting. Its always a nice time with family to just hang out. We’re all busy with our own lives so we take these moments when we can.

Plattsburgh US Grocery/Snack Haul

Market 32 by Pricechoppers

Walmart

Target

Last Sunday, I headed out with my friend to Plattsburgh to do a little grocery run. It was more for snacks and such and it was to pick up some goodies for the husband’s birthday. We had an early start so came back fairly early as well. We went to Target where I stocked up on some Spring & Easter Oreos, Easter Lindt bunnies, some L’arabar flavors that we don’t have in Montreal and some Pressed Coconut Coconut Water. The coconut water isn’t here either the last time I checked. Next stop was Walmart where I kept it fairly tight as I picked up unfrosted Pop Tarts (which I don’t get why isn’t in Montreal), Birthday Oreos (they are my husband’s favorite), and some Love Crunch granola which are super expensive and much smaller package. Last stop was Market 32 by Pricechoppers where I picked up some discounted Kind bars. They were $10 for 10 which is, even after exchange, a better deal. I’m stocked up for snacks for at least 2 to 3 months now.

Restaurant: Le Belle et La Boeuf

For the husband’s birthday, I took him out for a long-awaited date together. We rarely go eat out together unless its for film festivals or something so we wanted to go try something new. I already posted about La Belle et La Boeuf HERE.

Birthday Breakfast & Marché Jean Talon

Every year for my birthday, my friend takes me out for a big meal. Although I get to choose any breakfast place, I can’t seem to get past going to Le Cartet which is super delicious. My fave is their Brunch Canton which I absolutely love. The ham is so awesome and the sausages are good. Its really great. I probably talked about it in previous posts but still, if you are in Montreal, like breakfasts and want somewhere delicious in the Old Montreal area, this one is definitely one to consider and probably go to.

Marché Jean Talon

Westrose

After that, we had some parking left so we headed to a new bakery that opened around the corner that I walk by to go to work called Westrose and picked up a loaf of bread for my husband. We took a quick run to Marché Jean Talon. I haven’t been there since at least 15 years ago. I remember going when I was really young so it was nice to head back. I didn’t buy a ton of food since we still had stuff at home but got so beautiful looking brussel sprouts and since I can’t eat most cakes and don’t want to bake a cake for myself, I decided to pick up a strawberry-rhubarb pie at Creations Madeleine. Its a really delicious pie.

Its my Birthday so shameless selfie time 😉

That’s it for this Adventures post!
It was a bit overloaded with stuff but hey, promise April will be much less adventurous!

My Weekly Adventures: The 8th Blogiversary

This weekly adventures is a tad later than usual…because of the big event that Tranquil Dreams is 8!!

It all fits perfectly because I didn’t have much that happened other than working on some personal matters that I don’t prefer to share here. On top of that, its a whole lot of overtime at work and you all don’t want to hear about that just as much as I don’t want to talk about it, I’d presume. Then there’s the obvious issue of being sick which I had mentioned briefly on a What’s Up. So all in all, not a ton of fun activities in the last two weeks.

 

Normally, I have the habit of an annual vlog to celebrate the blogiversary but let’s just say that the plans fell through because I forgot I had to film and ran out of time. I have to say that it might be for the better. Before we move onto the more Weekly Adventures bit, let me write a little on celebrating the blogiversary today.

For one, its a massive thank you to everyone who has stopped by here, liked a post and the other bloggers and podcasters that I’ve worked with. Its pretty fantastic to think that I’ve been doing this for eight years and that now its part of my daily life and the content has grown and changed as well. Its also been a journey where I’ve learned a lot not only in finding my writing style and simply writing better but also the fact that without here, I wouldn’t have learned video editing and audio editing and learned how to be a part of podcast co-host and co-host a blogathon as well. At the same time, I never thought that I’d get the opportunity to cover festivals and review screeners and all that fun stuff. All in all, a HUGE THANK YOU to everyone whether you drop by today or later on or before this post existed.

