My Weekly Adventures: Christmas Is Just Around the Corner

November has come to an end. That was a quick and really busy month. Suffice to say, some projects and goals and that endless to-do list had its ups and downs. Its just how it is. The first part is accepting and being okay with it all. Not to mention, everything in general was kind of overwhelming so mentally, not in such a great spot. Its probably telling me something but I’m not going to discuss that because there are a lot of things on my mind right now as 2018 heads into its last month and I’m thinking a lot about 2019.

Blood in the Snow Festival (BITS 2018)

First time tackling remote coverage is definitely a pretty good experience. Unlike physically being at the festival, remote coverage is all about time management and working with embargos and getting things done in a timely fashion because there is nothing pushing physically to be done and its all more superficial. Blog technicalities aside, its also the first time working on Blood in the Snow Festival and it had a lot of interesting and intriguing movies to offer. Nothing that was disappointing but some were average and some were amazing. It had different genres and covered Canadian films which I love to dive into. Its only a few days long which is a much lighter festival but its a pity to not be on the spot to see all the industry panels and everything they have to offer. The variety of content alone makes it an interesting one to be present in person for.

With that said, all the movies have been reviewed:

• Altered Skin
• Alive
• Hammer of the Gods
• Montreal Dead End
• Deadsight
• The Hoard
• Fugue

With that said, a festival page under movies for Blood in the Snow Festival has been created now so you can find all the reviews HERE.

Black Friday

Black Friday was pretty calm this year. I didn’t go out with a huge intention of spending a lot so I found some deals that I thought were worth it to fill some of the needs and stuff. A few purchases were surprises but nothing that broke the piggy bank too much.

You can see the haul post HERE.

Christmas Decorations

Christmas is in full effect at our house. I only showed the new little bits of our place and the Christmas tree. I might have a little Christmas decorations thing in December but then its not a big change anyways.

NaNoWriMo

The week after I decided to do NaNoWriMo, things pretty much went downhill. After BITS 2018 came onto my radar and work got hectic and whatnot, that was it. I never expected to finish it in the first place but I had to put it aside if I wanted to at least have some normal sleeping schedule. Either way, I might actually work on that during the year afterwards. I have some nice ideas for my fanfic. I’ve never written one and sponataneity wasn’t really working. Either way, not feeling too bad about it. Something had to be give and this was the choice I had to make.

Next year though, I do want to get back to it and get some planning done beforehand.

Announcement: Christmas/Holiday Marathon

We head into December tomorrow. Like the last few years, I’m going to be doing a little holidays and Christmas marathon of sorts. I’m going to see if I can find some holiday themed books to end the year while probably go through some films on Netflix. Its slim pickings and mostly Hallmark type films but I’ll make do with what I can. This will be the official announcement for the marathon.

Some titles  considered right now:

• The Princess Switch
• The Holiday Calendar
• Bad Santa
• The Night Before
• A Christmas Prince 2 (I saw that its supposed to be released in December)
• Nailed It! Holiday (also coming out in December)
• The Christmas Chronicles
• El Camino Christmas

Thats it for this Weekly Adventures!
What have you been up to?

My Weekly Adventures: The Wrong Side of the Fence…

Following the last Weekly Adventures, I was on the fence about something. And well..seeing as its the title of this Weekly Adventures, suffice to say I made a decision on it. If you didn’t see the last post, don’t worry, you will know soon enough when we get there. These two weeks was a lot of eating… that’s all I got honestly. Something crazy happened at work that stressed me out so very much but really gave me the kick in the pants to motivate myself to get back into the groove of things. Find back some of the focus that I’ve seem to be missing.

MTL a Table 2018: Nom Nom Cantine

This year’s MTL a Table in place of the November Battle of Ingredients is at Nom Nom Cantine. We had a pretty good time there, eating delicious food with great company.

You can check out the post HERE.

NaNoWriMo 2018

The wrong side of the fence is refering to this. Which can only mean one thing…that I decided to start NaNoWriMo this year. I started on Day 7 and the late start and my recent cold has impacted a lot of progress. To be honest, with all the projects right now, I don’t plan to finish but I have an idea that I kept wanting to write about so I just couldn’t resist. Of course, I wasn’t going to do this madness by myself so my awesome podcast co-host graciously joined me in working on his own thing.

My progress leaves a lot to be desired right now so I’m going to try to push myself over the next half of the month to really catch up. Next Weekly Adventures, I’ll share the final result.

L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon

Like last year, as an end of season marathon thank you for all my early mornings and such, my friend took me out for a fancy dinner at the Casino de Montreal at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon. This restaurant definitely is expensive and fine cuisine but the one place that never disappoints me because of how well they adapt to making everyone feel important especially when it comes to my lactose intolerance and having French cuisine.

You can see the full recap of this restaurant experience HERE.

