What’s Up Week 17 & My Weekly Adventures: Its been a few days and I’m finally back!!

Welcome to the duo segment post of What’s Up and My Weekly Adventures!

Due to the lack of things going on and if you haven’t noticed, my unannounced hiatus for the past 4 days, its been rough and mostly just out of control on the work life personal side of things. I did give a warning last week but things just got more intense. Hence, to save everyone an overload of the same thing, I will do both segments together in this post. Lets start with Whats Up and move onto My Weekly Adventures!

READING

• Forever People (Review)

I finished up Forever People just in time for the blog tour so I will keep things brief here so you can see my thoughts over on the review. Overall, its a good story: good premise and compelling characters to say the least.

PLAYING

• The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

The husband and I finished up The Vanishing of Ethan Carter very soon after we started it. Its a pretty creative indie title with a lot of mystery and nice execution on gameplay and narration. Plus, the game sets itself in a visually stunning backdrop. I’ll be editing the playthrough after last week’s Rime. It’ll take a little while to get things back on track on my end.

WATCHING

NOTHING…absolutely nothing. I can tell you that I’m planning on catching up with all the Marvel movies in the next little while: Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp as well as all the other Pixar stuff in case it gets removed from Netflix at some point and get around to rewatching The Shape of Water for the next Movies and Tea episode.

BINGING

• My Daughter’s Boyfriend (女儿们的男朋友, Season 1)

Currently binging: The Brightest Star in the Sky, Put Your Head on My Shoulder, Z Nation (Season 1), Idol Producer, Rush to the Dead Summer (rewatch)

My Daughter’s Boyfriend is a 6 episode variety show which follows the daughters of 4 different famous fathers (actors and soccer player) and watch how they interact with their boyfriends over a few weeks time as they comment on various aspects on relationship and how their views and their daughters view on marriage, life and everything else changes. These shows usually can get very heartwarming and China has a lot of these variety shows from different angles and in the end, other than watching the relationships here whether its the love life or the father-daughter one, the main thing here is usually opening up the channel of the importance of communication and family and probably talk through some issues that everyone at one point or another might encounter in dealing with these different situations. Its 6 episodes and I thought it was really good. I’m not going to write about this show but it seems to already be greenlit for a second season so I’m looking forward to it.

As for the other shows, I’m pretty much watching the same things. Due to having a lot of overtime at home, I ended up rewatching Rush to the Dead Summer in the background while trying my best to stay on track with my two current favorite shows The Brightest Star in the Sky and Put Your Head on My Shoulder. I’ve been also semi-watching Z Nation with my husband but not completely focus although the show really doesn’t seem to have that much depth in Season 1 yet. The new thing this week is Idol Producer which I went back to watch to see how boy group Nine Percent started because a good few of them is now Nex7 which I think has some potential to do well and is the focus on Master in the House which I didn’t get a chance to catch up with this week but will get back to soon as well as Great Escape and such.

What have you been watching/reading/binging/playing?

---

Suffice to say not a ton happened so I’m going to keep it short and sweet as its pretty much the upcoming post recaps and such that I’ll be talking about. A few upcoming plans and perhaps some seasonal segment revivials and all that great stuff. The few days off reminded me of how much I miss writing and editing and recording so I have a few things to also deal with and get back on track on all projects.

Restaurant Discovery: Mama Dumplings

Its been a crazy hunt looking for  a dumpling place not on the island of Montreal or more specifically Chinatown and by complete spontaneity, I drove by one  a week or two ago and since then have gone two times with my friend. I’ll have a post soon about it.

Movies & Tea Podcast: Crimson Peak

If you didn’t see the reblog last week, Movies and Tea has a new podcast episode for Guillermo Del Toro’s Crimson Peak. My first time viewing feelings back when it released and this rewatch definitely had some differences.

Easter Weekend

Easter weekend was probably a mistake thinking back now with all the overtime but I think it also charged me up a little. We didn’t really do a ton for Easter weekend and mostly just relaxed and took advantage of the relatively nice weather and took care of some chores like changing tires and you know, taxes. However, my husband and I did go for a little walk in a park and its nice because the park itself has a lot of workout stations so I’m planning out some way to incorporate cardio with these exercises to get into shape. Add some changes here and there and whatnot. Only 7 weeks until my best friend’s wedding and I’m living in constant fear that I won’t fit into the bridesmaids dress at the lack of exercise, especially after this work rush. We are still working out the workout routines and such but the big plan starts in a few days after I’ve recuperated some energy.

