Its time for a Meowbox unboxing for the January 2018 month. A few goodies for my darling cat to enjoy with a New Year’s theme. Let’s check it out!
If you drop by here to watch unboxing videos, here’s a little notice for you. I’m taking a break from unboxing videos for a while as I aim to somewhat “declutter” my house slightly. We have too many unused cat toys and trying to get ready for some spring cleaning and see what I will keep and give away. I’ve been actually pondering getting foodie boxes instead. Meowbox will however come back probably later this year once everything has been sorted out and our home is not a one stop shop of cat toys and treats. While this is only quarterly, you’d be surprised how these things do pile up. Just a little notice in case you start wondering where its all gone.
The channel will however get some new style content that I’m thinking about right now. A few ideas will get test runs probably in February and see how it goes and we’ll adjust and adapt as the year goes along. As usual, any video ideas or content or even boxes you think I’d like that comes to mind, just drop a comment and I’ll try to make it happen.
The Meowbox arrived last week and its finally uploaded and ready! Like last year, its Halloween themed, which fits perfectly into our Halloween month. Or wait…as Meowbox says, Meowlloween 😉
A surprise Meowbox unboxing today! Earlier this week, I received this September box which I didn’t order since mine is due for next month. After contacting customer service to make sure I didn’t have someone else’s box, they explained the situation. Long story short, this turned into a little gift for us. A lovely gesture even if it was an error that caused it. However, I appreciate a ton. Next box will still come as planned but we have this one in the meantime. More unboxing vids! That makes me happy!
Sorry for the tiny delay in getting this one done. It was intended to go up faster but you know, time and schedule is always an issue. Point is: its here! This month’s Meowbox is very much summery and my cat is loving it so far.
Let’s check it out!
That’s it for the Meowbox! Thanks so much for watching!
Finally, the next unboxing is here! Its going to be really slow in the unboxing department this year. I only have two quarterly subscriptions left with Meowbox and FabFitFun! Today is the arrival of the April 2017 Meowbox and there’s quite a few goodies and one particularly rather interesting item. Followed by some play time with my cat at the end of the footage. Hope you enjoy! 🙂
This holiday marathon is going at an exceptionally snail pace but don’t you worry. I am trying to get my Christmas/winter/holidays stuff up here, even if it isn’t holiday movies. To be honest, I kind of just want to go back to the classics and not linger too much on these other movies. However, A Dogwalker’s Christmas Tale looks cute to say the least. I mean, pets are always welcome for festival season or any season at that.
A Dogwalker’s Christmas Tale (2015)
Director: Letia Clouston
Cast: Lexi Giovagnolia, Jonathan Bennett, Dina Meyer, Patrick Muldoon, Jennifer Joseph, Timeca M. Seretti, Tim Hess
When spoiled, 21-year old college student Luce Lockhart is forced to take a job over the holidays walking a rich developer’s dog, she is thrilled to discover they are going to build a salon and spa over the quaint local dog park nearby. But when Luce meets Dean, an irritating yet handsome dogwalker actively trying to stop them, Luce is forced to question what the park means to her newfound friends, and whether she can put aside her selfish ways to help save the park before Christmas. – IMDB
I remember the first time seeing A Dogwalker’s Christmas Tale pop up on my Netflix page and wondered what would make a movie like this appealing. Sure, there is the above factors I mentioned. Dogs are always a welcoming addition to any movie. Then the second reason popped up and that is Jonathan Bennett, probably most widely known for his role as the boy in Mean Girls. I love Mean Girls and surprisingly, I have seen a few other movies after Mean Girls of Jonathan Bennett. He’s not my favorite actor but I like his roles and his work. There’s a genuine feeling about him, whether it was in Love Wrecked with Amanda Byne (review) or Christmas Crush with Rachel Boston (review). Adding into a simple story in A Dogwalker’s Christmas Tale, it all seems to work out. Actually, regardless of how some parts seem rather contrived at parts, there is still a lot of heartwarming and fun moments.