This past week was a nice little work up to this because I had one announcement and one little decision in the making which is the only Weekly Adventures worthy parts…

Ultimate 2000s Blogathon Announcement

In case you missed it, Drew and I announced out Ultimate 2000s Blogathon on Monday. Sign up and submissions are open for 3 weeks. We are looking forward to it all. Its the 4th year that we are doing what we have called the Ultimate Decades Blogathon this time of year and the 2000s has such great movies that we are looking forward to what picks show up.

If you missed the announcement, you can find it HERE.

To Come: Videos, Vlogs, Discussions and more

Ever since I stopped doing What’s Up videos, I’ve been pondering this video business for a while. To be honest, I’ve been thinking about this even during that phase. Doing every other week seems to be hard to keep up with mostly because it just falls out of routine and seems a bit redundant. So I decided to do a monthly What’s Up roundup sort of thing. At least thats the idea for now. The goal is to eventually get something much more entertaining like discussions or compare and contrasts on movies and adaptations or their remakes or reboots or sequels. Something that I like to talk about preferably so it can really be anything. I might do audio and just do clips in the background more than myself showing up in the videos.

I still have some decisions to make but I think its a nice way to liven up the Youtube channel a little and do some extracurricular video editing practice. I did think about doing like a podcast style as well or maybe just doing an audio version as well.

All in all…

We’re 8 after all! I’m looking forward to changing things around and a part of me wants to go back to where it all started with a bigger focus on food and baking which I honestly miss a lot. I miss the days that I watched a lot of Chinese and Taiwanese TV series and Hong Kong movies and I guess its the years that its been here that I’m not as afraid to take those risks so I’ll slowly get that going as well. Its been on my mind for a few years now and I never figured out how to integrate it so I’m going to just go for it once I find the right structure and angle.

That’s it for this special Weekly Adventures!
Thanks to everyone for being a part of this journey!
Being here for 8 years means that I’ve seen many bloggers come and go.
As for myself, I see myself going further a little longer 🙂

My Weekly Adventures #62 I’m 32!

Welcome back to this edition of My Weekly Adventures!

This post comes a little later than usual. To be honest, I was just taking it easy since I took today off to relax and enjoy my birthday. I am getting older and this past week has been busy with new project launch and lots of catch up on stuff to be more on track and organized. Its been an uphill trek after being functional again a few weeks ago with the new PC. Luckily things are going very well now and I’m hoping it will go that way. Although, the last few days, the stats were absolutely meh but after so many years of doing this, I love just sharing what a little bit of everything so the stats don’t bother me anymore. Maybe its the enlightenment of getting a little older. 😉

This is going to be a really short one since there honestly isn’t much to recap. I was looking back and realized that the last two weeks didn’t have much going on. I debated about posting today but hey, why not! A little bit of something is better than nothing, right?

Getting Ready For Running Season…Very Slowly

The snow is melting away in our yard and I can see the tulips starting to come out and the strawberries are sprouting some new leaves as well as some other plants here and there. Which means that as the weather gets a little more stable and mild, I’m getting back to running season. I haven’t ran in a year. In fact, working out has been so sparse in the past year and a half that I really need to get back on track to just basic exercises. With that said, I started scheduling in little improvise workout programs for myself at home, just like 30  minutes of Zumba routines from Youtube 2 times a week. Its going okay…can’t say that I’ve been incredibly disciplined but working out is definitely always in the back of my mind and I make a solid effort to get even 20 minutes in when I have the time.

I’m hoping to start actually running somewhere like mid to late April depending on how much overtime I have at work and how that affects my own calendar.

The Husband’s Birthday Weekend

My husband, better known now as a contributing factor of Game Warp as Stunt Gamer had his birthday last weekend. Yes, our birthdays are a week apart. You haven’t heard the weirdest part yet when it comes to coincidences and our families other birthdays. Either way, for his birthday weekend, he got to relax like crazy and over the Saturday and Sunday, I made it a full day of meals pretty much, there was a brunch, a dinner and a birthday dessert. I posted last week about the dinner HERE. And well, above are the cupcakes (because the cake version of this would be crazy) that I made for him. It was a Chocolate Cupcake with Nutella Filling topped with cupcake icing and a Ferrerro Rocher.

