Thursday, October 26, 2017

Halloween Movies to Watch

It’s officially my favorite time of year! I know that sounds so basic as so many girls love autumn, but seriously, I love the time from October 1 through January 1. It gives me a nice warm, cuddly feeling. I love Halloween and normally do tons of haunted houses with friends and trick-or-treating with my brother, but I can’t do any of that here. Regardless, it just feels so nice this entire time.

Now that the month is ending, I am buckling down on watching Halloween movies. I am not into Horror movies; I used to be but now that I live alone I can’t watch them anymore - they scare me too bad! This list of Halloween movies consists of mostly family friendly movies because that’s what makes me happy now. It makes me sad that there aren’t that many specifically Halloween movies like there are for Christmas, it’s mostly scary movies or movies with monsters/magic.
  1. Hocus Pocus
  2. Halloweentown
  3. Halloweentown II
  4. Halloweentown High
  5. Scooby-Doo (live action)
  6. Casper, The Friendly Ghost
  7. Harry Potter (ALL OF THEM)
  8. Twitches
  9. Adamms Family
  10. Practical Magic
  11. Underwraps
  12. Don’t Look under the bed
  13. Tower of Terror
  14. The Craft
  15. The Nightmare Before Christmas
  16. Frankenweenie
  17. Monsters Inc.
  18. Monsters University
  19. Hotel Transylvania
  20. Hotel Transylvania 2
And of course: 

      20. It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown

If I watch nothing else, I have to watch the Charlie Brown show for each holiday. My family and I watched them every year and the holidays do not feel like the holidays without watching them.

Hopefully, this list helps you on your Halloween movie binge!


Kylie <3

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

South Korea Adventures: Shingu Botanical Gardens

Adventures in South Korea: Shingu Botanical Gardens
The other day, Mark and I were driving to Yongsan so he could get a haircut and we could get some food. On the way, not far from our house, we saw signs for Shingu Botanical Garden. I’d seen the signs before but never really cared. On this random day, Mark decided to just drive to it and take a look. So we did. We ended up staying and exploring and it turned out to be really fun. How have we driven past this so many times but never stopped at it?
Adventures in South Korea: Shingu Botanical Gardens
It was only ₩7,000 which is about 6 dollars each, so not super expensive. We looked around the rooms first where there was some artwork about the history of the Gardens and some artwork of nature. Then we left that area to explore the actual gardens. 

In a greenhouse, we saw these crazy looking lily pad plants that look like they were pre-historic and were actually kind of creepy because they were so big and spiky.
Adventures in South Korea: Shingu Botanical Gardens
Adventures in South Korea: Shingu Botanical Gardens
Throughout the park, they had the cutest stuff like little statues, music instrument platforms, bug platforms, tons of little colorful frog statues, a sundial, and a rain measure pot. There may have been more but being in October, a lot of the flowers weren’t in bloom and special gardens were bare. Plus there are these GIGANTIC spiders here that were claiming some of the pathways.
Adventures in South Korea: Shingu Botanical Gardens
Adventures in South Korea: Shingu Botanical Gardens
Adventures in South Korea: Shingu Botanical Gardens
Adventures in South Korea: Shingu Botanical Gardens
Adventures in South Korea: Shingu Botanical Gardens
Adventures in South Korea: Shingu Botanical Gardens
The flowers that were in bloom were beautiful and some I haven’t seen before, which is to be expected since there are probably a lot of flowers that are native to Korea. They also used a lot of Kimchi Pots to plant some of the flowers which were cool since Kimchi pots are such a staple in Korean life. It was also way bigger than we expected! I mean we drive by this once a week or once every two weeks on our way to Yongsan and we never knew that there was this huge Garden right next to the road. 
Adventures in South Korea: Shingu Botanical Gardens
Adventures in South Korea: Shingu Botanical Gardens
Adventures in South Korea: Shingu Botanical Gardens
Adventures in South Korea: Shingu Botanical Gardens
Adventures in South Korea: Shingu Botanical Gardens
This was such a great way to get out into nature and take a break from the city life for a while. It really felt like we were in nature, we couldn't really see many buildings and we couldn't hear the noise of the cars - which can be an issue with the inner city parks. It probably helps that we live on the outskirts of Seoul so a lot of nature stuff around is, is actually nature.
Adventures in South Korea: Shingu Botanical Gardens
Overall, we had such a fun time walking around this place. It took us about an hour just looking at the main gardens. They also had a cute little shop where you can buy plants and decorations for your garden or house, a nice little cafe, and when we got there, they had live music playing. Throughout the gardens they had a quiet classical soundtrack playing. Which I thought really added to the tranquility of the gardens.