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for this Weekly Adventures!
What have you been up to?

My Weekly Adventures: The 8th Blogiversary

This weekly adventures is a tad later than usual…because of the big event that Tranquil Dreams is 8!!

It all fits perfectly because I didn’t have much that happened other than working on some personal matters that I don’t prefer to share here. On top of that, its a whole lot of overtime at work and you all don’t want to hear about that just as much as I don’t want to talk about it, I’d presume. Then there’s the obvious issue of being sick which I had mentioned briefly on a What’s Up. So all in all, not a ton of fun activities in the last two weeks.

 

Normally, I have the habit of an annual vlog to celebrate the blogiversary but let’s just say that the plans fell through because I forgot I had to film and ran out of time. I have to say that it might be for the better. Before we move onto the more Weekly Adventures bit, let me write a little on celebrating the blogiversary today.

For one, its a massive thank you to everyone who has stopped by here, liked a post and the other bloggers and podcasters that I’ve worked with. Its pretty fantastic to think that I’ve been doing this for eight years and that now its part of my daily life and the content has grown and changed as well. Its also been a journey where I’ve learned a lot not only in finding my writing style and simply writing better but also the fact that without here, I wouldn’t have learned video editing and audio editing and learned how to be a part of podcast co-host and co-host a blogathon as well. At the same time, I never thought that I’d get the opportunity to cover festivals and review screeners and all that fun stuff. All in all, a HUGE THANK YOU to everyone whether you drop by today or later on or before this post existed.

This past week was a nice little work up to this because I had one announcement and one little decision in the making which is the only Weekly Adventures worthy parts…

Ultimate 2000s Blogathon Announcement

In case you missed it, Drew and I announced out Ultimate 2000s Blogathon on Monday. Sign up and submissions are open for 3 weeks. We are looking forward to it all. Its the 4th year that we are doing what we have called the Ultimate Decades Blogathon this time of year and the 2000s has such great movies that we are looking forward to what picks show up.

If you missed the announcement, you can find it HERE.

To Come: Videos, Vlogs, Discussions and more

Ever since I stopped doing What’s Up videos, I’ve been pondering this video business for a while. To be honest, I’ve been thinking about this even during that phase. Doing every other week seems to be hard to keep up with mostly because it just falls out of routine and seems a bit redundant. So I decided to do a monthly What’s Up roundup sort of thing. At least thats the idea for now. The goal is to eventually get something much more entertaining like discussions or compare and contrasts on movies and adaptations or their remakes or reboots or sequels. Something that I like to talk about preferably so it can really be anything. I might do audio and just do clips in the background more than myself showing up in the videos.

I still have some decisions to make but I think its a nice way to liven up the Youtube channel a little and do some extracurricular video editing practice. I did think about doing like a podcast style as well or maybe just doing an audio version as well.

All in all…

We’re 8 after all! I’m looking forward to changing things around and a part of me wants to go back to where it all started with a bigger focus on food and baking which I honestly miss a lot. I miss the days that I watched a lot of Chinese and Taiwanese TV series and Hong Kong movies and I guess its the years that its been here that I’m not as afraid to take those risks so I’ll slowly get that going as well. Its been on my mind for a few years now and I never figured out how to integrate it so I’m going to just go for it once I find the right structure and angle.

That’s it for this special Weekly Adventures!
Thanks to everyone for being a part of this journey!
Being here for 8 years means that I’ve seen many bloggers come and go.
As for myself, I see myself going further a little longer 🙂

My Weekly Adventures: The Wrong Side of the Fence…

Following the last Weekly Adventures, I was on the fence about something. And well..seeing as its the title of this Weekly Adventures, suffice to say I made a decision on it. If you didn’t see the last post, don’t worry, you will know soon enough when we get there. These two weeks was a lot of eating… that’s all I got honestly. Something crazy happened at work that stressed me out so very much but really gave me the kick in the pants to motivate myself to get back into the groove of things. Find back some of the focus that I’ve seem to be missing.

MTL a Table 2018: Nom Nom Cantine

This year’s MTL a Table in place of the November Battle of Ingredients is at Nom Nom Cantine. We had a pretty good time there, eating delicious food with great company.

