This weekend is PAX Prime here in Seattle, and I couldn’t be more excited. It’s our largest Geek Convention of the year here in Seattle, and I’m scrambling to figure out which panels and parties to go to, how much money I’m allowed to spend in the Expo Hall, and most importantly.. what to wear!!

PAX is one of those conventions where I’m never usually on any panels or working it, so I get to just wander and be a fan and enjoy myself. It’s relaxing, strangely, not locking myself into any large plans and just getting to meander freely amidst the hustle and bustle. Something about calmness in the middle of chaos. I don’t know.

That being said; yesterday I poured over the schedule and picked out the events/panels/etc. that looked exciting that I am going to try to be at. I figured I would post it here for you in case you’re interested in any of the same things!

Friday:
Game Show Night: Jeopardy 8pm (Kraken Theatre)
Improv Initiative Strikes Again 9:30 (Unicorn Theatre)

Saturday:
Everything We Know is Sexist: Now What? 10:30am (Wolfman Theatre)
I Love You and Have Your Name Tattooed on My Leg: Brand Personalization vs. Advertisement  2pm (Pegasus Theatre)
Turning Geek Passion into Profit 2:30pm (Serpent Theatre)
You Game Like a Girl: Tales of Trolls & White Knights 7:30pm (Kraken Theatre)
AppJunkies Live: The Worst Apps Ever Made! 10pm (Raven Theatre)

And of course, the Magic the Gathering Hero’s Path Challenge/Party that evening at 7pm

Sunday:
PAX Prime Girls Meetup 10am (Diller Room, 1224 1st Ave, Seattle, WA 98101)
Late Night Dub Fight 10pm (Serpent Theatre)

Monday: 
It’s Not Too Dangerous To Go Alone: Finding the Bravery to Do it Yourself 10am (Raven Theatre)
Gender Diversity in Games: Where Are All the Believable Female Characters? 2pm (Pegasus Theatre)

At some point (probably Sunday afternoon) Joe and I will be bringing a copy or two of Jetpack Unicorn to PAX to play with fans, if people are interested. Keep an eye on my Twitter/Facebook for details about that meet up! Also keep an eye out for my Outfit of the Day posts… I’ll be dressing my convention best all weekend and I can’t wait to share those outfits with you!

I am so pumped for this weekend – are you attending PAX? If so, are there any cool panels or events that I am missing out on? Let me know in the comments!

Next week, Wonderly is teaming up with the live-streaming site YouNow to launch a fun-filled, two day talent search to find our next Wonderly girl! It’s a combination live show, variety show, and contest all rolled into one… and I’m hosting! I’m not really sure exactly what it’s going to look like yet, but I can tell you that it’s going to be a party on your computer screen. It’s called Becoming Wonderfully Wonderly and the show will take place over on YouNow.com/girls.

Come hang out, say hi, or show us your stuff by joining in the fun! Live shows are only as exciting as the amount of people who join in the chat, so please mark your calendars for either or both of the following days!

Open Call: Tuesday, August 27th, 4pm EST / 1pm PST
Final Round: Thursday, August 29th, 4pm EST / 1pm PST

Get more info about the contest here and don’t forget to check out all of the amazing female content creators that are part of Wonderly. It’s an exceedingly lovely community of people I am proud to be associated with.

About a week ago, Joe and I got a package in the mail containing the first two boxes of Jetpack Unicorn. I’m sure you can imagine our excitement, holding the game we created in our hands for the first time ever. It’s a surreal experience, as I’m sure any creator knows – to work tirelessly on a project and then, suddenly, the finished product just… exists. It’s hard to accept that it’s a wholly real and tangible object you can touch and open and eventually sell to other people who will hopefully in turn love and enjoy it as much as you hoped they would.

We took the game up to AFK Tavern, our favorite nerd bar, and we filmed ourselves opening the box. I mean, come on – you can only open the first game you create once in your entire life, so I felt the moment needed to be saved. We went on to play (with real cards!) with a handful of our friends amidst ordering drinks like the Sonic Rainboom and the Still a Better Love Story Than Twilight, and overall the night rated pretty high on my list of favorite nights.

If you’re interested in see our unboxing, I’m embedding the video below. Also, Jetpack Unicorn will be available in stores and on DFTBA.com very soon! I will keep you all informed.

