Upcoming Plans 2023!!

Happy New Year everyone!

2023 is here. Honestly 2022 went by way too fast even if its probably the year that I slept the least, got my first hospital operation ( since wisdom teeth extraction is also considered an operation), birthed a little baby boy Triple V and my life milestones are celebrating his developmental milestones. In the midst of that, I managed to cover a couple of film festivals and took a few review opportunities as well.

For a general overview of 2022, you can find it HERE!

As we look forward to 2023, we’re looking at mostly the same but perhaps a little more goal-oriented (or an attempt to be). Maybe it will help with my indecisiveness when there’s just too many choices!

Let’s get right to it!

BOOKS

Goodreads Reading Challenge 2023: 15 books

Setting a rather ambitious goal of 15 books this year but above is all the books I do want to get through this year. I still have a ton of unread books that I physically own but I’m going to start with that. It will also have some children’s books in the mix since I’m reading a lot to the little one. Not that he understands anything as I write this up but hoping to get him used to the sounds and such to hopefully help his development.

Also, I’ve been thinking about reading all the Hercule Poirot books by Agatha Christie so I’m planning on trying to get that kicked off. I’m going to read them in order of release.

MOVIES

Not too many changes to movies this year. Much like previous years you can expect Double Features and single reviews on new releases, mostly those that I am more enthused about. My main source of entertainment remains Netflix and Shudder and sometimes Amazon Prime so I’m working mostly off those avenues. Not too sure whether I will getting on for the bigger festival coverages but I’m going to guess it will be a year or two more before I get back into it (if I’m still doing this by then). Marathons should remain the same with February Romance, October Horror and December Holidays. These suffered quite a bit this year but I’m hoping to shorten the length but get some decent reviews out. Still working on getting some themed months but hopefully this year will be it.

Also, seeing as my co-host for Ultimate Decades Blogathon announced last year his hiatus or possible permanent departure from blogging, this will not be happening.

My main focus has shifted a lot on Movies and Tea Podcast. Its a great time to record and Elwood and I have a lot of fun as we move through more directors and have some pretty good ideas for upcoming seasons.

TV & Tranquil Dreams Podcast

If you were here last year (and amazingly have stayed after my hiatus and slow content), I already talked about this. Only difference is that I actually put a lot of set up work on this in the past 2 months so its almost ready to get going. I just need some small polish to get things ready to relaunch.

For those who weren’t here, TV binge will focus on everything other than Chinese Language Series. I’ve already started doing that in 2022 and even changed a little bit how I approached the TV binges in general. All the Chinese Language Series will be moved to the podcast when it launches. I’m actually working on some series from the past few years that I haven’t had a chance to write about but I really love. Chinese Language Series means anything from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China. Maybe the random Singapore ones if it catches my eye. The main focus will be on the bigger North American streaming platforms like what is acquired by Netflix but will also look at notable ones from Chinese International streaming apps.

Last year I did also talk about the Sunday Lists being moved to the podcast also. Its still in my plans but I’m going to get it relaunched first before going further with this. I love the segment a ton so I do hope that I get around to working it back into the blog one way or another.

Monthly Segments

Monthly Segments remain the same with Music Obsessions happening the first weekend of the month and Adventures & What’s Up as a month-end wrap-up.

Retiring Photography Segment, Housekeeping and Where It Goes

I mentioned on the Adventures post for December 2022 that I had retired all the photography posts on the blog. With that said, I do still want to get back to photography. I’m mostly using my phone lately but still, it should be fun. I’ve always wanted to do the 365 challenge so I’m going to attempt to do it this year over on Avenue of Daydreams which was constructed for all things creative so photography is moving over there and honestly just continuing since I did weekly photo posts before I took a hiatus.

PERSONAL GOALS

WORK OUT REGULARLY: I’ve given myself a good deal of time to recover from the operation and while taking care and amusing my 6 month old is a lot of exercise, I do want to start doing some actual working out. I’m looking at getting in some yoga, bodyweights and light weights just to see how it goes. It will be a slow progression but I’m rather heavy right now and I’m starting to worry that its not doing any favors for my knees. Plus, we plan to get back to hiking in the summer carrying the little one on our backs so I do want to start training a bit more endurance in preparation for it.

