My Weekly Adventures: Family, Friends & Events

Its been a month everyone! I had to make the executive decision to skip last time because well, the end of June was kind of sad with not much going on. Seeing as the first part of July had just enough to pair it up, here we are!

A note for some things below. Events are in town and in the next two weeks, the main focus going into August will be on Fantasia Festival. However, you will see that I have other posts planned that aren’t all about movies in case you followed this blog for some of the other hobbies that I have and share around here! I have a lot of stuff planned from books to TV series to gardening and other cool stuff. Plus, most of the projects are still going on so busy but fun stuff coming up! 🙂

Let’s check out whats been going on this past month!

Family Visit

Last month, I had some family come to visit. We ended up going to one of my favorite breakfast restaurants in Old Montreal called Le Cartet. I’ve probably already talked about it before. Either way, they loved it and its always a great time. Most of my family has moved away from Montreal so its always so fun to have visit and catch up.

Battle of Ingredients: St-Jean BBQ

Check out the full post HERE.

Our first summer BBQ of this year was on the St-Jean Baptiste day for Battle of Ingredients. We have decided to lower the frequency just for less stress however, it still a ton of fun to get together and hang out. I actually have some fun ideas for next time if it happens to BBQ again (which I believe it is for now). It was a tad rainy this long weekend but it didn’t bother us too much.

Canada Day, Heat Wave & Pool Time

Shameless selfie time! Sorry about that but I didn’t really take a lot of pictures of swimming. Haha! Good news is that the pool is FINALLY opened after last year’s absolute nightmare. Everything seems to be going well and all the credit goes to my husband figuring it all out. Lucky because it was a record-breaking weekend hitting well above the 40s degrees Celsius. We don’t have air conditioning system so we just rigged our unit with a fan to get the cool air around the house. Luckily it worked pretty well. Along with time in the pool, it was a lot of fun! I’m one of those people who love water. It makes me so happy when I’m just in water or near water hence why I love hiking and being near rivers, lakes, creeks, streams, and especially waterfalls!

Montreal Comiccon 2018

You can the recap of Montreal Comiccon HERE.

I am so grateful to get the media pass again this year for Montreal Comiccon. For the first year, I angled one week of my vacation here so I actually went for all three days of the comiccon weekend. It was a ton of fun. Maybe a little crazy to get all the coverage done in a timely fashion for That Moment In but it all was finished and I thought it turned it pretty alright. There was a lot of see and the Q&A was absolutely awesome. I actually am still working on getting some of the Q&A audio edited for my own channel but if you want to hear the audio for Shadow of the Tomb Raider Q&A and understand French, its on the Game Warp channel and for your convenience, the video below.

Dinner with Friends

Vacation is the perfect time to catch up with friends. The first dinner was a meet-up with Phoebe and her family before the opening film of Fantasia Festival. We finally had my husband go try out their best-kept secret restaurant called Fuschia at Lasalle College. Its never disappointed and let me tell you, the meal was fantastic. So I’ll have that post go up finally since I’ve been respecting their desire to keep it a best-kept secret but they gave me the okay for this time. 😉

Second dinner was just yesterday. My monthly hangout with the girl friends have been a lot less this year because everyone is just so busy with different transitions and personal life and whatnot. We finally met up for a dinner at this little Czech restaurant called Restaurant Bohemia. I’ll have a full post on it also going up soon. It’ll be little things to cut between all the movie reviews in case you aren’t here for that.

Fantasia Film Festival 2018

Fantasia Film Festival is officially in town. Like last year, I had a media pass approved and so incredibly grateful for it. I have a fairly intense schedule the starts up next week. I only managed to fit in two movies as I try to get a lot of my house stuff done before the intensity really kicks up. You know, real life needs to be taken care of. I felt a little bit bad of skipping out a lot of the screenings this weekend but life doesn’t stop for this even if I love it so very much.