You can check out the post HERE.

NaNoWriMo 2018

The wrong side of the fence is refering to this. Which can only mean one thing…that I decided to start NaNoWriMo this year. I started on Day 7 and the late start and my recent cold has impacted a lot of progress. To be honest, with all the projects right now, I don’t plan to finish but I have an idea that I kept wanting to write about so I just couldn’t resist. Of course, I wasn’t going to do this madness by myself so my awesome podcast co-host graciously joined me in working on his own thing.

My progress leaves a lot to be desired right now so I’m going to try to push myself over the next half of the month to really catch up. Next Weekly Adventures, I’ll share the final result.

L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon

Like last year, as an end of season marathon thank you for all my early mornings and such, my friend took me out for a fancy dinner at the Casino de Montreal at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon. This restaurant definitely is expensive and fine cuisine but the one place that never disappoints me because of how well they adapt to making everyone feel important especially when it comes to my lactose intolerance and having French cuisine.

You can see the full recap of this restaurant experience HERE.

MEGA MTL

This past weekend marks one of the last gaming festivals that I will be going to (since there was also the summit earlier this week which I don’t go to because its on weekdays). MEGA MTL was morphed from the Montreal Independent Games Festival which used to be free and held at Dawson College. Now, it occupies the Marché Bonsecours in Old Montreal and it always shows off a lot of indie games to try out and showcase. Its a lot of games to write about so currently the post is still in the works for That Moment In but should be up soon.

My game of the festival is hands-down a game that has already been released called 39 Days to Mars, which is a coop puzzle adventure game developed by It’s Anecdotal.

Cute Kitty Pic

Thats it for this Weekly Adventures recap!
A quick and easy one this time. We had a few busy weekends so probably the next one will be even more quiet.

My Weekly Adventures #48

Its been a month since our last update! Honestly, the last one would’ve been just pure Fantasia Festival recap. I was going to put together a Top 5 or 10 films of Fantasia that I saw but after one recording, I just wasn’t happy with it so ended up putting that to the side. I still want to do something more for Fantasia Festival. Just giving it a little time to cool down as I catch up with some outstanding posts. Regardless, that is my own housekeeping and I won’t bore you further with it. On the note of housekeeping, the indexes for both books and movies are updated till the beginning of August so if you are looking for anything, you’ll find it there. I’ll work on restructuring that a little more by the end of the year.

Without further ado, let’s see what went on this past month! 🙂

Fantasia International Film Festival

A Ghost Story

Q&A David Lowery – A Ghost Story

Q&A Eric Valette – Le Serpent aux Milles Coupures

Q&A Origami Cast & Crew

Q&A Chris Peckover – Better Watch Out

Its obvious that the first thing to talk about is Fantasia Festival. It took most of July and overlapped the last My Weekly Adventures. Here’s some of the photos that I took from the Q&As. I did more recording than pictures. I’m thinking of compiling something out of it but working on that. Maybe it’ll be too late when I finally get around to it. However, you can find Fantasia movie reviews both in the Movies section or the drop down to Fantasia Festival, which will queue up all the last 15 posts or something about it.

If you look back at the Fantasia Festival movie list before I started (this post HERE), a good 40% of it probably had changed for many reasons. However, the original plan was around 15 movies and I watched about 14 and had an extra post for the short films. Things worked out quite well, I’d say. I will however get the Top 5 or 10 films list done soon. As I’m writing this, it feels necessary to give it a final wrap-up even if its late.

What made Fantasia Festival even better, other than the press pass was having my best friend join me for a day and my husband join me for two movies for back to back weekend date nights. I’d say this event coverage was pretty awesome! 🙂

New Blinds & Decoration

Seeing as I managed to spare some normal expenses in July, I decided to achieve the 2017 goals of changing our kitchen curtains which were lacy white curtains to actual blinds. After some discussion, we got the dark brown bamboo blinds and they are fantastic and match our color scheme perfectly. We just forgot to get a small one for the door but we will live. However, on our trip to Bouclair (a home decor chain in Quebec), I found this darling decoration on top. In case you haven’t realized, I love the word dream so one more thing to add to the den as I slowly transform it into my little world.

