Montreal Comiccon 2019 Haul

Montreal Comiccon is come to an end! As our final wrap-up piece after all the coverage, its going to be the fun shopping haul!

There was quite a few really nice vendors this year. They may have been there previous years but I just missed it because if anyone has been to any Comiccon, you know that its just a world of everything and information overload. I went back to the Artist Alley every single day and I kid you not that I always noticed something different that I didn’t in the previous day. Lots of creativity going on which is something that I love to see. It took quite a bit to restrain myself from buying everything that I liked (just take a look at my Day 1 on all the Artist Alley that I liked HERE).

Regardless, here is the shopping haul! If you follow my Instagram, then you probably have already seen it.

Ruin World by Derek Laufman

One of the things I’ve loved to find during Montreal Comiccon is the books and comics/graphic novels from indie artists and authors, because they are really interesting to see plus its always nice to discover something new. I’ve been into cute things lately (well, always have) so not only did the art attract me over to Derek Laufman’s booth in the first place but then I saw the colorful cover for Ruin World and just loved it. I’m really looking forward to reading it soon (and then I’ll have a review for it go up as well).

Fairy Bell/Fairy Glow Necklace by The Emerald Cauldron

The Emerald Cauldron first caught my eye because of its pixie light necklace, which they call Fairy Glow on their site so I’ll use that. Of course, the debate behind that is battery power and when would I want to wear a necklace that glows in public. In the end, after a chat with them, I decided to get a smaller size pendant (sadly did not have a rose gold or titanium finish, which I would have preferred) so went with a silver finish and then chose the sacred heart shape along with Fairy Bells instead which just ring a little instead of glow. This option at $30 came with a replacement Fairy Glow LED light, which I honestly didn’t want so I asked to change it to another replacement fairy bell (which she asked for $5, which was fine since practicality mattered more than getting something I wouldn’t use). Still, she was great and still threw in a blue LED fairy glow. Service and patience here was fantastic. Not to mention, they had a good choice of colors both for the chimes (and some glow in the dark options) as well as LED light colors (and one that changes colors slowly). Anyways, I got the blue chime and the mint green chime with a sacred heart cage with a silver finish.

Pins by Art by DaDa

Seeing as I already have a lot of art and we are running out of wall space for any more prints to hang up and I wanted to support a college friend and her business, I went to Art by DaDa and got two pins. I’m a big fan of Lilo and Stitch and Fox and the Hound so these worked fine for me. I like them a ton. Plus, I think that her Disney art concept is brilliant and so creative. I always look forward to see what else she comes up with. Those pins went right onto my bag (which I use for work and going to cover events).

Tea by Sense and SensibiliTea

I honestly think its the first year we’re seeing tea booths at Montreal Comiccon. Being an Austen fan, the store name caught my attention right away. While I didn’t get any Austen themed tea, I did end up getting an Absinthe-flavored Green Tea, which is derived with ingredients from the vintage Absinthe mix which turned into this blend. The tea smells really good and I love green tea so it seemed like a good choice. When I was drafting up the Artist Alley highlights for Day 1, I landed on their Facebook page which talked about their new modern tea called Demogorgon’s Bane. I also happen to be a fan of Stranger Things so it was a decision between this one and their Princess Peach Tea (which smells like a fruit garden tisane). I’m not going to lie that I wanted to buy both but then I’m not a huge fan of tisane and who can resist the raspberry chocolate flavored Ceylon black tea, which is what Demogorgan’s Bane is. I have yet to try either of them but fun fact, all the teas are vegan which is nice for myself who has lactose intolerance.

That’s it for this shopping haul!
Definitely toned down from previous years but I think I made some pretty awesome purchases!

Restaurant: Labothery (Brossard, Canada)

One of the new additions to Quartier Dix30 in the Square Dix30 area in Brossard is a new bubble tea joint called Labothery. The concept is to have a build your own bubble tea concept from base to taste combination to sugar level to the jellies/pearls/tapioca/etc.

Its been a while since the bubble tea concept has been around and to be fair, it hasn’t had a whole lot of gimmick surrounding since the whole foreign thing might already be one. The chewy tapioca and the different jellies and now we even have pearls and such.

