Le Grand Marché de Noël & Luminotherapie!

Downtown Montreal is bustling with Christmas right now. This past Friday, I went out with friends to Le Grand Marché de Noël (tranlsation: The Big Christmas Market) located in Place des Arts and also connected with Complexe Desjardins. It had a lot of fun stuff. There were stalls with gift ideas from local Quebec producers and artisans. There was food trucks  and lots of decorations. And if you haven’t heard yet, we got a huge Christmas tree (which everyone calls the ugliest Christmas tree ever). After that, we headed out to Quartier des Spectacles right next to Place des Arts for the annual Luminotherapie.

Christmas Village at Complexe Desjardins

Fontaine Boreale at Complexe Desjardins

Le Grand Marché de Noël at Place des Arts

Hey, look, snuck a picture of me in there. I know this is for kids but hey, kid at heart right here! This was just so adorable. I couldn’t resist!

Jerry Ferrer (Food Truck)

Christmas Poutine (with cranberry and truffle sauce)

Lobster Bisque

Grilled Cheese

Jerry Ferrer food truck is an extension of a chain of really awesome restaurants. The food truck was awesome because it had their usual great food but with a Christmas twist. While I didn’t eat it, my friends said that it was pretty good.

Luminotherapie at Quartier des Spectacles

I skipped last year’s luminotherapie and can’t really remember what it was but I usually go. You can see that I went to the Iceberg exhibit a few years back, then the field of dandelions imitations, and there was a few more after that. This year was these little contraptions where you move the metal lever in the centre between two people and it moves a wheel inside that depicts a story. We managed to get on two: the first was Little Red Riding Hood and the other one was the Frog Prince.

What Christmas events is going on where you are? Are you ready for Christmas?

A Little Christmas Cheer!

While I take a little intermission and try to work out my originally planned post for 2015 plans, I’m going to share a little Christmas cheer. Hmm..That almost rhymed.

I feel like I get to show off a little of my lovely 7.5 feet Christmas tree. Why? Because it took weeks to put together, like various weekends and going to stores over and over again. The joys of getting our first big Christmas tree comes with learning what length of beads, ribbons and lights we need to fit the whole thing.

On Sunday, with Christmas only a few days away, we put it all together! 🙂

By the way, under the tree are actual gifts.  I got my whole Christmas groove on and started wrapping up the gifts.  Only 2 more to wrap and one that has to be shipped off and its going to turn out to be more of a holidays gift.

Then I did this little berry vase thing by the window and thought of filling it up with colorful lights and lining the edge of the bay window with LED lights.

Plus, I have a lovely wreath (now with a ribbon) and some garland along the stairway. Its definitely starting to look like Christmas.

Add a little triple wick Christmas scented candle from Bath and Body Works in the scent of Twisted Peppermint 😉

I’m feeling this holiday cheer right now! Everything just feels awesome! Plus, last day of work tomorrow (for the week)..YAY!

How do you prepare your home for Christmas? 

My Weekly (now Monthly) Adventures!

Its been over a month that I haven’t posted a My Weekly Adventures instalment.  Why? Just because between not overwhelming you (and myself) with posts popping up all day, because I truly dislike it when I get bombarded by like 15 posts by one person (unless its comments), I decided to just group it together to eventually have its reappearance here and with actual things.  Life isn’t always busy and when its actually busy, I just don’t write about it, so I just lump it together with the highlights of the past month. I’ll try to keep it brief because I have posted individual posts on some of them also 🙂

Lets see whats happened in my life over the last month!

1) TV! TV! TV!

The thing I’m most proud of is catching up with TV.  My choice to keep up with three: Arrow, The Flash and The Vampire Diaries have been fantastically on track.  Mostly because I only have a week of streaming before they expire because I don’t have the fancy satellite subscription.  What happened to free TV, eh? Anyways, success also comes that I’ve delegated time to watch Dancing with the Stars (first season that I’ve seen) and am totally in love with it. The finals just happened and I need to stream that and not read any news to keep the surprise factor there.  Then, two weeks ago, I resumed watching Season 3 of Once Upon a Time, very much thanks to Netflix and and wrapped that up and read to catch up with Season 4 to be right on track. The way Season 3 ended, I’m looking forward to it. 🙂

Plus, apparently once a show is cancelled, I like to start watching it. Weird, eh? Because I just started watching the first episode of Witches of East End. I can’t say from the first ep but the set is very nice and umm…the dude, Daniel diTomasso playing Killian is really dark and brooding hot.

