My September Adventures: Halloween Horror Marathon & Festival du Nouveau Cinema Coming Up!!

September is now behind us. Its hard to imagine three-quarters of the year has gone by. However, it is the case. With July being hectic and then August being more of a laidback and recharging phase, September comes back with a little back to normal balance. Getting things back on track, events big and small and such were all in the plans.

Let’s check it out!

Dreamhack Montreal 2019

Dreamhack Montreal happened over the weekend of September 6 to 8 at the Olympic Stadium. It had some changes but this venue is still very suitable for this event overall. It was a bustling weekend with a lot of last minute changes that swapped my schedule around quite a bit. However, all the media coverage is over at Game Warp Blog. Everything is live now as we covered Day 1 and 2 as well as the Indie Game Zone. You can find all the posts below:

Day 1 Recap
Day 2 Recap
Indie Game Zone

IT: Chapter Two & Lambcast

We’ve really kept the theatre experience to a minimum this year except for special commitments that lead me to go. This time, it was for Lambcast recording of IT: Chapter Two that gave us the kick in our behinds to go check it out. We really did enjoy the first one so had it in our plans to see the second one anyways (just probably not on opening weekend initially). I’m not sure when we’ll be heading to the theatres again this year but it might happen again, who knows? I’m not quite on top of the theatre new releases as I should be.

You can check out the Lambcast show HERE.
You can find my written review HERE.

Moon Festival

Moon Festival happened on September 13th. Wonderful that it clashed with Friday the 13th because I have to say that it was a pretty okay day compared to the rest of the week prior to that. It was also full of sickness and a lot of cough-filled nights. Either way, I ignored my cold (which won’t go away and seems to keep morphing) and ate some moon cake as well as stood by the window and stared at the full moon for a little while, reminding myself that life is beautiful because I’m breathing and looking at those nice little moments of nature and nightscapes and such.

Friend’s Bachelorette Party – Dinner Out

One of my girl friend’s bachelorette party happened the Saturday on the second last weekend. She had it in two parts: the first was dinner and the second was an after party. Due to some other commitment (see below), I only went for the dinner party which was at Ichigo Ichie (which is the restaurant part of ramen place I like, Yokato Yokabai).

You can check out the restaurant recap HERE.

Festival du Nouveau Cinema Starting Soon

Much to my surprise, today’s announcements also include a press approval for Festival du Nouveau Cinema! Last year, I only got the 10 vouchers to go see 10 movies which had some pretty great films, with one or two that left a little to desire but didn’t fail on being artsy or creative. It will be exciting to see how many we can catch this year as well as what the movie lineup will be as that only goes live tomorrow (Oct.1). Keep an eye out for reviews during the festival from Oct.9 to 20th!

If you also are going, do tell me what movies have caught your eye so far?

Friend’s Wedding Day + Flowers Help Out

The last weekend of September was all kinds of crazy and lots of fun. Saturday was a day of hunting down flowers at various Costco. Between myself and another friend, we hit 5 Costcos in the morning. We met up in the early after to start making the “boutonnieres” for the groom and groomsmen and men of the families and then went along and made the bride and bridesmaids bouquet as well as a throwaway one. For myself, it was a learning experience since I had never done these before so it was all to help out.

 Sunday was her big day! We started out the morning to help with the door games (if you don’t know what that is, its part of Chinese weddings to pick up the bride, the groom and his groomsmen and other guys go to trials before he can pick her up). Then, we helped out with the set-up and mostly with the flowers to put together the vases. Yet again, I’m not too experienced with this so just helped out with my other friend. The picture on top is the centerpiece at our table with the flower arrangement. It was a ton of fun! I have a few more artsy pics going on Avenue of Daydreams at some point. It was a really fun night but we couldn’t stay as late as Sunday means work on Monday (aka today).

Announcement: Halloween Horror Marathon

As usual, September adventures wraps up with the official announcement of the Halloween Horror Marathon tomorrow (October 1st)! We’ll be doing double features as per the usual set up nowadays. At the same time, I’ll be trying to put in some horror TV series TV binge posts as well as horror book reviews as well. That’s the plan! While some movies have already been watched at this point (and probably/hopefully written up), I would love to hear what movies you suggest or movies you always watch for Halloween marathon and maybe I’ll see if I can add those in or push it up as higher priority on my list (if its there). All update of Halloween marathon posts will be updated on the page HERE.

