2020 Upcoming Plans!

2020 is already among us!

For new readers, welcome to Tranquil Dreams. I’m a blog that doesn’t quite follow the successful route of blogging (meaning to focus on one topic), instead I’m a fan of doing what I like and just using this as an outlet of doing the things I love. They primarily make up 4 categories: Movies, TV, Books and Food. There are weekly and monthly segments and a whole bunch of random spontaneous things going on. Now that the introduction is done for anyone new here!

Let’s check out plans for 2020! Note that a few little changes but not too many. I’ve indicated where the main changes are. 🙂

READING

2020 Goodreads Reading Challenge: 25 books

Last year, I set a bunch of books that I wanted to read and then didn’t get around to reading 90% of them, I’d say. Its probably because I forgot about it at one point being busy with everything else. This year, I already have about 5 books set for the first 3 months which is a great start as it all goes towards blog tours and such. I’m not going to say which one and will leave it as a surprise. The goal is to participate in blog tours and then work through a ton of TBR books on my bookshelves and Kindle. I won’t change the 25 books this year and if I exceed, then so be it. In general, its been a struggle to find reading time especially in the second half of the year.

MOVIES

Movies are staying relatively the same. I’m hoping that I will still be able to get the media accreditation for film festivals like in 2019 as that is always a lot of fun and brings in some really nice film discoveries. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea but it always brings in a nice refreshing change to the normal fare on Netflix.  Fingers crossed on that, right? 😉

As for movies, we will be keeping the double feature usually around 1-2 per week, depending on time. Full single reviews are for theatre viewings and festival screenings. The normal themed months still apply:

• February: Valentine’s Romance
• October: Halloween Horror
• December: Holiday Films

This year, I’m thinking of doing some themed months randomly so that I can catch up on various genre of films. Its still in the air whether I’ll do it as A-Z or simply as random screenings.

As for any other things, I’ve neglected my Sunday Lists in general and will hopefully be aiming to get one a month. I’ll set a Sunday per month for that.

TV

TV has really turned into a Chinese drama series deal since middle of 2018 and that will continue this year. I’m hoping to get a few of the TV binges that I didn’t do last year done this year as I didn’t do any for my Top 5 shows last year and that seems sad as they were all very accessible on Youtube and/or Netflix.

Aside from that, Netflix series are the other focus and perhaps Shudder depending how long I keep the subscription. A short little no change section at all: TV binge for Chinese dramas will keep the normal format I have and may actually use a part of that format for any other series I watch as well.

OTHER RANDOMNESS

After getting through the top 3 categories of focus here, its time to take a look at the random other segments at weekly or monthly frequency.

• [change] Wine Recap will wrap up with its final one with December 2019 and it will be over. I’m no wine connoisseur and the whole 2 year experiment of doing it has really helped me appreciate wine better but its becoming more of a chore to write it up. I’ll share some of it on Instagram instead so feel free to follow me over HERE.
• My Adventures: I’ve already changed it to a monthly segment in the middle of 2019 and it will remain that way. I’m finally happy with the structure so we’re keeping this as the fun and more personal post.
• What’s Up 2020: will remain a weekly segment set on every Wednesday to recap the previous week.
• [change] Baking Through Disney: has been a neglected segment over here that I’ve tucked away but never forgot about. As I aim to get back into baking, its the project that will hopefully be revived on a monthly basis. One baking day a month seems fairly reasonable.
• [change] Goodfood recaps: have been no more since the middle of 2019. It was due to a few bad experiences that Goodfood has finally fixed on their end. I didn’t talk about it at the time and won’t go deeper into it. As I’m not paid to do this and I have to pay for the experience, its becoming a convenience choice for our life so its become less frequent as well. I’ll share some of the meals on Instagram whenever we do order.
• Battle of Ingredients: has changed its structure since its beginning. We’ve been talking about how to get things back on track to fit its name but we are also enjoying taking the time to highlight some recipe trials as well as using local Quebec products in our cooking. This one is really supposed to be monthly but we have random hiatus due to our busy schedules.
• Ultimate Decades Blogathon is coming back in 2020. We are currently in production phase of getting things together. If you are interested, remember to check back here. We should be announcing it soon.
• Music Obsessions: almost got cut but this segment was saved by a recent comment. I enjoy the segment but its the one that does the least well out of everything here BUT at least its a fairly fun and easy post to put together. So its staying without any change, on a monthly basis on the first weekend of the month.