As a YouTuber, I often find myself saying the sentence: “Well, this is definitely the weirdest thing I’ve ever done for a video”. That single statement has included things such as “hatching” out of a fake “egg”, wearing a tutu, wrapping my entire living room in wrapping paper, being covered in fake blood and throwing paint at my friends – among many other things I know I am forgetting.

This time, though, I think I’ve taken it to a whole new level.

I’ll be transparent with you – Taco Bell asked me to make this video. They didn’t pay me… I just agreed for the fun of it. I appreciate and respect their keen marketing sense and their food is a huge guilty pleasure of mine, so yeah. When asked if I wanted to anounce the newest Doritos Locos Taco shell flavor, I said yes. And then proceeded to immediately text my roommate Justin, “Can you help me light a taco on fire?”

Bless him, he agreed enthusiastically without even asking why. THAT’S the mark of someone who’s lived with me long enough to know not to bother asking questions. Strangeness is the norm at our house, definitely.

Anyway, you can get the new Fiery DLT at Taco Bell early starting on the 19th, before it’s announced to the rest of the world on the 22nd. But the real point of this blog post is to make sure you watch this video, because I LIT A TACO ON FIRE. And apparently my hand, for a few seconds there. I didn’t notice until I started editing the video together. I promise though, we took all the necessary safety precautions, my gloves were fire proof, and we had a fire extinguisher within shouting distance.

Who DOESN’T love swag? If ask anyone (I mean anyone) what their favorite parts of a convention are, I guarantee “swag” will be at least in the top five. And if it’s not; they’re lying.

I’ve been talking about VidCon a lot on this blog, but it’s one of my biggest events of the year. And for those of you out there who didn’t make it, I want to try to at least give you a slice of what it was like, because no one wants to be left out!

So in this final VidCon write-up, here’s the swag I came home with. Let’s start with the free stuff:

• 1. Chapstick “business card” from bfftaylor. Brilliant! Functional! Adorable!
• 2. Endless Silky Eye Pen and Lip Blush from Pixi. Tried both already and I love them.
• 3. Lego themed moleskin (picked this up at the Subblime booth). So awesome!
• 4. YouTube branded phone screen cleaner. Incredibly useful!
• 5. Bare Essentials Marvelous Moxie lipgloss. This came in every VidCon bag.
• 6. “Nailed It!” nail art by Espionage Cosmetis. These just came out and they’re so much fun – check out the kickstarter they currently have running right now!

Next up, the stuff I actually bought at VidCon. Each year the Expo Hall gets bigger and bigger, and as that happens – it means more and more stuff to buy. Believe it or not though, I actually managed to keep it in my pants pretty well this year. My wallet, I mean. Come on, guys.

The first thing I purchased was this ADORABLE vinyl Pinkie Pie figurine by Funko (you can get them here on Amazon.com). I already have a small collection of Disney ones, but when I saw they’d started making My Little Pony ones, I was IN. I saw them for sale at the LootCrate booth, walked right up, handed them my money, and away we went. I have no regrets about this purchase. And I want more.

Next was the Cruella de Vil pin. I knew very little about the Disney pin trading phenomenon before this past weekend, but while I was at Disneyland my friend Sarah enlightened me. I don’t think I am ever going to be one of those hardcore back alley pin collectors, but I can see how it might be fun. So maybe I’ll get one pin per Disney trip. Or something. Anyway, I started with Cruella, since she was who I Disneybounded as that day. 🙂

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While in LA last week, my friends and I attended “Disneyland Day” for VidCon – which is like any other normal day at Disneyland, except the park is swarming with YouTubers. Rather than donning my official gray VidCon tee like many others, my friends and I decided to Disneybound:

This was my very first time Disneybounding and I decided I wanted to go villain. I chose Cruella de Vil; mostly on account of finding these adorable polka dot shorts. The puppy earrings were actually just white dog earrings I found at Claire’s (by walking in and asking the girl working to “show me whatever dog stuff they had”) that I drew black spots on with a sharpie. I tucked in a slouchy red shirt, grabbed some other black and white accessories and wa-la! If it doesn’t scare you, no evil thing will!