Sessions 375 x Ile Soniq

August is like the music festival month. The first weekend kicks off with Osheaga Festival and then last weekend was Ile Soniq. For those who don’t know, I’m like electronic music quite a bit. I’ve been listening to it and honestly as the years gone by, I’ve become more selective. I’ve always wanted to go to Ile Soniq but never really had the chance, mostly because I don’t want to go to these events by myself. However, Phoebe (aka The Starry Traveler & my co-host of Battle of Ingredients, which will return from hiatus very soon) dropped me a message and said that there was a free event in celebration of the Montreal 375th birthday called Sessions 375 x Ile Soniq En Ville. I met up with her at a midpoint and headed there with her and her bun bun. She has the goal of exposing her little one to all kinds of stuff so we didn’t go into the event grounds because of long line-ups and crowds and safety purposes but we watched and listened from afar and it was good enough for us.

The evening ended with a meal and I’ll be sharing a post on that soon. We have two foodie posts coming up. 🙂

Matsuri Japon Festival & Brossard Cultural Fest

Takoyaki

Every year, Matsuri Japon Festival and Brossard Cultural Fest lands on the same day so as usual, my friends and I head out to these events. First stop for lunch is Matsuri and we shared all those foods and my friend had some noodles also, which is not here. The day was incredibly local showers since we were in and out of rain and seriously one patch would have rain and the other would not.

Next up at Brossard Cultural Fest! We just made a little walk around, had a natural juice popstick and then got rained on a little and then left for home. There were some cute bouncy inflatable things every where for the kids and it was so awesome. My fave was the giant T-Rex but there was also a huge tiger, etc. Super cool stuff!

Game Warp – Instagram Fun

View this post on Instagram

Been thinking about replaying all the #NeedForSpeed #gaming #franchise. Can't say we aren't a fan, right? Which NFS game do you like? – Kim #selfie #socialexperiment #videogames #ps #ps2 #ps3 #ps4

A post shared by Game Warp (@gamewarppodcast) on Aug 2, 2017 at 7:06pm PDT

Not sure if I had mentioned it before but Game Warp Podcast has a Instagram. We mostly share random gaming stuff that we come across and hope to expand our platform a little more. Earlier this month, we decided to do a little social experiment, thought up by my fantastic co-host to see if we took selfies and held some random gaming stuff, we could get some more views. We ended having quite some fun with it and I’m thinking of doing that again. Mine turned out pretty good, which is so rare so I even changed a few of my profile pic to this one.

Yes, I know shameless promotion again! You got it! If you have Instagram, go and give us a follow! 🙂

Cute Kitty Pic

Upcoming:

• Battle of Ingredients (summer hiatus ends)
• Foodie Restaurant Recaps
• Movie Double Features
• TV Binges
• Books
• Top 10 Fantasia Films Seen

That’s it for this My Weekly Adventures (more like Monthly)!
What have you been up to?

My Weekly Adventures: Another NaNoWriMo Begins!

Welcome back to another My Weekly Adventures! It feels like forever that I’ve done an actual post on this and not just a random vacation or announcement post. It feels good to be back with this.

Lets get going!

Halloween month!

Halloween is finally over! It was a fun run learning all about Scream and Evil Dead franchises. It also had a few rough moments but it was great to finally see what this is all about. I didn’t get as much as I had wanted to do especially in the reading part or even TV part but work and real life kind of took over and they usually take priority. Still, a ton of you dropped by to comment and like and show your love for both the franchises. Thank you so very very much! I appreciate it. I actually just wrapped up Scream Season 2 so a TV Binge should be coming up fairly soon. I did try my absolutely best to keep a little fall themes going to not just be all horror.

I have already started brainstorming new franchise (s) to cover next year. My awesome Game Warp co-host Elwood suggested Candyman trilogy. I didn’t know that there were three movies so I will have to try to figure that out. Definitely a good choice. I am also looking at Final Destination or Joy Ride. Or maybe totally just changing it up and going back to random horrors. Any suggestions?

NaNoWriMo month!