I’ll share the next two recipes very soon. We also went to go see Tomb Raider for his birthday and while the theatre experience has me really angry, the movie itself was pretty fun. I’ll have that review going up very soon as well. Lots of upcoming stuff, right?

New Project: Movies & Tea Podcast

If you missed it this week, my awesome Game Warp co-host Elwood and I started up a new podcast and the debut episod went live this week. We apparently hate free time. Thats our running joke. Between us, we have too many projects and who are we kidding…we love it! Movies & Tea sparks from the idea of each season looking at a different director and their movies. Of course, some will have more than enough movies but we will pick a selection or batch together a few so that the season will be about 6 to 8 episodes long. Right now, we are looking at releasing on a biweekly or once every three weeks or something. We are pretty flexible with the schedule. This is a fun and casual project since we love talking about films off air during production meetings and stuff.

The kick-off director is Paul W.S. Anderson and this episode looks at his directorial debut full length feature, Shopping.

You can follow us over at the blog where you can catch all the episodes HERE.
Like us on the Facebook page HERE.
Thanks for listening!

Turning 32!

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A post shared by Kim (@tranquildreams)

How about that? Time sure does fly and I’m 32! Honestly, I don’t really feel that different. If anything, with all the projects going on, its making me feel very energetic and youthful like never before. I kind of have to be since it is the gaming scene and embracing new stuff and new game ideas and same goes for the movie industry and whatnot. I feel like the past year, I’ve grown a lot as a blogger and podcaster among many other stuff that I love to do. With that said, I usually don’t like to make a big deal of my birthday so its just been a relaxing day with my husband. We headed for a little day trip out to check out the Dreamworks Animation Exhibit in the Canadian Museum of History before it ends next weekend. Its a ton of fun since other than that exhibit, there’s some permanent ones there about the full Canadian history and its like 4 floors of stuff to look at and its paired with the Children’s Museum as well as includes a Dreamworks film which we missed since we got there too late and it was a decision between seeing exhibits or seeing the movie and just one exhibit. Plus, the movie was Shrek 4 and I stopped watching Shrek after the 2nd one so it wasn’t particularly intriguing. With that said, the exhibit was very unique and I loved seeing the art work and all the sketches and music and more. Super cool stuff.

No worries! I’ll do a coverage/recap post some time next week. More upcoming…

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for this Weekly Adventures!
Hopefully, I’ll be reporting back with some more exercise progress next time (if work hasn’t drained me).
You already know whats upcoming for the next week or two with all that I talked about up there. 
What have you been up to?

My Weekly Adventures #40

The incredibly work-related April is upon us! April always is the month that murders us at my work, so if it gets a little sporadic in the next few weeks, I apologize in advance. However, it has been a whirlwind of busy for the first quarter of 2017. However, everything’s been going pretty great. I love being a workaholic especially if it means working with a ton of great people and getting to do all the things I love. The last two weeks of March has been pretty awesome. I did manage to just get in those new segments despite being a little backtracked by the trip I took to Toronto. In fact this is where I’ll start this Weekly Adventures segment!

Toronto ComiCon (with Drew’s Movie Reviews)

For the second year in a row, I went down to Toronto and met up with Drew, my fantastic blogathon co-host for the Toronto ComiCon weekend. We jam-packed our schedule with tons of panels and went to a party and even found time to eat some good food and visit a beautiful touristic attraction, Casa Loma. You can find the recap for ComiCon here, Casa Loma here and the Toronto haul here.

On that note, one of my prints are already framed! I’ll be framing the other two in the few weeks. Our office is going to look awesome! 🙂

2017 Parks Canada Discovery Pass

More geared towards my fellow Canadian readers, to celebrate 150th birthday of Canada, Parks Canada has offered up the Discovery pass which allows free access to National Parks along with some other centers and whatnot. You can find all the info on the Parks Canada site. I ordered this pass a few weeks ago and got it in the mail some time before or after the Toronto trip and we’re super excited to plan out some more hiking day trips this summer especially since we managed to pick up another set of hiking poles for myself also. We will eventually have to change the hiking boots soon but we’re still looking for a good pair. On that note, if any of you in Ontario or fellow Quebec residing bloggers or have visited and hiked, do tell us where you suggest.