I never got a full picture of all my friends and I in costume, but we had among us a Dumbo, Christopher Robin, Scuttle, The Queen of Hearts and Sophie from Howl’s Moving Castle. I love dressing up, so getting to do so, subtly, on a normal day is something I am all about.

Who should I Disneybound as next? Or, if you’ve done it yourself, show me pictures in the comments section!

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The final day of a con always comes much too soon. After what felt like a literal SECOND of parties and panels and pitiful amount of sleep, the final day of VidCon reared its ugly head in a mocking tone, one that shouted directly in my hungover, sensitive ears, “Kristina! You haven’t even explored the Expo Hall yet!”

So Saturday was a blur. I had a signing at 10am, which I had to forcefully roll myself out of bed for. This is why all dresses and skirts and high heeled shoes were left in the suitcase in favor of flats and denim jeans. Don’t get me wrong – my signing was lovely. Two hours of meeting people who watch my videos, who enjoy Job Hunters, who wait with bated breath for the next episode of Dokapon Kingdom – I live for that. But there was a giant mechanical shark that could literally chew its way through a chair in the Expo Hall, and I hadn’t even gotten to see it yet.

Immediately after my signing we gathered the Job Hunters cast and hung out at the Wyrd booth for another hour – taking photos with fans and playing our Season 2 trailer on loop for anyone that’d missed it at the panel. THEN Joe and I played Jetpack Unicorn with a kickstarter backer named Cate Neuhauser who was so good at our game that it made us look bad.

Then, around 3pm (when the Expo Hall would be closing in a mere two hours) I finally, finally got to walk around, check out the booths and get free swag. I blazed through that room with the determination of a shopper on Black Friday. I called it the “photo both tour”, collecting as many silly photos with my friends as we could cram in these final hours. Not to mention a quick pitstop in the ball pit, as well as a small detour in some sort of robot music video.

I’ll be doing another post soon about my VidCon swag, so never fear! All aspects of this con will be covered on my blog! I had such a great time, and the Expo Hall this year really pulled out all the stops. I’m so impressed with how exponentially this little con grows each year, and I’m so happy I’ve been there every year to see it firsthand.

This is a super cheesy thing to ask, but if you attended VidCon 2013, what was your favorite part? The main stage? The concerts? The vendor room? Or was it something VidCon couldn’t plan for and put on a schedule, like meeting a certain YouTuber or getting to spend time with friends you don’t see very often? For me it’s meeting the people who watch my videos. The yearly reminder of why I do this is so special to me, and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

This was my favorite outfit of VidCon this year – hence why I saved it for Friday, when I had both the 5AG and Job Hunters panels. This is my brand new galaxy skirt from ModCloth.com, as well as one of my favorite slouchy black blouses from non other than Target. Completed with a cute little golden grenade necklace given to me by my friend Liz (not sure where she got it, but here’s a similar set of pendants on Amazon).

The first panel of the day was the Job Hunters panel. We showed a special VidCon exclusive trailer and then had a talk-back/Q&A with a roomful of lovely fans.

We’ve had a VERY tight lid on pretty much all information about Season 2, so the panel was both hilarious (“We can’t answer that. We can’t answer that either”) as well as a bit relieving when we did decide to reveal a few choice details. The biggest of which is that Season 2 will not only have 12 full episodes, but it will also have 12 additional “mini-sodes” that will take place on the train recruits take to and from the arena each day. Oh yeah, and we showed the trailer a second time – though that was mostly because even most of the cast and crew had never seen it before that panel, and we were all very excited.

Next up was 5AG!

The Fiveawesomegirls panel was seriously the most fun I’ve ever had on a panel. We sat in day order, we answered questions – but mostly we spent our hour reminiscing about the three years we spent making videos together, rehashing old stories, talking about what it was like behind the scenes, and laughing. It was so, so lovely to see the faces of our diehard fans in the audience, knowing many of the people in the room had been watching our videos since 2008. It was all very surreal, very nostalgic, and very positive.

Friday of VidCon also contained the fantastic Women of YouTube meet-up hosted by Laci Green, Rosianna and Lex Croucher. What a wonderful idea, to have a roundtable discussion out on the grass; it went so excitingly well and I really, truly hope VidCon takes notice of the lengths female content creators had to go to just to be able to hold a pseudo panel.

