My Weekly Adventures!

Instead of boring you with my little details, this time, I spaced it out deliberately to two weeks.  I had nothing to report back with so it just makes sense to get this in now with a little bit more activities. This time around, its slowed down quite a bit.  I’m trying to clear up my schedule a little and just relax, catch up on some sleep and find back some energy.  Plus, I need to get ahead with the blog so its all a work in progress. We are also trying to get the house in order and looking nice enough for any relatives that come and want to visit 😉

1) Second visit to Poutineville

As mentioned in the last Weekly Adventures, we went on our second visit and I met even more of my fiance’s friends.  Crazy stuff, eh? This wedding, I tell you. Its making life colorful.  And I mean, his friends are really colorful like their personality and their thoughts are hard to catch up with.

Anyways, I finally had the poutine at Poutineville.  Its not so much real as I wasn’t sure about the gravy so they suggested the Italian meat sauce instead. Its kind of what we call Michigan-style (instead of hot dogs, we have fries and cheese).

Chicken & Bacon Poutine with Dairy-free Cheese and Meat Sauce

Then, like the last time, a visit to Chocolate Favoris.

Gelato choices

Sorbet choices

Ice Cream with Hazelnut Milk Chocolate Dip

Banana Mango Strawberry Sorbet

Its turning into something of a tradition.  I just might want to refrain from Poutineville for the next few weeks until after the big day. So that, all my hard work is not put to waste, right?

2) Nike Re-Run

Last weekend, Nike Running app sent me an email telling me that on Saturday, a run that we did would give us the chance to have a Nike Re-run video.  Now, that sounds awesome and what’s great about having this blog is I love trying out new little things.  So, I got in an afternoon run on Saturday even though I was so not feeling like it.  But I did it and kept to my workout goals. I was thinking that maybe I wouldn’t get it because the run wasn’t all that great.  My time was a little meh. But on Sunday, I ended up getting the email prompt to get the video.  We got to choose the time log and pick whichever one.  My routes are more or less the same.  It varies in direction, side of the street or going through the park or whatever small streets.  I actually need to map out a new path to explore the other side of the new neighborhood I moved in.  Still, here is what I yield.

That is my fastest time I’ve done so far. I haven’t quite beat that time yet as an average.

http://nrcre-run.nike.com/us/en_us/nrcre-run/shared/0a8b587cc02123dd6fb2a56cc3af1f4e/1

Oh right, and I run against traffic because it feels safer for me and the lights don’t change when I plan on crossing the road or whatever.  I just like to run with as little interruptions as possible. On a side note, a few days later, I ran my fastest km…but still, this is my best average pace.  Lets hope it improves 😉

3) Quantico’s Set

If anyone is interested in seeing the new series Quantico, they have been shooting in Old Montreal right in front of the old Royal Bank building. They had done filming on and off for 2-3 weeks at least.  It looks really impressive and my guess is that its going to be the series headquarters or something.  The series already has me intrigued.  Its right up my alley of what I usually watch for TV series and with it being filmed so nearby, it has me even more interested 🙂

4) Vist at Seigneurie de l’ile d’Orleans (and some spontaneous stops)

We bought a voucher for a visit to this garden at l’ile d’Orleans a while back and its edging near expiry and we even missed the peak season to see the lavender gardens but we did buy it so we took a little day trip out to l’ile d’Orleans and visited a rather green garden 😉  I apologize but I only have my fiance’s pictures.  My pictures haven’t quite made it in the computer yet. However, I will be doing a full post on this if the pictures do turn out good.  I think I did some artsy stuff playing with the focus and whatnot. Not sure how it turned out.

L’ile d’Orleans in summer is definitely different from winter.  It was full of people.  We did end up stopping at a newly opened La Nougaterie which is a place that I love which makes amazing soft nougats.  Apparently, they just moved to this location for two weeks and I caught it completely spontaneously.  We bought some little nougats and had some tasting.  If you haven’t tasted these nougats, you have to.  I look forward to getting it at the arts and crafts show for their Christmas flavored one.  Its like heaven in my mouth.

The last stop we made before we left was at Cassis Mona et Filles which is a winery that focuses on blackcurrant wines and liqueurs.  They have a really awesome recipe using one of their Fruité liqueur and the syrup based one along with club soda and fruits that makes THE BEST sangria I’ve ever tasted. We, of course, got that. They also sell some more dry wines like their Port.  I almost couldn’t swallow that one because it was rather dry.