However, two reviews have already been up. You can check it out below

Nightmare Cinema
Playing Hard

The next two and a half weeks is going to be intense. I plan to review about 20+ films in total so next week alone, there are currently 11 screenings planned tentatively so if it all pans out, it’ll be my busiest week of the festival and I’ll get the reviews uploaded. All reviews will also be over at That Moment In. Actually, we are aiming for almost full coverage at That Moment In because of some arrangements. So head over there and check out what David has going on over there as he reviews some other movies at Fantasia that I won’t be able to make it to like this one:

La Nuit a Dévoré le Monde (The Night Eats the World)

I will retweet all of those reviews so either subscribe to That Moment In to not miss out or just follow me on Twitter @tranquildreams_

As for what’s planned, here is a list of the movies I’m aiming to go see in alphabetical order :

Anna & the Apocalypse
Big Brother
Bleach
Cam
Fireworks
Kasane
Knuckleball
La Quinceneara
Laplace’s Witch
Luz
Nightshifter
Our House
The Outlaws
Pledge
Searching
Under the Silver Lake
The Vanished

I’m hoping to fit some more in there but I doubt that sounds remotely possible as my actual paying job will be hitting some crazy work phase by the end of July. Gotta pay the bills after all 😉 Still, I’m more than happy with the schedule here and if it all works out, I’ll already be super pleased! I have a rule to have quality instead of quantity so excuse me if some double day film watching days have a little delay in the review going up.

Cute Kitty Pic

Thats it for this “Weekly” Adventures!
What have you been up to?
Any cool events going on where you are? Some fun summer plans? Perhaps vacation in the horizon?

My Weekly Adventures #57 (actually its been a month…)

Welcome back to the first 2018 Weekly Adventures post!

As usual, we skipped one to do the What’s Up 2018. If you missed whats coming up in 2018, you can check it out HERE. Nothing too late since I’m still struggling to catch up with some of the 2017 backlog and get it all out. Especially with this week being quite spotty and missing out on 3 days which is something I hasn’t happened in a long time. Work and balancing adding in a workout routine and trying to just be healthier and house stuff like taking down Christmas and such is starting to prove to be quite crazy at the beginning of 2018.

Regardless, I will catch up in the coming week and get it all out next week hopefully! Let’s see what happened this past month!

Christmas Eve Party

Christmas Eve Party is a tradition that we have with in-laws. My mom comes along with me and we have a great time together just hanging out while chatting and eating. It was supposed to our turn to host this year but things took a turn for personal reasons and we ended up going to my sister-in-law’s instead.We had a great turnout in food and everyone had fun. Gift opening was always entertaining. We got a lovely gift card from my in-laws and sister-in-law and her husband for a restaurant in downtown called Les Enfants Terrible which we’re definitely looking to find a time possibly in the summer to go because its on a top floor and probably would have a nice view in the summer and maybe a terrace or something.

Boxing Day

Boxing Day happened of course. As per tradition, I went out with one of my friends to go spend some money efficiently and get in on some great deals. I won’t expand too much on it but you can find my Boxing Day Haul in this post HERE.

Holidays Gathering

Next gathering we had was with my girl friends. I skipped the last gathering because I just couldn’t make it with a clash in schedule. Its been forever since I’ve seen my girl friends so it was great to actually head out to meet up at a housewarming and holiday gathering potluck at one of the girl’s new place. Delicious food and awesome company go hand in hand and we definitely had both as we sat around catching up and having some laughs.

Family Dinner

This holidays has been back to back to back dinners. You’ll see as right after our holiday gatherings above, the evening after, we went over again to my sister-in-law’s place to have a slightly smaller gathering for a pre-New Year’s celebration. She made turkey that took hours to do but it turned out fantastic. She made some french onion soup. Mine was cheeseless which was a thoughtful move and then used lactose free milk for her mash potatoes. It tasted delectable. Another fun evening.

New Year’s Eve Celebrations
(aka: Mini Battle of Ingredients)

The holidays craze has definitely put a slight hiatus for our Battle of Ingredients. Even with New Year’s Eve slated in, we didn’t quite get a lot of it done in time. Consider this a mini Battle of Ingredients. Phoebe made the prosciutto wrapped asparagus which turned out great. I was thinking that I was going to roast veggies but I ended up making the veggies in a pan instead. I can’t say that mine turned out that well. It felt slightly raw so I had to pop it in the microwave to hopefully remedy it but Phoebe’s dish was really delicious. My mom made a turkey which was also quite tasty.

Fret not, despite still in somewhat of a craze on our end, we’ll figure out this Battle of Ingredients scheduling and get back on track. 🙂

New Workout Regime in 2018 (& how we are being healthier)!