Because I’m silly, I forgot to take a picture so here’s a picture from my friend’s Instagram:

View this post on Instagram

1st time there saturday. Did a weird combination of flavours it tasted funny at the start but halfway through it grew on me. #dix30 #weekends #newstuff

A post shared by Ron (@rlaw1978) on Jun 16, 2019 at 2:35pm PDT

Its very much a lab concept there which is pretty nice and a lot of fun to just discuss what to put together and see what works. My friend used the more oriental flavors of kumquat and winter melon which I don’t think would have been as bad if he didn’t mix with other flavor palettes for the pearls and such.

We both took the Ice Tea variety. They also have a milk tea variety which is the powder that you choose and for the other types, you get to choose sugar level but for the iced tea, they say that the sugar level should already be enough. I’m assuming that means that the tea is already sweetened. I’ll discuss that a little later.

Here’s what I ended up choosing to put in my drink.

My iced tea base was green tea with flavors of kumquat and mango. For the pearls, I added in mango pearls and honey pearls. Mine turned out to be pretty good since I kept it fairly basic and didn’t get too experimental. However, my honey pearls did end up adding quite a sweet punch to it, making me think about whether the tea was sweetened already. I’m not quite sure about that. Point is, it did work pretty well. Plus the other choices were decent with tapioca as an obvious choice as well as aloe and all kinds of other pearls and jellies to choose from.

Overall, Labothery is a pretty cool concept. As with anything with a concept and customizable, it tends to increase the price. It was around $6.50 for my drink, I think. I haven’t had bubble tea in a while, mind you, so I’m not sure what the current pricing for it is. The pros and cons of this concept is obviously, that you can be as creative as you’d like to be with the flavor combinations but the cons is that the result will never be certain. However, it is a surprise element and essentially you suffer your own consequences. In my case, it turned out pretty well as for my friend, it was more an acquired taste that he grew to like more halfway through.

Restaurant: Nom Nom Cantine (Montreal, Canada)

You can see the last visit to Nom Nom Cantine recap HERE.

Nom Nom Cantine

I recommended Nom Nom Cantine as our co-worker lunch spot last week and we ended up going there. I’ve never had the lunch menu before and only been there once before. The restaurant decor was still the same and the atmosphere is still very relaxing.

Appetizers

Chicken Dumplings

The most impressed dish I had in my last visit was the dumplings so this time, I came back to try them again. These ones are steamed and the sauce is a little sweet and a think maybe a tad bit spicy. While I don’t have pictures, my coworkers also took dumplings. One of them took the pork and the other took the vegetarian. The latter is fried. I actually liked the chicken dumplings the best while the other two are pretty good also.

Main Meals

Chicken Poke Bowl ($19)

General Tao Chicken (They have another name but I can’t remember it)

Two of my coworkers ordered these two meals and shared it between them as they both wanted to try both of them. While I didn’t try the poke bowl (which wouldn’t matter since I’m not sure what its supposed to taste like as I’ve  never had it before), I did help them finish up the General Tao Chicken. The chicken here is done really nicely. There’s a nice flavor to it and a good texture in the bite of the chicken.

Shrimps Soba Noodle

My other coworker and I ended up getting the Shrimp Soba Noodles which had some interesting ingredients like lemongrass and such that gave me the impression that in a soup, it would have this refreshing taste to it. Plus, its supposed to be pretty popular dish at Nom Nom. This noodle bowl did taste good and was quite the comfort food. The shrimps are done perfectly and the soba noodles done in a soup bowl is the first time that I’ve had it this way. Usually its served cold in my recollection. However, it was a little disappointing because the soup lacked a bit of flavor. It leaned a bit more towards the blander side. For myself, I’m used to it so it didn’t bother me too much but my coworker also didn’t quite like it as much because of that. On top of that, the disappointment came with the fact that it lacked all those flavors it seemed to have promised and turned into a very normal bowl of soup noodles.

After Lunch Tea

Green Tea

I forgot to take the desserts that my coworkers ordered but I got myself a tea. Its always nice to see the care taken to present the tea and in this case, they had this whole thing. I believe the tea was sencha tea and had a fantastic flavor to it.

Overall, Nom Nom Cantine is still decent. It hasn’t really changed how I felt about it the first time around. The service is pretty good. The waiter was helpful and very friendly. The food presentation is very attractive. The flavors were mostly good except for the slightly blander soup base. The selection of food isn’t a huge amount but its a good idea to limit the options but offer a good quality of food in my opinion.

