Summer Festivals & Friends!

This past week went by in a flash. Maybe it was having fun, maybe it was work being busy but peaceful, maybe it was just having time to finally get things out of the way and maybe its just finally feeling like I’m moving into a direction where things are resolved.  Sure, that resolved feeling doesn’t quite feel that way during this week but as I put this post together on Sunday night, I also try to reset my mindset.

Last week’s updates was set up in a 10 item list mostly focused on gardening but I love that structure so to not overwhelm everyone, I’m keeping that structure from now on but we’ll be staying positive and looking at happy stuff.  That was always the goal of being here and as much as I love to share events, I also love to share positive thoughts 🙂

The past week wasn’t quite as eventful, thank goodness, but it did involve hanging out with friends and experiencing/exploring new stuff so I’m pretty excited to share it.

1) Attending and seeing an entire movie at Shitfest Social

Eric organized a Shitfest Social in the Evening with Table 9 Mutant hosting it in his place, although he still made an appearance.  The movie is that one up there, Alone in the Dark. You can check out all our comments and interaction right HERE! It was pretty hilarious and fun stuff to just be watching a crappy movie at the same time and seeing everyone’s comments and criticism.

Just saying, if you do want to watch this, think about all of us that suffered to tell you that it sucks.  I was pretty confused throughout the whole movie as to what was going on and the ending didn’t really make sense either. Plus, it had some pretty horrible music and it was so loud that it overpowered anything they were saying.  Anyways, just perfect Shitfest material, my friends.

2) Free Children’s Workshop at Home Depot

Project: Bug House

Totally new experience for me.  I never knew that Home Depot offered these free workshops for kids once a month.  Apparently, its every second Saturday.  You get little badges for every project you complete and its just amazing seeing kids bond with their parents and other relatives.  A really nice family activity! Kudos to Home Depot 🙂

3) Enjoying my mom’s vegetable and flower garden

There are also lavenders and pink roses, some purple flowers, etc.  Lots going on.

Sweet Potato

“Delicata” Squash

These two are the ones I gave to my mom to plant in her garden: Sweet potatoes and Delicata Squash.  My mom also has chives, lettuce, tomatoes, green beans, winter melon, other varieties of squash and bitter melon.

4) Spending time with friends at Longueuil’s Percussion Festival

Performance

Face painting

Courtesy of my friend 🙂

I’ve never been to the Longueuil Percussion Festival but the last few years, we’ve been learning a lot of festivals and checking them out one by one.  This one was really awesome since I spent it with some great friends, made some new ones and the kids with us had a blast which always makes for fun times.  There was a bag of free samples from a pharmacy chain and lots of games and crafts for kids.  Plus, of course, there’s food and I’ll talk about that in the next point…

5) Eating great food at Percussion Festival

Lemonade&Ice Tea

My friend’s food stand Takoyaki Montreal

Takoyaki

Shaved Ice from Takoyaki Montreal

J-Dog

Last year for the Matsuri Japan Festival, I had already talked about my friend owning a food stand.  This year, they got a spot in the Percussion Festival.  They had their usual Takoyaki, which is either octopus, shrimp (I think) or mushroom flavor shaped in little balls.  They also had shaved ice in lots of flavors as well.

Not their booth, but J-Dog also made an appearance and last year, I had that awesome hot dog up there and I just couldn’t resist to have it again. Plus, Lemon Heaven was there and they make the best lemonade EVER! 🙂

Friends, Food and Festivals…the 3 Fs I possibly love the most!

6) Reuniting and meeting new friends for my friend’s bachelorette party dinner

Glasses decoration at Kyomi Restaurant

Special table decoration at Kyomi Restaurant

Bachelorette parties are kept secret so only some food and decor shots here.  I haven’t seen the bride in at least 5 years but we’ve known each other for a long time.  It was my pleasure to be invited to her bachelorette party and her wedding next weekend.  Kyomi Restaurant is not a typical restaurant you would catch me at but the decor was beautiful. The lighting gave a beautiful mood.  You can see it on the glass and yes, those are penis decorated straws.  Don’t ask…

As always, there’s always food in the mix.