Course Update: Guitar & Photography

Both the courses ended this week! At this point, I’m done with the Guitar course final assignment (yay! and why this is going up later) and preparing for the final assignment for Photography, continuing after this goes up. I did have to work overtime to play catch up. One of the few things I’ve realized happen when I lose a weekend to going away. I think it also is because I don’t own a laptop anymore and when I’m away, I don’t feel like working on my phone as much so its really just watching TV and relaxing, which is a good thing. Actually, it was very refreshing to recharge even if it took a while to recuperate. Does that make sense? I was tired but more motivated to write. Anyways, point is, courses are over and hopefully these great time management skills I’ve used this past month (for the most part) will stick around.

One New Segment FINALLY Live!

In case you missed it, my team-up with Phoebe of Starry Traveler’s Road for this new segment, Battle of Ingredients is finally live! If you missed it, you can find it HERE! We started simple but we’re going to be doing a hopefully monthly deal with this. Planning time to meet up and gathering up friends and then coming up with recipes all take time between our own work, blogging duties for myself and parental duties for Phoebe makes it all so hard to make this more frequent. However, I am quite pleased with how the post turned out. Hopefully you all are and will enjoy it.

Learning a New Tools: Canva

Would you look at the image for Battle of Ingredients? I actually learned about Canva a little while ago but I’m truly enjoying working with it to build simple images and giving the blog a more professional header image for various segments. I have one for Music Obsessions coming up tomorrow and working on one for the new segment. Also, I’m trying to get something together for the actual blog header.

Birthday Month

March is THE birthday month of our family. My in-laws and my husband and even myself has birthdays in the second half of March. My birthday was yesterday and I turned 31. It was a pretty calm day which is always great. There were a few a little things that bothered me for a short while but overall, it was pretty relaxing and efficient, which is great. My husband and I will celebrate this weekend by going to a movie, Ghost in the Shell, which I’ll probably have the review ready for Monday.

Cute Kitty Pic

Upcoming:

• New Youtube project 
• Ghost in the Shell review & more

What have you been up to? Anything new?

We’re 6!!

Today’s post is going to be short and sweet!

WE’RE 6!!

In the heart of the next Disney movie in the Baking Through Disney line-up, I just couldn’t resist to use this one as the happy birthday to Tranquil Dreams!

I figured a gif day would be fantastic to just save up my gibberish and these thoughts really capture what my daily moments and possibly the things that started up this blog six years ago!

Pretty accurate way of saying it. I think a lot and probably overthink much more than I should. The amount of stuff in my head is sometimes incredible. If only, it meant something more and to be honest, having a blog makes those pieces of odd opinions and thoughts have an outlet. Sure, I’m not quite as skillful and write as well and coordinate my thoughts as a lot of you here and I really need to thank you for sticking around because I know I’ve improved and its been fantastic to be blogging with a bunch of such fun and awesome people like you.

I don’t plan a whole lot for my blog. In fact, the organizing and planning really just started in the last few months. Also, the benefit of making a blog even if that is hard. Then we have living. Do you know how many more reasons I have to go out and embrace being a foodie or going to see a movie or especially checking out all these great events and hiking trails and just having a ton of fun outside of my blog? I never do it deliberately for the blog but it makes me want to experience more and share it with all of you. As much as it seems really odd to say that I’m living more because of owning a blog, I am. I’ve met and collaborated with awesome people, made some cool friends in the process and even started up projects.

Back to that 2 hours planning thought, six years ago, I started this not really knowing what I was doing. I didn’t know what to write and it started off a pretty personal affair, looking at photography and recipes and just random daily prompt writing and look at what it is now. Not only that, Tranquil Dreams has gone to writing about gaming over at That Moment In, spent a part of of the last year part of That Moment In podcast (also known as The Random Chat Show for a while), then now, I’ve even expanded to our gaming podcast with Elwood Jones, Game Warp. All of this are things I wouldn’t have imagined ever.

