My Weekly Adventures #49

The most grueling two weeks may have just passed by. Not a whole lot to report about as most of it is personal stuff that is just homeowner stuff that has been lingering on our minds. Its definitely affected my energy and motivation to keep things going on track here. For that, I’m really sorry. However, there are a ton of other fantastic bloggers here so I’m sure you will not be bored even with my sporadic posting schedule.

This Weekly Adventures will most likely be fairly short. I’ve reported on mostly everything already in other posts.

Battle of Ingredients: Hiatus Over

Our Summer BBQ Edition is the comeback piece for our Battle of Ingredients segment. It was a lot of fun to switch things up. We went to another location than my place and had a BBQ. It was nice to hang out with everyone after two months hiatus while everyone was busy with their own things.

You can read the entire menu and post here.

Water Park with Friends

Super Aqua Club

Super Aqua Club

Last weekend, I also went to a water park with my girl friends. It is a little late in the season to go and it was a tad chilly, particularly in the morning. Our destination this year was to Super Aqua Club which is one of the closer water parks to Montreal. We have our eye on another one for next year. It would be cool to do this on an annual thing. Its a lot of fun and sometimes does test my limits but adrenaline rushes can be quite awesome. Sitting in the sun was really nice to and I love water as it keeps me calm and clears my mind. I got out of the weekend with just a tiny sunburn on my back where I couldn’t reach to put the sunscreen but it was so mild that it was gone in like 2 days or something.

Garden Update

In terms of the garden, the cool weather hitting us a little earlier is definitely not helping the harvests however we still harvested some cucumbers and lots of raspberries are still ripening along with ground cherries as well. The zucchini is pretty much dead. Its the long weekend here so I’ll be heading out to the garden to move some things around and hopefully get some of the herbs in ground so they’ll come back next year. Ground cherry might have to move as well as it has gotten way too big and it spreads.

A few projects to go for this one.

Cute Kitty Pic

Upcoming:

• Restaurants recap
• Double Features
• TV Binges
• Dreamhack Montreal coverage

Oh and I also settled on my Halloween marathon! That’s pretty exciting! 🙂

That’s it for this Weekly Adventures!
Not a whole lot to talk about! Hopefully the home issues will be taken care of soon.
In the meantime, sorry for any sporadic posting schedules. I’m trying my absolute best to get the energy level back up!

Its the long weekend. I’m taking some time to catch up with everything! Yay! 🙂

Gardening Update #4: Rain & Harvests!

Welcome back to a long overdue Gardening update! It keeps getting bumped back and finally, now its time to report back after vacation.

Its been a rainy and gloomy summer. We can’t complain much because we live without the luxury of air conditioning in a bungalow so that means, when its hot, its boiling inside most of the time. Compared to last year, this is somewhat a heavenly situation especially on days where I need to record podcasts. However, plants and flowers aren’t like us and most of them need the sun and bees to pollinate in order to bear fruit aside from just water, which it also needs a lot of, of course. With that said, the garden is still doing pretty good. We started to have some harvests and the vegetables and flowers are all coming around.

In-Ground Garden

No blueberries or asparagus in these pictures as they are waiting for next year to have any harvest. However, they are so far doing quite well.

Here is the in-ground garden. Zucchinis are coming out now. The lettuce is actually doing worse than in the containers. You’ll see later. Cucumbers are also not doing as well as in the container however they are starting to form some cucumbers. Hopefully it’ll work out especially with all the rain. If only, there was more sun. One of the more solid plants are the Ground Cherry. The challenge so far is still actually getting it to ripen before it falls down. I had planted it two times before in containers with that same issue. Now I’m hoping planting it in-ground will do the trick so we can harvest some ground cherries soon. Its definitely looking strong.

On the other side is our trimmed but somehow still overgrowing raspberry shrub. Strawberries had their season and I would have shared the harvest but like a loser, I deleted all my pictures this past weekend off my phone when I was lining up for a Comiccon panel. Long story short, I don’t have it anymore and the season is over. We did have decent harvests but nothing as epic as what raspberry will be. We had two tupperware bowls already in the last two weeks, which is pretty impressive. As you see, there are still raspberries ripening so the rain and sun balance seems to work beautifully for it. Plus, raspberries are great to have as it also helps out the bees, which Canada has been acting on to encourage Canadians to plant more bee gardens. I got my bee garden kit, just trying to get the garden ready as it’ll be a raised garden that I’m trying to get ready.

Flower garden

In my flower patch, the flowers right now is my mini rose shrub and these yellow flowers. I have to remember to keep these in check as they spread really fast although they are super pretty. My cone flowers are also starting to bloom however, they are also super depressed because the rabbits now can’t access the vegetable garden and they decided that they’d snack on the cone flower leaves instead. They looked miserable for the longest time. And now there another one that I moved and suspect will have to move again. The flower garden needs to be restructured and organized. I’m pondering that at the moment.