I know we cover a ton of stuff here including Restaurant recaps and other event coverage including shopping hauls and such. It shouldn’t change much on that front. I’m hoping to get some more DIY going on and other things, if possible. However, time is scarce so I’ll do what I can.

I think that generally covers everything for 2020 plans!
Its not a ton of changes but I will work on being more organized this year!
Happy 2020 and all the best to all of you lovely people!

My Weekly Adventures #39: Upcoming Projects & More…

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

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

Ultimate 90’s Blogathon Done!

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

New Online Courses

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

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

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

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

Hangout with Friends

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

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

Two New Projects/Segments

Project #1: Battle of Ingredients

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

Project #2: All About Adaptations

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

Gaming Reviews Update!

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

Cute Kitty Pic

Upcoming:

• Toronto Comicon
• All About Adaptations #1
• Battle of Ingredients #1
• Various Movie Reviews

What’s Up in 2017!

2017 is here! There will be some changes around here. Some new, some old, not a whole lot swapped out as you will see soon below! I have an issue of letting go, maybe… Its okay though, it’ll all work out! I haven’t talked about resolutions for a year or two here but I feel like I probably should because that explains some of the changes, which won’t really make a huge impact for any segment in particular but will keep myself accountable for certain things.

Baking & Recipes

Its been a rough year for recipes. I’ve only added maybe somewhere around 10 to 20 new recipes this past year. I’m a little disappointed with myself even though we did have the additional unboxing for Miss Fresh (which will continue this year).

New Cooking Project: I do have some news on a project in the planning with my awesome childhood friend, Starry Traveler. She’s very much busy with a lot of her personal life stuff of late and her blog is less active but we have been talking about a cooking project. This project will hopefully open our horizons to new ingredients and recipe ideas. We are planning the first one some time later this month and I’ll have an announcement post soon. All details on frequency and whatnot is still being decided.

Baking Through Disney: I started this one back in 2015 and only TWO movies have been fully complete with the baking projects. And I have the 3rd review done but then got stuck on Fantasia’s recipe to make. It is what threw me off. So, I’ve made the executive decision to put that baking on hold and jump forward to the next movie, Dumbo. There is a solid goal for one movie to be done each month. If I can get more, that will be good but for now, I’m aiming to do 10 movies (in case there are months like Fantasia Festival in July where I won’t be home enough to do it). These are the movies coming up: Dumbo, Bambi, Make Mine Music, The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmatians. However, if you do have a suggestion for what to bake for Fantasia, please suggest ahead and I’ll try to figure out a way to make it happen.

Books

2016 was the year that I made the resolution to not buy any new books for the entire year to make sure that I could get through all those unread novels sitting in my Kindle and to save money. With that said, I did explore a lot of new stuff. I let myself off the hook and bought some new books during Boxing Week. Right now, its back to no more new books until I decrease the list. With that said, there is a revival and continuing through all the Kindle books. This year’s Goodreads Challenge is to read 35 books.

• The Classics Adventure: I took a year off of this project but its back! Part of my unread Kindle books that I put off were Classics. Some titles I do want to get through: Northanger Abbey, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, A Tale of Two Cities, Treasure Island, Great Expectations, Gulliver’s Travels, Madame Bovary, What Maisie Knew, North and South.

• Unread Physical Books: Last year, I sadly neglected my physical unread books so I’m working on that this year. One of them is trying to kickstart my Stephen King novel reading along with some other titles like Salem’s Lot, Hollow City, Ready Player One, The Fate of Ten, The Catcher in the Rye.

