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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Spending my #birthday at the #DreamworksAnimation #exhibit at @canmushistory #HistoryMuseum

A post shared by Kim (@tranquildreams) on Mar 31, 2018 at 12:11pm PDT

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?

Salon des Metiers d’Arts of Montreal Haul!

Winter is here! Christmas is right around the corner. What does this mean? Gift shopping and every year for the last few years, I would go with friends to check out the Salon des Metiers d’Arts de Montreal. In translation, it is the Montreal Arts and Crafts Show.

This show has free entrance and especially for the food and wine vendors, there are free tastings. Another addition is that it focuses on smaller Quebec vendors (at least nearby). It is a great place to see what is new on the market and learn about the new products.

Usually, I go to these shows and pick up ice ciders or ice wines but this year, somehow I had a change of heart and focused on other things. Maybe its because we went to the Magog event: Festival des Vendanges (post HERE). Lets check it out! 🙂

Timothee Tartinier Gourmand

I actually picked up two items from this place. The other one I split with my friend and I forgot to take it back which is a roasted hazelnut spread. This one up there is gourmet popcorn with flavors of chocolate, vanilla and caramel. It was my husband’s gift for all the hard work and long hours he’s had to endure the last few weeks. He tasted it and loved it. You can check out this place HERE.

Ferme Guy Rivest

Have you ever tasted fruit pearls? I haven’t. I’ve seen them before and they look cool. I just never figured out how it would work with what we eat and didn’t see the need for it. This year, I wanted to try something new and these ladies looked nice so I went over to try it out. The passion they have for these products are fantastic. Ferme Guy Rivest sells five flavors (I believe): strawberry, raspberry, apple, blueberry and cranberry. If I’m missing well, you can always go check out their site HERE. I ended up getting the raspberry. They suggested to use it either as a topping on appetizers like cracker and cheese (which was their display product) or its good to put inside champagne or wine which is what I intend on doing.

i-Sens

A  new vendor at the show (I think) is this gourmet maple syrup/fruit pearls/organic tea place called iSens. The owner is chef and world traveller Philippe Morin and the maple syrup, from what he tells me is sold internationally. I bought this vanilla flavored maple syrup but also tried their Yuzu flavor and Ginseng one as well. While those latter two were pretty good, I just couldn’t decide who I could give it to that would appreciate it the same way and how to use it. However, Vanilla is also quite gourmet and there was no hesitation in getting it. It seems good to make desserts or pancakes. You can check out iSens and their products, including the fruit pearls which have mango and passion fruit flavors HERE.

La Nougaterie

I buy from La Nougaterie every year. They make delicious soft nougat. My absolute fave is Christmas Nougat which they didn’t have last year so I made it point to get it this year. Its great to cut up into pieces and serve at parties. My husband likes the honey and almond and chocolate ones so I get those for him. I’m thinking of giving away the Lavender as a little gift. Lavender is a tricky ingredient to use but they actually retain a good balance, floral but never overpowering. We also went to their shop at Ile d’Orleans a year or two ago. You can check it out HERE. Did I mention that they expanded their line quite a bit with meringue and candies and my absolute fave, marshmallows!

Coach House Shortbread Company

Also, a recent addition to annual buys which works so cute as gifts. I believe in giving food as gifts a lot because its absolutely great to have and its something to share with everyone especially as a general gift. While they come in salty flavors with cheese and herbs in four different varieties, I always go for these sweet ones. I usually would get sugar plum since its so festive but this year, I changed that up for Lavender and the other two flavors are Ginger (which is for myself) and Dark Chocolate/Fleur de Sel. There’s a ton of other flavors and you can find them HERE.

Domaine Labranche

I can’t go to these shows and not buy at least one bottle of ice cider, right? C’mon! That just wouldn’t be right. Fire Cider didn’t quite originate in this show with Domain Labranche but we’re not here to talk about that company. However, Domaine Labranche stole my heart last year when they introduced Fire Cider but as a hot cider drink. You can make it with cinnomon stick and it’ll have this delicious apple and cinnamon smell that just gives off a lovely scent through the house. Its like the drink you picture drinking on a cold winter’s night and its snowing outside and the fireplace is roaring. Yeah…the thought of it all was what happened when I had the fire cider so there was no question when I tasted it again and just fell in love again. I’m actually starting to like fire ciders quite a bit. The way its made gives the drink a nice smooth taste. You can check out Domaine Labranche HERE.

We learned at the show that they also are a vineyard, orchard and maple shack. Maybe we’ll consider it the next time we look for those activities.

Rustique Design by Pascal Normand

Surprising that it isn’t food to end it all off, right? I’ve been looking for artwork for some walls on my house. We’ve moved in for two years and its been a gradual climb to getting it all decorated. As much as I do have complaints about Montreal here and now, which I don’t share here, Montreal is a beautiful city and adding in the rustic feeling on some of the landmarks makes for a really nice touch. This art is called Rustique Design by Pascal Normand. You can check out more HERE.

And thats it! Montreal Crafts Show had a few new vendors. There are still a lot of the same but in general, its a nice place to get gift ideas and seeing as its free entrance, even if you don’t pick up anything, its a nice 2 to 3 hour walking away activity, which is always fun.