On a side note, due to the festival approval, marathon might be slower in the middle of the month! I am working to get more posts done in advance but I do have other priorities as well as podcast recordings so I will do the best that I can before October 9th comes around and hopefully you will enjoy it!

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for the September Adventures!
Looking back, its been kind of crazy! I thinned out some less important bits.
Mostly two announcements and some recaps!
October is looking less varied but probably much busier, as always when there’s coverage to do!

Battle of Ingredients: Moon Festival & Autumn BBQ

Welcome to the next round of Battle of Ingredients hosted together with Phoebe over at Starry Traveler’s Road. This month’s get together was a slightly belated Moon Festival celebration as well as the last BBQ of the season.

Its a packed one this time so let’s see what we came up with. A lot of the food was really thought up simply by our brains so if we have recipes references, we’ll share it, if not, we can list some ingredients or whatnot. this time seems mostly to be checking out spices and such. Nothing too complex as we were both fairly busy with our personal lives.

Wines

The two wines offered by our friends this time were these two rose wines

• Listel
• Cote des roses

I will talk about both of these wine in the upcoming wine recap. I had already tasted Cote des Roses before but realized that I hadn’t shared it in any wine recaps before (oops..).

Main Courses

We went fairly simple this time. Phoebe took care of most of the food. She had some vegetables from various types of cauliflowers to peppers and more. She also had corn. There was also steaks which she had two types of seasoning for. The first was a gourmet steak spice blend and the second was a innovative herb type which was a mix of oregano and thyme with salt.

My contribution for dinner were kabobs. It had sausages, zucchini, peppers, mini portobello mushrooms and onions. The sausages were the IGA supermarket brands. One kabob had the honey-garlic flavor and the other one was wine and chives. There was no additional seasoning added to anything. We just put it on the skewer and barbecued it.

Results

I’m sorry that I didn’t take more of the veggies pic. However, everything turned out really good. The steaks had two different flavors. The one with the spices had more of the flavor as the spices were on the steaks itself. While the herbs and salt was more subtle, which is normal since it was just on top. As for the kabobs, I thought they turned out fairly well. It was fairly packed but cooked quickly so was good. The sausage flavors were also quite delicious.

Dessert

 

Dessert was obviously the highlight here and that’s moon cakes. Just like last year, we went for a more local brand. This one is a Canadian brand, King’s Pastry. It was a variety pack (like last year as well). The flavors were the following:

• Date paste
• Red Bean paste with melon bits
• Traditional one egg yolk lotus paste
• Five nuts

To be honest, they were okay. The five nuts had the citrus peel which was a bit intense. My husband and Phoebe was not a fan of it to say the least. The traditional was a bit too sweet. The date paste turned out better than expected. The same applied for the red bean paste.

We also had a fruit bowl that I put together with apples, clementines and grapes but I forgot to take a picture so we’ll leave that out since no one really ate any of it with the amount of sweets we already had.

Overall, a simple but lovely meal together!
This is a wrap for this Battle of Ingredients!
Back to the indoor kitchen for us as we figure out our next battle!
Nothing settled just yet..we’ll be back in a few weeks!

Battle of Ingredients #5: Fall BBQ & Moon Festival Edition!

I know its a little early to take a break from the horror marathon and it’ll resume tomorrow. However, Battle of Ingredients is our monthly segment and our gathering just happened this past weekend. I promise it’ll be a short and sweet one and one that matches perfect with today which is Midautumn Festival, mostly referred to as Moon Festival!

A warm and maybe slightly cooler welcome from me and my cohost, Phoebe from Starry Traveler’s Road to the next Battle of Ingredients. Due to our love for the previous BBQ session and the weather being still decent, we decided to do another BBQ event. 

This time, we took it to mostly basics. Mostly because we realized quite last minute that no actual plans were formulated. Also, we were both busy with personal life stuff so the final menu looked like this.

