Hello, lovely blog readers!

As you can see by the title of this blog post… I’ve got some rather big news to share. Life alteringly big news, in fact — and something I’ve kept quiet for the last two months.

I got a job at Microsoft.

To be honest it feels a little cliched, having grown up in Seattle. If you were raised here, you know what I’m talking about. If your parents didn’t work at Microsoft they worked at Boeing. While I’d mulled over the idea of getting some sort of day job over the last year or so, I always imagined some hip new media company. Not… Microsoft. Not the most obvious place to work in the Northwest.

But here I am. And to be honest, it is a pretty hip job. I was hired as a Community Manager, which means my responsibilities include a whole spectrum of various types of community engagement for a laundry list of games owned by Microsoft Studios.

But Kristina!? you’re probably asking. Why did you take this job? I thought you were a professional YouTuber! I thought you made oodles of money talking to your camera!

First of all, I am flattered if you think that. Alas, while I enjoyed my freelance time immensely, it was really starting to weigh on me. If anyone ever tells you that turning your hobby into your job is the ~American Dream~, then you should just tell them to talk to the hand. Because (let me drop a wisdom bomb on you for a second here) if there’s one thing I have learned in my twenty-seven years of life, it’s this: we have hobbies for a very specific reason. We have hobbies because we are creative animals, and we enjoy making things, doing things, being part of things. Sometimes we even enjoy making things just for the sake of creation, but when you add financial pressure to that, you can literally feel your enjoyment start to deflate.

I didn’t want to hide sponsorships in my videos anymore. I didn’t want to make videos for other companies’ channels anymore. I didn’t want to wake up every day knowing I had to film videos, or had to write blog posts, or I might not pay rent. And I also didn’t appreciate the ever-present self awareness of “what am I actually doing with my life” looming overhead.

I am acutely aware, however, of how special a thing I’ve created online. And how lucky I am that so many of you care enough about what I’m doing to have stuck around this long. For a long time, considering getting a different job felt like giving up. Throwing in the towel. It felt like I was admitting I hadn’t “made it”.

But then I start re-evaluating my goals. Made what, exactly? I starting thinking about what I was actually doing, and what I wanted to be doing. I love making videos. I love blogging. I love my Patrons, and my book club, and I love the amazing community of intelligent, caring people who engage with the things that I do.

Why would any of that need to change, just because I wanted to get a day job?

It was at that moment that I realized it wouldn’t change. I could still make videos. I could still read books. I could still blog, and tweet, and interact with people online exactly like I always have. This moment of clarity changed everything and I began applying for jobs. The Microsoft opportunity came at exactly the right time and while I’ve been extremely stressed out as I struggle to adjust to a vastly different lifestyle… not much has actually changed, at least online.

In fact, that only thing that’s been really tough has been not telling you guys about what I’m doing, which is precisely why I am writing this blog post. So… I work at Microsoft now, 40 hours a week. This probably explains why I might have seemed a little distant lately. It was tough to figure out what to talk about without spilling the beans, but I wanted to give myself time to adjust on my own before I told the whole Internet.

Oh, it’s also been tough to keep up with my email. I did not realize how much email I got until I wasn’t able to check it regularly. How cow. But that’s another issue entirely.

So just to sort of let you know what to expect from me now, my online presence mostly won’t change. You can still count on 2 new videos a week. The Restricted Section book club is still going strong. I’ve got three cosplays planned for Emerald City Comic Con. And this blog will always be here.

I’m just going to have a bit less free time, and I might complain about traffic a lot more, since my commute is right in the heart of rush hour and includes a toll bridge. But audiobooks are a new obsession of mine, so there’s always a silver lining.

Whew. I don’t know why I am so nervous to be announcing this. I guess it makes sense, because it’s the biggest change that’s happened in my life in a long time. It’s been sort of a tough adjustment, and I miss having all the time in the world to create things for you guys.

But I think this is going to be a very good thing for me.

Hello, lovely blog readers!

Yet again I have sort of fallen off the face of the planet, but I’m here to make amends by doing another little roundup of my favorite videos I’ve posted in the past month or so. If you missed any of them… go ahead and catch up! I’ll wait here.

So, first of all.. this video I’m about to show you is probably my favorite video I’ve ever made. Half the views it has are probably from ME, rewatching it and laughing hysterically alone in my room. I have no shame about this. It’s that funny.

Joe and I did a slightly different take on the whisper challenge. Rather than asking each other inane questions sent in on twitter, we just said nerdy phrases at each other. It was amazing.