I think thats about the extreme of how much TV I can get in right now.

What are you watching these days?

2) MTL a Table!

Apparently October and November are the big events month for autumn.  I didn’t know that so the first new experience was participating a little in MTL a Table/TASTE MTL with friends.  I posted about those already.

The 3 restaurants I went to were:

• Le Montrealais (Queen Elizabeth Hotel)
• 1000 Grammes Bistro Glouton et Traiteur
• Brasserie Le Pois Penché

Do you  have any food festivals where you are?

3) La Grande Degustation de Montreal!

A wine tasting festival through and through! It was a last minute decision to go.  Over the years, I’ve been really interested in wines more than cocktails.  Learning to appreciate wines is something I’m slowly learning.  This year’s highlight was South Africa wines and those are a growing trend here.  After trying 6 booths or so, including these ones that left an impression while the others I can’t remember anymore:

• Nederburg Ingenuity White Blend
• Le Bonheur (Chenin Blanc/Chardonnay)
• Reyneke (Chenin Blanc)
• Porcupine Ridge (Sauvignon Blanc)

Other than that, I ended up loving this vodka from Las Vegas called Vegas Vodka and ordered myself 2 bottles of it. And then ended up at a checking out this white wine from Quebec from a winery called Domaine de Petit Roubie that had this lovely fruity wines with a very distinct taste (2 more of those).

Definitely a new experience and I’m waiting for those bottles to arrive so that my boyfriend can taste it as well. (By the time this goes up today, I just received the order yesterday.)

4) Home update!

My house is completely painted now.  My kitchen was the last room and the most pain in the behind to do.  That room has covered with a light yellow and it brightens up the room when any light hits the walls.  My description is that my kitchen is like a dessert. The cupboards look like gingerbread and the walls look like custard and the trimmings is whipped cream.  Trust me, when natural hits it, its even more so.

Now is just organizing everything.  First place all organized after 2 evenings as of last night was organizing all the movies that my boyfriend and I own.  After organizing alphabetically over 3 shelves, emptying a ton of boxes, its finally done.  I dug out the movies that I owe reviews to and I’m stacking them up to get those watched.  I’ve never really had a chance to see EVERYTHING my boyfriend owned and although we had a few doubles, there was a whole lot that I haven’t seen yet so it’ll be fun 🙂

Also, beginning of November, we also bought our huge Christmas Tree.  What comes with Xmas trees are how to decorate it, which means I need to get my crafty self back into action. While getting those DIY ornaments together, I put together my garland with little decorations around it and spiced it up with some fir scented sticks and decorated it on my little staircase. Last year’s wreath also got a little redecoration so once I find that door hanger, I’ll put that up as well 🙂 (By the time this goes up, I already found it but no picture yet).

The holidays are around the corner, the house is pretty much in the final stretch and I’ll be moving soon.  Thats a crazy but extremely happy thought 🙂

Are you geared up for Christmas?

5) New clothes (for a good cause)

I love Arrow and I love Stephen Amell.  Why? Because the man does good things. He tries to live up to his character and he seems rather genuine.  So, I love buying clothes and if I happen to buy clothes that are for a good cause, well, even better. I usually don’t wear people’s face on myself, its a little creepy and I don’t swear (much) either so this F&ck Cancer shirt really breaks a few rules but for a good cause, I’m willing to do it.

6) Ornament making

I just bought a 7.5 feet Christmas tree so that means I need to decorate it. I managed to get some hand me down ornaments but its definitely not enough to cover a gigantic tree. So other than buying a few little things at Target and Walmart (yay for sales), I am making it. Here’s two of the types 🙂

7) Sunrise photo session!

Two weeks or something before the weather went all cold and crazy, I went out with my friend for a photo session for sunrise.  First time for me.  Here’s a few shots.  I promise a full post but I’m just a bit backlogged 😉

8) Snowy Girls Night Out 🙂

This past weekend, my girl friends and I went out for dinner. One of us is going back to Vancouver after a few months back home in Montreal to deal with a few things.  That day, she fell in love with the snow all over again.  With her excitement, we went to take pictures.

Quartier Dix30 has that lovely decorations all set up.  The restaurant we wanted to go to was packed but we did get to stand in the snow with the lovely Christmas “tree” and warmed our hands near the fire.

On top of that, last night we all went to go see Big Hero 6! I had a blast with it and the review will go up tomorrow afternoon 🙂 I’m even going to pair it with a lovely Out of The World Travels post on my other blog.  That one is really getting neglected a lot when my brain really can’t squeeze out any more writing.