STREAMING: Last year I set this goal and did not do it at all. Its still on my mind to get this launched. I have a lot of games to play on back catalogue and why not try to build something in the process. This will probably happen after I get into a rhythm after the podcast launch.

FINAL NOTE

Last year I talked about slowing down and to be honest, its pretty clear that I’m not picking up blogging any time soon. My baby is taking a lot of my time during the day and in the evenings, between making sure the house isn’t a complete mess and trying to move up my sleeping schedule, its been really hard to focus on writing a lot. I basically write posts for the things that inspire me the most at the moment. Anything that lands in the average doesn’t get prioritized. You can always follow me on Letterboxd to see what I’ve watched and the ratings, if you like. I only use it for my diary to track the movies I’ve watched throughout the year.

To be fair, I’m shifting more towards my co-host projects so while I’ve mentioned Movies and Tea Podcast. I am going to also put more effort into Game Warp to try to get more reviews out and gaming done. It will go hand in hand with the streaming plans.

2023 has some ambitious plans but I’m hoping to get through it!
Wishing you all a fantastic 2023!

Update & Announcement: Welcoming a Baby!

For those who have been reading my actual weekly adventures this year, I have been inadvertently dropping updates about preparing for a baby to arrive since the beginning of this year.

This past week, he has arrived! Boy, do I have a story to tell…. in time (probably the next Weekly Adventures). As I draft this quickly at 5am as we are in the first week with a newborn and the sleep schedule is still all over the place, my priority is not really on the blog. It does feel weird to not be writing but my brain can’t seem to process a ton of good analysis…yet.

Fret not, it is a hiatus and isn’t at the same time. I had a bunch of work in progress in preparation while I was waiting for it to happen. While I didn’t actually create the impressive backlog that I had intended to as a bunch of posts are unfinished, its still on my mind to do it when I have more time to sit in front of the PC.

For now, I don’t want to put myself through too much as unexpected situations arose and I also need some time to recover. I do want to still aim for a relaxing 1 post a week. If that doesn’t happen, the monthly segments will still be happening for sure.

Thanks to my amazing Movies and Tea Podcast co-host Elwood Jones, things over there will be running as usual with new episodes going up. Keep your eyes peeled as we continue through the Quentin Tarantino season. If you haven’t been following us, there’s tons of episodes in our archive from the past seasons and the show is available on most podcast platforms or you can listen to it via the player on the blog HERE.

We also managed to cover the non-E3 2022 gaming showcases and gathered a bunch of our selected highlights in a few separate posts over on Game Warp blog. You can check that out HERE if you don’t follow us yet.

That’s it for now! Things will gradually get back on track in time. I am fairly confident about it. In the meantime, hope you all are going to have a wonderful upcoming summer!

Reminder: Ultimate Decades Blogathon

A quick reminder that the 6th annual Ultimate Decades Blogathon hosted by me and Drew’s Movie Reviews entry deadline is around the corner on February 15th! Remember that this year’s Ultimate Decades Blogathon is not about a specific decade but the year ending in “1”.

If you haven’t sent us your post, you still have a week to do so. You can send it to myself or Drew at kim.tranquildreams@gmail.com and drewt510@gmail.com.

If you haven’t heard of the blogathon but want to join in and want more info, you can find it on the announcement post HERE. If anyone needs more time, let us know in advance and we can work it out.

If you know anyone that would be interested, let them know and see if they can join. Help us spread the word. The more the merrier!

Thanks again for joining and we look forward to your posts!

2020 Upcoming Plans!

2020 is already among us!

For new readers, welcome to Tranquil Dreams. I’m a blog that doesn’t quite follow the successful route of blogging (meaning to focus on one topic), instead I’m a fan of doing what I like and just using this as an outlet of doing the things I love. They primarily make up 4 categories: Movies, TV, Books and Food. There are weekly and monthly segments and a whole bunch of random spontaneous things going on. Now that the introduction is done for anyone new here!