The next video I want to share is my wrap-up from the #xmasbooktubeathon. I love booktubeathon. In fact, I am really coming around to just loving ALL readathons, and I can’t wait to do so many more in 2015. But this was the weekend long readathon I did right before Christmas, complete with a lot of struggles:

This year I am, of course, doing the 50 book challenge, so there will be MANY more readathons to come. And, I can imagine, more book struggles.

As we get closer to the end of the year, I started getting reflective. About books, of course. I realized too late that the trendy thing to do was your top FOURTEEN books of 2014, so I look a n00b only listing five. Whatever!

Then I had to show off all my NEW books, of course. This is a very book heavy blog post, I’m finding. No regrets! Here is my most extreme book haul yet:

I posted many more videos over the last month or so, so scoot on over to my channel to catch ’em all! Like a Pokémon master. Or you can stay here and leave me a comment telling me what kinds of videos you’d like to see more of in 2015. Whatever you want.

Thanks, as always, for reading my blog! It makes me smile. I like you guys.

Okay I am a little late on actually making a blog post about this, but better late than never, right?

I am participating in Bout Of Books! It’s a readathon that’s happening right now, as we speak – it started on Jan 5th and it goes all the way until Jan 11th. I thought this was the perfect way to kick off the new year and get a few books under my belt early since I am attempting to read 50 books this year.

Here are the books I set out to read:

These were/are my goals:

• Read all three of these books
• Don’t watch any Netflix

Pretty simple, right? Here’s how I did:

I read The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks on Monday and Tuesday, finishing Tuesday night. I also started Ready Player One on Tuesday night, which made me think this readathon was going to be a breeze. However! Wednesday and Thursday were bad reading nights for me… though I still managed to squeeze in a few pages on each of those nights. Not much. About 40 pages total across the two evenings.

Friday I powered about 100 pages through, then I read 150 pages on Saturday and I finished up Ready Player One today (Sunday morning).

That book was amazing, but intense. I ended up needing to take a little break (which turned into going for a 3 mile walk with Joe that included stopping for margaritas) and starting to play a game called Hatoful Boyfriend (which is a dating sim for pigeons and yes, it will be on Team Hypercube). After that I finally cracked open The Night Circus, but after the trip Ready Player One took me on, I just wasn’t totally ready to dive into another book.

So, I’m about 30 pages into The Night Circus, nearly a book short of my goal – but happy. Because I also listened to about eight hours of All The Light We Cannot See over the course of the week, in my car. So really, I’m still leagues ahead on my reading challenge for the year, which is the important part.

I’m excited for this year. I’m excited for all my new books, and how I finally feel like I’ve carved reading back into my life in a big way, and I don’t even feel like I’m “making time” anymore. I just have reading time, even if it means other things are back-burnered or put on hold.

Oh – that reminds me. I also stuck to my goal of not watching any TV this week. It’s been 7 days since I watched anything on my television, on Netflix, etc. I’ve only watched a very small handful of YouTube videos, as well. I’m proud of myself.

But now… I think I am going to reward myself with an episode of Gilmore Girls. Shhh.

 

Hello lovely blog readers! I had the pleasure of working with GlassesShop.com recently, and it was a fantastic collaboration! The let me pick out three new sets of glasses to try out their store and I am happy to report that I really like all three of them!

If you’re interested in checking out this site, you can use the code “KristinaX20” and you’ll save 20% on your own pair of frames! I am extremely happy with mine, and they’re so cheap!

This first pair is called CouncilBluffs Wayfarer and I got it in blue. I think these are my favorite of the three, but it’s so hard to decide!

The second pair is called NorthPlatte Wayfarer and I chose green for this set. I don’t like these quite as much as the other two, but they’re not bad for a backup pair.

I am obsessed with this third pair. I kind of threw these in as a spontaneous last minute decision, but they are so much fun! Most of my glasses frames throughout my life have just been black, so having a pair this bright and exciting is just great. I think it compliments my eyes and hair pretty well, too! These are called RedWing Wayfarer, and I got them in, of course, blue.

Let me know if you decide to order any new glasses – it’s easy to put in your actual prescription and personally I like having options for accessorizing! Don’t forget to use my coupon code if you do!

 

Landline by Rainbow Rowell is one of my favorite books I have read this year. It’s well-written, funny, poignant, heart warming – but go, watch the video! It’s spoiler free so you can watch it even if you haven’t read the book yet.

