My Weekly Adventures: Shopping Hauls Recap

We’re already halfway through December! Its kind of crazy to think there’s only 16 more days and its 2019. I’m pretty happy to see 2018 go away because it seems to have been a tough year for everyone that I’ve talked to. I know on my end that as bad as things are, when I look back, I see that things did turn out to have the best results out of a bad situation, so glass half full, right? Its how I stay positive. I’ll do a year in review in the next weekly adventures. Not sure together or separate post yet. I guess it depends on time and how I want to structure it. Its a lot of housekeeping behind the scenes going on for the blogs and projects right now. However, there were a few little things that went on this past 2 weeks so let’s check it out! If you follow my Instagram, then you might have seen some of this…

Salon des Metiers D’Art de Montreal

The Salon is back in town and smaller and shorter than previous years. However, I am now a veteran at this place. There are places that I haven’t tried before and some cool ideas but somehow I ended up picking up stuff from the usual and some returning stalls that weren’t there last year (or I missed it? I don’t remember). So let’s take a look at what I picked up:

• Cidrerie du Minot – Ice Cider
• Cryo – Ice Cider
• La Nougaterie – Nougat – Christmas, Lavender, Chocolate, Classic
• Coach House Shortbread – Sugar Plum, Rose and Almond, Ginger flavors
• Nutra Fruit – Dark Chocolate covered Cranberries
• Courtesy of my friend’s honey wine purchase, a gift of Confit of Onions

Most of these are either gifts or things to share for upcoming festivities with family and friends.

Signé Local – Square Dix30

The husband and I finally went to Signé Local in Quartier Dix30 which is a store full of local artisan products. Its like Salon des Metiers d’arts everyday. I’m really trying to support more local products because I’ve bought some really durable and great stuff so I’ve been wanting to go see this spot since it opened earlier this year. Its nice that we went because I found a few things:

• Oomph Popcorn Seasoning- Vegan Maple BBQ Flavor
• Les As Du Fumoir – Smoked Salt
• U’nhiver – Handmade Winter Hat + Extra Pompom

Ooomph is one that we’ve bought before and its pretty nice. The sales rep there told us that some people actually use the seasoning for other things. It is a pretty good idea. As for the hat, its pretty cool because you can remove the pompom. It has a snap button (is that what you call it?) and the second pompom was an extra $10. Its pretty nice because not only is being able to change the pompom pretty fun but whenever these hats go into wash (which this one needs to be handwashed anyways) its nice to remove the pompom because its what wears out the most.

Grocery Trip to Plattsburgh, USA

TARGET Haul:

• Winter Oreo
• Sugar Cookie Pop Tarts
• Frosted Nerds
• Quaker Oatmeal Medleys
• Lacroix: Passionfruit, Cran-raspberry, Tangerine
• Sierra Mist
• Candy Cane
• Larabar: Snickerdoodle, Strawberry Chocolate Chip

PRICECHOPPER Haul:

• Fresh Bagels
• KIND Granola Bars
• Popcorn (because it was on sale and we needed it)

WALMART Haul:

• Cape Cod: Wave Reduced Salt, Waffle Cut
• Crunchy Rice Rollers: Mixed Berry
• Larabar: Mint Chip Brownie
• KIND granola bars 12-bar value pack
• Ritz Bacon

I haven’t gone across the border (a lot, like once earlier this year) for many reasons in the past few years. Mostly it is because of the fact that our exchange rate is absolutely stupid low. After I saw the foreign exchange on my transactions, I kind of regret it again but then it had some cool vegan snacks and whatnot, flavors and such that aren’t sold here. Most of the stuff I bought aren’t sold in Canada or else I would feel that it wasn’t exactly worth it. However, it was a nice trip.

Holiday Marathon Update

We’re two weeks into the holiday marathon. Its been going pretty on track with posts related to Christmas every other day. Its been quite a batch of stuff from books to movies to TV binges. You can find it all updated as the reviews go up on the page HERE.

We have another 10 days to go and a few other things in my plans. Hopefully you’ll stick around and keep checking out what I’ve dug up from Netflix and my Kindle and such.