See you next week :)
Kylie <3

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Goodbye September 2017

Going through the month of September, it felt slow. Mark was gone on TDY for two weeks and while I can function without him, life is so much more fun with him. So those two weeks were long and sucked. However, the rest of the month was good, we had two four-day weekends framing his TDY which were wonderful. But also because of him being gone, we didn’t get to do a whole lot of stuff this month. Regardless, September was good and now that it’s over, it seems like it went by in the blink of an eye. Now that we are heading into fall and holiday season, my FAVORITE time of year, is going to seriously fly by.

Reading //
Last month was a good reading month but this month was kind of meh. I’m still in a reading rut, especially because I’m mainly in the mood for specific books and finishing series. However, I absolutely loved what I read. I finished the second half of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which I started in August. Of course I loved this, it’s Harry Potter. 

I also read the first book in the Percy Jackson series which I reviewed here. It quickly snagged a place in my heart and I’m super excited to have another series that struck me like the Harry Potter, Mistborn, and Chronicles of Nick did.

Finally, I read Endless by Jessica Shirvington which is book 4 of the Embrace series. This is a series that I love but forget that I love it when I’m not currently reading it. This book was so good and really kept me glued to the book. Especially the last 150-200 pages where I cried the entire time. The. Entire. Time. I sat for two hours while Mark played video games and read and cried and cried. My heart hurt after finishing it. Right now, I’m mad at the ending and I hope that book 5 ties up the series well. After finishing the book, I needed to get out of the house and get some fresh air and spend some time with Mark to get my bearings back. Even trying to tell him about it made me cry. I’m making it sound horribly sad but it was so good and not sad like Nicholas Sparks books.

Watching //
We didn’t go see any movies this month. I think it was a mixture of him being gone for two weeks, the theater on-post closing down one of their screens, and there not really being any good movies out in Korean Theaters.

I did watch more Gilmore Girls of course. I’ve made it through seasons 4 and I’m very upset and not liking Rory at the moment, but I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t watched it.

We also watched a lot of Rick & Morty. A few months ago, when Mark started watching it. I immediately decided that I didn’t like it because I normally hate adult swim type shows. The only ones I liked were Futurama and Bob’s Burgers. Eventually, I decided to try Rick & Morty because it seemed like EVERYONE loved it. Once I gave it a chance I loved it. We watched through seasons 1 and 2 over the past two months. Then when we started watching season 3, I realized that I wasn’t catching a lot of the references that season 3 made to seasons 1 and 2. So we went back and re-watched them and wow, I missed so much. I think because Netflix would move the show to the corner of the screen while it counted down to the next episode and we would miss the little ending bits that are after the credits. Now that we’ve re-watched it, I understand so much more and we’re almost done with season 3 which is really sad since who knows when season 4 will come out.

Doing //
We went swimming at the new Camp Humphries water park and it was so fun. We didn’t get to swim this summer because the pools on the bases closer to us suck and the pools off base are even worse and the water parks off base are insanely expensive and super crowded. We are the kind of people who are super active in the pool, we like diving, swimming, going down slides, and whatever else is available. So going to pools that are just a big square is pretty boring to us. The water park at Camp Humphries had slides and diving boards and was huge for an on-base pool, was cheap, and when we went, was practically empty! There weren’t lines for either slide or the diving board. It was great.

When Mark came home, we went to Oktoberfest on base and it was…pretty bad. The food wasn’t that great, though they had great mushroom gravy; the beer was okay, they had a local on tap and bottled German beer. There were also no activities like ones in the states that are like mini fairs. So, it was pretty boring. We ate and left and went our favorite pub to play some darts and just spend some time together.

We explored Namdaemun, Myeongdong (our favorite), Yeouido Park, and Yeouido Hangang park, went for a bike ride, ate a lot of food, and even tried a churro dog (a hot dog but the bun is a churro without the cinnamon) which was delicious.
September Monthly Wrap Up
Finally, we got couples pictures done and they turned out so great. It was our first time taking professional photos so we were really excited. Photos courtesy of Byrd Nest Photography taken at Namsan Park.
September Monthly Wrap Up
September Monthly Wrap Up
At the very end of the month, we went to our first Korean baseball game. I’m not into sports like at all, but some friends of ours invited us so we went and it turned out to be a lot of fun. The concessions were cheap which is so nice compared to America. They have cheerleaders and a spirit section for each team and it made the game much more interesting. The crowds really get into it and sing and dance. They got livelier as the night went on and even after the home team was for sure losing, they were still super lively. It made it so much more fun and it was funny watching Mark and the other husbands dance and act silly. It was worth it, even for someone who doesn’t like sports.  
September Monthly Wrap Up
September Monthly Wrap Up

October //
I’m so excited for this month. I love Halloween. Normally, I go to 3 or 4 haunted houses but I don’t know if they do that here. I know for sure we’ll watch Halloween movies and carve pumpkins. I don’t know what else we’ll do since once again, Mark may be gone for training for two weeks.

What was the highlight of your September?

See you next week! :)

Kylie <3