This is also a great book for making the jump from YA to Adult fiction, but this one is about a women well into the middle part of her life, but it reads almost like it’s YA. I’m not totally sure why that is (maybe I just really connect with Rainbow Rowell’s writing) but it’s fresh and unique and I really loved it.

This video went live on my channel today and am just so excited to share it with people — it’s a collab video I did with Joe, and somehow it ended up being the funniest video I think I’ve ever made. I seriously keep rewatching it.

I hope more people make videos using this concept because I want to watch them! Hope you love the Whisper Challenge as much as I do!

Hello valiant blog readers!

I have been terrible at keeping this thing updated. I know. Every time I get busy this blog is the first thing to go, but it’s also one of my favorite things I do online! I don’t understand it! I’m gonna be better. I promise.

Anyway! Here’s what I have been up to since the last time I wrote a blog post, which was… early November.

The biggest thing for me was – I finished my 9th NaNoWriMo novel! It was a crazy month, with very little time for anything other than writing, but I DID IT. It felt amazing, and here’s my video documentation of the process if you want to know more about what it was like for me:

 

I also recently started up a book club on Goodreads if you haven’t heard about that yet. It’s called The Restricted Section and we’ve already got a great group of people involved! Our first book (for November) was Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore (which I loved) and this month we’re reading My True Love Gave to Me, a compilation of holiday themed short stories written by popular YA authors. I can’t wait to dive into it.

As for this month, I’m currently gearing up for Project 4 Awesome (that’s taking place December 12-13 if you wanna get involved) and then shortly after that is the Christmas BookTubeAThon! I can’t WAIT to find out what the challenges are; I love BookTubeAThon so much. I will likely be making daily videos and shoving everything else on my to-do list way down so I can knock out a bunch more reading before the end of the year.

It’s also going to be my birthday soon… I turn 27 on the 27th, making it my golden birthday! This will also set my well into my “late twenties”, which is something I am still grappling with, emotionally. Where did the time go? I honestly couldn’t tell you. I was too busy wearing footy pajamas and watching My Little Pony to notice how old I’ve gotten.

That’s sort of it, for now! I hope you’re all doing well and I will be back very soon with another blog post. Happy December!

 

I’m a big fan of Ally Condie’s Matched trilogy, so when her new book Atlantia came out, I was first in line to read it. I was pleasantly surprised by this dystopian novel that breaks many rules, doesn’t have a love triangle, and really made me think. Watch my video above for my full review!

Okay, it’s clearly NaNoWriMo up in here… first a Halloween post and now my October Favorites video? I know, I know. What can I say, I’ve been busy writing a novel! I don’t know what’s come over me, actually. After 3 days I’m already at 10k, double the “recommended” amount – so this is shaping up to be one crazy November.

But! Today’s post isn’t about writing, it’s about favorites. And the video I made to share them. So here it is!

How are everyone’s months going? Busy? Cold? Gearing up for the holidays? I’ve been in an inexplicably good mood so far in November, so I really hope it keeps up. Maybe this year will be my best novel yet! Who knows!

Hello, lovely blog readers! I know we’re well into November by now, but I still wanted to share with you a few photos of our Halloween party. Halloween is a big event around here for my housemates and I – we’ve thrown a party each Halloween since 2008; it’s automatic now. Halloween rolls around, we throw a party. It’s always big, loud and tons of fun.

This year’s didn’t disappoint! We turned on those black-lights, cranked up the tunes and opened our doors!

This is the one day of the year we actually put our built in bar to use! This is where we stuck chips and all the various bottles of booze, mixers and beer.

 

This was the ‘fancy drinks’ table. We reused our Unicorn’s Blood recipe from last year’s Harry Potter party (Blue Hawaiian Punch and whatever vodka you have lying around) in our punch fountain, vodka gummy worms (dear lord these were strong) and radioactive green test tube shots (pineapple juice, sour apple shnapps, dragonberry rum and a few drops of green food coloring).

This was our food table! This year we had the Mummy-Rollups (weenies wrapped in crescent rolls), graveyard dip (standard 5 layer dip with tombstone shaped “headstone” crackers) and orange pumpkin-shaped rice krispies treats.

 Finally, it wouldn’t be a party without good ‘ol Aragog. It felt like old times, having our little spider friend watching over the festivities.

 

How was your Halloween? What did you do? What’s your favorite Halloween snacks or drink? let me know in the comments, and I hope your Novembers are off to a great start!