I made burger patties. Actually, because I was in a lot of pain that day, my husband being the champ that he is helped me make the patties. We got medium lean minced beef and used eggs and spices and he made the patties. He also took on the grill master role in the evening. So our event became a lot more relaxed than it usually would be. We bought the Italiano burger buns and got some cheese, gouda and lactose-free swiss.

Phoebe pulled the stops this time and brought her take on the veggie foil pack that I had tried out last time. This time, her’s had bell peppers, zucchinis and also added in two to three slices of prosciutto. The prosciutto being on the top spread its salty flavors to the veggies, making it no necessary to spice it at all.

Phoebe also found on Pinterest a way to roast corn on the grill. It simply required snipping off the top part. It turned out perfect! She also brought on to try roasting eggplants on the grill as well. Most of us weren’t very into eggplants and didn’t normally cook them so in my opinion, they weren’t done too good. Definitely something to further into bettering our skills at or maybe its just better to cook them in another way.

Aside from that, this time was almost like a potluck as our friends also brought some chicken breast along with tzatzki sauce (not sure how you spell it).

We ended with our dessert.  Our friends,who is always responsible for beverages, brought the Pepito Rose Sangria and some light fruity coolers. While I forgot to take pictures of it, I brought some garden fruits like raspberries and a lot of ground cherries. Aside from that, we also had an early celebration of Moon Festival, or Midautumn Festival which most people know for eating moon cakes, a little chinese pastry with lotus paste normally.

Phoebe found a pastry shop in Chinatown called La Patisserie Chow that makes their own moon cakes and we were interested to see how they were so she bought the box with their bestselling four flavors.

• Double yolk White Lotus Paste
• Double Yolk Green Bean Paste
• 5 Stars Mix (5 different nuts, sweet melon and tangerine)
• Golden Double Yolk Paste

Our biggest issue was that each one wasn’t labelled. We easily could identify the white lotus paste one which was a win for both me and Phoebe. The nuts got an okay where it was good but not great. Then we have a mystery one which I personally suspect is the Golden Double Yolk Paste that my husband and our friend liked. Then there was one that unanimously was pretty bad. I’m guessing its the green bean paste but it wasn’t labelled so I don’t really know.

Chow Pastry Shop is pretty commendable to have their own moon cakes. Huge applause for that. However, its better to label the variety one way or another even if the ingredients are also labelled super vaguely. I think this one could be hit or miss. Its definitely not like the ones you’d buy from the big brands. Phoebe posed a good question about how we usually do eat from the big brands and maybe traditional moon cakes with any preservatives and in their natural state would taste more like this. Perhaps one time, I’ll be in Hong Kong where actually smaller bakeries also make moon cakes or I’ll attempt it myself and we’ll see.

That’s it for this Battle of Ingredients!
Thanks for joining us!
November might be skipped because our crew usually does the MTL a Table event.
However, we’ll find a festive return in December for the holidays!

My Weekly Adventures!

First, a massive THANK YOU to Laurie at Pride in Photos for suggesting to give my weekly personal updates this title 🙂 Now, I don’t need to get all fancy and can just use this lovely simple My Weekly Adventures.  I just learned the whole  acronym of KISS –> Keep It Stupid Simple.  This however is not stupid in any way and its recaps exactly what the weekly posts are about.  Thank you for being so awesomely genius, Laurie! I owe you one! And if you haven’t visited Laurie’s blog Pride in Photos, I advise you to because she is an amazing photographer and I love her posts to bits.

From now on, this segment will now be MY WEEKLY ADVENTURES.  I will add that on the menu some time this week (hopefully tonight).

Lets see what adventures I went on this week 😉

1) Moon Festival!

Dinner for Midautumn/Moon Festival!

Moon Cake

Last Monday was Midautumn Festival or more commonly known as Moon Festival. Its a time for family and symbolizing the arrival of a new season.  The moon is like a completion of something mostly in the complete family being there and the blessing behind it.  My mom made a delicious dinner and then we had moon cakes later on at night. We even stepped outside for a walk together and to look at the lovely full moon 🙂

2) Another room finished!

Thanks to my boyfriend being super awesome at picking up the pace for painting. Another room in the basement is done 🙂 This color is absolutely adorable and actually turned out way better than I expected! Only 3 more rooms to go and one of them is already in progress.

What do you think of the color?

