I know I’m one of the many people who experience this fall frenzy, but I go absolutely nuts in October. Everything about it makes me happy – parties, decorating, dressing up, food, outdoor activities while it’s still slightly warm enough. I can’t even totally place a finger on it… I think it’s this shifting of priorities as we feel that sting of nostalgia as Summer wanes to an end. But! Then we’re met with three months of pure holiday filled excitement, and it makes the switch to Winter so much more bearable. One of the things at the very top of that list for me is corn mazes.

I don’t know if corn mazes are popular everywhere, but you only have to drive about forty minutes out of Seattle to find good ones here in the Pacific Northwest. My friends and I attended Bob’s Corn Maze this past weekend (as well as renting our own private fire pit!), and I think everyone was surprised by how much we enjoyed ourselves.

When you arrive at Bob’s, you first check in and leave all of your campfire supplies with them in these plastic tubs. They don’t want you to have to lug it all through the maze! Then a giant tractor takes you over to the maze on a bumpy hayride, and before you know it you’re sent into the entrance where you’re immediately turned around and walking in circles. The maze was huge. Even in a group of nine intellectual college graduates – we didn’t know where the heck we were going. Finally we found ourselves in a big circle we recognized had to be a specific part of that map and were able to navigate ourselves out with a bit less trouble.

The halfway point has a couple of giant campfires and a little store that sold s’mores fixin’s and drinks, but we had our own campfire. We walked around the corner to one of the many smaller pits, where our tub was waiting for us (filled with hotdogs, marshmallows and roasting sticks). We had one hour at the fire pit, which was more than enough to make some delicious food and recuperate enough to start round two.

We had even more trouble finding our way back out of the maze – but wandering around with only the moonlight to guide you, making Goblet of Fire 3rd task jokes, trying not to get smacked in the face by rogue corn stalks… it was definitely a night to remember.

Have you ever been to a corn maze? Do you remember what any of the shapes in yours made up? Ours was a series of very confusing loops with a giant bee in the middle, and it was so confusing! And if you haven’t been to a corn maze… are there any near you? Go check them out! Let me know your thoughts on October activities in the comments!

So, a long time ago, YouTube implemented this new feature called the Channel Trailer. It’s a pretty good idea – basically you create a “trailer” that represents and sells your channel, and this is what new and unsubscribed people see when they click on your channel page. It’s a great way for people to instantly find out who you are and what you’re about, and hopefully subscribe for more!

This blog post is about how, for all my great work ethic and motivation, I put this off for an embarrassingly long amount of time. But alas! Yesterday, I posted channel trailers on both my main and second channels, and figured I would share them here.

If you’re new to my whole internet presence, you might learn something about me! If you’ve been around for ages, well, you should watch anyway – people’s minds have been blown since I posted this video because the color coding on my videos finally makes sense. That’s right: my videos are color coded! Surprise!

Here’s the trailer I made for my main channel:

And here’s the goofy one I made for my second channel:

I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all for being involved in what I do, and for continuing to keep up by watching my videos and reading my blog. You’re all awesome, and make what I do possible. Thanks, guys. In the comments, please let me know how you found my channel and/or blog!

I was a bit late to the game on grabbing the newest installment in the Pokémon series – when it came out last Friday, I was on an airplane, and then I was much too swamped at NYCC to stop by a game store. Trust me, it was tough collecting street passes all weekend and watching the “what I played most recently” show me Pokémon over and over again. But alas! I got mine last night, only six days late.

I made the arbitrary decision to go with X, based solely on aesthetics. The celestial fairy deer looks cuter than the flame bird, in my opinion. According to a bit of reading that I did, the games are virtually identical, so here’s hoping that holds true.

The most important question of all comes in the first five minutes of the game – not your name and gender, of course – I’m talking about your starter Pokémon. This was a hard decision for me! I was a diehard Squirtle fan growing up (starting at the very beginning with Pokémon Red), and that allegiance has kept me on Team Blue Starter in nearly every subsequent Pokémon game I’ve ever played. But look how cute Fennekin is!