Container Gardening

Herbs are doing fantastic. We’ve harvested some basil mostly and added it to our recipes. The others we keep fresh in the fridge. It gives us a reason to use fresh basil and make foods with it. As you may notice, my pineapple sage lost the fight with the storm and is not just one stem struggling to stay alive. At least it survived. I almost thought it was a total loss. The kale and cucumbers are doing great here. Pots do cucumbers miracles as they are growing well although, it won’t be successful until we actually get some cucumbers to harvest. Finally, there’s the eggplant. The over excessive rainfall and lack of sun seems to be affecting it the most as it gets more yellow everyday and its not really having anything yet.

Our lettuce harvests were probably the earliest. While they are growing slower now, they are still doing quite well. Especially since we have them in-ground and in two hanging baskets.

Finally, the last thing is our kale. Its been doing fantastic. We’ve really only been making kale chips out of them. I should really post up the recipes for it that we use. I promise I will soon. The kale has been treating us well. As this post goes up, I’ve been thinking of harvesting my next batch this evening and making some more chips.

That’s it for this gardening recap!
How are your gardens doing?

Ends, Beginnings and Everything in Between!

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!

Fantasia Film Festival 2014

Open Windows
I Origins
Cybernatural
The Harvest
Jack et la Mecanique du Coeur
Hal/short: Sonny Boy and Dewdrop Girl
Into the Storm
Dys-/short: I am Monster
The Drownsman/short: Picket
Time Lapse
The Demon Within

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 😉

Its getting late, so I’m off to bed! 🙂

Hope you all had a great weekend! 

#FantasiaFest, Friends, Date Night and Fun Times! :)

Wow, this week went by really fast!

This week wasn’t exactly eventful but it did mark a few things happening and so much to be grateful about. I’m really enjoying this busy weekends and not so busy weekdays.  Its nice to finally regain some form of balance in my life and any sign of negative and I just dodge it and bounce right back to being happy and positive 🙂

Next step: getting back to my working out more regularly 😉 Maybe I should do my workout posts again.  What do you think?

Before we get ahead of ourselves, lets see what things I have to be happy about this week 🙂

1) FANTASIA FESTIVAL!!

Fantasia Festival has started and as I write this, I’m back from the third movie.  I’m happy because I managed to get tickets for all the movies I wanted to see except one (other than the ones I had to skip because of scheduling problems).  Things always work out in  the end and you’ll see why.  If you missed my post on the movies I bought tickets for, you can check it out HERE!

There is one movie not on the list.  After Joseph @ The Cinema Monster dropped me a comment after seeing my lineup, he told me about two movies.  One I couldn’t put into my schedule but I looked into The Harvest with Michael Shannon and decided to add that one in.  Here is the trailer on the Fantasia Festival page:

http://www.fantasiafestival.com/2014/fr/films-et-horaire/80/the-harvest

A funny moment for you: I actually didn’t watch the trailer before getting the tickets and just read the plot.  Lets say, I have a feeling I’m going to be pretty creeped out…  I’ll tough it out though! It does look quite good 🙂

Final tally is now 11 movies and 14 tickets! 🙂 One more movie than I expected because I just couldn’t let go of That Demon Within.  Nick Cheung has really grown as an actor and anything that he’s in cannot be bad so I just couldn’t resist, what else can I say, right? I still remember him when he first started taking up stupid roles in ridiculous movies that I didn’t laugh at.  He’s really changed and does more sophisticated roles and its works out a lot better (at least I think so).

I have a good space between each group of movies so expect the reviews for Open Windows, I Origins and Cybernatural and tonight’s in the next few days 🙂

2) LEMON VERBENA & its flowers

I may or may not have talked about before in my many gardening posts but my lemon verbena had little bug issues and thats why its now living outside for the summer.  It bloomed some cute littler flowers in the middle of the week when I went for a miniature gardening maintenance run 🙂 Bug issues are completely gone and the leaves are perfect.  These little victories (and some that will follow) makes me slowly grow more and more interested in this gardening business.

3) BIKE RIDE TO OLD MONTREAL WITH FRIENDS

Old Montreal from the Concord Bridge

Downtown Montreal from Concord Bridge

Saturday was a busy day and it all started at 9:30am in the morning when me and two friends started getting ready for our Old Montreal bike ride.  I do one of these every year at least once.  Its a really nice ride with amazing scenery that reminds me of why Montreal is actually a beautiful city when you put all the stupidity aside.  This year, I had company, making it so much more fun 🙂

Lobster Roll

And we even got to enjoy some of those pretty famous and extremely tasty lobster rolls!

4) ATTENDING A WEDDING FOR A LONG-TIME FRIEND (that I haven’t seen in a long time)

Weddings are a super happy event. I haven’t seen this friend in ages and being at her wedding (and the bachelorette party last weekend) makes me really honored that she thought about me enough to invite me to the happiest moment of her life. She was a beauty and a princess all  night in the most elegant manner.  The wedding was beautiful and it was so much fun.  I saw a few people and reconnected with them, and even hit the dance floor all in good fun! The restaurant even had a window and terrasse facing the fireworks.