MEGA MTL

This past weekend marks one of the last gaming festivals that I will be going to (since there was also the summit earlier this week which I don’t go to because its on weekdays). MEGA MTL was morphed from the Montreal Independent Games Festival which used to be free and held at Dawson College. Now, it occupies the Marché Bonsecours in Old Montreal and it always shows off a lot of indie games to try out and showcase. Its a lot of games to write about so currently the post is still in the works for That Moment In but should be up soon.

My game of the festival is hands-down a game that has already been released called 39 Days to Mars, which is a coop puzzle adventure game developed by It’s Anecdotal.

Cute Kitty Pic

Thats it for this Weekly Adventures recap!
A quick and easy one this time. We had a few busy weekends so probably the next one will be even more quiet.

My Weekly Adventures: When Work Takes Over…Again & The Game Plan (for the rest of 2018)

Welcome to the next weekly adventures. Maybe I should call this non-adventures? I’m not sure much happened other than myself sitting around watching TV, cleaning or going nuts over work, work and more work at the office and at home or multitasking a lot. So, let me think back about what to talk about  and whether something interesting happened over the last two weeks and hopefully this post won’t be a complete disaster….

Battle of Ingredients

Battle of Ingredients is back on track now. We also went back to our indoors non-BBQ format. This time we had the star of the show that Phoebe took care of with our friend’s winter melon. As for myself, I went the normal route and did something much more simple trying out a new spice for the chicken dish and then made some fall appropriate dessert. This time, we went into a true collab format and Phoebe tested out her recipe-writing skills.

You can head over and check out the post HERE.

Movies and Tea – Season 2: Guillermo Del Toro

Season 2 for Movies and Tea has officially started. I know that I just posted this yesterday as part of the Halloween Marathon. I have been so proud of this project that I just can’t help to share it in case anyone missed it yesterday. This season, we’re checking out Guillermo Del Toro’s films. For myself, Del Toro got on my radar after Pan’s Labyrinth but how were his films before that one? That is my journey in this Movies and Tea season. Of course, we kick off with his debut directorial feature, Cronos.

As a final shoutout, we are looking for guests this season. Drop me an email at kim.tranquildreams@gmail.com with which of Del Toro’s films you want to talk about and we’ll see if we can work something out.

Halloween Marathon 2018

Halloween Marathon 2018 is done and over with. A lot of films I had planned didn’t happen but still, I still managed to get a few things watched and some new series as well. I’m actually quite pleased with how it turned out especially since there was a mix of reviews and not just movies. Its how I would prefer to do this. If you missed any of it, the Halloween marathon page is updated. You can find it HERE.

NaNoWriMo 2018 – Best of Luck to Participants

As a participant of NaNoWriMo, I always take some time to encourage all of you participating in the month-long grind to get a first draft of a novel written for a grand total of 50,000 words. While I do have an idea that I want to write about, I have decided to not write one. I’m still on the fence so who knows, maybe I’ll still jump in later on. I mean, I have pulled off a homerun week of 30,000 one year so its still possible. However, my plan is to edit a novel that I wrote during NaNoWriMo. Not for publishing, just so that I can get one of these done completely. I know I say it every year but I’ll figure out some way to stuff it into my overloaded schedule as it is. Either way, for you courageous challengers, best of luck! Just remember, that you can do it. Stay on track and remember that editing is the after process. Just keep on writing and 50,000 words will come to you or even more. 🙂

What’s Coming Up – Game Plan

2018 hasn’t exactly gone the way I had anticipated. As some of you have seen, I’ve kind of slowed down operations overall on all the projects this past month (if not the past few months). Reason being that I just wasn’t motivated and it felt like so much other personal life things were weighing down on me that I was just exhausted. In fact, if you look at all the stuff I’ve watched versus how many of those still need to be written, its endless. In terms of movies, I’m relatively on track especially since I do a lot of double features but TV binges are just way behind so much that I’ve started rewatching some of the series in order to do the binge post.

With that said, the new year is in two months. December usually goes out to holiday films. I probably will need some twist to it unless I watch a lot of Hallmark movies. It really depends what Netflix has to offer so I’ll talk about it later. November has that added task mentioned above to edit one of my past novels from NaNoWriMo. I have probably 4 or 5 written. With that said, 2019 means not only that the blogiversary is coming up in mid January but also what changes to be made come the new year. Its been on my mind for a while now since I can’t do everything and keep up with my two other podcasts. Something has to give and its where its getting me in a little bit of an unsure phase of whether its because I just lacked motivation this year that things fell behind or if I had better time management that it would have worked out with the current system.

Anyways, not much of a game plan but the goal is to get a lot of those TV binges and Double Features movie reviews out over the next two months to try to catch up. I’m getting back a lot of the writing motivation so hopefully all the projects will be up and running now. Movies and Tea already is in Season 2 as mentioned before so that is already a positive start!