A lot of the story’s charm goes to Jonathan Bennett playing as Dean and our main character, Luce who we realize has everything and doesn’t quite understand the need of the dog park. As the story continues, we as the experienced viewers already know that she’s going to be the one that will somehow save the dog park, or at least take it upon her to do it and realize the worth of it by the end. However, the merit of this movie that gives it a lot of feel good points is the journey to get there. The interaction and dialogue and chemistry that builds between her and Dean and even her growing love for these furry friends all play into this. Luce is a flawed character but only these characters can grow, regardless of how predictable it is and actually, this movie focuses on how she yearns for “substance” in her personality and we realize that she does have a lot when she doesn’t only care about shopping but puts her traits to good use. Lessons, message, feel-good, heartwarming and a little romance gives this story a nice little boost.
Of course, we can’t leave this movie without Missy, played by Dina Meyer who is the employer of Luce and her and her husband, played by Patrick Muldoon, plan on building the spa in the dog park area. The friction is here and the dilemma for Luce starts here as she eventually becomes torn on finding the balance between pleasing her employer as they have powerful positions in society and possibly her future and doing the right thing. But we’re here to talk about Missy Paxton and Dina Meyer does a fine job at giving a lot of enthusiasm and charisma to this character.
Overall, A Dogwalker’s Christmas Tale really does need to be taken apart. Its supposed to be just watched as a heartwarming little movie with the best intentions. There are some fun performances and some nice interactions and a little chemistry and lots of furry little pets. As predictable as this all is, the feel-good heartwarming element that a Christmas movie needs is exactly what I needed and liked about this one.
Welcome to the unboxing of Meowbox! I did one roughly three months ago HERE. Back then, I had debated whether to get another one but the people at Meowbox were fantastic and helped me out a lot to get a plan that worked for me and they offered the quarterly plan and that is perfect. I love my cat and her being entertained is fantastic but I also don’t want my floors to be littered with her toys because she just has too many choices. Between you and me, the last box still has a few toys I haven’t used yet. However, its always fun to do these unboxing.
This was supposed to be an unboxing video but there was a technical issue that I’m working to do some research to now use as a test to learn a new editing skill. Hopefully next time, the setup will work better.
Let’s check out the Meowbox Unboxing! And of course, if you don’t care about the unboxing, there are some fun pics of my cat playing with her new toys! 🙂
Meowbox [July 2016]
For those of you who didn’t see the last unboxing, Meowbox actually also customizes the box to your own little feline friends.
Now for the goodies!
World Friendship Day Card
Meowbox Cat Toy
Simple as it is, Meowbox’s little cat toy is made really well. The first toy my cat took from the Meowbox was this one and its found all over the house here and there. She’ll play with it whenever she feels like it.
Jellyfish Cat Toy by Angel Kitty Toys [Exclusive]
I thought it was an Octopus until I was putting this together now and realized that it doesn’t have eight tentacles but rather its obviously a jellyfish. Minor details, right? My cat found a fondness for this as you will see at the bottom. These toys so far are all filled with catnip (I guess) because she just falls in love with it.
Nine Lives Can Cover
Nine Lives Can Cover is for a promotion for an upcoming movie called Nine Lives with Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Garner and Christopher Walken. On the flip side of the card, there is actually a link to go see if there’s an advanced screening available in the area, which I do in Montreal. Luckily it doesn’t collide with any Fantasia Festival movies so I’m going to go check it out! 🙂 As for the can cover, my cat doesn’t eat wet cat food so I’m going to be giving that my in-laws for their kitty’s special treats.
Felt Snake by le Sharma Eco-friendly Pet Toys
As you can already see, curiosity already got my cat here. The felted snake hasn’t been sent out to its death yet but I have a feeling when it does, its not going to be pretty.
Baldi Mouse by Bavarian Cat Toys
The cat toy that caught my attention was this one. Baldi Mouse is filled with German Valerian Root and Spelt. Its interesting to me because for humans normally Valerian Root helps sleep but in this case, for cats, it has a Valerian Effect that “encourages cats to play”. I think that’s a pretty cool thing and also makes me want to look into Valerian root and just what different types they are and all that fun stuff.
Jambalaya Snapz by FeelGood Treats [Exclusive]
Last in the box is some cat treats by FeelGood Treats called Jambalaya Snapz. Its an all natural gourmet baked treats for cats.