I probably talked about this some time before or whatnot but writing in college was those things that my English professors thought I did not have any talent in. If you only saw my marks, man, were they depressingly bad. Its quite a miracle that I’m now writing a blog post every single day. If you aren’t surprised, I’m still embracing that every day and being so happy that you all drop by and check out what I have to say about whatever I choose to write on.

Suffice to say, this blog here has gone through a lot of change in the past year along with the projects I’ve taken on. The experience is irreplaceable and honestly, the last six years have been great for life and just having here as an outlet to have fun and be myself really makes it just so awesome!

Rambling done! To end this…

THANK YOU SO MUCH! I LOVE YOU ALL!
I have so much for the coming year!
My virtual glass of wine is raised in celebration for the next year in the blogverse!

My Weekly Adventures: The Big 3-0 (Recap & Announcement)!

I’m 30 today! Honestly, that’s all I have to say about that!

Back to our normal recap, its my birthday so I figured, I’d have an announcement sort of thing at the bottom.  Deal is that, this was supposed to be like a big thing but I didn’t manage to get everything decided and figured out.  More details at the bottom with a little message.

Lets start with some recap!

Toronto Comicon & Ripley’s Aquarium

Call it a blogathon celebration or whatever, I ended up meeting up with Drew (Drew’s Movie Reviews) to check out Toronto Comicon and Ripley’s Aquarium.  You can find those posts HERE and HERE! It was a ton of fun.  Now I’m on a comicon high so I already have Ottawa Comicon set and I’m debating on Montreal Comicon, but that is in July so the guests are exactly set yet.

Aside from that, I’m pretty hyped up about finding more cool events to go to.

Baking Frenzy & Baking Through Disney

I got back to baking this past two weeks and had two recipes go live! One was for the delicious Hong Kong style Egg Tarts (recipe HERE) and then the second was the Baking Through Disney Cupcakes for Pinocchio (recipe HERE). I have to say that I’m geared up to get back on track with this stuff.  The only deal is to organize time so that I am motivated.  With winter leaving us and spring bringing in a little warmer weather and some more sunlight between the spring showers, I’m already working on some ideas for Fantasia.  The review for that should go up soon.  I’m trying to stay on track to do one movie and one recipe every month.  Its a pretty challenging goal but one I plan on managing to do this year.

Dinner and Karaoke with my Best Friend

On Good Friday, I met up with my best friend who has been incredibly busy so I haven’t seen her a lot.  While I was waiting for her, I went to Pharmaprix/Shopper’s Drug Mart and found Kombucha there! I’ve seen it on TV before, I think it was on Dragon’s Den and I’ve been wanting to try it so I grabbed the Rosehip and Hibiscus one.  It was absolutely a delight.

After meeting up with my best friend, we went out to grab a little something to eat.  I took an appetizer as I wasn’t too hungry and she took a club sandwich that was a lot bigger than she expected it to be.

We headed off to some long overdue karaoke for 2 hours afterwards and headed home.  I did do some recordings of it but decided to not because the moment I upload it to Youtube in a video, its going to have some copyright issue so I rather not have to deal with that 😉 We sang some Chinese songs and a few English ones.

Here was two that I’m not so good at but I have a lot of fun singing. This is possibly one of my fave Karen Mok songs and well, Jordan Chan’s song is ridiculous but I used to like rapping although my voice is not anywhere near as tough as it should be so it sounds pretty unconvincing but it has a nice tune/beat.

Potluck and Game Night with Friends

The past weekend, we had a nice gathering with friends.  We made some ribs and those cupcakes up there.  Everyone made delicious food from salmon to roasted veggies to chicken to salads and chicken wings.   It was a great time talking and laughing.  Then we sat down to learn how to play Pandemic together.

We played a total of two games.  The first game took us an hour to set up and work through the rules and get an idea of what was going on.  The second game went much smoother and we defeated the pandemic although we were at 6 outbreaks and incredibly close to losing again. Teamwork and strategizing, that helped us out quite a bit. 😉

ANNOUNCEMENT & THANK YOUS!