I can’t believe that it is already November. This year went by so fast. November also means that its time for a month to construct another novel that I won’t get around to edit. I really should. This year, I have two ideas floating about. Something of a thriller. I never wrote one of those and I am not sure if I am up for it. The ideas are more drafts and to write 50000 words feels like a stretch for either of the plots. I always make it work. NaNoWriMo is the time I use to try out writing and formulating different genres so it could be a nice challenge. I will keep you all filled in. If any of you are also part of NaNoWriMo and want to be writing buddies, we definitely should to keep each other accountable.  Talking about that, in the hour before NaNoWriMo took off in the Eastern time zone at midnight, I went hunting down to see if Word Nerds was doing some more word sprints. They helped me out so much last year. In fact, it got me into a habit of even doing word sprints on my own when I couldn’t make it. And they did have one with Write All Year as a Twitter word sprint and I joined in for a 15 minutes then 30 minutes word sprint and hit my word count for day one and a little over.

As I got ready for bed, I have a good idea of even how to possibly mesh the two plots I was thinking about together. Just change the setting and voila! Lets hope that it all works out! Let the writing begin. I’m embracing what they call “Plantser. I got a vague outline/idea and basically winging most of it.

November Plans

With all that said, my life will mostly be consumed with work and home stuff and preparing for winter and Christmas. I can’t believe I am already talking about that. I do have lots of material all ready to be written and as usual some festivals to visit. It might not all be exciting but I am trying out something a little different on this month. It isn’t a far stretch from anything I have done just getting up to date with times and what I have time to do. This month primarily will be jumping back in time to review some 90s teen comedies and the likes. Not sure why. Perhaps all the stress at work made me more inclined to do so and it works well with a stressful November with a genre that is not what I am writing. NaNoWriMo means that I might not have as much time to write for the blog as regularly. I’m trying to keep things simple and light. Hopefully you all understand. 🙂 I also started planning for December which might be a little different from the normal holiday movies (since I’m running a little short on choices). That will be for the December update though.

Cute Kitty Moment

 

Upcoming:

• Event: MTL a Table
• Movies: 90s movies and other random stuff

My Weekly Adventures!

Two weeks have already passed by since the last Weekly Adventures? That is crazy! I can’t even believe we’re already halfway through February already.

In case you didn’t drop by the review for The Longest Ride, Happy Valentine’s Day! Its pretty much late in the evening for anyone in Eastern Standard Time (which is where I’m at and some of you are already in the evening). Thing is: it is Valentine’s Day and while I don’t celebrate it particularly, it has been pretty busy also running errands and taking more time than usual as we’ve entered deep freeze here in Montreal with temperatures dipping in the -35C with the wind chill factor and all that lovely stuff.  Winter has been late to arrive but we never really skip it, right?

I have a little more to report this time than last since I was just overloaded with work in the previous Weekly Adventures. If you did miss it, Chinese New Year happened and you can see the events of that right HERE!

Let’s go! 🙂

Ceramic Cafe with my husband and his niece

I love going to Ceramic Cafe.  Its this little place where we choose a piece of ceramic they have on location and you sit down for whatever amount of hours painting it.  We had a 2 person full day coupon so we had to only pay for his niece.  She is absolutely crafty and imaginative.  It was a ton of fun.  We were a little pressed with time since she had to go back to go for a sleepover or meeting with her friends (or something like that), but we did pretty well.  I managed to pick it up this weekend so we have the before and after it went into their baking process.

Before

After

My husband did the car piggy bank (which he ended up giving to his nephew).  The owl was his niece and of course, the cat is mine. 😉 I wasn’t sure how mine would turn out but I’d say it rather simple but cute.

If you notice, the last time I got one of these coupons, I went with my friend and I did that fruit bowl in the back. It has a Dr. Seuss quote around it.

Valentine’s Day Marathon: Short & Sweet!

Valentine’s Marathon came and went really quickly.  I didn’t really get a lot done but I’m pretty proud of all my choices.  It was an enjoyable run.  Plus, if you think about it, I started at the end of January when I did Far From the Madding Crowd. Still, continuing on the Nicholas Sparks adaptations was pretty good and the other choices were some decent finds with one that blew my mind.  In Your Eyes is right up there as one of my favorite romances right now. This is by far the least amount of movies in the few years I’ve been doing this with only 5 films but it is in quality and not quantity.  I do enjoy watching good movies more than bad and I’m pretty forgiving of romances.  It all worked out for the better.  Plus, Grease: Live was aired exactly at this same time frame and while I didn’t peg it as Valentine’s, it was a fun experience that was because of its emphasis on young love.