Kitty Play Time!
Overall, this month’s Meowbox was cool. It has some fun items. It is still a lot of toys but at least its all stuff that my cat does like. She’s having lots of fun with it right now.
Its been a while since I’ve had Pinterest Therapy.
Today has been a horrible day completely out of proportion. Maybe its because NaNoWriMo has really killed me. I apparently don’t get inspired till about 11pm at night and even after 2 hours of writing, then its 1am and then sleeping only a little bit and heading to work is kind of crazy. Along with that, work has been a basketful (more like a shipping container full) of crazy. I’m ready for vacation right now, but already used those up. Well, with nothing much else to do about it. I figured a Pinterest Therapy session would be good. Especially since I’ve been spending a lot of time there of late 🙂
1) Ultimate Cuteness Overload
Nothing starts off a good Pinterest session like some cute animals and this is oodles of it 🙂 I’m already smiling a lot just going “Awwww…” over and over again.
2) Tulips in a Vase
Did I just blow your mind with this? I love pretty flowers. Spring bulbs are absolutely fantastic. I’m thinking about spring while autumn is here because it gets me a step closer to warmer weather next year. Imagine planting bulbs inside? That idea makes me excited 🙂 Plus, I just bought a bunch of ’em and couldn’t find enough space in the garden to plant them all. Next project idea 🙂
3) Spaghetti Squash Pad Thai
Its a pity that the link for this doesn’t work anymore. But still, thats a pretty awesome idea. I’d use spaghetti squash as actual pasta replacement but vermicelli is actually noodles of sorts so spaghetti squash is a great choice to replace it. Maybe I’ll try it out one day 🙂 First things first, let me attempt to make a normal pad thai first.
Whats a little pinterest with some food, right?
And you know whats coming up next, do ya?
4) North Pole Cupcakes
You got it! Whats dinner without dessert? I’m compiling my Christmas baking stuff. I seriously miss baking A LOT! I haven’t baked in so long. I’m starting to question my baking capabilities when I look at a recipe. But its my absolute peace of mind. When I bake, everything vanishes. All my problems just go poof! Life is just so beautiful.
What are your must-have Christmas baked goods?
5) DIY Christmas Ornaments
A new home means a lot of new stuff. Sure, we got a lot of hand me downs. But my boyfriend and I are massive Christmas people. We love the holiday and we’re getting into the mood by already purchasing our Christmas tree 2 weeks ago. With a big tree, we got very little hand me down ornaments so I’m on a mission to make all my decorations. I bought a lot of plain baubles to decorate. I’ve done it as two gifts for family. Now its time to do it for my own home. Pinterest has lots of cute ideas and I’m pretty excited to start working on it 🙂
6) Quotes: Fairy Tales & Creating our sunshine
Nothing like ending Pinterest with some inspirational quotes. Fairy tales, love them!
Second quote reminds me of this post. This is one of my ways of creating my own sunshine 🙂
Sitting around looking back at the past week, its been consumed with my house, boyfriend, horror movie marathon, catching up on TV and writing posts and of course, work. Time is really a scarce resource, my friends.
Still, I’ve learned a few thing this week even if its not even having to step out of my neighborhood 😉
Lets see what I’ve been up to, right?
1) Marathoning at the max!
October Halloween Horror month is what set off the blog in 2012 and its what motivates. I know that a lot of you are interested in this genre so every year I try to up my game. This weekend I had some crazy motivation and got through 4 films in the rundown. I know, I know, a deserve a pat on the back. Wait until you see what else I got done 😉
The movies were interesting to say the least. I already posted up the Friday 13th Part 2 review this morning. I pretty much have one more movie to watch to complete this week. Although, I’m actually thinking about whether to do a few weekend reviews or just do a few double review days. I usually try to avoid weekends since the posts never are popular because we’re all generally busy with our own lives.
2) TV time!
Who’d have thought after watching so many movies, I’d still have time for TV, right? Well, yeah, sacrificing sleep or just pure insomnia week is where I’m at. So I’m finishing up Arrow Season 2. I only have maybe 5-7 episodes to go which should be land me right in time for Wednesday for Season 3.