Cute Kitty Pic

My Weekly Adventures #53

The second half of October has been an interesting one. We’re finally settling into our routine after my husband had a work schedule change. Its also calmed down after vacation so in reality, I almost have nothing to really write about but as I sat here think about the last two weeks, its been pretty awesome overall. I honestly have no other words to describe it. Why? Let’s just jump right in!

Shudder

A few years ago (I can’t remember how many years now), I backed a project on Indiegogo. Possibly one of the last projects I backed there because I didn’t find it as reliable especially when projects got funded regardless of whether they reached the goal or not meaning the chances of the project not cashing out is extremely high. I think I’ve backed 4 projects and at least one of them is probably not going to happen. One I’m fairly certain will cash through as its by two big stars and there is a lot of development updates going on. Regardless, I’ve gotten smarter. We’re not here about Indiegogo but rather a project I backed on there finally came through. Its called Found Footage. Found Footage is available for both 2D and 3D (except we got our 3D glasses mailed to us so early that I have no idea where it is now). It got distribution on Shudder, which is subscription streaming service but focused on horror movies.  You don’t need to sign up to see what movies they have so go ahead and check it out because its great. They have a trial for 7 days and such and its not really expensive. However, I do have Netflix so I kept hesitating and after procrastinating too much, something great actually came out of that and I had an extended trial period. Of course, I went ahead. Nothing beats the incentive of having gotten more free stuff. What I’m curious is how frequent there are new movie selections added and that will be a huge factor in whether I keep this one as a paying member. Regardless, its changed my horror marathon line-up in the final week to say the very least and it will also mean that there will be more horror movie reviews coming up. I have my eye on a few movies such as Seoul Station, Bullhead, Dead Snow, Haunter, Cherry Tree, Martyrs for starters.

Canadian Gaming Expo Montreal

On October 21st and 22nd weekend was the first time that the Canadian Gaming Expo has been held in Montreal. We went for the free event and did a little coverage for the games showed in the expo area. The coverage post will be up on That Moment In shortly but a little delay due to the hiatus last week. For the first time, my husband’s changed schedule now has him being free when these events happens so he can come with me. It was a lot of fun. We found a good parking spot (which is a pretty awesome accomplishment) and had a lot of fun.

Pretty New Things #1: SNES Classic & GT Sport

Wouldn’t this be a great new segment if only I had money to spend? 😉 I’m grateful for everything I have especially since I love to joke about my first world problems as I fully acknowledge that they are. However, I ended up asking my husband what he wanted for  Christmas and asked him whether GT Sport would be good for his early gift and I knew the answer already. He wanted the fancy limited edition steelbook with all the extra bonuses like extra cars and preorder had extra stuff as well. He really enjoyed the beta a few weeks ago and I know the $90 I put into will be put into good use as the replayability usually is worth it since Gran Turismo is one of those games who takes their sweet time to get out their next one to make sure it adds on a lot more improvement and polish and a better experience.

Aside from that, after I talk about being super poor, I need to justify that the stars aligned and I ended up getting a SNES Classic. October 23rd is a heavy day for myself but it was a day that came with so many great stuff and nice things that happened that I was able to forget the heaviness a little.

Pretty New Things #2: Nice Leggings

Have you ever wondered when you change your seasonal clothes that things just vanish? Mine are always leggings.  Luckily, I went to check if there was a sale at Dynamite Clothing and there was! I picked up these Moto Leggings and a pair of basic high rise leggings. They are super comfortable and feels very durable which is thicker so very suitable for the cooler weather.

Friend’s Baby Shower

Last Saturday, a few of our friends got together to celebrate one of my elementary & high school friend’s baby shower. She’s having a baby boy. I’ve never been to a baby shower but being invited to one was pretty fun. We played a few games which was great, won some candy and caught up with everything about her pregnancy and baby and everything else. I couldn’t stay long since I need to get back to the overtime work but it was nice for those few hours to see friends.

Letting Go

Emotionally, it seems this last month or so has been quite crazy. Perhaps not so apparent on the blog although I’ve mentioned it here and there but I’ve been working out some stuff on my own. More like admitting that I can’t do everything and that sometimes, its just that the right thing to do is to let go. It seems October is one of those months who will always be known for that. Anyways, this weekend, I finally let go of this thing that I’ve been trying to pursue. For the last month, my husband and I have been talking about it and working out the feelings about a lot of those issues and its helped me a lot. While I’ve gotten over a lot of it, there’s still some residuals feelings after actually committing to the decision. Anyways, I don’t really want to elaborate on it too much. Its nothing major just something I’ve spent a lot of time and my life working for (something of a hobby) and now choosing to stop.

Why No NaNoWriMo?