Now that this is behind us, if you missed any of them, head to my Valentine’s Marathon page HERE if you want to revisit this year or any past year’s choices.

New Plants!

We don’t celebrate much of Valentine’s Day gift but I’ve been talking about getting some lovely air plants to purify the air in our house a little quite a bit.  Its pretty much whenever I go to Wal-mart, I’ll go to the garden section and stare at it.  I’ll admire it and then leave without buying it.  Last week, my husband and I went and he finally urged me to buy one, which is the first one with those pretty pinkish grasses and beautiful flowers.  When I came home on Friday night from work, he had left me two pots more of these.  One was these air plants and the other was a little thing that people call “money tree”. If my plant, like the fern part looks a little torn is because my cat decided to give it a tasting before I got home to place it better.

Its time to grow some cat grass for her before she goes and eats anything else that I don’t want her to. On a second note, I’m starting to think about spring seeding and prepping for opening my garden and how to set up my vegetable garden when early May comes around. Its the first year that I’ve fertilized it and prepped it enough to turn it into a vegetable garden so I’m planning on getting some good stuff in there. Matching it with some container gardening and I think I might be set for this summer. 🙂

Ultimate 80s Blogathon!

At this point, I’ve done so many reminders and announcement posts on the Ultimate 80s Blogathon, you might hate me by now.  While its not Drew’s first blogathon, it is my first blogathon and I’m so happy that he let me join into a wonderful idea that he had for this one.  Ultimate 80s is a great idea and the turnout and excitement has just wowed me.  The blogathon will be running for close to 4 weeks currently with posts alternately between both of our sites Monday to Friday of the week.  We’ve received some fantastic posts! Tomorrow, we’re kicking off with our own 80s selection.  Remember to head over and check out Drew at Drew’s Movie Reviews and give him a follow to make sure that you don’t miss any of the posts.  If you are worried about that, I also hatched a backup plan for you and have a page on the menu on top dedicated to the Ultimate 80s Blogathon or you can just click HERE!  Currently, there are already 5 front runners that helped us out by sharing their posts on their sites last week to drive up the hype! They are fantastic choices and awesome reviews so remember to go check it out! 🙂

Balancing my Life!

Its been a while I’ve inserted quotes here but this kind of matches what I’m doing right now.  Between movies, books, podcast, baking, house stuff, work and recently gaming, my life is all over the place. Its funny because in all the mess, I actually feel very happy at finding a balance.  It does make me think about the direction of the blog.  Its a little early reveal of what might change for Tranquil Dreams.  I love sharing everything that I do and I’m pretty scattered in what I like to do so I don’t mind doing a bunch of stuff at the same time.  Its a mess that I love and embrace very much.  And don’t worry, to those wondering, I do sleep 😉 I have the best guardian in the world that makes sure I do and that’s my darling cat. I guess we should wrap up with a little sleepy cat picture.

Upcoming:

• Ultimate 80s Blogathon
• 2015 Oscar Nominations Reviews

Hope you all had a lovely weekend! 🙂

My Weekly Adventures: Crazy Overtime & Announcement!

Wow! I’m finally sitting down and writing an actual post at my computer at home.  You know what? I haven’t done that in quite a while.

Work has been killing me.  Just to give you an idea.  My huge work deadline is tomorrow and it has been a ridiculous week with extended work days and I went in this weekend. I actually just got back. Regardless, that doesn’t matter.  I think things will work out 😉

With all that said, it might be the event of the last two weeks so with a serious case of winter blues that was the week before that, I don’t really have a lot of stuff backlogged which means next week looks incredibly empty.  Haha! I guess stressed out days reminds me that I really love blogging and writing and just reading everything.

With that said, we’re keeping this Weekly Adventures short!

First, a song because the title says it all!

After that, a song that made me so happy because its so adorable and awesome all at the same time!

Finally! In the middle of next week, we’re going to kick off the Valentine’s marathon!

I have some pretty awesome movies lined up! First of all, you’ll be seeing me move along with the last two Nicholas Spark’s movie, The Best of Me and The Longest Ride. A year or two ago, I embarked on a “torture” fest (which turned out better than I expected) to watch all the Nicholas Sparks.  Let’s face it, the adaptations won’t ending any time soon so it will always be a work in progress. And before you ask: No, I’m not going to see The Choice in theatres.  I’m totally not feeling it for the trailer so maybe I’ll just skip that one completely.  Or wait till it lands on Netflix. Netflix A-Z will also be romance/rom-com heavier.