5) Garden Updates

Its almost time to close the gardens but we had a surge of heat wave and my plants are all confused.  Its good though.  We’re getting our big batch of strawberries and raspberries.  I’m considering to get a blueberry plant for next year.  I have a bit of space next to all these berries but it might not work so well because sun doesn’t hit that corner as much.  Anyways, next year’s projects aren’t anything to discuss now.  Look at those strawberries and raspberries 🙂

Raspberry plant

Strawberry plant

Confused plant doesn’t get any more than my clematis.  It has the hardest time staying alive in that spot.  I was starting to think about moving it again but didn’t know where just yet.  Then the heat wave hit and its having a ton of buds.  I sure hope the weather holds up so that it can bloom.  I haven’t seen one flower bloom on it yet.  Better late than never, right? 😉

Clematis

Finally, we are seeing signs of the fall chrysanthemums coming out.  Its budding and about to bloom.  The big one is from the previous owners and my little ones last year, only one survived but its more than enough with whats there now since the marigolds are still blooming.

6) What’s Next…

• Netflix A-Z: I-L movies (next two weeks)
• The Classics Adventures: book review and corresponding movie review
• Alaska Cruise: Day 5 & 6
• PRIORITY: Baking Through Disney: recipe & next movie

That’s it for this time’s Weekly Adventures! Short and sweet! 🙂
Happy Friday, my lovelies! Enjoy your weekend!

Happy Chinese New Year!! Its the Year of the Sheep!

Today is Chinese New Year! Although I’m not the cook when it comes to these things because my mom is the boss.  I just felt like I should share some Chinese New Year decorations.

Since I’m STILL in the midst of moving to my new place.  Final moving date set for March 1st tentatively….but I’m set about 80% positive it’ll happen because I’m plain sick of having my life divided into two.  This year, I had to take care of flower decorations for both places 😉 Sad thing when Valentine’s Day is around the same time is that its incredibly hard to find flowers so I couldn’t find the lilies that I wanted and this year, our flower selection is different from previous years.  Change can be good and it still works out good 🙂

Lets start with my own place’s decorations.  Not quite as abundant and it was taken with my smartphone.

Dining table flowers: Carnations and tulips

Chinese New year Decorations

Decorations in the living room: Carnations and Chrysanthemums

C hinese New Year Decorations

Window decorations: Peruvian Lilies

Chinese New Year Decorations

Sorry for the poor lighting.  I didn’t play around with it too much on my phone. Next year, I’m going to get a little more decorations and have earlier prep 🙂

Moving on to my mom’s place,  I didn’t put all the decorations because its literally EVERYWHERE! But here’s a few pictures from last night taken with my DSLR.

Flowers

Tulips

Carnations

Peruvian Lilies

Chinese New Year Decor

Chrysanthemum

Now to wrap up the post, last night’s Chinese New Year Eve dinner with dishes including fish, lotus root, chicken..all having their own good meanings.

Chinese New Year Eve Dinner

Like always, my mom makes the best meal! It was so yummy! 🙂

That’s it for now!

Happy Chinese New Year!

May the Year of the Sheep bring you lots of happiness, awesomeness and success. 

Psst..another Oscar review coming up in the afternoon! Remember to check back! Appreciate it! 😉

My Weekly Adventures!

Life is an adventure so anything I do qualifies! So before you start talking about how watching TV isn’t, thats like saying reading a book isn’t. I can pretty much say that there’s a lot of readers who would disagree with you.  We are explorers and we travel to lots of fun places. Maybe you think I’m crazy but I’m not 😉 So to saythat this week is less actually going somewhere but just achieving little things.

Before we move along with this, I’d like to remind or bring to your attention that my Halloween Movie Marathon Poll has been up.  If you haven’t seen it or having voted, please head on over HERE to help me out 🙂 With some earlier planning, I can get more movies seen in October and make it an amazing month, especially with all of your help/recommendations!

1) Dragon’s Den!

I absolutely love watching Dragon’s Den.  I skipped a few season in middle but when it first launched, it was one of my favorite shows.  Its really grown to be completely amazing.  Although some pitches are just completely out there, some are really awesome ideas.

The last episode where recapped some of the some deals are usually amazing.  Its all so amazing to see people’s dreams become a reality.

2) Splurging on TV *blush*

A little shameless selfie 🙂

I never intend to splurge and I pretty much don’t impulse buy anymore. And I didn’t because I fully planned to go out and get Season 2 of Arrow but then I was thinking, I have to catch up with Vampire Diaries also. Now I’m waiting for Grey’s Anatomy Season 10 to go on special too (but then I didn’t watch Season 9 yet so its not so rushed).  See, I’m still logical, right? 😉

I’m trying to not go too crazy over Arrow so I started watching Vampire Diaries on the weekend.

3) A Productive Weekend Starts….Harvesting Herbs

Lemongrass, Orange Thyme and Yellow Zucchini

The weather got cold really fast last week and somehow is supposed to get warmer this week again….gradually.  Either way, it was the kick in my butt to speed up the process and let my fatigue take the backseat.  Thursday night activity consisted of going to harvest everything I could while there was still a bit of light before sunset.  Orange Thyme and Lemongrass is currently in the drying process.