Movies & TV

Movies and TV is a huge chunk of here. I have to admit that and if you haven’t noticed, by the end of 2016, I was trying to slow that down a little. As much as I love watching movies, I had a block in writing reviews. It is also why I’m happy that I added in the TV Binge segment quite a bit.

• Unwatched Movie Collection: I updated our movie collection this year and while I have stopped a lot of movie buying (saving once again), I realized that there’s a ton of movies there that I haven’t seen. This year’s mission is to get through them.
• Other movies: New Releases (look at Anticipated 2017 Movies post HERE), Netflix Originals, Oscar Nominations (in January/February))

Miscellaneous/Monthly Segments

• Monthly segment: Music Obsessions will stay on the first Sunday of every month!
• Game Warp: I will continue to post up the updates to the Game Warp Podcast release. Those are twice a month usually unless there are some special segments. More info can be found on That Moment In or our Game Warp Facebook page. Also, we just set up the Twitch channel with a stream schedule coming up soon.
• My Weekly Adventures: This is currently a biweekly segment right now. However, this comes to what I talked about earlier about resolutions. I have been doing event posts and haul and travel in separate posts, so I try to not cover those in the weekly adventures making it hard to get a lot of stuff to talk about on there. However, I like the fact that I share a snippet of my personal goals to share. You all don’t realize it but a lot of times it keeps me accountable. With that said, this year, I have set myself an ultimatum to finish my Grade 10 piano so I’ll probably start sharing that journey a little and maybe post up some piano pieces. You can criticize or not but at least it keeps me practicing piano and keeping that solid in the schedule instead of always pushing it in a lower priority. Also, I need to get back to working out and training for at least a 5 km marathon this year. So two new segments aside from Cute Kitty Moments, along with other random updates.
• Other: Montreal Events & Unboxing

For some highlight months (which haven’t changed much):

• January: Housekeeping and updating is going to be the priority for the first week. That includes wrapping up leftover material from 2016. Some TV binges and the Netflix A-Z.  Aside from that, I’m working on getting a domain or at least, working on an official Tranquil Dreams header by January 17th which is the blogiversary and I don’t want to drag that out anymore.
• February: Valentine’s Marathon is the first half of the month. I’m putting together what movies to watch. It might not be romantic comedies but I will try to get The Choice to keep up with the Nicholas Sparks adaptations.
• October: Halloween Marathon! For now, its a toss-up between a few franchises. I believe Final Destination is a high possibility at this point.
• December: Holiday Marathon! This might have some changes seeing as the selection is getting slim.

That’s it! Congrats and Thanks are in order if you made it all the way here!
I’d also like to share that I’m working on a project with my husband which I will announce soon! As well as a Youtube segment for my channel!

I’m looking forward to 2017. Hope you are too!
If you have any movie or book suggestions, please do share with me.  I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for them or maybe they will be in my list.

We’re 5!

Can you believe 5 years went by already?

So much has changed in my life from when I first started blogging till today.  There are days I think, “Maybe its time I go do something else”, but then, I just love blogging and all of you lovely awesome friends that I’ve met here.  Its a journey all on its own.  If anything, I’ve learned a lot from this experience and it has been an amazing and awesome one!

The New Year’s was just two weeks ago so I’ve pretty much done all the announcements that I need. You can go check it out HERE! Pretty much everything is staying the same.  Except last year was highly unproductive in meeting any of my goals from long-term projects like Baking Through Disney and The Classics Adventure, even my Reading Challenge was one short and lets not even talk about the PopSugar Reading Challenge that I totally forgot about.  I’m not perfect and that’s okay.  A lot of things happened last year and while not much happened, a lot also did happen.  I’m trying to be more involved and this year, I’m trying to comment more.  I’m still working super hard on catching up with all of your posts. Its a work in progress but one that I try to take my time to do as much as I can.

However, this post was supposed to be a vlog (like I say every year).  Five years is a milestone.  One that I’m extremely proud of.  The versatility and diversity of the content has really grown from that first year when I was writing in my little corner and struggling to write up one post a week to now where I try to get on average on post a day and finally learned how to plan in advance and be more organized.  All very great accomplishments that are useful not only for here but for my life in general.