For some of you who have been here for at least the last year or so, maybe even followed me because of the NaNoWriMo writing thing, for the first year since 2012 (or 2013..I can’t remember), I’m not doing NaNoWriMo. I don’t mind the hard work and I actually do have an idea on what I’d like to write about, however, this year has been crazy and I not only need a break but instead of writing, I want to use that time to edit one of my previous novels. Its something I have meant to do for years and years. I don’t intend to publish it as an ebook or anything but its been something I’ve always wanted to do. I’m a reader and its been nice to see what being an author feels like to get that imagination and creative juices and really hammering out a novel and figuring out plots and outlines of different genres over the years but authors go through the entire phase and it sounds like a crazy hard time but definitely an experience I’d like to try and see if I can at least have one of those novels edited and get a few drafts until I think its perfect. Plus…I promised my husband and my best friend that I’d stop NaNoWriMo last year and edit so I’m really just following through on that promise to them this year 😉

With that said, if you are doing NaNoWriMo, I’m cheering for you! Keep it up! Know that you can do it! Message me if you ever need any ideas on staying on track or at least how to push through. My 5 years (or more) of experience has taught me a few tricks. Doing word sprints with the WordNerds are one of those tips. Don’t know who the WordNerds are, search them up on Youtube. 😉

Mini Update: Now Till the End of 2017

I had wrapped up this post and was thinking about now till the end of the year! December, or a good part of it, will be working on a holiday marathon/themed month. Phoebe and I have already started thinking about the Battle of Ingredients menu. I guess the update really is for November. With NaNoWriMo out of the picture and Game Warp needing to get back on track, November is going to have heavy focus on getting a lot of the backlog cleared up. I have screeners and unfinished books and TV Binges that need to be written and a few movies that I haven’t reviewed either. Its going to be a busy trek to the end of 2017, especially with my mind already feeling like making a few changes here.

With that said, as always in November and December, I ask you what brings you to Tranquil Dreams? 🙂

Cute Kitty Pic

Coming up: 

• MTL a Table (in place of the Battle of Ingredients)
• Movie Reviews & TV Binges
• Book reviews

My Weekly Adventures #33: NaNoWriMo Recap!

We’re in the last month of 2016! December is finally here!
I’m still trying to process that. But then, I’m still trying to process a lot and I just wrote 50,000 words so you know what? Vlog time!

I know I always bail out but this time, I actually do have something I feel I can only express verbally to recap NaNoWriMo properly. Its been a long time since I’ve vlogged so excuse me if it turns out bad.  Here we go!

Links:
Parlor of Horror
Poetry, Books, Movies and Music

Related posts:
Black Friday Haul

Thanks for watching! Hope you enjoyed!
Would you like more of these vlog style My Weekly Adventures? 

Also, forgot to mention but the holiday marathon is coming up soon! Just need to get some last minute planning done!

My Weekly Adventures #32: Getting Organized!

We’re getting things more organized here! My Weekly Adventures will be numbered from now on! At least that way there isn’t a confusion and it kind of gives it less of the same title over and over again. I will try to add a little something to make it highlight what the part is about.

November is the month when I start thinking about the next year so that is exactly what I’m doing. I still can’t exactly believe that 2016 is almost finished! Christmas decorations need to go up soon and everything is being in preparation mode for December! I mean, everything!

Let’s start!

NaNoWriMo Progress

The beast I need to talk about first is NaNoWriMo. It is the highlight of November. This is my sixth NaNoWriMo and if when I finish, it will be the fifth one I completed. It also means, I need to work on some editing. Both my husband and best friend has asked about reading some of it. There has to be one story that I feel can be made into something a little more presentable. Maybe not for the public eye but at least friends and family that have to put up with my disappearance and sudden running off because I need to do word sprints.

NaNoWriMo is going pretty well! As I’m writing this up, I haven’t started the writing for the day but I’m at 21,156. I’m about 500 words behind provided I get the word count today. The story hasn’t hit a snag just yet but I did fall behind as I had to restructure a little of the outline as I work up on the first turning point. Thrillers are super hard to write. For those who don’t know, I’ve pretty much wrote a different genre of novel every year so far. The most promising goes to last year’s so far. I still think about how to make it better. This year is all about a thriller and those are super hard because its being able to keep a plot going but having a second thing going on where there are hints. It kind of happened just because I decided the day before I started to mesh two ideas and couldn’t decide. I’m sure it’ll work out.

On a better note, all this work has turned me into a super efficiently organized person. Apparently, when time becomes super scarce, I just go crazy on structuring my to-do list. All good things! I’ll do a recap at the end of the month. I feel like I’ve grown much more this time than ever and its only half a month. Plus, I’m still relatively on track which is a record on its own! Let’s not get overconfident though ;).

MTL a Table

Another year of MTL a Table has passed. We went to three dining restaurants and expanded our group to a three couple and one baby foodie adventure. We ended it with a little brunch (that unfortunately didn’t have the complete group). That post is going up tomorrow! There’s always so much to try and decide on and this year was no exception. I have my eyes on a few restaurants for next year. So far, those restaurants haven’t had menus that work for me yet. This year’s choices were still pretty good. They were all unique in their own way to say the very least. Plus, it was with great company. We keep to ourselves quite a bit, mostly due to schedule and being busy with our own little stuff so its nice to hang out with friends when we get a chance.