Housekeeping/Planning Ahead/Catching Up

December also brings on a bunch of housekeeping. You will see that most of my indexes are being updated and should be all ready by the time we hit the new year. They are all currently updated to the end of November (if I remember correctly). As for planning ahead, I’ve talked about a few things here and there between this and the What’s Up posts so I’m debating a few structural things but unsure about how committed I will be to a fixed schedule because that is usually when things fall apart. Considering that sort of thing and figuring out how to fit everything I want to keep and maybe what I’m not so dedicated to anymore because I added a good few new segments last year and revived a few as well. Suffice to say, taking everything into consideration, I also have a lot of catching up and backlog. I’m fairly confident that by the end of the year all the movie backlog will be done because its all double features that I’ve already paired off. And books is all done except for one which I can’t figure out how to do for the past few months and ended up rereading at least 2 times. The main thing is TV series and the fact that I’m debating something really ambitiously stupid or doing something more sensible but something I had wanted to do for the past few years but never figured out how to structure it around what’s here. A lot of thinking going on but 2019 overview will talk about all of that and we’ll even go back and talk about some of the achievements this year in 2018 in the next weekly adventures to wrap up the year (if not in a separate post).

I’m sorry to keep talking about this if I’ve talked about it before. To be honest, I don’t remember much sometimes and this adventures post has felt slightly empty so I just wanted to use this space to share some vague thoughts.

Cute Kitty Pics

**I realized that I forgot to post a cute kitty pic in the last weekly adventures so here’s two this time to make up for it! My cat is enjoying the fireplace and basement hangout time a lot to say the least. **

That’s it for this Weekly Adventures!
What have you been up to? Have you started Christmas shopping yet?

Signé Local: Vitrine du Fait au Québec Haul & Recap

From the last weekend of November till December 17th held on weekends at the Quartier Dix30 shopping area was this fair that featured different local products in rotation over the weeks. It was a good place to see a lot of Quebec products that I have never seen before in the Salon des Metiers d’arts which is very cool. However, this one was not free. It had an entry fee of $5 which bought a pass for every week of the fair. Before we move forward, I feel that I need to address this. While I did pay for the pass, I did also feel a little surprised to have to pay an entry fee. While I can get why they would need to charge it, it also seems a turnoff to charge for a fair that you’d go in and have to spend more money on buying whatever interests you. Most of the local products are good quality which means they are priced higher than what you’d get at big box stores. With that said, its solely based on principle, it has nothing to do with the price because $5 for 5 weekends is not expensive. It really depends on how much you value seeing local products and treating it as more of an expo where you get to learn, see and taste the local products.

With that said, the experience was pretty good. We only caught the last 3 weekends but there was a lot of cool products to learn about. Even if we couldn’t get everything (limited resources and such), I’ll share what we did buy and also some stores that I will keep an eye out for and maybe see if I can order stuff online later on (if its available).

Haul

The first weekend ended up with 2 different purchases.

The first was Oomph which is a 100% natural popcorn seasoning. There are some allergen free option with this company which is very awesome. We ended up buying a Maple BBQ flavor and the Apple Pie flavor (which I’m seriously looking forward to baking with). We’ve been addicted to the Maple BBQ popcorn seasoning and its just a whole new world of amazing flavors.

The second purchase was at La Pincée. There have a variety of seasoning for vegetables and different kinds of meats including curry mixes and mild, herb, spicy, etc. This one is sold at some supermarkets from what they told us. We chose the Plumée seasoning which is good for poultry which is a huge part of what we eat since we love cooking chicken and turkey a lot.

The week after that, I picked up this scarf sort of thing from Léonce. I hesitated a little because it was like $45 dollars however, I really love this type of scarf that encircles your neck like how I like eternity scarf (but those seem to be out of style this year). This one is supposed to be incredibly warm and feel really comfortable. While I do have a scarf right now, the fabric on it is soft but also irritates my skin. I’m hoping this one will be much better. From what I’ve tried so far, it does the job. They have super cute mittens too which I’m hoping to purchase after my current mittens aren’t good anymore. But then, I love my current mitts so I hope they’ll keep up their effectiveness.

In the final weekend, we ended up picking up from two stalls as well.

The first was at La Lichée which had caramel spreads. My husband loved it so much that he really insisted on getting the caramel fleur de sel type. I couldn’t taste it since it has lactose however I’m sure that he’ll make good use out of it.