4) Bike Support for my Friends

Thanks to my friend who took the picture

Oasis Marathon is going to be happening this coming weekend so my friends who are going to do the half marathon along with one doing the 10km and 3 others in for the fun went out for a group jog.  My job was to be bike support for their 17km run.  It included making sure that they were hydrated and giving them directions and scouting out the route ahead.  There were heavy winds and then my bike support broke down near the end because of bike issues.  Note to self, next time make sure to bring tools.  I did manage to bike very slowly home after making sure everyone passed the intersection to head home.  It was a pretty fun day and I biked a whole lot of distance and I was so tired after but I couldn’t let my body slow down because the garden and my house needed me.

5) Transplanting in and out

Top Left are the transplanted flowers from pots for next year

Between early morning before bike support and coming back afterwards, I got the two flowers at the top left planted into soil.  They should be both perennials viable in my zone.  They were also paired with others so I needed to pot those right away and brought in a few plants as well.

Eucalyptus, Orange Thyme and Citronella Geranium inside

This is only partial because others are by the bay window or in the dining room. Still a lot of transplanting to do this week and then hopefully it will be done…for now. Next is the shopping for spring bulbs and getting those in the ground.

6) Workout room done!

On Saturday, after the run, I went to battle the anniversary sale in Walmart and aside from a bunch of household products, I also ended up getting on special the final touches to our workout room.

Hello workout flooring 😉

Oh right, my boyfriend’s weights.  Mine haven’t been moved yet.  I can’t possibly lift that.  All I can do is roll them across the floor when they are in my way.

7) Making Awesome Ribs

I know I’m backtracking, but on Friday night, I sat down after running errands at my place with more moving stuff around and came home to make my ribs.  Ended up eating at around 9:30pm or something but they were so worth it.  I don’t know the measurements but I used soy sauce, smoked paprika, ground pepper, honey, ground coriander, herbes de provence to marinate it.  I did marinate it in the morning and then just popped it in the oven for 1.5 hours in the evening.  They turned out amazingly delicious 🙂

8) Autumn Chrysanthemums

Nothing more to say on that.  So beautiful 🙂

9) Hot Pot (aka Chinese Fondue) with my girl friends

One of my girl friends came back from Western Canada to settle a few things so we got together for a hot pot hang out.  There was so much food and it was amazing to chat with the girls.  Its always filled with fun and laughter.  And we’re even going to go see The Maze Runner together this week.  Yay! 🙂

10) Favorite Quote this Week

It was a tad tiring and busy but it was pretty fun as well.  I’m looking forward to seeing The Maze Runner.  I can actually see the fuzzy finish line in this whole moving business where I’m trying to do it slow and by myself so I can save money, still, its almost there.

How was your week? Tell me about it!

Happy Monday! 🙂

All in A Week(end)’s Work (plus some blogging help please)!

I have no idea how to title these things anymore.

My highlights of the week are so similar that they really don’t have any titles.  Maybe I’ll just give it a segment name, once I figure out something witty and fun 🙂

Moving right into  this past week..it was a short work week because of Labor Day weekend and the weekend came incredibly fast with a few little fun things!

1) Completing Nike Training Club program on Saturday night

Its been hard to get back on this whole working out routine.  The first was the hardest of the program where I felt my body didn’t belong to me.  I could barely do push-ups anymore and every move was a mega chore.  By this last week, I was able to pull off a good bit of burpees, push-ups, even figured out the whole plank row deal once and for all.  I’ve sweated buckets and buckets of sweat over the last few weeks and although I did the Getting Lean (Intermediate without running) program and I’m not sure I got that lean but it sure did make me feel absolutely fantastic 🙂

Now its back to one or two weeks of self-disciplined workouts.  If I can keep it up for a month thats great, if not, I’m jumping back into Nike Training Club for the Getting Toned program.

2) ARROW Season 1

Montreal Comiccon is this coming weekend and for that, I went on the mission to binge-watch Arrow Season 1. Arrow is amazing.  I love the main character but everyone else is fantastic.  Its absolutely fun to watch and I’m pretty sure I’ll be done in a night or two at the pace I’m going 🙂 I’m going to admit that I love watch Stephen Amell as Oliver Queen doing those crazy workouts (shirtless of course), I also love the rest of the cast. Everyone is just so awesome! 🙂

I think the CW dishes out the most series that I like. Its pretty amazing!