However, it won’t be just movies so don’t worry about it! I’m deciding on what to do as Valentine baking projects and I still have Pinocchio themed baking to do.  And of course, there’s also some unboxing to go up.  This time, its not my scheduling problem.  I just haven’t received it yet.

That’s really it for this time! Short and sweet!  Its not much of an adventure but you know, real life just takes over sometimes 😉
I’m off to go prepare for next week and maybe take a nap to recuperate or play some games to relax!

P.S. one more song as bonus because I’m so happy that The 100 Season 3 started and Netflix has it updated weekly! Episode 1 was so awesome!

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!! 🙂

My Weekly (now Monthly) Adventures!

Its been over a month that I haven’t posted a My Weekly Adventures instalment.  Why? Just because between not overwhelming you (and myself) with posts popping up all day, because I truly dislike it when I get bombarded by like 15 posts by one person (unless its comments), I decided to just group it together to eventually have its reappearance here and with actual things.  Life isn’t always busy and when its actually busy, I just don’t write about it, so I just lump it together with the highlights of the past month. I’ll try to keep it brief because I have posted individual posts on some of them also 🙂

Lets see whats happened in my life over the last month!

1) TV! TV! TV!

The thing I’m most proud of is catching up with TV.  My choice to keep up with three: Arrow, The Flash and The Vampire Diaries have been fantastically on track.  Mostly because I only have a week of streaming before they expire because I don’t have the fancy satellite subscription.  What happened to free TV, eh? Anyways, success also comes that I’ve delegated time to watch Dancing with the Stars (first season that I’ve seen) and am totally in love with it. The finals just happened and I need to stream that and not read any news to keep the surprise factor there.  Then, two weeks ago, I resumed watching Season 3 of Once Upon a Time, very much thanks to Netflix and and wrapped that up and read to catch up with Season 4 to be right on track. The way Season 3 ended, I’m looking forward to it. 🙂

Plus, apparently once a show is cancelled, I like to start watching it. Weird, eh? Because I just started watching the first episode of Witches of East End. I can’t say from the first ep but the set is very nice and umm…the dude, Daniel diTomasso playing Killian is really dark and brooding hot.

I think thats about the extreme of how much TV I can get in right now.

What are you watching these days?

2) MTL a Table!

Apparently October and November are the big events month for autumn.  I didn’t know that so the first new experience was participating a little in MTL a Table/TASTE MTL with friends.  I posted about those already.

The 3 restaurants I went to were:

• Le Montrealais (Queen Elizabeth Hotel)
• 1000 Grammes Bistro Glouton et Traiteur
• Brasserie Le Pois Penché

Do you  have any food festivals where you are?

3) La Grande Degustation de Montreal!

A wine tasting festival through and through! It was a last minute decision to go.  Over the years, I’ve been really interested in wines more than cocktails.  Learning to appreciate wines is something I’m slowly learning.  This year’s highlight was South Africa wines and those are a growing trend here.  After trying 6 booths or so, including these ones that left an impression while the others I can’t remember anymore:

• Nederburg Ingenuity White Blend
• Le Bonheur (Chenin Blanc/Chardonnay)
• Reyneke (Chenin Blanc)
• Porcupine Ridge (Sauvignon Blanc)

Other than that, I ended up loving this vodka from Las Vegas called Vegas Vodka and ordered myself 2 bottles of it. And then ended up at a checking out this white wine from Quebec from a winery called Domaine de Petit Roubie that had this lovely fruity wines with a very distinct taste (2 more of those).

Definitely a new experience and I’m waiting for those bottles to arrive so that my boyfriend can taste it as well. (By the time this goes up today, I just received the order yesterday.)

4) Home update!

My house is completely painted now.  My kitchen was the last room and the most pain in the behind to do.  That room has covered with a light yellow and it brightens up the room when any light hits the walls.  My description is that my kitchen is like a dessert. The cupboards look like gingerbread and the walls look like custard and the trimmings is whipped cream.  Trust me, when natural hits it, its even more so.