***As an ending note, the waiter did explain that Nom Nom would be changing form into an Italian restaurant later this year  because the restaurant was always meant to be more of a pop-up concept. You can see their first form was as a French restaurant called E.A.T. where we did go to in this post HERE.***

Ottawa Day Trip and August Announcement!

Can you believe that August came around so fast?  Summer already feels like its over but still, with so much time at home from being sick and before that being in a car on vacation, my mind has been working really hard on thinking up things I wanted to do for the blog.

Before that, you know me! I can’t just start by giving you the announcements! With all that positive seeking yesterday, it got even more awesome after I published THIS POST! My friend called me up and went to Ottawa for a day trip for exploring the St. Laurent Mall (always went to the Rideau Mall) and then to our favorite supermarket T&T! 🙂

Of course, I always end up buying stuff! At the St. Laurent Mall, I bought this:

St. Laurent Mall buys!

I got The Casual Vacancy for 40% off at Coles. Then got two different types of teas at Teavana.  One of a herbal tea called Peach Tranquility which works well on its own and is supposed to be a good match for Tranquil Dream herbal tea also.  Second one is a classic green tea called Emperor’s Clouds & Mist.  It smells awesome! I can’t wait to try it out.

I also got a new dress! Finally after searching for one the whole summer, I finally found one that worked 😉

I’m not too good at self-portraits apparently with my new camera.  This is the best shot I have.  Love the dress though 🙂

Next stop at T&T Supermarket, my friend’s new cooler was big help.  I could get some frozen Fried Pork Buns and Steamed Pork Dumplings.  We also got some dimsum for a late lunch and some food for dinner that evening.  I bought some Black Sesame Soy Milk (my fave which I talked about HERE!). Lets check out the dimsum 🙂

Chives Dumplings

Steamed Shao Mai (Pork Dumplings?)

Fried Pork Buns (my fave)

Sesame balls with red bean paste

Now that I have your attention with food 🙂 Ready for the August Announcement?

So, I’ve been thinking about it for a while.  This year, I’ve talked about Meg Ryan marathon, Nicholas Sparks marathon, but those won’t be for August.  All of you have been totally awesome whenever I post up film reviews and would always suggest more movies for me to check out.  Believe it or not, I’ve jotted it down in my notebook and a part in my email drafts as well.  That list has been getting really long so in a mission to decrease the list and to give some mention all of you, I’m going to be spending August watching movies solely from movies you recommended.

This week, I will start with two movies that aren’t recommendations because it was before I made this decision.  After those two, we’ll get cracking right away.  If you have certain movies that you feel I’d like, then please go ahead and recommend it in the comments whenever you’d like.  Drop me an email or tweet me if you’d like.  Whatever works for you, but I don’t mind the list getting bigger.  I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I felt it was the right time! 🙂

I will also be looking for a film for the Shitfest so there might be a few interviews from that as well 🙂 I will be changing my horror packs since the current one seem to not be going anywhere.  So maybe this one will hit the jackpot right away!.

August is going to be recommendations month! Drop me more if you’d like 🙂

Hope you had a great weekend! Lets have a great August together 🙂

Week 10: Staying Hydrated!

I have this issue.  Part of it has to do with weekdays when I`m at work and the washrooms being on the 4th floor.  Its drinking water.  I can`t really take so many bathroom breaks so I lower my water consumption.  From morning till evening on the weekdays, I probably get about 3 cups of water in.  Most of the times, its even less.  When I get home, I get maybe another 2-3 cups.  Working out has made me drink more but its never at par with 8 glasses of waters.  So this week`s goal is to keep liquids flowing into my body.  Soft drinks and alcoholic beverages not included, of course!

Monday

Hydration: 6.5-7 cups of tea, water, juice, protein shake with vanilla almond milk!

Not a bad start for a new goal, right? If I can even keep this up for the rest of the week to get into the habit of it. I’ll be pretty happy about it.  Today, my boyfriend decided to join me for a part of my workout.  Mondays are always the crazy long workout day, so I chose to do the Workout Mashup (that I love so very much). I also figured out how to do the Jump Lunge Mountain Climbers properly 🙂 Plus, I realized my endurance to do burpees are higher!

Tuesday

Hydration: 6 cups of tea, water, apple juice, mango juice and protein shake with almond milk 🙂

Due to the playoff game, the workout eventually had to start in middle of the 3rd period.  I chose to work out my glutes and my abs! I did two rounds of glutes exercise with Tone it Up’s Spankin’ Booty Workout.