We are already looking at the next Montreal foodie event! It might be in a few months though.

ShirtPunch finally came in!

 

It took more than a month to get processed and sent here but I finally got it from ShirtPunch! You know what? It was worth the wait because it looks so awesome! I had my issues with Life is Strange but there are so many charming elements of it as well. A truly memorable experience.

Planning for 2017

I can’t ever remember how much I’ve talked about on this. I talked about domain and all that stuff earlier in the year. Don’t worry about it. It is still something I’m working on. There’s never something that pops out at me yet and I want to make a banner and stuff to make it all look more professional and fun! Just look at the sad YouTube channel page, for example, it would have multipurpose. I’m uploading more stuff there, like game playthroughs and unboxing primarily. There is actually going to be more stuff there soon. I’m working on the next thing right now. Its something that I’ve been thinking about for the last year so its nice to want to do something more.

As for 2017, there may be some finalizing the change in direction of what I’m doing. For one, there may be more video content, maybe less movie reviews and more focus on lifestyle. Although, to be fair, my lifestyle includes a lot of movie, TV and books so you won’t see it going away any time soon. Especially since I just started exploring the world of visual novels. Plus, I have to get back to those abandoned projects that I haven’t done anything for in a while.

If it isn’t crazy enough right now, my husband and I are setting up something new right now. Funnily enough, I made a banner for that already. Just need a thumbnail logo.

Lots of stuff in the horizon, my lovelies! My question for you all: What do you like reading here? 

Cute  Sleepy Kitty Moment

What are you up to? Getting ready for Christmas yet?
Help me out and tell me what you like checking out here!

My Weekly Adventures: Another NaNoWriMo Begins!

Welcome back to another My Weekly Adventures! It feels like forever that I’ve done an actual post on this and not just a random vacation or announcement post. It feels good to be back with this.

Lets get going!

Halloween month!

Halloween is finally over! It was a fun run learning all about Scream and Evil Dead franchises. It also had a few rough moments but it was great to finally see what this is all about. I didn’t get as much as I had wanted to do especially in the reading part or even TV part but work and real life kind of took over and they usually take priority. Still, a ton of you dropped by to comment and like and show your love for both the franchises. Thank you so very very much! I appreciate it. I actually just wrapped up Scream Season 2 so a TV Binge should be coming up fairly soon. I did try my absolutely best to keep a little fall themes going to not just be all horror.

I have already started brainstorming new franchise (s) to cover next year. My awesome Game Warp co-host Elwood suggested Candyman trilogy. I didn’t know that there were three movies so I will have to try to figure that out. Definitely a good choice. I am also looking at Final Destination or Joy Ride. Or maybe totally just changing it up and going back to random horrors. Any suggestions?

NaNoWriMo month!

I can’t believe that it is already November. This year went by so fast. November also means that its time for a month to construct another novel that I won’t get around to edit. I really should. This year, I have two ideas floating about. Something of a thriller. I never wrote one of those and I am not sure if I am up for it. The ideas are more drafts and to write 50000 words feels like a stretch for either of the plots. I always make it work. NaNoWriMo is the time I use to try out writing and formulating different genres so it could be a nice challenge. I will keep you all filled in. If any of you are also part of NaNoWriMo and want to be writing buddies, we definitely should to keep each other accountable.  Talking about that, in the hour before NaNoWriMo took off in the Eastern time zone at midnight, I went hunting down to see if Word Nerds was doing some more word sprints. They helped me out so much last year. In fact, it got me into a habit of even doing word sprints on my own when I couldn’t make it. And they did have one with Write All Year as a Twitter word sprint and I joined in for a 15 minutes then 30 minutes word sprint and hit my word count for day one and a little over.

As I got ready for bed, I have a good idea of even how to possibly mesh the two plots I was thinking about together. Just change the setting and voila! Lets hope that it all works out! Let the writing begin. I’m embracing what they call “Plantser. I got a vague outline/idea and basically winging most of it.

November Plans

With all that said, my life will mostly be consumed with work and home stuff and preparing for winter and Christmas. I can’t believe I am already talking about that. I do have lots of material all ready to be written and as usual some festivals to visit. It might not all be exciting but I am trying out something a little different on this month. It isn’t a far stretch from anything I have done just getting up to date with times and what I have time to do. This month primarily will be jumping back in time to review some 90s teen comedies and the likes. Not sure why. Perhaps all the stress at work made me more inclined to do so and it works well with a stressful November with a genre that is not what I am writing. NaNoWriMo means that I might not have as much time to write for the blog as regularly. I’m trying to keep things simple and light. Hopefully you all understand. 🙂 I also started planning for December which might be a little different from the normal holiday movies (since I’m running a little short on choices). That will be for the December update though.