I’m writing this pretty much around midnight jumping into March 31st.  I had debated to just give myself a day off from the blog but turning 30 is a big deal to many people.  I’m not so affected by it.  I still feel pretty young at heart and a lot of my achievements and self-satisfaction comes from doing the blog so I wouldn’t want to spend it any other way than with all of you lovely people who drop by today, yesterday, from the beginning of this blog, even in the future.  Nothing means more for my birthday than saying my thank you to all of you! I take all my opportunities to tell you all how much I appreciate all of you.  I’ve made a ton of blogging buddies here and its just been an amazing experience that I would never trade for anything.  With that said, I’ve been thinking of getting rid of the wordpress.com and owning a domain.  As much as I love Tranquil Dreams, I do want to get out of the “klling” thing because thats hard for anyone to find this place.

The big announcement is that I’m working on a new name and a new banner and moving over to a new domain.  Its a plan in progress.  The hardest part is deciding on a name but I think I might have something that works now.  I’m still getting some feedback from friends.  Once that is decided, I’m heading straight to put together that banner and deciding the next step of where to go from there.  I’m excited for this change and I hope that you all will have fun with it as well.  I’ll have another more formal announcement when things are about to wrap up with possibly a launch date.  I’ll make sure that everything is going to shift as smoothly as possible for everyone.  Decisions, decisions, decisions: thats where I’m at right now.  I’m sorry that its not done yet but I promise its a work in progress.  The hardest part is that Tranquil Dreams is so versatile and finding something that fits it all in and has a nice ring to it.  Work in progress! We’ll get there! I’m getting a lot of help from friends and my husband.

THANK YOU SO MUCH! THINKING OF WHAT TRANQUIL DREAMS HAS ACHIEVED IN THE LAST 5 YEARS MAKES TURNING 30 FUELED WITH ENERGY! 🙂

And to wrap things up…

Cute Kitty Time!

Upcoming:

• Netflix A-Z: N-?? (taking this segment a little easier as I catch up with a few movies in preparation for some upcoming movies and work on some backlogged content)
• Disney Project: Fantasia Review
• A few book reviews

Have an awesome day!! 🙂

Birthday, Hangout & New Toy!!

Its long weekend in the province of Quebec! Yay! Meaning, tomorrow I still don’t have to go to work and have a fantastic day off with the boyfriend! He’s going to redeem his Christmas gift tomorrow for his 2 laps driving both a Ferrari and Lamborghini! He’s pretty much been anticipating it since forever! After that its going to see World War Z!!

Lets rewind just a little and fill you in on whats been up for the last two days 🙂

Friday evening was a great night because I managed to get together with my best friend! She finally graduated from her medical field course and has to prepare for her National Exam but between that, we found it was time for our little gathering to catch up because we have a lot of suppressed thoughts that chat doesn’t really communicate as well! It was great to just relax and have a good night with her 🙂 First, we went to our favorite joint at the Crescent Street restaurant, Les 3 Brasseurs! I chose the Chicken Brochette with rice and fries and had a Mojito on the side!

Chicken Brochette with Fries, Veggies and Rice!

YUM! So delicious! Plus, we were starving…and we started chatting and talking about everything: work, job, future, boyfriends, life, parents, etc.  After that, we needed to walk off the meal a bit and walked back to get some shopping done where I managed to find some AMAZING deals at HMV! I had to try to be rational and got Seven Psychopaths, 21 Jump Street and Step Up 2! 🙂  I had originally wanted to get Stoke but it was ALL SOLD OUT!  Afterwards, we finally decided that we wanted to head over and relive the moments at the arcades.  We’re totally into Time Crisis 4 but that machine was as popular as ever (even after so many years) so we settled for trying out Razing Storm!

Razing Storm!