Tranquil Dreams has always been about staying positive and experiencing new things, trying something different and all that lovely stuff.  Its about living life and even though, I go through surges of talking about movie, I’m working hard this year to balance out the things I enjoy and talk about that.  The last two years have been a little crazy with adapting to being a new homeowner (and the renovations) and then wedding planning and getting back energy after the big day.  Its all done and things have settled down so I’m ready to take on this year heading into Year 6 with much more energy and many more fun things that I plan on doing.

I was trying to get something special regarding upcoming changes for this post but after some debate, I’m giving it a little more thought so I’ll do another reveal soon.  I want to really take my time in making sure that its going to be exactly how I like it.  For now, its a secret 😉

I never really know how to approach these blogiversary posts. What I really do want to say in short (since this is already kind of long) is that…

THANK YOU! Thank you so much for being here, stopping by and doing everything you do.  I appreciate it so so much! Meeting new bloggers, making friends, joining in to blogathons, being a part of The Random Chat Show and That Moment In, etc: its all a great experience and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.  If anything, I’m working hard to make here better every single day! 🙂

Thank you again and stay awesome! 🙂

My Weekly Adventures: New Year’s Special (2015 Recap & 2016 Goals!)

My goodness, 2015 went by in a flash! So many things happened and most of it was pretty awesome!

Let’s start with some 2015 recaps and the last half month of stuff.  Then we’ll wrap up with 2016 goals, okay? Sounds like a plan!

End of Year Things: Christmas Party, Boxing Day Finds, Snowstorm & New Year’s Eve

Christmas Eve party with the family was crazy fun.  We hosted for the first year and I went into a frenzy about the house not being clean enough and now having the turkey defrost in time but we found backup for everything and it ended up working out and

Boxing Day finds at Walmart & Best Buy (waiting for a few more movies/games coming in from Amazon)

Boxing Day Finds at Adidas and Nike

Walmart Online order for Kitchenaid Ultra Power Standing Mixer

Dynamite Sweater and Pants (Online order arrived rather efficiently so I tried it out and took an awkward selfie)

Snowstorm

New Year’s Eve and Jenga with Friends

2015 RECAP

2015 was kind of a half-half deal.  For the blog, my main goals and projects didn’t exactly work out as I planned but my overall views have averaged higher than the previous year which makes me quite happy.  Jumping into the 4th year of blogging, I’ve finally found how I want Tranquil Dreams to be positioned and what content I want to write about.  As much as versatility seems overbearing and crazy, I really do enjoy every bit of it.

• Baking Through Disney Project: Only one movie was done completely (kind of a fail but I did add a side project of watching adaptations when available)
• The Classics Project: It went pretty good.  Currently, I’m reading the second last novel of Jane Austen.  These are more time-consuming than I initially imagined but I’m continuing right along.
• New segment: Netflix A-Z was added on.  We got one round completed with much success.  I felt great that a lot of you not only commented about the movie and even joined in to guess what the next movie would me, sometimes opening my eyes to movies that sounded completely out of the world weird.
• Joining That Moment In: Its one thing to own a blog but its another to be part of someone else’s.  That Moment In is a great blogging family for me.  I love being part of The Random Chat Show with my awesome co-hosts Melissa and David and chatting up all sorts of randomness, even when we debate and argue over our different views. As for writing, I’m loving getting back into playing video games and writing about them. I may  not be a skilled gamer but I always have tons of fun.

On a personal life level, my weekly adventures expanded with:

• Getting married in October
• Visiting different festivals in Montreal: Fantasia Film Festival, MTL a Table, Sherbrooke met la table
• Vacation and first time cruise experience on the Norwegian going to Alaska and sightseeing in Seattle
• Falling in love with Zumba (I probably didn’t elaborate on this one too much) & getting running into my summer workouts

If you do want an overview of this year, you can check out the WordPress annual report HERE!