Let’s check out plans for 2020! Note that a few little changes but not too many. I’ve indicated where the main changes are. 🙂

READING

2020 Goodreads Reading Challenge: 25 books

Last year, I set a bunch of books that I wanted to read and then didn’t get around to reading 90% of them, I’d say. Its probably because I forgot about it at one point being busy with everything else. This year, I already have about 5 books set for the first 3 months which is a great start as it all goes towards blog tours and such. I’m not going to say which one and will leave it as a surprise. The goal is to participate in blog tours and then work through a ton of TBR books on my bookshelves and Kindle. I won’t change the 25 books this year and if I exceed, then so be it. In general, its been a struggle to find reading time especially in the second half of the year.

MOVIES

Movies are staying relatively the same. I’m hoping that I will still be able to get the media accreditation for film festivals like in 2019 as that is always a lot of fun and brings in some really nice film discoveries. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea but it always brings in a nice refreshing change to the normal fare on Netflix.  Fingers crossed on that, right? 😉

As for movies, we will be keeping the double feature usually around 1-2 per week, depending on time. Full single reviews are for theatre viewings and festival screenings. The normal themed months still apply:

  • February: Valentine’s Romance
  • October: Halloween Horror
  • December: Holiday Films

This year, I’m thinking of doing some themed months randomly so that I can catch up on various genre of films. Its still in the air whether I’ll do it as A-Z or simply as random screenings.

As for any other things, I’ve neglected my Sunday Lists in general and will hopefully be aiming to get one a month. I’ll set a Sunday per month for that.

TV

TV has really turned into a Chinese drama series deal since middle of 2018 and that will continue this year. I’m hoping to get a few of the TV binges that I didn’t do last year done this year as I didn’t do any for my Top 5 shows last year and that seems sad as they were all very accessible on Youtube and/or Netflix.

Aside from that, Netflix series are the other focus and perhaps Shudder depending how long I keep the subscription. A short little no change section at all: TV binge for Chinese dramas will keep the normal format I have and may actually use a part of that format for any other series I watch as well.

OTHER RANDOMNESS

After getting through the top 3 categories of focus here, its time to take a look at the random other segments at weekly or monthly frequency.

  • [change] Wine Recap will wrap up with its final one with December 2019 and it will be over. I’m no wine connoisseur and the whole 2 year experiment of doing it has really helped me appreciate wine better but its becoming more of a chore to write it up. I’ll share some of it on Instagram instead so feel free to follow me over HERE.
  • My Adventures: I’ve already changed it to a monthly segment in the middle of 2019 and it will remain that way. I’m finally happy with the structure so we’re keeping this as the fun and more personal post.
  • What’s Up 2020: will remain a weekly segment set on every Wednesday to recap the previous week.
  • [change] Baking Through Disney: has been a neglected segment over here that I’ve tucked away but never forgot about. As I aim to get back into baking, its the project that will hopefully be revived on a monthly basis. One baking day a month seems fairly reasonable.
  • [change] Goodfood recaps: have been no more since the middle of 2019. It was due to a few bad experiences that Goodfood has finally fixed on their end. I didn’t talk about it at the time and won’t go deeper into it. As I’m not paid to do this and I have to pay for the experience, its becoming a convenience choice for our life so its become less frequent as well. I’ll share some of the meals on Instagram whenever we do order.
  • Battle of Ingredients: has changed its structure since its beginning. We’ve been talking about how to get things back on track to fit its name but we are also enjoying taking the time to highlight some recipe trials as well as using local Quebec products in our cooking. This one is really supposed to be monthly but we have random hiatus due to our busy schedules.
  • Ultimate Decades Blogathon is coming back in 2020. We are currently in production phase of getting things together. If you are interested, remember to check back here. We should be announcing it soon.
  • Music Obsessions: almost got cut but this segment was saved by a recent comment. I enjoy the segment but its the one that does the least well out of everything here BUT at least its a fairly fun and easy post to put together. So its staying without any change, on a monthly basis on the first weekend of the month.

I know we cover a ton of stuff here including Restaurant recaps and other event coverage including shopping hauls and such. It shouldn’t change much on that front. I’m hoping to get some more DIY going on and other things, if possible. However, time is scarce so I’ll do what I can.