Now is just organizing everything.  First place all organized after 2 evenings as of last night was organizing all the movies that my boyfriend and I own.  After organizing alphabetically over 3 shelves, emptying a ton of boxes, its finally done.  I dug out the movies that I owe reviews to and I’m stacking them up to get those watched.  I’ve never really had a chance to see EVERYTHING my boyfriend owned and although we had a few doubles, there was a whole lot that I haven’t seen yet so it’ll be fun 🙂

Also, beginning of November, we also bought our huge Christmas Tree.  What comes with Xmas trees are how to decorate it, which means I need to get my crafty self back into action. While getting those DIY ornaments together, I put together my garland with little decorations around it and spiced it up with some fir scented sticks and decorated it on my little staircase. Last year’s wreath also got a little redecoration so once I find that door hanger, I’ll put that up as well 🙂 (By the time this goes up, I already found it but no picture yet).

The holidays are around the corner, the house is pretty much in the final stretch and I’ll be moving soon.  Thats a crazy but extremely happy thought 🙂

Are you geared up for Christmas?

5) New clothes (for a good cause)

I love Arrow and I love Stephen Amell.  Why? Because the man does good things. He tries to live up to his character and he seems rather genuine.  So, I love buying clothes and if I happen to buy clothes that are for a good cause, well, even better. I usually don’t wear people’s face on myself, its a little creepy and I don’t swear (much) either so this F&ck Cancer shirt really breaks a few rules but for a good cause, I’m willing to do it.

6) Ornament making

I just bought a 7.5 feet Christmas tree so that means I need to decorate it. I managed to get some hand me down ornaments but its definitely not enough to cover a gigantic tree. So other than buying a few little things at Target and Walmart (yay for sales), I am making it. Here’s two of the types 🙂

7) Sunrise photo session!

Two weeks or something before the weather went all cold and crazy, I went out with my friend for a photo session for sunrise.  First time for me.  Here’s a few shots.  I promise a full post but I’m just a bit backlogged 😉

8) Snowy Girls Night Out 🙂

This past weekend, my girl friends and I went out for dinner. One of us is going back to Vancouver after a few months back home in Montreal to deal with a few things.  That day, she fell in love with the snow all over again.  With her excitement, we went to take pictures.

Quartier Dix30 has that lovely decorations all set up.  The restaurant we wanted to go to was packed but we did get to stand in the snow with the lovely Christmas “tree” and warmed our hands near the fire.

On top of that, last night we all went to go see Big Hero 6! I had a blast with it and the review will go up tomorrow afternoon 🙂 I’m even going to pair it with a lovely Out of The World Travels post on my other blog.  That one is really getting neglected a lot when my brain really can’t squeeze out any more writing.

Have you seen Big Hero 6?

9) Blogging Changes and Updates!

End of the year is right around the corner and the days are moving fast fast fast.

This weekly adventure is coming a tad late.  So if you haven’t realized, the pace of things are relatively stable much to my surprise but the content is more concise.  For one, I’m doing the Photography 101 for two reasons.  One is for the annual NaNoWriMo month, which I was very much on track in the first week and then the second week just went in the dumps.  I’m about 15000 words behind now and I really don’t know how I’ll catch up but I’ve been in worst shape in previous years and manage to finish.  I’ll figure it out one way or another. Second is that with Nanowrimo, it gives me a permanent post going up everyday.  This new routine actually has given me the push to keep the content going up here rather constant.

With this one, I’ve actually been able to revive some more fun segments like my Pinterest Therapy, Music Obsessions and back regularly is my Weekly Workout Recaps as I work hard to get back to how fit I was at the beginning of the year. I’m even getting really dedicated to having updates (probably for myself) to how I look physically.

December is next week! My mind is going crazy with new stuff.  So I’ll be doing some organizing around here.  The sidebar has been in desperate of updates.  C’mon, my images are from 2013! I’m thinking up a rating system (still) and two long-term projects.  More baking also for Christmas!  On a lovely note, I did add on the menu tabs for My Weekly Adventures and  Music Obsessions.  I should really add in Pinterest Theapy 🙂

 FINALLY…THATS IT! A round of applause for you for making it to the end 🙂

No more of this long breaks between adventures! You can see how I procrastinated.

Wish me luck on pushing to finish for NaNoWriMo! Word count is around 30,000 right now. 20,000 more in the next few days! I need a lot of tea….