Other than that, I started Vampire Diaries Season 6. Its interesting to say the least. From how Season 5 ended, I figured everyone would be yet again grieving in their own separate ways (and this time, its pretty literal). I’m not a hard audience to please when it comes to Vampire Diaries so I was relatively happy with it. I do hope that things intensify gradually because I can see things getting a lot worse before they get better as is always the case with Vampire Diaries 😉
I do intend on eventually checking out How to Get Away With Murder and Gotham. Before that, I’m going to work on Arrow 😉
3) House: New Lights
One of the biggest successes this week is finally having the basement done. Its just having my two DVD shelves over and arranging all the stuff into it but in general, its painted, the new wall lights (from Rona) were installed, trimmings done, furniture arranged and even bought a floor lamp (from IKEA) to help with lighting up the room a little. Its feels pretty good to know that almost everything is in place for the basement. I even managed to rearrange the storage in shelves and started putting a video games away. Its rewarding to look at the basement and be pleased that its finally coming around.
Only one more room to do and thats the kitchen. Along with my furniture to come in and a bunch of organization but its definitely coming along nicely 🙂
4) House: Cabinet decoration
Things are slowly coming out of the boxes and my room is looking more and more empty as things are boxed up at my new place. The first floor is technically done safe for what I mentioned before, organization. Now that the garden is all transplanted with a few little decisions left and a whole lot of leaves raking, I was indoors taking care of pulling things out. IKEA had a lovely sale on a glass cabinet and we bought that a few weeks ago so I couldn’t leave it so sad and empty in its corner. Here’s how it turned out:
Yup, thats a Yuna from Final Fantasy on the top and yes, those are the original My Little Ponies at the bottom. Nothing is extremely valuable as in I’ll be able to sell it off and get back a lot of money but its valuable because of the memories it holds whether from person who I got it from, the travels or just parts of my life 🙂 Its not exactly done but I think its 90% there.
5) Yummy Lamb Chops
The weather gets cooler and my mom loves to make lamb. Sunday night, she made lamb chops and they were absolutely delicious. 🙂
6) Cat Napping Time
Let me introduce you to a Saturday morning at 8:30am (because we all wake up at 7am to feed my cat), especially after a few late evenings away from home during the week. The result is not only being waken up brutally early on Saturday morning but that when I crawl back into bed, she’ll finish eating and then comes back for her morning nap and usually is her obstructing me from getting up. Apparently my blanket covered legs are extremely comfortable to sleep on.
7) Music!
There’s really nothing else that happened other than those little things so how about to end things off with some music that I love this week 🙂
Daniel de Bourg is an independent artist and this new single is awesome! 🙂 Plus, when in doubt, Jason Mraz is a sure fire 😉
How was your past week? TV? Horror marathon also? Any Halloween traditions? Also going through home renovations?
A lot to talk about this week. Well, kind of! Lets just get straight to the 8 little bits and pieces 😉
1) End of Fantasia Film Festival 2014
I had a blast at Fantasia Film Festival this year. After 11 movies, I learned a lot about myself and the way I understood movies and just a lot about movies and their purposes in general. If you want to check my reviews, click on the menu and Movies, Festivals, Fantasia 😉
If not, here is the list of the movies and I’ll link it to the reviews I’ve done and update as it goes!
I still have 1 movie to review for the festival. They will be going up soon!
2) Resuming workout
There is nothing to say but that I’ve really taken a LONG break from working out. I still go out to bike rides and did some jogging in between but I’m ready to get right back into it now. This week, I got in two 20 minutes yoga sessions and some other activities which I’ll talk about in a little bit later of this post! Here’s the awesome yoga sessions if you’re interested:
Starting next week, I should resume with the 4 weeks Nike Training Club program (if everything goes as planned), I might just boost up my strength with some random circuits first and start the week after!
3) Catching up with TV!
This week, I finished Season 7 of Psych. Thanks to Netflix for updating it!
Psych has its up and down moments. There are some episodes which are a bit meh. I can’t really blame it since its at season 7 now. However, compared to season 7, this totally rocked. I particularly LOVED the season 7 finale. I’m going to try to find Season 8 now since thats the final season and I hate to keep these things hanging.