You think it’ll make you feel energetic? This should eventually be a workout room..haha! So thats kind of important 😉

3) My first Montreal Comiccon!

On Saturday, I went to my first ever Montreal Comiccon! After finally having to go alone, I ended up spontaneously meeting up with fellow blogger and one of my very awesome girl friend, Day’s on the way to the line-up.  She was there alone as well so we paired up and went together 🙂 Very nice turn of events.  I ended up going to 4 Q&A panels and then checked out some exhibits and took tons of pictures of some awesome costumes.  I’m still shifting through my pictures but the detailed post on that one will go up tomorrow!

I’m totally going again next year.  If there is someone awesome, I would love to go do a photo op.  This year, the photo op was full by the time I decided I would like to dish out the money to do it.  Plus, I’m planning on going to Toronto Comiccon next year if I can arrange my finances and find some friends who would like to road trip with me.

4) Little Finds at Comiccon!

Although I did spend most of my day at Comiccon running back and forth between Q&A panels, we did find time to eventually hit the exhibition hall and check out some merchandise.

Our first find was this Moonglow Jewelry.  The concept behind it is that you can use whatever date you choose.  I chose my birthday and looked up the code for the moon that was on that birth date and it a photograph of the moon on it.  Then you can attach it to either a bracelet or a necklace (in various models).  I eventually chose a bracelet and added on my boyfriend’s moon on his birth date as well.  When you buy this, it give you a little card with a description of the personality of the person born on that moon.  I was born at the 3rd quarter of full moon while my boyfriend is the new moon.  These little charms absorb UV light and at night, they glow in the dark.

Pretty neat, right?

Moonglow Jewelry

After debating on getting some artwork to decorate my new place, I eventually came across a place, where I bought a T-shirt (which is going to be delivered to me in 2 weeks) from TeeTurtle but they also sold posters and this one caught my eye. The Totoro bus with a bunch of Ghibli characters on board just stole my heart away.

TeeTurtle Posters

Luckily this poster is still in one piece.  This was a free poster from Warner Bros booth celebrating the 75th anniversary of Batman.

Warner Bros free poster: 75th anniversary Batman

5) One Day Road Trip to Charlevoix

Along the shore of La Malbaie

After taking a few months to figure out when to do it, my friend and I finally decided to go on a one day drive through Charlevoix to take pictures and see the area.  I’ve already been before with my boyfriend a few years back but when my computer got attacked by a virus, those happened to be the only photos that were not backed up AT ALL.  So this trip was essentially for me to do a reboot of those photos except this time, I have a more powerful camera on hand 😉

I’m still sifting through Comiccon pictures so these ones are the next ones to go through.  This post will go up nearing the end of the week 😉 Prepare for some breathtaking moments!

6) Finds in Charlevoix

I love going to different regions and looking at some wine stores because some times they carry some alcohol different from the ones in Montreal. This time, I stopped at the SAQ in La Malbaie before turning around and heading home and found a Rose wine La Rose Gabrielle and a Dry Gin made from herbs called Ungava.  I haven’t tried the gin yet but we did open it to smell (when I got home, of course) and it has a very distinct smell.  I’m intrigued as to what it would taste like 😉

7) Some Funny Moments!

Some of you may have missed my funny moment on TV and the post and that was pretty much the most funniest moment of my summer.  YouTube offers mostly hilarious moments from Ellen Show channel and I’m so happy that its back because it means I get to share those again! This week’s video that cracked me up the most was Channing’s Biggest Fear…

Fears, my friends! No matter how awesome you are, it just destroys you.

8) Awesome Music!

You all know by now (if you’ve followed me a while) that I love Youtube artists or in general, independents artists.  I’ve talked about Sam Tsui, Kurt Schneider and the whole crew.  This time, the spotlight is the extremely talented Daniel de Bourg.  This guy has such an amazing voice.  I love listening to his originals and his covers and its pretty crazy that I haven’t mentioned him yet.  Maybe its because he doesn’t have as many covers come out.

I’ve never heard the original yet so I can’t really compare but I’m liking this one a lot 🙂

Thats it for this week! Life’s adventures just never stop and they almost always give me inspiration for something new to check out.

How was your week or weekend, my lovelies? Happy Monday!