I was really interested in the fire/dark type split he becomes, especially since he literally becomes a fire wizard. He’s got a little wand that sticks out of his tail that he pulls out during battle. It’s adorable. And since my main character in WoW is a fire mage… I couldn’t resist.

The real question is what I’ll pick as my secondary starter. This is new to this version: apparently a bit into the game we get to pick again, between the three classic starters. My gut says to pick Squirtle, obviously – but the smart choice could be Bulbasaur. My opponent will pick Froakie, the advantageous type to my Fennekin, so I should pick grass to combat that. But… Squirtle, though. It’s been a rocky twenty four hours for my morals, guys.

Anyway, I’m not very far into the game, but I am hoping to be able to keep you updated as I collect my gym badges and make my way through this amazing game of out-of-this-world graphics. Playing Pokémon always takes me right back to being 11… my parents got me a Gameboy Color and Pokemon Red for Christmas, and I remember ignoring all the kids at my birthday party (on Dec 27th) because I wanted to play so badly. It was truly innovative, and the first moment I really considered myself to be someone who liked video games.

It’s amazing (and a little emotional-making) to think back to playing the game then, and what it looked like… knowing fourteen years later it can still captivate my attention.. and look like THIS:

When I think about things that have been there with me for my entire life, Pokémon is definitely siting incredibly high on that list. I’m just fortunate so many others feel the same way, and that we can still all enjoy it together.

Did you play Pokémon as a kid? What was your first or favorite version? And have you picked up X/Y yet? Let me know in the comments, so we can all Poké-geek out together.

In today’s installment of “Kristina the snarky chef makes things, sort of,” (it’s a working title), we’re going to make meatloaf. Because I thought, “hey, meatloaf is delicious and seems not super hard. Why not?”

I’m going to preface this post by saying, why the heck does meatloaf have such a bad rep? I feel like most people stick it in the same category as brussels sprouts and mayonnaise (both of which are delicious, by the way) where people turn their nose up at it out of habit, but really, most people actually sort of love it. So, I decided to conquer my fear of cooking meat today and give it a go.

Here’s what you need:

1. 1 1/2 lbs of lean ground beef
2. 1 cup bread crumbs (I used a seasoned variety, but use whatever you want)
3. 1 egg
4. 1/2 an onion
5. 1 cup milk
6. 2 tablespoons brown sugar
7. 1/3 cup ketchup
8. 2 tablespoons BBQ sauce
9. salt and pepper

Let me just say – cooking meatloaf is FUN. You stick a bunch of random stuff in a bowl, squish it around with your fingers, build a bust of yourself out of the gooey substance… unbuild the bust of yourself, and finally just sort of shove it all in a cooking pan. So easy. It’s like playing with play-doh, but even more delicious. I mean look at this:

In this bowl, you mix the ground beef, egg, milk, bread crumbs and salt/pepper until it looks like Meatwad from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. In the mean time, you should chop up and sauté the onions until they’re cooked-ish, otherwise they’ll be a bit too crunchy in your meatloaf.  My roommate Liz thought it would be funny to organize the sautéing onions into a heart shape for you guys:

Dump the onions into the meatloaf, and then mix it again. Careful touching it with your hands, as the onions are hot. Set the completed mixture aside for awhile while you prepare the final step, the sauce. Mix the ketchup, brown sugar and a couple spoonfuls of your favorite BBQ sauce in a small bowl.

Once it’s smooth, you can arrange the meat mixture in your baking loaf tray (5×9″ works best) and then dump the sauce evenly across the top. Yeeeeah meatloaf!

Stick the whole thing in the oven for about one hour at 350 degrees F. To check if it’s done, just cut into it. If it’s still pink on the inside, put it back in the oven for another 5-10 minutes. Or eat it raw, vampire. I’m on to you.

When it’s done, combine it with other wholesome “family” type foods, and trust me, you’ll super impress your grandma once you put photos online. As long as she has Facebook. Your grandma has Facebook, right?

Let me know if you have any suggestions for other easy foods for me to try! Also, let me know if you try any of the recipes I post on my blog, and send pictures! I would love to see them.