Have you seen Big Hero 6?

9) Blogging Changes and Updates!

End of the year is right around the corner and the days are moving fast fast fast.

This weekly adventure is coming a tad late.  So if you haven’t realized, the pace of things are relatively stable much to my surprise but the content is more concise.  For one, I’m doing the Photography 101 for two reasons.  One is for the annual NaNoWriMo month, which I was very much on track in the first week and then the second week just went in the dumps.  I’m about 15000 words behind now and I really don’t know how I’ll catch up but I’ve been in worst shape in previous years and manage to finish.  I’ll figure it out one way or another. Second is that with Nanowrimo, it gives me a permanent post going up everyday.  This new routine actually has given me the push to keep the content going up here rather constant.

With this one, I’ve actually been able to revive some more fun segments like my Pinterest Therapy, Music Obsessions and back regularly is my Weekly Workout Recaps as I work hard to get back to how fit I was at the beginning of the year. I’m even getting really dedicated to having updates (probably for myself) to how I look physically.

December is next week! My mind is going crazy with new stuff.  So I’ll be doing some organizing around here.  The sidebar has been in desperate of updates.  C’mon, my images are from 2013! I’m thinking up a rating system (still) and two long-term projects.  More baking also for Christmas!  On a lovely note, I did add on the menu tabs for My Weekly Adventures and  Music Obsessions.  I should really add in Pinterest Theapy 🙂

 FINALLY…THATS IT! A round of applause for you for making it to the end 🙂

No more of this long breaks between adventures! You can see how I procrastinated.

Wish me luck on pushing to finish for NaNoWriMo! Word count is around 30,000 right now. 20,000 more in the next few days! I need a lot of tea….

Christmas Marathon: Disney Classic Holiday Stories

This is a Disney compilation of 3 short Christmas movies: The Small One, Pluto’s Christmas Tree and Mickey’s Christmas Carol.  Its one of my absolute favorite in all my collection because one of my favorite Christmas animation from ever since I was a child is Mickey’s Christmas Carol.

First Feature: The Small One (1978)

Its about a little boy who is forced to give up his donkey who can no longer be supported by his family.  He ends up spending the day in town searching for a person to buy his donkey and will take care of it as well as he has in the past.

Its a nice, short and cute feature.  Its extremely heartwarming and part of me always gets addicted to the song.  My boyfriend has the same problem because he’ll spend the rest of the night (and the day after sometimes) singing, “Small one, small one, small one for sale…” Its very enjoyable and if you haven’t seen it, you definitely should.  Small One (the name of the donkey) does find the perfect home.

Second Feature: Pluto’s Christmas Tree (1952)

This one features Mickey and Pluto who goes out to chop down a tree to bring home to turn into their Christmas tree.  They accidentally end up bringing up Chip ‘n Dale who start exploring their new environment and when Pluto finds out, he starts trying to catch them.

As usual with more Mickey short animations, we get a lot of fun and lighthearted moments.  Its perfect for the Christmas season and a few laughs of Pluto chasing down Chip ‘n Dale.

Third Feature: Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983)

This is adapted from Christmas Carol, the classic by Charles Dickens but with Mickey and other characters from assorted Disney animations.  We meet Ebenezer Scrooge who now runs a business alone since his partner, Bob Marley died a few years ago.  Scrooge is very careful and stingy with his money.  He treats everyone badly and always wants to use them to their max, especially with Bob Cratchett who is his employee.  On Christmas eve, he goes home and is surprised to be visited by Bob Marley, now a ghost carrying chains, who is there to warn him that he has sinned and will carry heavier chains than he is now unless he makes amends.  He tells him that 3 ghosts will visit him at night and then goes away.  We see Scrooge embark on his revelation as he meets with the Ghost of Christmas Past, Ghost of Christmas Present and Ghost of Christmas Future.

This is my most favorite feature of all.  I have no idea why I like it so much.  Maybe its because its with Disney characters so it adds a little funny and cute mood to it, less dramatic perhaps.  Maybe its the actual A Christmas Carol story that I truly enjoy.  It could even be the message that I enjoy a lot, how money isn’t all that important but rather Christmas is about the season to care about others like your family and your friends.  To remember that a simple gesture is better than none.  A lot of wonderful messages that sometimes a lot of people forget and need to be reminded.