I think that generally covers everything for 2020 plans!
Its not a ton of changes but I will work on being more organized this year!
Happy 2020 and all the best to all of you lovely people!

Announcement: Halloween Marathon 2018 Officially Begins!

Halloween Marathon

The 2018 Halloween Marathon is upon us. It definitely came by quickly enough.

Halloween Marathon has been always an exciting month in the year over here. This year’s horror movies have been quite limited so its going to be an adventure to work on getting rid of some of the movies in My List on Netflix as well as some movies on our shelves that we’ve bought but never seen. We are in the phase of decluttering and trading in our films is one of the phases we are working on. I do have a lot of horror movies to catch up on and with the Netflix October movie releases and other bits here and there with books and hopefully some cooking as well, its going to be a ton of stuff happening and with a decent variety if things go as planned.

Reviews currently being scheduled and writing in progress:

  • The Babysitter (2017)
  • Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2017)
  • Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments (Season 1 & 2)

Some of my top picks:

MOVIES

  • Annihilation
  • The Babadook (because it seems like I’m the only person in the universe that hasn’t seen it yet)
  • Bone Tomahawk
  • Green Room
  • Gantz: 0
  • The Visit
  • What We Do in the Shadows
  • Sharknado: The 4th Awakens
  • Sharknado 5: Global Swarming

TV SERIES (These picks are priority because I want to wrap up the show as they are already done)

  • Scream Queens (Season 2)
  • Hemlock Grove (Season 3)
  • Ash vs Evil Dead (Season 2)

The Maybe List (if I’m in a mood and none of the top picks fit my liking or I want to watch a dumb horror):

  • The Forest
  • It Comes at Night
  • Anaconda
  • Mother!
  • Mama
  • The Open House
  • Winchester

Obviously, the list above is all subject to change and its on what I decide to pick. However, I’m open to any suggestions! If there’s any movie that you want me to review on this list, just leave it in the comments or tweet or email or whatnot and I’ll make sure to bump up the priority. 

Also, as I mentioned before, books will be included in there. I’ve currently started one already so we will be having 2 or 3 hopefully pop up over the month.

On top of the normal programming from movies definitely making it in and others in consideration above, Elwood and I are kicking off Movies & Tea Podcast’s season 2 with our look at Guillermo Del Toro’s directorial effort. With that said, there is a lot of horror movies coming out from there. I’d say that we might get through a movie or two in October if things go as it did in the first season of the show.

Before I wrap this announcements and start the Halloween Marathon out of the gates here, I do want to say that I have a last minute decision of attending the Festival du Nouveau Cinema in Montreal so I’ll be covering up to 10 films there. However, none of those films will be horror, or at least from what I think. So, there will be other things going on here. If the marathon takes a little slide in the background, the second half of October will be in full force. You just need to be patient with me as I work through real life, festival coverage and Halloween marathon.

That’s it for this morning’s announcement! 
We officially start tomorrow morning with a movie review! 🙂

Are you doing anything special for Halloween on or off the blog? Leave a comment and a link to your blog so others can go check it out!

Calling Out for Guillermo Del Toro Fans!

Hey everyone!

A little announcement and invite to everyone today!

Movies and Tea Podcast is about to head into our second season. After a great first season focused on Paul W.S. Anderson and a 3 episode After Hours session (and even had a little break to catch up on all the written material), we are ready to move onto the next director. If you are unfamiliar with Movies and Tea. Its a movie podcast hosted by myself and Elwood Jones where we choose one director every season to look at their directorial work. It acts at both a re-evaluation of their works as well as filling in those empty spots of films that we haven’t seen from director’s that intrigue us.

If you want to check out the episodes from Season 1, you can head over to the blog linked above or to Podomatic, iTunes, Spotify…we’re in a lot of places.

This season, we are talking about Guillermo Del Toro’s films. The change from last season, we want to open up invites to see who would be interested in joining us on some of the episodes and specifically which film you want to talk about. Suffice to say that Guillermo Del Toro is definitely more loved than our first season but his work and progression of style and film material has its diversity. For myself, I haven’t seen any of his earlier works so its going to be a journey to discover how his debut material is.