I couldn’t find the North American arcade machine and I didn’t think about taking pictures of it either! Those machine guns were so huge, my hands were hurting after playing a few rounds of it! It was mad fun though! PLUS, it was half price for all the games that night.  I love getting things done for cheaper than intended, so it made our day and it was quality time together so even better! It was definitely a fantastic Friday night! 🙂

On Saturday, the weather plummeted into rainy day again.  I had to postpone a lot of my workouts and since the night before, I had some insomnia (its been for the last few days) and didn’t sleep till 4am in the morning and then woke up at 7am.  It was efficient though! Managed to get a whole section of the Unit 2 for the TESL online course! Went over to my friend’s place to chill for a bit and then went out to check out the movie deals at Future Shop.  I should learn to avoid these places these days…I had to make decisions. I did manage to find Stoker for even cheaper at Walmart and found the only Resident Evil: Retribution Blu-ray that wasn’t in 3D and at a seriously inexpensive price! SO HAPPY! Lots of movies added on…even though I wasn’t supposed to buy any 🙂 (AND, Sir Phobus I did manage to get Wall Street on my tablet and I’ll get on it ASAP).

I ramble too much! Saturday night was the birthday of my boyfriend’s nephew which means seeing lots of kids play around and babies, chocolate birthday cakes and some adult fun! I got the chance to fulfill the hot dog craving I’ve been having!

HOT DOGS! 🙂

Some shots to celebrate amongst the adults!

Raspberry Sour Puss Shots!

It was a fun night! We cut it short since both my boyfriend and I were dying of fatigue…so I went home to watch some Criminal Minds and prepare for an early morning jog on Sunday!

Guess what? This morning, I did get my jog in and did a whopping 6.8 km in mega humid weather.  At this moment, I still have 1.2 miles to complete by the end of the day to reach my 100 miles by summer goal.  I’m sure I can get it done with an evening walk later on.

BUT!  I have to introduce to my big investment of 2013 and my newest toy…

DSLR camera!

Here it is! My upgrade to a DSLR camera: Canon EOS Rebel T5i! I’m still learning a lot about how to use it but its really fun and even though this pic isn’t that great…I’ve been getting some really great shots with testing out the functions on objects! 🙂

How is your weekend? Did you have some awesome meals? Cave in to some cravings? Do some shopping? Maybe spend some time with family and friends?

I hope you had a great weekend and enjoy the rest of it 🙂

Weekly Writing Challenge: Truth is Stranger Than Fiction

I’m finally back with one of these.  The past few have been a bit not my cup of tea or I’ve been too busy with other posts to do it.  However, this one involves pictures and I fully intend on checking out the March Phoneography but since I only have a dumbphone still.  I will be using this to learn a bit more about my tablet.

For this week’s Weekly Writing Challenge, they kick off this March Phoneography with a picture…

For this challenge, we want to see a photo of someone looking truly happy. Not “I’m-smiling-for-this-photo” happy, but really, deeply, twinkle-in-the-eyes happy. When we’re smiling a genuine smile, our whole faces get involved — our whole bodies, for that matter. There’s a light in our eyes. We look relaxed; there’s a forced tension in a fake smile. Then we want to know why: what’s going on in the photo? What are you (or they) thinking about at the exact moment? (And if you really want to get into it: what happens next?)

I hunt through my old pictures as they requested to look for one of me.  I also had to put in my loved one, my boyfriend, because I captured that shot.  Its really hard to capture myself truly happy although most of the pictures I take, I am genuinely happy but to catch myself giggling to myself spontaneously is hard.  The most genuine is when we don’t realize..like when I’m baking…but then my hands are kind of full with hand mixers, spatulas, flour, butter, etc…Enough rambling on my part and let’s go!

My absolutely favorite and natural picture of my boyfriend giving off all kinds of natural happiness in his expression:

This was in the summer of 2011 when we went on our Niagara Falls trip at Bird Kingdom.  That place is super beautiful and we went into this area with these little birds flying and chirping away in their mocked natural habitat.  They were all so adorable.  I don’t exactly remember what my boyfriend was looking at. My guess is probably some kids or some conversation going on while he was patiently waiting for me to chase or sneak up on birds and take millions of pictures before I got it right.  That is a natural smile right there.  He had no idea I was taking pictures of him until we got back to the hotel and I was checking out the pictures.