The couple themselves was just the symbol of love.  It was also an honor to be there to witness two people completely in love with each other, go through all that they’ve gone through and finally get to this step in their life.  I was so deeply moved by the event itself 🙂

5) COMPLETING THE FIRST FLOOR

Office done with new lights also 🙂

Suffice to say that I talk a lot about my new house, but I think it comes with being a homeowner.  I’m almost all moved in except for a few things but I figured that as we get things in room by room, we’re getting every step closer.  The first floor is all done! We bought some new ceiling lights last week for the office (brighter than the previous owner’s) and with the natural light and everything, the office is looking lovely.  Next weekend will be spending time arranging how all the furniture goes while my boyfriend will take care of the painting in the main floor and basement.  The main floor will be the hard part as its a bit more colors and more tricky.  Progress, my friends! That makes me happy 🙂

6) SUCCESS WITH THE SELF-WATERING SYSTEM

Raspberry is happily hydrated

Raspberry plants are like overly demanding and easily dehydrated babies. It wasn’t happy with one wine bottle full of water so I added another one. Then it still guzzles the water in exactly the same speed. At least, my baby here is blooming some flowers at the top and maybe it’ll be a champ and grow me some raspberries 😉

Miracle squash/zucchini growth

My mom says these are yellow zucchini so I’ll take her word for it. This baby went through a lot.  Its grew from a snapped stem repaired by green tape. And then I put in a self-watering system about 10 days ago and unlike my raspberry up there with a tantrum, I came back to a sudden growth of this zucchini right there.  Its telling me I love you. And I love it back because its has so many coming out.  I just hope it doesn’t get tangled in its own growing vegetables.  I guess when that time comes, it means it time for harvesting! YUM! 🙂

7) THE STAR OF MY GARDEN: PURSLANE!

Purslane in full bloom

Coming home yesterday to tend the garden, the happiest sight is to see everything going well and then my Purslane is looking very beautiful with its little pink and orange flowers brightening up my deck! 🙂

I’m still trying to figure out what I can do with these purslane because apparently it is a herb or edible plant.  I’m interested to know what use I can do with this.  I’m taking it easy though.

8) LITTLE VISITORS IN MY GARDEN!

Bumblebees hard at work!

I haven’t put my work into my front yard.  But thats starting soon.  However, the previous owner’s left these rather bland looking flowers from afar but along with the fluffy fern things and my flowers and whatnot in the backyard, its attracting a lot of bees. I took a neverending weeding break to try to capture them hard at work.  This is the best picture I’ve taken in a while 🙂

9) DATE NIGHT WITH MY BOYFRIEND

Evening sky in Montreal

My boyfriend and I work opposite schedules so we don’t see each other very often and we don’t spend too much quality time either.  With the Fantasia Festival, its my way to just not sit at home and stare at my walls and just go out and have fun.  Although I saw two movies by myself already, I was happy that my boyfriend agreed to see 3 of them with me.  The first one starting at 9:30pm on Sunday.  We drove out and was welcomed by lovely weather and a beautiful evening sky as we drove over the bridge.  Romantic, eh? And made our way to see Cybernatural.  He is my best movie viewing buddy because he always automatically discusses the movie with me afterwards. Its fantastic to ponder on it in my head by myself or even talk out loud to the walls or my cat but its also nice to have an answer some times.

Joking aside, we really needed a date night! He gets a break next weekend and the week after, he’s back on double duty for being my movie date 😉

10) FANTASIA LUCK!

Live Skype Q&A and hosted by director Leo Gabriadze and executive producer Adam Sidman

I love Fantasia Festival ever since I went last time.  This time, my biggest worry was to not choose the right movies.  I mean, I only chose one that sold out and it didn’t even sell out on the screening I’m going to.  Either way, I remained confident with my choices. I honestly have to say that, although there was some small issues, overall, I enjoyed all of them.  3 for 3 sounds like a good track record and it has be all hyped up. Last night’s was the first one where it was hosted by people related to the film.  Director Leo Gabriadze and I actually think the other man was the executive producer Adam Sidman.  There, they also had their supposedly first live Skype Q&A session.  The first to join was the writer Nelson Greaves and producer Timur Bekmambetov.  After 10 minutes or so, they even brought 3 cast members (which is pretty much half of the lot).  First was the two girls, Shelley Hennig and Courtney Halverson and later, Moses Jacob Storm joined in after he resolved his technical issues.  Its a pretty ingenious idea and matches how technology has really changed how certain things are done.  I’ll talk more about it when I review them.

To be absolutely honest, I’m just feeling so lucky! Luck isn’t normally on my side often but I make the best of what I can. It is now and I’m enjoying every moment of it!

Things are going great, my friends! I’ve been having a blast this summer!

Before I leave, here’s a lovely quote I found and here’s the article you might want to check out for 15 Quotes about Life from Children’s Books!

Happy Monday, my awesome friends!