Guitar | Tranquil Dreams

2017 has been incredibly busy so far!! We’re already halfway done with March. Can you believe it? That means in two weeks or so, I’ll be officially in my thirties, the 3-1. Honestly, entering 30 hasn’t really changed anything much except coming to terms that I now can’t tolerate as much alcohol as I used to. Which isn’t a problem since I drink a glass of wine like 3 days in a month, unless its holiday seasons or some special event. Being 30 only seemed to fuel this additional motivation to do the things I’ve wanted to and just not care so much and do it. Point is, it seems getting older has given myself some more courage and clarity about what I’m doing and life and all that stuff.

Running off on a tangent apparently is still something that I haven’t changed. Getting back on track! Let’s check out these last two busy busy weeks!

Ultimate 90’s Blogathon Done!

Ultimate 90’s Blogathon hosted by myself and Drew over at Drew’s Movie Reviews drew to close a few days ago. If you missed any of the reviews, you can find them all on this page HERE. We’ve already expressed our gratitude in the conclusion post but yet again, thank you to all for the participation, comments and likes. It does feel great to know that there’s so much love for our little blogathon. We’ve met new friends and bloggers and it was a lot of fun. We are hoping to do something similar next year and for those who missed out (and a few of you have reached out to us about it), we will keep you in our hearts and minds and maybe we’ll have you all on board as well if all goes well. Of course, a big thank you goes to my darling co-host Drew which I don’t think I ever express thanks to him enough. Remember to head over to check out Drew’s Movie Reviews if you haven’t already right here.

New Online Courses

I wrapped up my last course a week or so ago. It was pretty good and a lot of fun. I had already learned a bit of the foundation so it was really polishing up those skills and I realized that I was reminded why I chose to not major in this in university. Funny how some things just never change, right? I did pretty well in my final exam so yay!

Last time, I did mention that I was debating on courses so I decided to be ambitious and took both the photography and guitar course. Does that sound a little crazy? Maybe. I never know anymore. I just follow my instinct. If you are newer here, then you probably didn’t quite get to experience the whole photography days here which is moved over to my other blog, Avenue of Daydreams. I have been playing around with photography for a while but its been a while that I’ve felt like I need to learn more about the foundation of photography so that I can use my DSLR with much more ease. The main thing is that while I know of the terms like shutter speed and aperture and the idea of what effect they have but how to set the numbers on the camera are all a blur. Pairing guitar with photography seems to be good because it shouldn’t be incredibly hard.

We’re in the second week of the course now and let me tell you, photography is pretty cool and exactly what I expected as that its helpful but never too hard because I already know a part of it. However, guitar is a whole other story. I’m definitely picking up more than when I ambitiously tried to learn on my own but I play the piano so my hands don’t work the same way and fretting hurts so much. I am working hard to get in some practice everyday from what I’ve learned to hopefully get the basics down. Guitars are a little huge for myself. Its why I’m starting to convince my husband to learn it instead. 😉

I’ll report back with more news later on. I’ll be approaching the end of the course by the next weekly adventures.

Hangout with Friends

Living in a city where winter is so prominent makes it hard to do much during these cold winter weeks. The last two weeks definitely beat us down with some dry cold weather that just urged us to stay in unless absolutely necessary, like going to work. As I’m typing this post up, its now milder but in a snow storm. I’m just hoping this is the last leg of winter and we’ll be seeing some lovely spring weather soon. Of course, this doesn’t stop us from going out. On a Friday night, I went to hang out with Starry Traveler and we chatted about a ton of stuff and finalized some details on our new segment that I’ll talk about in the next section.

The week after that was the day of our actual segment in the works. Maybe one day I’ll get something going for it more as we work out a little more on how this will work in the long-run. The hope is that it will keep going on. So we even had the husbands join in along with two more friends. We’re pretty much the foodie group now that heads out to these food events in Montreal together. Fun times! To clarify the picture, we only managed to set up the game before my friend’s baby tried to grab everything and we decided that this game is for a babyless night. Not sure when that will happen, or at least when baby or toddler is more grown up.

Two New Projects/Segments

Project #1: Battle of Ingredients

Next week will launch the first instalment of Battle of Ingredients, featuring myself and my awesome childhood friend and casual blogger, Phoebe from Starry Traveler’s Road. We’ve been brainstorming this one for a good few months (if not a year) and finally decided to just do it. I’ll explain a little more on how it works but the goal here is that we pick one or two ingredients to compose a meal. We usually grab some friends and our husbands to sit down for a lovely gathering and they can then give us feedback. The key is not really to see who wins out of this but rather to inspire some new recipes and hopefully explore what is in season. We hope to start this off as a monthly segment due to preparation and getting everyone together. For the first battle, we chose two ingredients that are very common however, it is what is in season for us (at least one of them is). However, its not always going to be battles and sometimes just a team-up.

Project #2: All About Adaptations

Launching this week (if tonight’s recording goes well) is All About Adaptations. The idea of talking about adaptations was actually one of the first reasons why I started movie blogging unfortunately nothing ever happened. However, when Movie Reviews 101 and MovieRob had their Stephen King Blogathon, I did an entry that really made me think about this idea harder and finally, after something like two years, I’ve decided that I’m ready to do this. The idea of this is that any adaptation can fall into this category and compare it to source material. If there are many adaptations, I will try to look at as much as I have access to. Because there is much more preparation, I’m not quite sure about the frequency but I already have two ready for recording. With that said, this is going to be a YouTube segment. I’m slowly transforming the channel to focus on Movie, Gameplay & Unboxing. Hopefully you can join me over there! More details on the launch post. 🙂

Gaming Reviews Update!

Would you look at that? The latest project this week was putting together our video Game Reviews. Obviously the choice to read the written review is still there but for those of you that want to kick back and just listen to the review while watching some gameplay, we now offer you that option! Hope you enjoy it! 🙂

Cute Kitty Pic