Musical musings for April

The last few weeks have been particularly busy for me, especially with having the big task of moving. As a result, I have neglected my blog and almost forget about my monthly musings. I remembered just in time i.e. last night and made it part of my mission tonight to write this little post. Oh and by the way, my move went well and I am super excited for this new chapter of my Vancouver adventure. The month of April somehow became pretty much all about country music and I am not quite sure why, but I have really enjoyed the tunes that made their way into my iTunes library. I keep catching myself flipping through my iPod shuffle on the way to and from work trying to find one of these songs because they instantly make me happy. So without keeping you in suspense any longer, these songs were the stars of April 2013:

1. Shine (Acoustic Version) [feat. Sam Palladio] - Nashville Cast
2. Cups - Anna Kendrick
3. Beat This Summer - Brad Paisley
4. Sure Be Cool If You Did - Blake Shelton
5. Red - Taylor Swift
6. Stay Stay Stay - Taylor Swift
7. It's A Beautiful Day - Michael Buble
8. Downtown - Lady Antebellum
9. Cruise - Florida Georgia Line
10. I Want Crazy - Hunter Hayes

As you can see I wasn't lying because it was all about the country and what a fine bunch of artists they are. I have to say my two particular favourites were Cruise and Downtown - definitely upbeat, catchy tunes. I am even lucky enough to now be going to the Taylor Swift concert in June, which I am super excited for especially as it is the night before I go to New York. It doesn't get much better than concert one night, big apple adventure the next morning. On that note I have to do the not so glamourous task of folding laundry, but maybe I will listen to my April inspiration while I do it.

April's music can be found on these albums (images courtesy of iTunes)

Travel possibilities - North America

In the last almost ten years I have been fortunate enough to do a fair bit of travel. However, after living in Vancouver now for just under three and a half years, I feel like there is still so much travel I want to do. This is something I have been thinking about more and more lately for various reasons. Of great interest at the moment, are some cities in North America and I definitely wouldn't say no to an epic road trip to make it happen if the opportunity presented itself. I love the idea of once more traveling through small town America with all its quirks and Walmarts and Targets. For the time being, I thought I would come up with the ten cities, in no particular order, I would like to get to in the next couple of years:

1. Montreal, Quebec
2. Quebec City, Quebec
3. Ottawa, Ontario
4. Halifax, Nova Scotia
5. Nashville, Tennessee
6. New Orleans, Louisiana
7. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
8. Memphis, Tennessee
9. Charlotte, North Carolina
10. Savannah, Georgia

Some of these cities I am not too familiar with, which might seem like a strange comment to make seeing as I have put them on my list, but that's the truth of the matter. There is a possibility that if I started to get serious and do some proper research then this list may or may not change or even get longer. I also would love to see some of Alaska, but I am not quite sure exactly whereabouts I would like to go. For now this is all just a traveler's dream, not unrealistic, but just on the back burner as next up is a trip to New York City with my big sister. 

White chocolate m&m cookies

This is a big statement to make, but I think this past weekend I baked the most delicious cookies I have ever had the privilege of baking. It all started because I have had a bag of raspberry dark chocolate m&m's in my cupboard since my birthday trip to Los Angeles in February as mentioned here. I hadn't really given them much thought since they were put away at the end of that weekend. However, I decided during the week that these m&m's would form part of my weekend baking project. As it turned out they became the key ingredient in combination with white chocolate chips as I chose a cookie recipe I found here. The recipe search was actually super easy and so was baking the cookies. I followed the recipe to a tee except I used my trusty ice-cream scoop to place the cookie dough on the baking sheets. The cookies were so good that I ate two of them without blinking before realising I should eat something more substantial and appropriate for dinner. Anyway don't just take my word for it, find a bag of these m&m's, even if it requires a road trip, and bake them for yourself. Although, consider yourself duly warned as to their addictive deliciousness.

Skulls

My fashion tunnel vision has struck again as I can't seem to get skulls out of my mind and I am not quite sure why. It started with me wanting a skull patterned scarf of the non-wintery variety. I found my ideal one in Zara (image below courtesy of their website) last weekend.

I'm hoping to add it to my wardrobe before it disappears out of the store. However, my obsession, well maybe not quite obsession just yet, doesn't end there. Yesterday I was doing some window shopping and came across some more cute, yes I think you can still use that word when it comes to skulls, fashion options in Garage (images below courtesy of their website). 

Maybe it is a obsession because Ardene also furthered my skull crusade and provided a couple more options (images courtesy of their website). 

As of now none of these skull emblazoned items have made their way into my wardrobe, but there is hopefully still time to change this fact.