Cute Kitty Moment

 

Upcoming:

• Event: MTL a Table
• Movies: 90s movies and other random stuff

My Weekly Adventures: Its December!

Its been a month since the last post.  Right on time in my mind actually. I had started to draft a mid-month progress update adventures post but then I decided that I wasn’t really up to it.

Did a lot of stuff happen? Not really… but you know, nothing kickstarts brainstorming in everything else (aside from the novel) like NaNoWriMo month.

What do you say we keep a little structure here? We try to keep this at every 1st and 15th? If I have enough stuff to talk about… but at least it’ll make me try to go somewhere other than work and home and I do anticipate a few other events going to happen. Talking about that, I should be getting that seasonal post together for winter events that I’d like to highlight in and around Montreal 🙂

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves and get you all updated with all the fun stuff..its not really a lot 😉

1) NaNoWriMo — I DID IT!!

At the beginning of this experience this year, we got this personal achievement of whether we’re a plotter or a pantser. You know what, I’m kind of in between because I did have this idea before and I did some fifties over at my other blog, which is pretty much inactive for the past 3 months, but will revive after this. But, I’m definitely a pantser because my story is spiraled in a very spontaneous direction.  I think about it a lot but I never outline anything.  Maybe thats why week 2 for me was tough because I started feeling like road blocks were in view.  Its a scary thought. However, I’ve never been so calm and collected and actually confident about this novel.  Temporarily its titled The World’s End. My guess is I’d find something better later on.

On the third week, that’s when it all fell apart.  My husband had a week of vacation and I decided to spend time with it and I ended up being a week behind on the word count and it was crazy to try to build it back from there. On top of that, the road blocks actually appeared and I started feeling like some scenarios were pointless and ridiculous.  I ended Week 3 strong with a good word count, pulling the days behind a little closer.  Its also when I implemented personal word sprints and sprinting with live WordNerds sprints.  Those helped so much.  Thanks to that, I reached the goal of beating my last year’s ending time.  I finished just a little after midnight landing my winning on November 30th but hey, I wanted to finish it up and I did! For once, I feel like this is worthy of some time to edit and maybe I’ll post it up little by little.  I kid you not, there is a lot of hard work to put in to work on this one, maybe even some remapping of events but its going to happen 😉

But hey, that doesn’t matter so much but the significance is really that I will be catching up to everyone’s posts that I’ve missed out in the past month!

2) Sherbrooke met la Table/Sherbrooke Restaurant Week + December events

Thank you SO MUCH for being awesome with the MTL a Table coverage.  Its double as fun when I see those posts really working out. I have fun and it seems that a lot of you drop by to check it out and I’ve had a few new likes from other foodies.

With that hype going on, my husband and I decided to do one day of Sherbrooke met a table event in the city of Sherbrooke, which is about 1.5 hours drive away. I love driving down that area because its absolutely beautiful and calm.  Plus, we’re there to try new restaurants and eat a lot. It was so enjoyable to just spend time together there and talk about all sorts of random stuff.

If you missed those posts on the restaurants, its for two very creative and unique places called OMG Resto and Overflow Restaurant .

3) Christmas is here!!!

We got a bit of snow this week.  What better time than the last day of my NaNo sprint on the 29th to go pull out all of my Christmas decorations and put up the Christmas tree. But that’s just me. There’s still some hanging up lights around to deal with but a little sneak peek 😉

I’ll have a full home decorations thing up later on. We really stepped up our game this year so its just ton of fun.  I’m getting some crafty things done soon, just missing a few supplies.  Plus, we’re hosting the family Christmas dinner this year so that should be interesting. Its going to be a potluck and everyone took dibs on the actual meal so I have the task of whipping up some fantastic desserts.

What do you like to have for Christmas desserts? Is there a go-to dessert that you make?

4) What’s Up for December!

I know there’s not a lot going on to talk about for this month.  Mostly it was a lot of sitting down and finding time to get the novel writing thing down.  However, I did stay relatively on track with the Netflix A-Z! I do plan have a few new releases theatre visits.  Not sure how many. Star Wars tickets are bought so that’s a certain one.  Krampus is one I’m looking forward to also.  And I’d like to find time to fit in The Good Dinosaur.

Netflix A-Z is nearing its end.  We have X-Z left.  The goal is wrap it up with in the next two weeks.  After that (or simultaneously), I’ll start up the holiday themed month. The big question is what movies to watch.  I’ve reviewed a lot of Christmas movies before and now its just searching up movies from Netflix that are extremely random.  This month, I’m aiming for some more popular choices like Scrooged, Gremlins and some other horror with Christmas in it.  I can’t remember it. Its part of my husband’s movie collection.  I might need to add a little twist to this.  However, the goal is to bring back baking so expect some Christmas baking. I really want to put together a Christmas log so hoping I’ll get that done 😉

5) Music!