The list of films we are looking at this season are in the banner above:

  • Cronos
  • Mimic
  • Devil’s Backbone
  • Blade 2 & Hellboy
  • Pan’s Labyrinth
  • Pacific Rim
  • Crimson Peak
  • The Shape of Water

That is really all I have to say. To keep things a little more secretive, you can drop me an email if you are interested and which film you would like to talk about and/or leave me a comment to tell me that you sent me an email at kim.tranquildreams@gmail.com so that I know to keep an eye out for it. In the email, you can leave me the film you want to talk about, and recording availability. If you don’t know yet, we can work it out and see if our time zones can all jive.

We were super happy with how the first season went so incredibly excited to talk about Guillermo Del Toro’s works.
We’re looking forward to sharing this podcast experience with all of you!
One last thing: If you know anyone that is interested, please pass on the message!

My Weekly Adventures: A Little Bit of Everything…

Welcome to the next Adventures post!

First of all, if you do drop by here frequently, I’m sorry for the sparseness of the posts, I’ll have a general explanation of what went down and kind of took over my life. I feel like I’ve said that a lot in 2018. While there were a lot of things that have been fairly cool in 2018, overall on a personal sense, 8 months in and I’m sure my husband and I are quite over it and ready for something incredibly great to balance things out. Anyways, we gotta stay positive to hopefully attract some more positive things..at least thats the concept in my mind.

Let’s see how the second half of August went!

The next Battle of Ingredients

Battle of Ingredients

We skipped a month of Battle of Ingredients in July because well, its busy in July for myself. However, we got things set for mid-August and had it all ready to go for our Take 2 of BBQ. This time, we each made some nice twists and there were a lot of success. Some recipes are ideas for other cooking methods in later challenges for non-BBQ and others, we learned from its not so perfect execution. Overall, it was a fun little time together to hang out and catch up and explore some new recipes. Its hard to imagine we just did the 9th Battle of Ingredients and the next is the 10th!

You can check out the full post HERE.

Lachine Half Marathon – Spectator

No pictures for this event. I’ve grown so accustom to doing half marathon support for my friend that I just kind of chill out a lot. It was a super hot day and I got a mini sunburn. Honestly, my bad for choosing to sit on a bench under the blazing sun catching up on reading. It was a super nice and honestly, I kind of miss it because the weather’s slightly cooled down and after that race and going home for a pool session, our pool motor is dying but as its the end of the season, we are only replacing everything next year and closing the pool early for the year. However, in terms of the Lachine Marathon, it was a tough one because the heat came in fairly quick. My friend did finish it within the time he wanted but so close. This season has been a tough one for him. A few more races to go for the season and with the heat ramping down a little, I’m hoping that its gets a positive turn for him. However if you haven’t been to the Lachine Half, its set in a pretty cool pier/park area with some stuff set up to look at and nice little sitting areas and all that fun stuff.

The 15 Hour ER Adventure

Life takes us for some crazy time. Don’t freak out! I didn’t go to the ER personally however, my husband did have some pain that he was enduring and we had chalked up to maybe indigestion or stomach flu until he had pains on his side which because just very unbearable by the time we hit the end of the work week. For those who don’t know about Canada’s free healthcare, it just means that there is an incredible wait time more so because in Quebec, medical professionals and the whole system is fairly messed up so we ended up doing a 12 hour wait time in the ER then got sent to the room to wait for the doctor another hour before he saw him, took tests and proceeded to round out another 2 hours or more waiting for test analysis, results and diagnosis. It turns out it was something of the beginning of a stomach ulcer and its time for meds to stop it before it gets more serious and well, the pain still showed up every once in a while so further test is in the horizon at the moment. Quite the stressful time and honestly, after my 5:30am arrival to home after the ER adventure and staying awake to make sure the husband was okay and being over 30, the all nighter and sleeping 2.5 hours just kind of murdered my entire week that followed and with it, any energy or motivation to process thoughts on movies and reviews. I spent most of the time after work sitting in my chair just resting and relaxing this week.