As I feel the ab and leg pains from the currently in progress 2nd week of a 6 week program that I set on Nike Training Club app, I’m actually feeling quite good. The holidays was a weird mush of feelings. As much as I was excited for the holidays and decorated rather early and got everything together, the holidays hit me quite hard. Maybe it was just that I had a lot of time to think and reflect and 2017 was a very tough year and we went into the holidays in somewhat of a bad mood (at least for myself). Reflecting on the past year and looking forward to the new year always brings some odd emotions. With that said, I’m getting back to my positive self and I want working out and being healthy from it to give me the confidence boost and the feeling good vibes mostly from it. My husband and I are both hopping back into being healthier this year. Together, we’re aiming to be more active (hiking, running, strength & endurance training), eating healthier by cutting out as much processed food as possible, and being nicer to the environment as in using biodegradable cleaning products and such. Working out has been on track despite the crazy schedule and I’m pretty  happy about it. I’ll try to get an update on how things are progressing on that front.

Winter Storms

Montreal has been a crazy roller coaster of weather. December storms started early. Christmas week was a deep freeze zone as we entered the -40 Celsius zone. Bring on the double layered pants and socks and triple layer clothing. It was in a fairly freezing mode all the way till the last two days which rained and melted almost all the snow from before away and then on Friday to Saturday within 14 hours, we got a lovely 36cm of snow. This was on Saturday morning as the storm was tapering off. We were pretty much snowed in. I shoveled a bit before having to head out to a chiropractor appointment but my husband did a fantastic job and shoveled the rest for 2 more hours as I went off to do groceries as well . Every day life stuff, right? 😉

Miscellaneous Other Stuff

My Weekly Adventures is a day earlier than usual this month. Its because I missed one but also because tomorrow, I have an announcement coming up! Remember to drop back to check that out!

Aside from that, what other miscellaneous stuff am I thinking about. Unboxing will possible fade out this year. I made the move to cancel the FabFitFun box. Its a pretty costly expense that while I like, can’t seem to be justified anymore. We do have another Meowbox coming up but after doing massive cleaning this year, I realize that I still have a lot of unopened cat toys sitting around so I might forego that one as well. I’ve talked about vlogs and other video segments for the blog so I’m definitely working on something to get that together or maybe doing a What’s Up Wednesday video segment instead. If you have any suggestions on video content you’d like to see here, leave a comment and I’ll try my best to work it out!

I honestly had other miscellaneous stuff and now as I’m typing this out, I’ve forgotten all about it.

Cute Kitty Pic

It might not seem cute but when I’m in the shower, this is what she does. You know, my little guard cat…who runs away when she hears anyone approach. Effectiveness is zero but the thought is admirable 😉

Upcoming stuff:

• 2017 leftovers: Gilmore Girls Season 5 binge, Bring it On: Worldwide #Cheersmack, Stranger Things Season 2
• Announcement tomorrow
• A new segment coming up
• Blogiversary!!!

Thats it for this Weekly Adventures!
Remember to drop by tomorrow to check out the announcement!
Also, if you have any video ideas, do share them with me: What’s Up Wednesday vlogs or Weekly Adventure vlogs or some movie related vlog.
That’s all the ideas I have for now so maybe all the above will show up. Which would you watch?

My Weekly Adventures #45!

And we’re back!

It feels like I’ve been giving a lot of updates lately so it feels a like that there isn’t a whole lot to talk about. However, it also feels like these 15 days had like 30 days of stuff that I had worked on. I’m sure as with others doing this, everyone wishes there were more hours in the day to do everything. On one hand, I’d love that Tranquil Dreams could get all the love but I also love the Game Warp Podcast so much. Either way, regardless of it all, I’m finding a way to get back to a more healthy lifestyle (workouts and eating better) while still maintaining the garden and keeping the house clean and getting all the blogging duties done while making time for my mom. Its a little crazy at times but I’ll find a balance for it all. A new season just means more tasks than the stagnant winter months.

What’s been going on?  Yet again, a lot behind the scenes or mundane stuff so those didn’t make the list however, these did!