So everyone, this always makes me happy to watch it and this morning, it was my version of morning cartoons.  Its a pretty awesome feeling.  Fun, lighthearted, heartwarming…all feelings that really positive.

Have you ever seen any of these features? Do you like them? Maybe you like the actual human versions of A Christmas Carol more?

Christmas Marathon: A Very Minty Christmas (2005)

Never heard of this one? I wouldn’t be surprised.  Now you’re looking at this and laughing at me, I know.  This is a My Little Pony feature.  I don’t know about your childhood but mine was with My Little Pony.  I wasn’t into Barbies so you can put that one aside.  You won’t be seeing anything Barbie related here, but My Little Pony, you definitely will.  I still own a small collection of them actually.  They are showcased on top of my dresser.  I think I had taken a few pictures of them in a previous photo challenge.  Let me see…right, click HERE to see it. You should check it out, because that little tiny pony in the front is the reason why I bought this movie. It came with this movie.  Even though the new My Little Pony collection is not as good looking as the old ones, it was worth the buy.  Nostalgia does weird things to me, what can I say?

Right, back to the movie!

MY LITTLE PONY: A VERY MINTY CHRISTMAS (2005)

Duration: 44 minutes

Honestly, I almost didn’t want to post this up, but it does always end up in my Christmas marathon even though its not the best one around.  Actually, its miles away from the best. For me, its all about nostalgia.

Ponyville celebrates with placing a special glowing candy cane on the top of their Christmas tree so that Santa can find Ponyville and deliver their presents.  Minty is a ditz who has a good heart. She tries to help and everything just goes bad.  Everything she touches crumbles.  She pushes the candy cane on the tree a bit too much and it falls and shatters.  She tries to make up for her problems by going to North Pole to lead him to Ponyville.  Before she had that suggestion, she had wanted to give away all her socks (which she loves) to everyone.   They learn that its not the light from the candy cane but every pony’s unity and generosity that leads Santa there.  Its where Santa gets the idea to use stockings over the fireplace to place the presents.

This one is downright a flick for young children, preferably girls.  It has very cheerful music which I liked.  The voices aren’t too great or is the dialogue, but thats because I am in my 20s.  Its a bit expected.  For a kids movie, it has its cute moments and wonderful colours that fill up the screen.  Cheery adventure and some different Christmas music is alright.  Its what draws me to make this an acceptable Christmas movie that fills up some of the nostalgia.

What are you nostalgic about? Any toys or cartoons that you enjoy from your youth? Any particular ones that you may have outgrown or perhaps still keep around?

My Christmas Decorations are UP!!

**Note: If anyone caught this before multiple times, I apologize, the tablet was giving me a hard time with the pictures and the video.  It should be all fixed now.**

Christmas used to be a lot more festive and then there were a few low season years when we didn’t even own a Christmas tree.

For the last few years, Christmas has been a lot more fun since my boyfriend has a lot of family here so we have a big gathering including my mom and me and his sister’s in-laws family. It gets quite fun.  We usually do the whole Christmas eve celebrations. My boyfriend’s dad actually is the most festive of all.  He has a collection of Santa Claus and some move and sing different tunes.  The last few years,  I’ve given him penguins and an elf for decor as well.  The lights are lit and then the Christmas trees are put up.

Check out both of our Christmas decorations!

These pictures are taken with my tablet, so hope the quality isn’t too bad.

This beautiful tree is my future in laws. Isn’t it absolutely beautiful? You see that ladder with Santa on it? That Santa can climb up and down the ladder. I find that extremely cool.

This Christmas village is placed at the foot of his Christmas tree. That’s all I have of his for now. If I get some videos of his Santa collection, I will post it up later.

This is the elf decoration that we both have. This blue one is mine, and he has the green one. It moves but unfortunately, I haven’t gone to get batteries for it just yet. It’s actually really cute because it moves like a busy elf running around.

My moms favorite addition is poinsettias. The second day she came back home from her trip and she already had bought it. Even before all the other stuff was put up.

When all of our relatives moved away, we gave away our big Christmas tree. The year after, I couldnt handle it and went out to get this small tree lit with colorful LED lights that change colours. Unfortunatly its hard to capture it, but I did add a candy star on the top and little cute decorations. As for that circular ornament, I made that two years ago at a cookie swap. It’s the only one that survived my cat’s paws.

And to end things, one of my favorite decorations with a little video, also with my tablet so please the shaky hands.

Is your Christmas decor up? A lot more festive? Do you buy a real Christmas tree?