Either way, with that little scare…we are officially enforcing…

A Transition to Change in Eating Habits and having more Balanced Meals

Not sure why that’s a section in itself! But I’m totally grasping for straws for something to talk about. Anyways, I’ve been getting back to working out as you can see. As I’m typing this up, we just literally finished binging Ultimate Beastmaster Season 3 and boy, am I excited to talk about it in the next TV Binge! Yes, its moved forward in priority because I’m so hyped by it. However, that is good because Ultimate Beastmaster usually gets us super motivated to train again. We are already working on the eating healthier thing and for that reason, I’m decreasing Goodfood boxes to help get into a groove of making food from scratch on our own and not always relying on boxes because the reality is that the boxes were meant to help support the crazy weeks and not so that we could get lazy and that is what we’ve been doing a lot, which results to some bad eating habits whenever we don’t get boxes. Either way, transition going on already and I’m probably not going to share that except perhaps on Instagram or if I try out any cool new recipes.

We did make this recipe today as a little throwback: Basil Avocado Bacon Pasta. The post is HERE. We found this recipe 5 years ago and we still make it a few times a year. Its actually the first time we made it this year so like I said, we’re off our game a little.

If you have any healthy and tasty recipes, do share it in the comments below. We’re always down for suggestions!

New Dairy-Free Food Discovery

Upcoming:

  • TV Binges
  • Book Reviews & Blog Tour
  • Restaurant Review/Recap

Kitty Cute Pic

kitty cat

If you are following me on Avenue of Daydreams, you already saw this pic!
A silly kitty cat moment as she pulls down our towels that was hanging to dry on the railing to the ground to improvise a bed.

Thats it for this Weekly Adventures!
Its a little short but its just what happens when life gets taken over by more serious things!
On a side note, I am more avid on Instagram when I’m not posting or adding random posts on Facebook, so be sure to follow me there.

What adventures have you been up to?

Current Status….Work Overload

As I take a literal 3 minutes to put this together so that there is something going up today and to apologize for the delay of more Fantasia reviews going up, I’m literally in work overload. I haven’t stopped working for the last 4 days except to do the essentials and sleep the 5 hours I need to function. Love Fantasia, its just at the busiest time of the year for work also.

Anyways, as I struggle to eventually after today’s deadline to wrap up the Bleach review from Fantasia, I have some other stuff in the works when I get home tonight as well. I have something special to do this weekend so I’ll be making sure that things go up here as well, maybe clear out of those TV binges I have sitting around on my to-do list, The only upside of this overload was bringing work home and then actually

In the meantime, enjoy these Game Warp videos, its story driven stuff to think of it as movie time with me 🙂

Lots of fun stuff coming up like What’s Up vlog and such. I still have like 3 Fantasia reviews to get done and one more Fantasia movie to see tomorrow so things are still happening.

Have a great day everyone!

Announcement: Tranquil Dreams is on Facebook!

Hey everyone!

As you may have known from the last WordPress update news or whatever you call it, I can’t connect Facebook to my profile anymore, which wouldn’t matter to most of the people here as only a few of you are on my Facebook which I keep fairly private. However, since I do treat Facebook as a means to mostly share the posts, the only way the posts will share automatically upon posting is if it was a page. Its something that I’ve been planning to do for a while but I envisioned it always more as a step that I’d take when I finally decided it was the right time to buy a domain and really expand the brand. After some thought, despite all the Fantasia Festival craze, I decided to just set it up. Its still somewhat of a rough draft but all the posts including Avenue of Daydreams will go there.

As I get used to managing another Facebook page, I’ll try to share thoughts and stuff over there. Random little things and updates but then most of it is already here. I’ll share trailers and videos and stuff also if that is what you like or maybe events I plan on attending. Who knows, since I do a ton over here, the myriad of topics opens up a lot of possibilities. As frustrating as this was to do last minute (and better today than later) since it starts on August 1st but Fantasia runs until then, I don’t really know when I’ll carve out the time to do it, probably in August at this point. I’ll probably do some Instagram sharing there as well.

If you happen to rely on Facebook to see the posts, then give me a like or follow and the posts still show up on your news feed. If you don’t read this through Facebook, maybe just still do that to show me that you support the blog! And if you happen to have a Facebook page, put it in the comments below. Let’s share some community love so we can all support each other!

Check out the Facebook Page HERE!