The final thing we got was at Chocolaterie Mathilde Fays. My husband bought the Hazelnut Milk Chocolate Bar and I went for the 70% Dark Chocolate bar and the Dark Chocolate Ball. The dark chocolate is lactose free so I’m extremely  happy about that. They had a lot of really good variety along with some nice smaller packaging with some fancier designed bite-sized pieces as well.

Now that we’re done with our haul, lets take a look at some places that we really liked and have their card in case we save up some money and get a chance to pick up something from their stores online:

• Lecavalier Petrone – Confections Gourmandes: These are some fancy looking chocolates. I like it for the unique look and I’m sure that they would taste great. Luckily, looking at their locations, they seem to have a location nearby to this show so maybe we’ll go check it out. It would be a nice gift to give.
• Chali: This is an interesting piece of jewelry which acts as a durable clasp that can be moved from one sort of jewelry to the next whether as a closing an earring or bracelet. Its a really neat idea that stemmed out of a need from the designer.
• MB Alpha Wear: Its pretty hard to find clothes particularly for men. This place designs men’s apparel and adds a touch of wilderness design to mix it up. It caught my eye right away at the show. Why do men get all the nice looking clothes?  I’ve always wondered that. But then, what would stop me from getting one of the sweaters for myself, right?
• Pression: This is a cute little backpack shop with some really beautiful colors and designs. It also has this little hook at the top to hang your keys for those people like myself who spend 5 minutes digging out keys when I get home. Not so fun when its like -30C.
• Les CocoNuts: Coconut oil based products all the way. I think one of them that caught my eye the most is their chapstick which you actually refill. A pretty nifty idea as most of you who use coconut oil knows that they have a melting point and then solidify making it pretty easy to see how they could be used as a refillable sort of item. Very intrigued and they have a store accessible to myself so I’m looking to check it out sometime soon.

Thats it for the recap of this event!
Anything catch your eye from the haul or the honorable mention?

My Weekly Adventures #56

Its December! Christmas month just started for a few days on the blog. I already talked about how I had done all the Christmas decorations in late November and a bit in early December so we’re not going to talk about that. There are a lot of events going on and in general, its been pretty busy as end of year stuff piles in before the holidays drop by and we all take a few days off. The blog won’t be affected as I’ll have stuff backlogged and ready to go, plus we’re hosting Christmas this year so I’ll be here and just taking it easy.

Let’s check out whats happened the first part of December!

Alight at Night

Check out the full post HERE.

On the first weekend of December, we headed out to Upper Canada Village in Ontario to go to the opening weekend of Alight at Night, which is a Christmas/winter event. This historical town has put up all its lights and its a walk through a town. There’s a place to visit Santa as well as different areas. Overall, a cool experience to get in the mood for winter. We didn’t have any snow yet but I’m guessing this weekend would be really pretty, although it does come with the extremely cold weather.

The Game Awards & Playstation Experience 2017

This is just a quick mention. The Game Awards happened on December 7th and the Playstation Experience was last weekend. There were some cool reveals and we, (Game Warp aka Elwood & I) did a full recap of both events (remotely thanks to the magic of livestreaming). You can find the links below:

The Game Awards
Playstation Experience Panel Recap
Playstation Experience Trails Recap

What was also very cool was that Norman Reedus and Guillermo Del Toro both made appearances which was incredibly cool.

Salon des Metiers D’Art

One of my annual December events is going to Salon des Metiers d’Art. I usually end up going two times. I went the first time last week and picked up a few little things. I’ll be heading back very soon to scope out some other stuff and see if anything else catches my eye on gift ideas and such. I’ll be doing a haul post on it soon or some places that caught my eye if the haul isn’t particularly inspiring.

Signé Local – Le Vitrine du Fait au Quebec

Finally, for another local event is this one that I spontaneously found on a shopping outing with my husband at this shopping district called Quartier Dix30 in the suburbs. Every weekend, there are different vendors (for the most part) that sell their products from local arts and craft companies. Its pretty cool. I definitely have a mini haul post for this one as well and since I’m not a millionaire, I couldn’t get everything I wanted to but I’d like to highlight some really cool companies (and log them for future reference when I do have more disposable income).

Cute Kitty Pic

Upcoming:

• Christmas Movie Reviews
• Sunday List (Christmas related)
• 2017 Movie Reviews
• more Christmas related stuff…

That’s it for this Weekly Adventures!
Not exactly a ton of stuff but just a few moments here and there!
This will most likely be the last one as the next will probably do a 2017 in review!