Back to a Workout Schedule

I kind of go on this on and off workout regiment. It isn’t intentional that I fall off it. Usually something happens to hinder it. Being super motivated, I ended up doing three workouts: one arm/abs weight and a 40 minutes of Zumba (that I put together) and then finally, went out for a jog/run for 5km. My time wasn’t great but you know, its a start to getting back. Of course, my luck would have it in this fantastic “unhealthy” year of issues all the time, I had to run up the (luckily) short flights of steps and fell, making my Sunday a day spent with the ice pack watching E3 conferences and drafting posts and watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Obviously, that meant that the following days was in the rest zone as my knees feel better. Which they are now! So, back to weights and a run for the remaining days of this week somewhere. I’m getting a little self-conscious of my weight and health so I’m hoping this healthier lifestyle will help, or at least make me feel mentally more positive.

Grand Prix Montreal

This was supposed to be a post on its own but I just can’t and plus there isn’t a whole lot going on that I need to put more content in this one. Either way, lots of fancy and pretty cars. Mercedes Benz, Porsche, Acura and more made their appearance. The event was spread out further and expanded over an extra block where it was more events and food truck vendors. We obviously did the food truck route. Before that, let me highlight that the showstopper was in fact the Cars life size replica. As Pixar and Disney fans, it was something to be excited about.

Now for the food!

Lucille’s Lobster Roll and Taco

Le Smoking BBQ: Pulled Pork Sandwich with Fries

Jerry Ferrer: Pulled Pork Sandwich with fries

We like pulled pork, what can I say? All very delicious. However, if you are to try food truck, my must-have every single year is Lucille’s Lobster Roll. They are to die for! But Le Smoking BBQ is fantastic as well.

We ended the night with a trip to the Casino of Montreal. I don’t gamble but my friend likes to go once in a while to try his luck. Luck was not great until we saw the OMG! Kittens slot machine by the exit and gave that a go. Suffice to say, he doubled what he brought that night. From now on, he believes me that cats are awesome.

E3 Conference Live Streaming Craze

Those are my favorite conferences of this year! We have a ton of recaps for all the shows. You can find them over at That Moment In. I know that I had talked about this before. However this did take up all of my last weekend and we’ve been working hard on doing impressions and lists to come out in the next week or so while working on the featured game as well which I’ll be streaming over the next few nights. I’m trying to boost up some stream time and learn to be better at it.

Vacation SOON!

Finally, I guess the fun thing is that we have our vacation time booked in. My husband and I had conflicts in schedule so we only have a few days overlapping but it’ll be fun to just hang out and do some home projects. We might go away but since I’ll be on vacation, you won’t (or you might) notice that I’m away.  And when we get back, things will jump into vacation recap phase.

Upcoming:

• Battle of Ingredients (if we could figure out the topic)
• And a lot more of the normal: movies, TV series and books

Cute Kitty Pic

What have you been up to?

My Weekly Adventures #37

We’re a little behind schedule for this Weekly Adventures segments. I do want to make this an actual weekly segment but I feel like there’s just not enough material. I am working on how to work it out even if its just little goal updates. Anyways, enough about that. These last two weeks have been nothing short of crazy and yet, it doesn’t feel like there’s a whole lot to talk about. Valentine’s Marathon was a very tiny run of just five days with some pretty random choices. The only movie I wanted to watch but didn’t get to was Joe vs. The Volcano and I owe a double feature recommended in the last post when I announced the Valentine’s marathon. Things I need to get around to doing. Ultimate 90s Blogathon has also ended in receiving submissions and that will be starting on Monday (February 20th).

I’ll explain why things are falling a little behind, even the posts are being uploaded later than usual at random times.

Random Bug and Health Issues

I’m not going to go into too much detail and I’m just happy it didn’t knock me out for a long time. In short, there was one Saturday that a bug generally just hit me super hard, packed with chills and everything. I ended up spending most of that weekend lounging around the fireplace and sleeping. It was probably my body’s way to tell me to relax and sleep. I get hit by insomnia every once in a while and this is probably my body just forcing me to rest. Aside from that, there was something else with my ear which I’m scared might turn into an infection. Regardless, its still getting better. It does make talking or listening to anything super hard and its also been a cause of the sleep issues afterwards. Luckily, it is on the road to recovery, at least I hope so.

Enough of the bad stuff..let’s move on!