3) After Work Adventures: RedBall Project

“ Through the RedBall Project I utilize my opportunity as an artist to be a catalyst for new encounters within the everyday. Through the magnetic, playful, and charismatic nature of the RedBall the work is able to access the imagination embedded in all of us. On the surface, the experience seems to be about the ball itself as an object, but the true power of the project is what it can create for those who experience it. It opens a doorway to imagine what if?…That invitation to engage, to collectively imagine, is the true essence of the RedBall Project. The larger arc of the project is how each city responds to that invitation and, over time, what the developing story reveals about our individual and cultural imagination.”– Kurt Perschke 

RedBall Project is travelling the world to spark imagination.  Has it landed in your city yet? You can check it out: HERE

4) After Work Adventures: Fountain House

Fountain House is a temporary exhibit on the streets on Montreal.  Its built on the concept of water flowing throughout and the idea to celebrate drinking water.

The Fountain House is first and foremost a space open to the public, like a park. Inside, at the centre, there is a basin with water flowing in it. Why did we choose to celebrate drinking water, a public good that might seem rather mundane? Precisely because we take it for granted, and we tend to forget the previous generations that built the infrastructure that now allows us to benefit from this resource.- Quartier des Spectacles

Its open to the public till October 26th.  It has water flowing down the center, the plants on the side grow (I presume), and they have stairs to go up where you can look out into downtown around us.  I love water so this was a pretty sweet concept.

5) Getting out right in time

On Friday evening, the sky went dark shortly I left work.  Taking my time, I’m walking to the bus terminus, hoping that it doesn’t rain.  And then it does.  I feel the first drop and then the drops come a lot faster right when I spot where I am and dash up the stairs to the OACI building, which is part of the underground passages in Montreal.  As I went in, I got out of the rain right in time.  Another 10 seconds and I would’ve been completely soaked.  Yay to perfect timing or should I say, being at the right place at the right time 🙂

6) Saturday: Friend’s Birthday Brunch and Shopping Ventures

Saturday was one of my very good friend’s birthday.  He’s almost like my brother and we hang out quite a bit.  For his birthday, I usually offer to take him out for a meal, this year it was at this brunch place in Old Montreal that he’s been talking about forever called Le Cartet

Pastries to start!

Green Jasmine Tea

Cappuccino

Brunch des Cantons

That was possibly the best brunch I’ve had ever.  For one, the coming in the cast iron pan made it so delicious and a very unique experience.  Plus, everything was cooked in duck fat which just melts in your mouth.  Except it also means, I probably won’t eat this all the time, for my health’s sake.

After that, he wanted to go shopping so we went on a little venture around town and ended up in Mountain Equipment Coop out across town since that one is gigantic.  I managed to get my boyfriend and I a new hiking backpack and got myself a yoga brick because I’m not flexible and to avoid injuries. One of the few purchases that day, along with a few movies: The Shining, Moon, Weird Science.

A very fantastic day with good company and nice chats! Hanging out with friends is really quite awesome! 🙂

7) Sunday Gardening 1: Fern 

Everything deserves a chance.  With that in mind, I decided to give my fern a second chance.  It was looking monstrously huge and just totally out of control.  I gave it a little trimming and pruning.  Took some branches out (dead and alive), shrunk its size and gave it some structure and voila! I think its looking pretty nice! 🙂

8) Sunday Gardening: Autumn Flowers

I haven’t quite finished with fixing up the side area in the front yard but I pulled out the frustrating vine plant and now the area is completely clean after I cut a part of the tall stems that are done blooming.  Things are starting to look good.  This week, Rona had a fantastic sale on Autumn Chrysanthemums so I thought it’d look nice in that spot. After a lot of pulling and cutting and shovelling, these two got planted and ready.  The one on the right is coral and the left is orange chrysanthemums 🙂

I can’t wait to see them bloom!

Now to end this off, there are a few highlights which I’m going to give an update for some coming blogging stuff!

• I have drafted a general list of movies that I’d like to watch for Halloween marathon but I’d also like to give you all a chance to choose what you’d like to see so I’ll be putting together a small poll soon.
• The original plan to do recommendations month in September is not happening as I want to continue to put extra focus on books so BRING ON MORE INDEPENDENT WRITERS! 
• Pinterest Therapy session coming up!
• I owed you all a review showing my new movie crush. That did not happen last week unfortunately since I’m shifting my schedule a little, but it will go up in the next few days 🙂
• Following that, I’ve been thinking of making a new segment either for Crush of the Week (or something along those lines), highlighting an actor (or sometimes actresses). Maybe it’ll be a monthly basis.  It really depends how impressed I am with what I’m watching. Is that a yes or no for you?

To recap, a few questions this week:

Do you know where to find online yoga routines?  Have you seen Arrow? Have you started fall gardening yet and what are your favorite autumn flowers?

What do you think about a new segment for sexy actors or beautiful actresses? 

Thats all for today! Happy Monday! 🙂