Wonton Soup

Someone’s meat dish

These two dishes was one of the girl’s meal: Wonton soup and a meat dish.  Not sure the exact thing.

Then me, my best friend and another friend decided to order three dishes and share among us.

Basil Shrimp

U.B.B.

Lobster Salad

All three were very good. Lobster Salad was delicious.  Basil Shrimp was original and I was happy to have rice.  The saw was done really well and they had a rice sheet at the bottom which gave it a nice texture. The U.B.B Maki rolls were great.  UBB has eel, avocado, shrimp tempura and mango.

Blue was the theme. Here’s my outfit for the party

Dinner may have taken long and I may have had gotten beat to the last parking spot and ended up parking in the side streets and had to trudge in my heels to and from the car but seeing some long time friends and hanging with a bunch of nice girls was very enjoyable.  It was a change of pace and just a nice night 🙂 I couldn’t join them for the activities before and after as I already had plans and I needed to get home to rest for Sunday.

7) Spending an entire day with my boyfriend

Not a lot of pictures to show for this one but after a pretty busy Saturday, my boyfriend and I took Sunday to recharge and spend together.  Mentally, its been a tough week with a lot of stuff to reflect on and I might touch on that a little but we had a few errands to run so we took care of stuff together.

I’m thankful for those lovely friend and family that took my advice and gave me Reno Depot gift cards because it covered all my pool treating and maintenance expenses and I love you for it.  We didn’t get the chance to get more paint but we definitely have to do that as our next priority.  We made a stop at Ikea and bought some ceiling lights.  As much as we want to change as little things as possible, some rooms have really dim lights and we’re going to do a little moving lights around and installing extra ones.  We still have to go back for a second round for wall mounted lights and dining table but things are falling into place.  One floor is completely painted and I’m getting some furniture ready to be moved over.

Gluten-Free: Bison Burger and Sausages

After that we ate dinner together at our home.  We made some gluten-free penne, sausages and bison burger patties (our first time trying) along with some broccoli.

We even managed to see two movies on Netflix: a ridiculous soft porn movie giving this chick a million times to show off her too big boobs called Jailbait  (Side note: I should’ve used this Shitfest, Eric.) and a Marvel movie I’ve never seen and know nothing about, The Punisher with Thomas Jane.  Review for this one will happen eventually…

8) Calming my soul with some Michael Buble

It really doesn’t mean anything but Michael Buble is always a winner especially with these slower songs.  It brings me contentment.  Plus, I started trying to play this on the piano so its pretty much on repeat 🙂 Thats really how this all started.  The second one that I have on repeat is called Lost.

9) Fantasia Film Festival coming up this Thursday!

Last year, I got mega sick last year for Fantasia Festival so I missed my most anticipated movie which when some of you reviewed it, turns out it wasn’t all that great.  Still, this year, I was more structured.  I tracked when the schedule came up and made my setlist of 10 movies 🙂 My boyfriend will join me for the weekend ones so yay to date night.

Still, all is just talk until I get the tickets.  I”ll be updating you on what I’m going to see right after I manage to get my hands on those tickets 😉 I’m excited. It looks like there are some cool movies in this year’s line up

10) Finding inspirational quotes 🙂

This quote just made my day when I saw it.  I’m happy that I found someone that I can lean on and confide in 🙂

So true, right? Its a work in progress.  Negative BS, the door is that way, please see yourself out 😉

Here we go! My 10 things this week! I’d say its a winner.  Saturday was a bit nuts and overcrowded but the next two-three weeks will be very busy with Fantasia in my plans.  I’m planning on drafting a mad amount of posts so that I’m covered for the nights I’m out.  Lots of planning in there 🙂

Happy Monday my lovelies! 

Long Weekend & Gardening!

These two weekends have been pretty awesome.  Its a new learning experience to plant my own garden and grow my own seeds.