A New Class

Ridiculous as it all sounds when I’m talking about winding down and yet still being incredibly busy and not being able to do that, I accidentally signed up for an online course. Let me explain that I did buy this course as a Groupon deal a few months ago and was thinking about it and then I was just checking out to redeem it and I did it. So now, I’m doing a 4 week course with 8 live seminars stuck in the middle of the workday which I try to listen to and catch up in more detail on the weekend and finish up assignments. Either way, I’m hoping it’ll enlighten a few things on that I’ve been hoping to improve which can help Game Warp and Tranquil Dreams. It also brings up a whole lot of stuff that I’ve been planning to do but never actually finalizing.

 I’ve actually been in the learning mode this year and wanting to improve Photography, Video Editing and Spanish. Of course, its not going to happen all this year but hey, its nice to feel motivated to improve and upgrade my skill set.

Snowstorms

Other events going on is snow. Lots of snow this past few days. Well, by today’s standards. I think Sunday to Monday had about 25cm and then Tuesday, we had a bit more and Wednesday was when I took this picture in the morning. It stopped pretty quickly but still, quite a bit of snow compared to usual. I think I read somewhere it broke some record. It is nice to see nice fluffy snow and not the wet slush that turns into freezing rain and then raining. Its a tad odd to see people and their umbrellas in winter. Maybe its just me.

Random Buys

Perhaps random but lets just say timing got the hold of me and it was time to upgrade to have a controller for the PC especially when there’s a game that I need to review but is more controller compatible. Other than that, I ended up grabbing two movies to help fill up orders to get free shipping (stupid logic perhaps) and they were Charade and The Raid 2. I rented Backcountry lately. We started Cardinal, a Canadian mini series that is awesome, which is good because I actually bought the whole series on Play store. The price of not having cable or even bunny ears and relying solely on Netflix and not wanting to miss out (which is a rare occasion to be honest).

In terms of games (which I’m putting a stop on myself after yesterday’s purchase), I’ve been shopping on Steam a bit and grabbed some nice deals. Murdered: Soul Suspect, Guacamelee: Super Turbo Championship Edition and right before February, I picked up The Bug Butcher and Four Sided Fantasy. Nothing super new but games that have peaked my interest. If you are into gaming and Twitch streams, Game Warp streams are set now to run on weekends. Early Sunday mornings (5am GMT) with Blood Bowl 2 with my awesome co-host Elwood and I usually run mine on Friday nights or Saturday mornings/afternoons with whatever games I feel like playing or its the games we’re featuring that month.

Probably I’ll do this once in a while and share the random stuff I buy outside of like hauls on Black Friday or trips or whatnot.

Cute Kitty Pic 

This Weekly Adventures has been a little lackluster with truly everyday events that I couldn’t help but to give you two cute kitty pics. Winter, snowstorms and cold weather makes my darling cat sleep even more so these are her two spots of choice: in front of the fireplace where it fully warms up her belly and curled up in blankets behind me on my husband’s office chair. My support system everybody, she’s into moral support. Sleeping away the hours for me.

Upcoming:

 Ultimate 90’s Blogathon is running from February 20th into about early-mid March.
Expect to see TV Binge, Book reviews and Recipes during this time. Any of my own movie reviews (unless new releases) will resume after the blogathon.

Simple everyday life for the last two weeks & lots of behind the scenes things that I can’t really share because its just boring.
What have you been up to?

My Weekly Adventures: Gardening and Something New!

Weekly Adventures seems like a good place to address why things have been a little off schedule. Thing is, my backlog I had built is depleted. I’m rebuilding it right now but the reason is that these last two weeks have been so busy with just preparing the house for the new season, mostly gardening, that I haven’t sat in front of the computer.  And when I do, I fall asleep.  Energy level is just not there.  Honestly, I needed to reassess a few segments and give it all a new direction and organize a few little other things.  Still, its been busy even if posts are up in the morning as I usually would like them.

These last two weeks haven’t been exactly eventful.  It has been but I already talked about the Ottawa Race Weekend. If you missed it, you can check it out HERE! Other than that, there’s mainly a lot of gardening and just a little bit here and there.  This will be a shorter post (unless I ramble and I’m already doing that…).