Closed out the night with a Fiesta Movement party up the street and had a great time catching up with some of my fellow agents. I had some spinach and artichoke dip that was, if I dare say it, the most delicious thing I had ever eaten. All in all, Friday was a pretty stellar day.

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The first day of VidCon (Industry Day) was surprisingly low-key. I wasn’t speaking on any Industry panels this year, so I got to wander around, eat pastries and actually sit in on a couple of panels.

My first outfit was a casual one; I paired my brand new shark attack shirt with a yellow bandeau, denim shorts and red sandals. This outfit was inspired by both my love of Sharknado, and the rapidly approaching SHARK WEEK! In fact, it’s currently Shark Week right now as I write this, and I can’t wait to get home and get my Discovery Channel on. Overhyped or no, I’m not gonna pretend I don’t love Shark Week just as much as everyone else.

What were we talking about again? Oh yeah. VidCon.

So Industry Day was a mix of panels, running into friends, and generally soaking in the feeling of finally being at the event you’ve waited all summer for. Also free snacks. Seriously, I ate this cheese danish they had on a tray outside the panel rooms that I swore was the most delicious thing I’d ever eaten.

In the evening a handful of my friends and I donned our party outfits (I sported this super cute new top I picked up at another favorite clothing store of mine called Papaya along with another bandeau in gray) and hiked our way to Downtown Disney for the Nintendo Brand Ambassador’s party.

Before we got there, however, something AMAZING happened. I’m sure not all of you follow the Sephora Disney Collection news as closely as I do, but some drama went down recently that made it very difficult to get the new Ariel Palette. I was devastated, naturally. But! On our way through Downtown Disney I saw a Sephora and realized it couldn’t hurt to try. Sure enough, there were two palettes, looking lonely in a giant, empty display case. I snatched them up immediately (one for myself and one for my friend Eia) but only found out later that local Sephora locations send their extra Disney stock to this store (because they sell better near Disneyland, obvs) and even then, I got the last two. And they’d only been put out hours prior. BOOM. So pleased.

Anyway. VidCon. Stop letting me get so off track!

The Nintendo party started small, so I grabbed Joe and Liz and we took up residence outside on the empty outdoor deck (after snagging some surprisingly large glasses of wine). Eventually we ran into more friends (I had invited Tara and Alexander Theoharis as my guests; we also saw Meghan Camarena, Alex Carpenter, Jason Munday, Maxwell Glick, etc.) and it became a genuine party. Also there were these vanilla macarons on the hors d’oeuvres table that I swore were the most delicious I’d ever eaten… clearly I am fickle with my superlatives.

My favorite part of the night was the fact that because it was a Nintendo sponsored party, there was a DIRECT correlation between the amount of fun we were having (read: the more free drinks we consumed) and the amount of giant green Luigi hats that ended up on people’s heads. It was a beautiful evening. And so typical.

All in all, a great first day of VidCon.

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Hello, blog readers! I started this trip to LA exhausted, so really, it’s only fitting we’ve come full circle here right before I leave for the airport to head home. Between very little sleep, dance parties, signings and a full day at Disneyland… VidCon 2013 was a fantastic success, but oh my gosh am I ready for some quality time in my bed with Netflix and a box of wheat thins.

Honestly, when people ask me what I’ve been up to lately, a genuinely fitting way to sum up the entirety of my time this past week (month, year, etc.) is by saying I’ve been “cramming more into my hours than should be humanly possible” – but that’s depressing, so here’s a picture of me in a ball pit:

So anyway, here we are; another VidCon come and gone. The reality of the situation is that no matter how you decide to spend your time, which panels you go to, which parties you check out, you’re likely going to be surrounded by familiar YouTube friends, people with cameras and more booze than can even be consumed in a single weekend.

No matter how much fun you have, how little sleep you accept yourself to deserve, how much you party hop – you’ll never see everyone or do everything, but that’s totally okay! That’s the beauty of the Internet, of social media, and of knowing that VidCon isn’t truly over until everyone has sufficiently documented it online.

So over the next few days I’ll be posting my VidCon wrap-up here, complete with photos, my outfits from the event as well as my thoughts on the goings-on that happened there. Did we meet at VidCon? Let me know in the comments so I can match usernames to faces!