I wanted to die at the end of the 2nd round.  It doesn’t look particularly hard but when you add everything together, its so painful.  Whats really good is that it has a very smooth movement from standing exercises to kneeling then onto the back.  I followed this through with the Slender Abs Workout.  I did one round of this and it was already too much for me.  The worst are doing Cinch Ups.  Apparently my body doesn’t not move like that.

Wednesday

Hydration: 5 cups of assorted drinks like tea, water, milk with protein powder, juices.

Day OFF! Date night with my boyfriend to see Ironman 3! (Check out my review HERE if you missed it!) This month’s movies are going to be very time sensitive in order to catch everything we want to see 🙂

Thursday

Hydration : 5 cups of water, tea and almond milk

Playoffs night yet again! I ended up losing most of my hope halfway through so I wandered off to do chores and then went to do this Love Your Arms Workout! I did the full 3 rounds.  It wasn’t particularly hard but by the 2nd round those Swaying Angels started getting a bit tougher and by the 3rd round, even the Bow and Arrow was feeling hard to complete.

After that and the game pretty much ended, when my boyfriend also didn’t want to see how the game would ends, we went off for a 30 minutes “after dinner” walk.  Dinner had passed for a good 2 hours before we actually go out but we probably walked for longer than 30 minutes so I guess its not too bad 🙂 It felt good! The air was a tad heavy because it didn’t rain when it was forecasted to but at least it had a nice breeze.

Friday

Hydration: 5 cups of tea, water, almond milk Perfect Fit smoothie, juice

Tone it Up has scheduled in these workouts below!

2 rounds Sunseeker Workout

2 rounds Surfer’s Paradise Workout

I deliberately avoided this exercise on Tuesday because I LOATHE the Pacific Paradise…and I never understand the point of using surfboards as your platform because I don’t have one here.  I have a very normal floor. Plus, I don’t live down south so I don’t know how to surf either. However, I decided to give it a go finally.  Actually it was pretty fun once I figured out how to do it.  The most fun and slightly challenging had to be the Kiwi Kicks 🙂  It feels  like a long time that I pushed through and completed the same exercise as Tone it Up puts out.  I even followed their advice and had a Perfect Fit Protein Smoothie made with almond milk and peanut butter.  It was SUPER delicious!

Saturday

Hydration: 5 cups of water, juice, almond milk

Somehow the day became more hectic than I expected and I ended up getting in less hydration than my normal weekend day.  I also had to celebrate Mother’s Day and get flowers and bake and all that so no workout today.  Postponed to Sunday 🙂 Plus, my muscles were still in some crazy pain from Fridays workouts so it’ll be good!

Sunday

Hydration: 6 cups of tea, water, juice, almond milk with Perfect Fit

My boyfriend decided to join me for a cardio/body weights workout together. Since he was being so nice, I gave him a few choices to choose from and he picked this one…

…which he soon regretted by the time we hit the squat jumps.  Squats-Squat jumps-lunges juiced us out real good.  By the time I had to do the burpees, every single one felt like my legs were burning and it took every ounce of energy to jump.  However, I did keep it up and did 2 full rounds.  I was going to give up on the 3rd but I ended up doing it but had to cut out the alternating lunges because my knees would probably not take it well and did 10 burpees and 15 pushups.  Everything else I did in full to end the 3rd round.  I know that I’m out of shape for some of these when I did this in 32 minutes.  I will try to aim for completing this in 25 minutes eventually!

Week 10 means that the weekly workout roundups are worthy of their own tab on the top along with their own category, which means that if you ever are interested in trying out any of the workouts, you can find them there easier 🙂 This week was tough and although hydrating myself didn’t hit the 8 glasses of water any of the days, the effort I put in showed and I felt better just from aiming to keep that up.  It’ll be a constant focus! Its important to my health to really drink more fluids a day.  Before we move on, my two fave workouts for this week that I’d recommend is No Nonsense Circuit and the Tuesday combo with Spankin’ Booty and Slender Abs Workout! They are both challenging and efficient.  I’d give honorable mention to doing Friday’s Surfer’s Paradise because there were some workouts that really great to do.

NOW, ONTO NEXT WEEK! I might end up doing only 3-4 workouts though…with my friend’s wedding coming up on Sunday and Friday being her bachelorette party, its going to be tough to get in a lot more than that.  However, I will try very hard! After all, I do need to fit into that dress and take some beautiful pictures to show everyone! 🙂