Vegetable Garden

This isn’t the updated version two weeks later now but when I first planted it that day, this is what it looked like.  What do I have here? Cucumbers, Asparagus, Leeks, Okra, Kale, Lettuce, Zucchini and Eggplant. If you were looking at the updated version, well, the lettuce is almost all eaten but the neighborhood bunnies sadly. I’m trying to figure out a way to remedy that problem with fences. And somehow the cucumbers, at least some of them, either got uprooted by the heavy rain or it got pulled out and dried out in the hot weather so I only have two (and one half dying) still there. Other than that, everything seems to be doing good.  My zucchini is by far the strongest, followed closely with asparagus and broccoli. Although, maybe the asparagus won’t count because I need ot at least take care of it for 3 years before there is any harvest.

I’ll give you an update on the vegetable garden soon periodically! I spent a lot of time in here and even my friend helped me out a lot by getting the rest of the grass removed.  There’s still some grass on the side but there’s a soil issue that we’re trying to figure out.

Herb Container Garden

Here’s my little herb garden I’m working with. I actually have a Chamomile and a new Rosemary inside which I don’t have a picture of. These ones are Italian Oregano, Thyme, Pineapple Sage, Sweet Mammoth Basil and Boxwood Basil. They are looking lovely so far. I actually just was reading up on the Pineapple Sage and it said that it had a pineapple smell on the leaves which I never realized and it does! 🙂 That is so cool!

Mosquito Repellent Container Garden

I kid you not! My patio is going to be mosquito repellent everything soon. Actually, I tried a similar container like this and it was pretty good.  Last year, I didn’t and I was just mosquito buffet. This has Geranium Citronella, (my dying) Rosemary, Lemongrass and Marigolds. The rest of the marigolds is planted in the container on the ledge of the patio.

Flower Patch

This is also not reflective of what it is now. My crimson star is blooming a lot yesterday. The addition here is my new echinacea and my husband’s violet. We also ended up getting some lily of the valley in our path unexpectedly. I suspect its because of my neighbor’s patch. My mom gave me some flowers that are growing and hopefully will have buds eventually. Things are looking good.  I added some new top soil so it looks healthier now. Its going to be a slow process to get some new top soil for everywhere, including the grass.

We have a few yard projects this summer so I’ll keep you in the loop as to what else is going to come up. This year’s goal is to make my garden beautiful and thrive (at least a little bit more than before). So far, its going well!

An Amazing Belated Birthday Surprise

Did I ever tell you that I have the most amazing best friend in the world even if she is sporadically vanishing because of her busy schedule and she lives provinces away from me right now? She flew in to be my bridemaids for the wedding back in October and completely surprised me last week when I came home to a package on my front door. I thought it was my husband’s but it turned out to be Amazon Fulfillment Service and I opened it up and this is what I got!!

A New Mic for podcasting! I’ve been saving up for a new mic for a while now.  A lot of new gear to get the gaming and podcast quality to go up. Lots of upgrades needed and I’m trying to get it done little by little. I was using the mic on my webcam and it feels like its slowly dying. So this is amazing! And you know what this also means, her support for my passion for this new thing I’m doing! I’ve thanked her a thousand times and she knows I appreciate this so much.

I guess its fair to say that a lot of people in my life don’t understand how I’m still blogging and spending a lot of time doing this. I’m not earning anything from it and it all seems like a hollow and unrealistic dream/hobby that is just expensive at times. Fact is, I like doing this and I hope to improve enough to be more and its nice to know that one more person, especially one of my best friends understands that.

Cute Kitty Moment

Upcoming:

• Next round of Netflix A-Z
• Baking Through Disney
• Book reviews
• TV Binges

Have an awesome day, my lovelies!
This week is going to be super relaxing as I create some sort of backlog! Enjoy! 🙂

My Weekly Adventures: Recaps, Events and Question!

Wow! Two weeks already? 2016 is out of control crazy.  We’re in mid-March already!

Its time for another My Weekly Adventures and I’m not going to lie…it doesn’t feel like there’s a lot to talk about. Maybe we will keep it short! Let me review these last two weeks and do a little recap!

At any time, head to the bottom and tell me what you think about my question for you! 🙂

ULTIMATE 80S BLOGATHON: DONE!

First things first, Ultimate 80s Blogathon finally ended as of this past Saturday.  My first ever blogathon and I’m not going to lie…I kind of missed it.  It was a massive success and it really blew me away on the level of participation and how long it ran.  Plus, I made an actual friend out of the blogosphere collaborating with Drew.  Its pretty fantastic because I always worry about working with others, especially only through the inter-webs.  But I guess its all part of owning a blog, right?