An general look of the how many of each categories I’ve posted about for the last few years:

• 103  novels and short stories reviews
• 510 movies (and maybe short films) reviews
• 129 recipes

Personally, the goals I set out for this year kind of did flop but a lot of things did happen.  I’m a lot closer to where I need to be in the final Practical Piano exam except the curriculum changed and now the technical bits have caused a little problem, making the theory part also a little change to my original plans.

2016 GOALS

This year, we’re taking things kind of the same but a little different. Since last year was really about finding my footing and getting a sort of routine going, I think we’re ready for some stable and organized posts going up for once in almost 5 years. I do have a few personal goals I need to get out of the way so I’m still working out how to maybe get something like that here, if not, it’ll all be about getting things done in advance to make time for it.

Let’s get down to 2016 business!

• Netflix A-Z: As usual, its appearance will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  The only interruptions is on themed months and other events going on. It all depends if there are fitting movies that match up with it.  I don’t think there will be an interruption for February’s Valentine’s Day since romantic comedies are abundant. If you do have any suggestions, do tell me what Netflix movies, you’d like me to review.  Keep in mind, I am in Canada so I have far fewer choices than the US selection.
• TV Binge: A much more sporadic series but I do love TV in between a lot of busy  movie seasons.  I have one coming up and this next year, I’m not going to be too ambitious but I’d like to see Hemlock Grove Season 3, From Dusk Till Dawn Season 2, Criminal Minds Season 8 & 9, Once Upon a Time Season 4, Jessica Jones, Daredevil just for starters.  That looks doable. Of course, I also follow The 100 and the new season is sometime in January if I’m not mistaken.
• Baking Through Disney: The goal is one movie and baking a month.  I can’t guarantee it but I’m hoping we’ll get through 12 movies in the Disney Classics list this year. To boost the confidence level, I already have the next one, Pinocchio watched and I have a pretty cool baking idea set. Just a few details I’m deciding on to actually get down to business after the holiday season.
• Marathons: All the themed marathons are staying except I’ll try to have more scattered and not just movies.  I’ll try.  For Valentine’s Day, I have acquired the latest two movies for Nicholas Sparks to continue on that journey, among other choices which I’m deciding on. Halloween should be either Hellraiser or Final Destination themed series.  But then, I have a vague memory of promising someone here that I’d do Scream so that is going to happen except I need to find the 4th film. If thats the case, I’ll go with the Final Destination series just to have a reasonable amount of time. I’ll decide when it gets closer. As for Christmas/holidays, its getting harder and harder to find Christmas movies so I’m thinking up a twist for it 😉
• Books & The Classics Project: This year, I’m not going to do a Reading Challenge.  For one, I’m planning to contribute more to That Moment In so I want to get back into gaming a little especially since we did get a PS4 and there are some decent games coming out this year that I’m excited to play. However, the focus from now on will be on books that will be adapted into films and indie books.  But, don’t be fooled, I am not giving up The Classics Project.  I’m currently finishing up Persuasion and have one more to go before I finish that up.  You can see the updated list of classics I plan to read for next year.
• My Weekly Adventures, Music Obsessions and Pinterest Therapy: These are my more personal segments.  I keep them around because they are fun to put together and really less thought heavy. It shines a little on who I am.  Music Obsessions and Pinterest Therapy are a monthly segment for the most part and My Weekly Adventures has dropped to being a biweekly event.  I did add on a seasonal Montreal events segment and I might just continue to do that.  Winter hasn’t gone up yet but I might see if I can work it in the schedule.

There you have it! That’s 2016 for you.  My brain thinks about the blog all the time and how to improve it and make it more me.

What has me curious is what segments do you drop by here to read? Is there anything you’d like me to incorporate in these topics? Feel free to share your opinions.  I do a lot here but its rather scattered and recommendations are always appreciated.

Overall, 2016 looks like its going to be a great year!

*VIRTUAL HUGS* FOR EVERYONE!

HAPPY NEW YEAR, 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