We’re keeping this short and sweet so I can plan out the rest of the week! I found this tune listening to a Youtuber (Gassy Mexican) on their livestream and it has a awesome tune! It just pumps me up and gets all my creative juices going!

Upcoming:

• Netflix A-Z: Letters X-Z
• Winter Events in Montreal
• Snow White themed baking (getting at least one done so that I can focus on this project next year.)
• A few independent book reviews (6 more books to go to complete the Goodreads Reading Challenge)
• Christmas everything: Decorations, baking, crafts, movies (I’ll try to do everything)

Happy Tuesday, my lovelies! 🙂

My Weekly Adventures: Wrap-ups, Beginnings, And Reviving Updates

Welcome back to another My Weekly Adventures.  I should change this to biweekly adventures, right? I will, for the next one. I probably won’t be scheduling anything more than every two weeks.  We are in a huge update post today!

I’ve been thinking about the blog a lot lately.  Well, I always think about the blog but its nearing the end of the year and my choices of how to continue the blog become more prioritized than the past few months of the year.  Especially  now that the wedding is over and everything is settling down, I’m really getting back to feeling a little more myself.

So let’s jump into the updates!!

1) DONE: Halloween Marathon!

Can you believe it? It was shorter than expected but we got the entire highlight series done and reviewed.

There was two horror-ish book review posts, and two movies from Netflix A-Z (4 if you could Nanny McPhee as a witch and wrap up into the Halloween-ish thing). And then a few other movies.  Along with that, our podcast over at That Moment In was all about Halloween as well.  We covered Tremors (which I also did a review for) and 28 Days Later. Then we ended it with having some fun more casual posts.  One was about Halloween as a celebration (not the franchise) and Scary Moments in movies. Overall, I rather success month of horror (even if it was technically like 3 weeks or so).

If you missed any posts, check it out at the page HERE!

2) Halloween Haunted House!

Since Halloween marathon is pretty much done and I’m being lazy, I’m going to skip doing an entire post on my Halloween activities.

We did something different this year and other than doing the MTL a Table with friends, we also headed to visit some haunted houses. I did one of them and the other one, I skipped because I wasn’t sure if I’d survive it 😉

1st : Westmount area of Montreal

I kid you not, this house was pretty much pitch black outside and inside was eeriely designed and full of movie referenced rooms from newer ones like Cooties to older movies like The Ring and I think, Christine.  Maybe even some Halloween/Michael Myers thing.  It was a last minute decision and this place has been putting up 41 years of haunted houses on Halloween.  This is its final year so it deserved a visit and it was so worth it! 🙂

Second one was a little closer to my place on the suburbs in La Prairie area and it was done a lot more “Hollywood”-esque as my friend called it.  More noise, more lights, more people dressed up during the walk.  I didn’t do this one because I wasn’t sure if we’d go through the house and they had some funky designs up in the windows.  Look up..yup, zombies? Excuse me…*shakes head* no.  That’s all I’m saying.  And they even had this ending where they had a zombie with a briefcase walking down the alley.  It was crazy. Huge applaud to the efforts.  My friends thought it was a bit loud but got startled a few times.

That was my Halloween nights. Did you do any Halloween haunted houses?

3) BEGINNING: NaNoWriMo!

With the end of the Halloween marathon and waving goodbye to October, we arrive at November.  For some of you who have followed me for the last few years, every year since 2012 or so, I’ve been joining into NaNoWriMo.  While I seriously contemplated giving it up this year, I just couldn’t because I honestly think I finally have a really good idea.  Maybe you may have had brainstorming hints in fifties over at my other blog, Days Nights & Daydreams. If you haven’t, I have been working on three storylines so far. Which did I choose? Well, that’s a secret 😉 If it becomes something I like, I’ll probably edit it and release it chapter by chapter at my other blog though.

I haven’t had such a charged idea or ideas in a long time.  Usually they leave my mind and then I get lost while I’m writing.  I feel really enthusiastic about any of these plots. It’ll be fun! I’m absolutely psyched about it!

Its GO time! The goal this year (as it is every year): STAY ON TRACK! 😉

If you are doing NaNoWriMo, Best of luck to you! Happy writing! 🙂

4) RETURNING: Projects, Baking, Cooking!

Going back to the thought of thinking about the direction of Tranquil Dreams.  I’ve been focussing a lot on movies and books.  Its great and I love it! Talking movies and books with all of you is fantastic.  But my roots are photography, baking, cooking and artsy crafty things. Moving and being disorganized has honestly stopped me from catching up on these things. The house is finally getting organized and the last room to do our own organization is the kitchen where I can get all my baking stuff in one spot and in cupboards that I can reach.  Its still a work in progress but we added this little baking counter to solve a good bit of my problems!

And I have baking and cooking projects tentatively scheduled to go up.

First priority goes to the Disney Baking Project that I haven’t done much with.  What I will do is post up a few more reviews for Disney movies and move through the baking side accordingly. Its a little more creative so I need to give a little more thought before diving in.