Last week, that was exactly what I did (other than my food adventures HERE). Around mid-week, my boyfriend sent me pictures that the seeds, my little zucchini was growing.

Hello World, Zucchini!

By the time, this weekend came around and I went to go see my seedlings, some others were sprouting as well.  Of course, I was the genius and didn’t label them so I know two of my broccoli are coming out along with possible basil and oregano. Oregano is my guess and even some chamomile, which is also a guess.  It needs to get bigger for me to realize.  Those two are so small that I didn’t even bother to take a picture of them. I’ll probably do an update post on how that’s going soon.

For some who don’t know, I’m currently in my long weekend, which means NO WORK TODAY! YAY! Thank you, Queen Victoria 😉 Regardless, this weekend was the mega plan to go to this huge greenhouse producer garden center called Les Serres Jean-Francois Dauphinais out in St Basile Le Grand, a little town on the outskirts of where I live.  Originally it was just myself and Phoebe@Starry Traveler but then my boyfriend came along and thank goodness because we needed help with that 😉

We spent almost 2 hours there going through rows and rows of herbs and vegetables and flowers.

This was everything that I bought, with a few little ones from Canadian Tire, that we picked up everything and my lovely Clematis is out of the shot.

So lets have a little more close-up tour of what I’ll be planting for both my indoor garden and outdoors (if it happens, more about that later in this post).

Lemon Verbena, Stevia, Ground Cherry and Lime Mint

For you Vampire Diary lovers, I can make some vervain 😉

Raspberry

Delicata Squash, Ginger Mint, Strawberry, Blackie Sweet Potato and regular Sweet Potato…

The one in the top row in the middle is baffling me right now.  Its escaping my brain what it is…

Moving on 😉

Hibiscus

Spanish Lavender, Goldilocks, Mixed Lettuce, Crimson Star and Little flowers

Other then the two on the right, lettuce combo and little red flowers, the rest are all going in pots or indoors.

The most awesome part is that after my post about Crimson Star, there flowers if you miss it.

Flowers

I fell in love with them and although the garden didn’t have them, we managed to find stuck in the lower row of the Canadian Tire garden exactly two plants, one for me and one for Phoebe.  Score! That was a happy moment.

We still have one more plant that we haven’t shown, here’s the lovely Clematis.  The first plant I thought about wanting in my garden because they are so beautiful.

Clematis

That was my crazy garden shopping.  Its a bit late to sprout seeds from everything at this point so its pretty great to have found that lovely garden center. I’m sure to return there.  I have a few other plants I have in mind if these succeed.

However, there is a bit of issues on the outdoor garden issue.  My previous owners were not the gardening type and the gardening area has turned into partial storage and grasslands full of weeds.  As I was weeding away, I found some white worms.  I may be a gardening amateur but I know these not so little guys are a big no-no. This means, I need to treat my soil before I can use it.  I have some researching to do on that.  With my vacation a few weeks away and mostly time to work on the weekends, maybe I’ll have to throw in a few weekdays this coming week to try to get everything done.

Whats good is that on Sunday morning, we headed out to Ikea and bought a few more items for the house.  The most significant being some pots to plant my indoor herbs garden.  At least that will most along as planned and that will be done later today after a little fun time with friends 😉

I’m pretty done with updating on the weekend.  I bought some paint for the dining room also but that won’t be done until the last room in the upper floor is taken care of. I’m just going to say that the colors are very delicious because I can’t remember those fancy names.

Fun and exciting times!

I’m doing a bit of research (if I stop falling asleep while I do it) on herbs, vegetables and flowers to see where and how to plant it is more appropriate.  Also on my list, natural/organic treatment formula for my apple tree; how to get rid of white worms and how to have more space effective indoor gardens 😉

I know some of you are very wonderful gardeners. Any advice?

Also, no worries! Normal programming will be back. I have a fun week prepared and I promise you will like it 😉

Hope all of you had fabulous weekends and to my Canadian friends, Happy Victoria Day (unless you have another name because I know we like to be special over here in Quebec and have different names)!