I also took the time this week to catch up on True Blood. I like to watch them in bundles of episodes just so some stupid episode endings don’t bother me as much. I was about 3 episodes behind so I sat down and took care of that. Its the series finale in just a few episodes and honestly, I’m still not quite sure if I like where everything is going.
My goal this little while is to keep up with True Blood and Pretty Little Liars, so next line of business will be to catch up with the last 3 episodes of that. I will be binge watching Season 1 of Arrow right after though 😉
What series have you been watching?
4) (Kind of) Secret Weekend Getaway!
My boyfriend and I went off on a weekend getaway this past weekend. One of the reasons why I’ve been slightly quiet and well, I didn’t even bother to say anything because since we’re just a few hours up north, I had my cell that worked and its a little escape. A few of my friends knew about it and our parents but in general, its just a little bit of a breather to recharge.
We did some hiking (a part of resuming my workout) and we did some visiting in Saguenay region in Quebec. Its about a 5 hours drive or so away and we had a lot of fun. I’ll be posting about the few places we went in the next week.
As much as we love buying a house together and spending every living moment making it ours, its nice to just get away by ourselves and take a little break.
5) Lovely Surprises in the Garden
Hello raspberries! Thats right! I amped up the bottles for self-watering system in the raspberry plants and when I came back, I had some ripe raspberries waiting for me. There’s still a good bunch waiting to ripen but so far they are delicious and sweet. My mom was also a sweetheart and dropped by to help me water the plants to keep the soil wet during our very hot weekend.
I have some strawberry, yellow zucchini and tomato harvests happening and coming up.
There are few other things on my agenda for the garden:
Orange thyme harvesting and drying,
Figuring out why my basil all died and was so weak when it was alive,
Looking at the uses of lemongrass and how to harvest it,
Searching up what to do and how to harvest lemon verbena.
Plus, I have to figure out my front yard and pull out some over abundant plants and by the end of the season, shift some plants around.
Green thumbs anyone?
6) Geeking out!
Mario and Dinobot Yoshi!
While I was on the getaway, I used my ton of overtime and took Friday off. Much to my surprise, somehow this package arrived that exact day. Thank goodness, the mailman was great and put it in my mailbox. Its a tank top that I ordered from For Human Peoples and its the totally awesome crossover of Transformers and Mario. Excuse me, Dinobot Yoshi! Allow me to geek out just a little bit and tell you that I saw this and I knew that I had to own it!
*ahem* I’ve regained myself a little! Moving along…
7) Finding the Perfect Gluten-Free Article from Popsugar Fitness
Click on the image to get to the article! 🙂
Everyone read this already? So, some of you know that I’ve been trying to go gluten-free. I’m about 80% there. I’ve cut out a lot of foods including bread and I make an effort to make and buy lots of gluten-free products. Its helpful because now it opens up the options I never had when I was just dealing with lactose intolerance. Except, cutting gluten and lactose is like double hard and I absolutely hate it when people make it harder.
What really gets me all the time with any food intolerance is “just give it a bite, it won’t kill you” or “Its all your head”.
If gluten-free was me doing this just to have fun and lose weight, sure thing but its not. I truly believe that its going to make my life a lot better and reduce a lot of this recurring discomfort from IBS symptoms. Just to make things clear, its really hard to go gluten-free. Almost everything on store shelves has gluten, its really a pain so lets refrain from any comments that will just make it worse. Because no, its not in my head and no, it won’t kill me but it will put me in a state where I’d like you to kill me. You know, just to skip the disgusting details….
Rant over but that article made me laugh a little 🙂
8) Home is Where My Cat Is 😉
My Cat Taking up All the Space
My cat is a huge baby and she’s the princess of the house. She’s making a point that she’s hot and that she deserves the best spot in the house where the wind hits or the A/C. So here’s her the night before I left for my getaway and not letting me sleep. And she’s not joking, she’s in full dream mode 😉
By the way, Aeropostale actually has a shirt with “My Home Is Where My Cat Is” . Its true though. I always miss my little girl (even if she hogs the bed).
BEFORE I SAY THE GOOD NIGHTS…
Here’s a little something to help you go to sleep a la Disney style 😉
Tranquil Dreams 