Fact is, I feel a little lost without simply baking.  I’m a little more stressed and more worried about everything without it.  Its weird that baking takes me into that space of sweet joy.   Everyday I think about it and then realize how I’ll get frustrated because everything is gone and vanished and it’ll take triple the time it used to to make something as simple as banana bread or cookies, so I stop and sit down to do something else.

But, things are picking up and we’re reviving all of those things.  I even want to do a little drinks section.  Its a desire at most now.  We’ll see what happens 🙂

Tranquil Dreams is heading back into the days of Glow in the Dark Cupcakes and Cloud Cakes and Hamburger Cupcakes.  Are you excited? Because I sure am!

5) WordPress: Home of Tranquil Dreams for 5 years!

This is nothing official.  I didn’t start using the blog and making it active with posts until January 19th or something so thats my actual blogiversary but I always love seeing WordPress notify me every October 23rd of how long this has been my blogging home. The friends I’ve made and the posts I’ve read.  The inspiration all of you and this space has been in my life.  I’m evening getting the opportunity to branch out into doing podcasts.  It seems like this 5 year milestone is marking a lot of new beginnings and it makes me love every bit of it more.  As you can see, I’m revamping the blog a little for 2016 right in time for the official 5 years celebration.

With all that up there, I may be planning 2016 and there might probably be some changes.

6) Events this month!!

In November, I like to prove that I’m superwoman. What can I say? Somehow, this year, I’m rather pumped up about it. So, I might end up skipping Le Grande Degustation.  We’ll see the scheduling.  All depends on my husband since I refuse to drink THAT much wine tasting by myself. At a certain point, it won’t be enjoyable anymore.

However, we do have plans set for MTL a Table (which has already started) and we will likely be heading to Sherbrooke mets a table.  This is probably the equivalent of the MTL a Table food festival but in the Sherbrooke/Eastern Townships area.

If there are any other festivals, it’ll be a surprise 😉

UPCOMING:

• Resuming Netflix A-Z: next letters Q, R, S, T (at least)
• Disney Baking Project
• Music Obsessions & Pinterest Therapy

November: NaNoWriMo Recap & December Announcement!

December is starting (or started for some of you) already!

First things first, I beat my own record (time-wise) and yes, I won another year of NaNoWriMo with a lot of hard time especially in the last few days. I tried my absolute best and kept it up for about 2 weeks for staying right on track.  Then the third week was disastrous and I wrote like a few hundred words in a week and had to go absolutely nuts this past week writing till 3am every night then waking up to go to work, writing on the bus and at lunch and coming home.  Eventually, on Saturday night my body crashed and I had some weird food poisoning thing. Still, I made it at 2pm this afternoon.  Which is definitely a new record for me because my earliest was like 8pm or something last year.  YAY! I’m done! I can go back to a normal sleeping schedule! 🙂

Pointe a calliere Museum

Aside from NaNoWriMo having a few revelations, the whole Photography 101 was pretty nice too.  It gave me a whole lot of motivation.  I still have the last day on last Friday’s to put up, probably tomorrow.  Still, I tried to check out some new blogs and it was an inspiring exercise.  It helped me add some routine and keep the activity going here. If you happened to have missed any of it, I added a tab Photo101 up there under Photo Challenges. Feel free to check that out. The monochrome photography one was the best experience in this whole thing because it was refreshing and different from my normal ways.

Enough about November! Lets move to December announcement!

Did you notice its snowing on my blog again? I love it!

December means Christmas/Holiday month!

That includes movie marathon, of course!

This year is going to be a bit different because I’m all Christmas movied out on my own collection, so I’m picking some from my boyfriend’s since we just combined our collection together.  Plus, I’ve searched up a few really peculiar ones on Netflix but I’m going to expand it a little to some focused around winter.  I want to do a few lists. We’ll see how that goes.

Since we’re on movies, I was wondering if you all think its a good idea to search up movies released in the past years during the Christmas season. You know, like Titanic? Is there even a place where I can search that up? Ideas? That might be a good twist on this holiday movie marathon business.

Baking is definitely back! I really need it! 🙂 I have a few cooking projects as well.

Book reviews will be back.  Probably not very Christmas orientated but I have a prior commitment to a writer to review their book, which is the first on my list.  And, Goodreads reading challenge: Super behind.  Need to read a good 5 books throughout this month.

Also, I have a wintery exhibit I’m waiting to take place this coming weekend and share with everyone 🙂

I’ll try to not bombard you with anything too crazy. I do have a few other non-holiday reviews I plan on doing, but I’m working on it.

Updates and Changes

I mentioned it in my Weekly Adventures last time, I think, but I’m still working hard on some long-term project ideas for next year.  Hopefully, I’ll get a blogging poll to see what you think.

I’m all written out from the past month so I’ll keep this short! 🙂

I’m excited for December, aren’t you?