The other picture is full credits to my friend, if they see this post via Facebook, they will know who they are so thank you to my awesome friend or else I wouldn’t have these memories:

It was hard to choose which one for this but the one before is of me holding the actual gift I got.  Why not? I was asked to put one and then here’s two, why not three, right?

Wait wait, back track…

Last year, I held a huge duo birthday party for two friends and also it was a huge party in general to gather everyone together.  What I didn’t know was that they had planned out a surprise for me.  Making me get a lot of attention that night.  One of my friends somehow snuck in two shots of me.  I think this is me really happy from actually holding a guitar that they all chipped in for me and then (they don’t know this) tearing up…I was really touched.  I don’t like attention but I do like feeling appreciated and loved by my friends.  Surprise, right? And that card made me laugh a lot too, because its pretty much cats meowing to the tune of Happy Birthday.  Whenever my cat hears it, she just starts sniffing the card, biting and meowing at the card to get those cats to reveal themselves.  Its pretty hilarious 🙂

Sometimes, its really these moments that you look back and you really smile.  I look back and I had a hard time choosing the moment to use. A lot had to do with the one party that I have a year for my birthday which I stopped doing huge.  This one was in April, well past my birthday but they all remembered, so that was really sweet.  Point being, I’ve been very fortunate to feel genuinely happy throughout the years and I have tons of pictures to show for it.  That thought makes me even happier.

Whats a moment that comes to your mind that makes you smile right away?

Happy Belated Birthday!

I knew I had forgotten on Saturday. I was so happy and optimistic and posted about Charlie Brown for a reason. If you didn’t see my Happy Saturday post, click HERE to see it.

Talk about being slow but I just had the time to look at the calender and hope for something great to happen…since I’m in this horrible pain in my left leg and left side of my lower back from slipping on ice this morning.

It just hit me that Saturday, January 19, 2013 marked the 2 year anniversary of this little blog.  YAY!  2 years went by fast and I really wanted to do something special but I had to rush off to work on Saturday morning.  So I didn’t get a chance….I’ll find another time to give you all some more goodies right after I figure it out (maybe on another milestone).

Ideas have been scarce lately…probably because my brain is occupied by work.  I’m telling you…work haunts my sleep.  I just had a nightmare about not finishing the deadlineS on time.

When I’m on here, I forget my problems, so forget about all that stress from work. This is my time!

First of all, let me…

Thank YOU!

Offering my thanks to all of you is the most important!  You all deserve a huge shoutout and I’m really trying to do that.  I’m going to try to promote your blogs whenever I get a chance.  Whether it be awards, or just how you inspire me in every little way…its coming bit by bit this year.  Without you all, I’m not sure I’d have gotten to where I am now: posting everyday, 281 followers, a few awards on my sidebar, 9,880 total views, etc.  I’ve seen a lot of other blogs get way more in less time but to me, this brings a smile to my face.  It means a lot that you all enjoy what I put up.  Every like and comment and follow really makes my day, especially today when I’m in pain.  It puts a smile on my face.  You all ROCK!

Also, I’d like to give huge thanks to That’s Life And Then You Sigh for nominating me for The Versatile Blogger Award. I received this a few days ago and was thinking if I should take this since its my 2nd time I’ve gotten it.  I am extremely flattered!

Here are the rules:

• Display the Award Certificate on your website
• Announce your win with a post and link to whoever presented your award
• Present 15 awards to deserving bloggers
• Drop them a comment to tip them off after you’ve linked them in the post
• Post 7 interesting things about yourself.

Since I really don’t know how to give these anymore! In event of my late blog for my blog anniversary, I’d like to give this award to whoever wants it.  Just take it and follow the rules and do what you want with it 🙂

And for the 7 interesting things..I open up the floor for your questions.  Ask away my wonderful friends! Count it as a gift from me to you!

I’m sharing this fun Birthday song to celebrate the late birthday together! I would play it by myself but I’m still practicing hard to get it good!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

LETS MAKE THE TRIP TO THE 3RD YEAR EVEN  MORE AWESOME! 🙂

P.S. After last week of being more relaxed, I’m more charged up this week to bring you all more more more! Also a little update, A Bite of China Project will officially start in February!