If you missed it or any posts, you can always check out my page right HERE!

I did bring up this in the reblog of the conclusion but one or two of the participants brought up whether 90s Blogathon was going to happen.  We’re going to take a little while of break from the blogathon for sure but its a possibility that it’ll happen if we find the time and schedule to do it.

My question is: Would that be something that’s interest you? If it wasn’t the 90s, what other decades would be fun also?

BIRTHDAY HANGOUT WITH FRIENDS!

This is the year, guys! Most of my friends that are the same year of birth as me are turning 30! So, we’re having lots of parties and hangouts and whatnot. This Saturday we had a dinner party with friends and its at Les 3 Brasseurs in downtown Montreal.  We met some new friends and caught up with friends we haven’t met in a while.  Its nice to see people and well, my best friend was there so it was nice to hang out with her.  The birthday boy is also one of my really good friends and we have a summer day trip in the planning which I’m sure to post about when it happens.

Sample new IPA Beer

White Sangria

Garlic Cheese Bread

Spicy Chicken Wings

Onion Rings

Braised Pork

Pulled Pork Sandwich (no Swiss cheese)

Sriracha Burger

Homemade Reeses pieces Cake

GETTING BACK INTO SHAPE!

Spring is right around the corner.  I’ve recovered from my fall on ice and hurting my knee.  I might have not talked about it in any previous posts.  Anyways, that happened and I had to take a few weeks off of Zumba to make sure I didn’t hurt it anymore since I was literally limping around the house for a few days. However, I went back after a month of break this past weekend and I tell you, it was tough.  I put on my new Reebok in-studio training shoes (which are absolutely comfortable and great) and pushed so hard that I literally needed to take a break because I felt really dizzy.  A friendly advice: Don’t make last minute decisions to go work out and forget to bring water and not have eaten anything beforehand.  Lots of rookie mistakes there and its all my fault but I almost blacked out.  The room literally spun and I needed to sit out for the last routine and only went back in for the cooldown.

BUT, other than learning to be better prepared for Zumba class, I do realize that I need to get back into regularly working out.  The weather being warmer is great gradually because I can get back to running also.

I still need to get into the mood of doing strength training and start doing that again.  Still, its one step towards a goal just getting back to Zumba 🙂

OFFICIAL (RE)LAUNCH OF AVENUE OF DAYDREAMS!

This is the last time I’ll be talking about Avenue of Daydreams.  Its my other blog that I have which moves Photography over from this one.  Its more of a creative outlet than here. I felt the need to compartmentalize a little because while its hard to run one blog, and now I have two.  It was even harder to balance everything I wanted to do and still keep it functional around here.  Plus, I really want to do creative writing and it will probably go hand in hand with either posts from here or over at That Moment In for gaming.

For now, its three segments: Double Shots (theme weekly photography), Out of This World Travels (looking at worlds created in movies, books and video games) & Fifty (short fifty word creative writing pieces).

If you didn’t know, The Daily Post (which runs the Weekly Photo Challenge that I used to participate in) and the Daily prompts just launched their Discover Challenge and I’m doing this challenge over at Avenue of Daydreams also.  You can check out the first post HERE!

INSPIRATIONAL MUSIC OF THE WEEK:
BE SOMEBODY-BOYCE AVENUE

Don’t we all want to be somebody? Chase our dreams and do the things we love! I know its burning inside me more and more each day to try to make this something more, even if its just a hobby right now!

UPCOMING:

• Netflix A-Z: K-N
• Book Reviews
• Upcoming Weekend Trip
• Unboxing: FabFitFun Spring Box
• Montreal Spring Events (if I have time)

Its short and sweet this week and its really just a recap! That’s life.  Just like how I do shameless (and silly) selfies like this one.

Some days, its just normal and simple, exactly as I like it. Its what makes the other events even more fascinating.

***Before we leave, my question for you: I’ve been thinking of making this segment into a vlog.  Maybe part vlog, part written.  Would that be something that you’d like?
I could work on video editing more and it could be more interactive that way.  Its just a thought. What do you think? Yes, no, maybe?***

HAPPY MONDAY, MY LOVELIES!