This past weekend I had the pleasure of taking a brief but enjoyable trip to the wondrous New York City, with the purpose of attending New York Comic Con.

While I’ve been to New York on a number of occasions, I’d never attended their Comic Con. I think if you’ve been to at least one comic con you probably at least have a pretty good idea of what others are going to be like, but it’s always a treat to get to walk around and explore the expo halls of a con you’ve never been to before. I didn’t get quite as much time to just meander as I would have liked, but I was there on a mission for the Ford #FiestaMovement, and they made sure to keep us agents busy.

Friday I arrived quite late in the evening, but I arrived at the same time as fellow agent Deena Marie, who was lovely and strolled around Times Square with me (neither of us wanted to go to bed right when we finally got to the city, even though we both regretted it when our alarms went off bright and early the next morning). We gazed at the glowing signs advertising broadway shows, found a cute deli that sold adorable little macarons, and I tempted fate by ordering a Brie Sandwich. I don’t know what I was expected, aside from a sandwich filled entirely with brie cheese, but my stomach wasn’t too happy with me that evening.

It was worth it.

The next day began with a trip to “Burgers and Cupcakes” for breakfast, where I order neither a burger nor a cupcake and opted instead for a breakfast sandwich.  Then two of the team headed off to Comic Con to begin their challenges and my team was sent around on a scavenger hunt tour of the city. This is what eventually led me here, a place I can never fully describe to anyone who wasn’t there with us:

No joke, this place was a tiny little comedy club… and the only audience members were dolls. The dolls were places on chairs with little tables with varying degrees of sobriety – some were prim and proper dolls and others were slouched over next to empty glasses and only half clothed.

But that’s not even the weirdest part.

A woman was running the place, and asked us if we wanted to tell any jokes to the dolls. Deena was delighted, but told the woman she didn’t have any jokes. “Not a problem!” we were informed. “There are jokes hanging up there for you!”

Which is why, in the fall of October 2013, I had my standup debut in front of a bunch of skeptic dolls that didn’t like my jokes. The woman in charge had a laptop and would play an audio track of the babies cooing or laughing if they were enjoying your set. They were a tough crowd.

It didn’t cost us any money, there wasn’t a donation box anywhere – we had no idea what the point of this place was or how we had even stumbled onto it. The entire room was maybe twenty square feet, total, and the women seemed so, so pleased we stopped by and participated.

Just a strange live art installation, I guess. Guess I can cross “tell jokes to dolls” off my bucket list, or maybe “fulfill some women’s crazy fantasy”. Jury’s still out on that one.

Anyway, Saturday night in the city was a blast; then Sunday was our team’s turn at the con! We started the day taking photos for Gawker, but then got to wander out on our own. I bought some fun nerdy things I’m sure you’ll see soon in an outfit of the day post, as well as a few early Christmas presents for friends (started shopping early this year!) and ran into a couple of friends. My biggest regret of the weekend was not getting into R. L. Stine’s panel (UGH) but… next time, I suppose. It still stings. Let’s not talk about it.

It was such a short, crazy trip – but I had a great time meeting some of the other Fiesta Agents I hadn’t known before, catching up with the ones I did know, and spending a bit of time in a city I just don’t know all that well yet. Thanks for sending me, Fiesta Movement!

Okay, I’m about to share with you my secret favorite snack. This is a huge deal, as it has secret in the title and that means no one else knows about it. Except I guess Instagram, since I posted a picture of it one time. The food item we will be making today is the Avocado Bagel.

Just to clarify, this isn’t an avocado flavored bagel (though how cool would that be?!) because I am not that caliber of chef; I can’t infuse the flavor of one delicious food into another, no matter how awesome that would be. No, what we’re doing today is putting avocado on a bagel, which sounds simple, yes – but if it’s so simple, why haven’t you thought of it before?

Ingredients you will need:

1. A bagel
2. Plain cream cheese 
3. 1 avocado
4. Seasoning of your choice

First toast the bagel to your liking. I can’t stand when my bread gets even the slightest bit burnt, but to each their own. I guess the toasting settings wouldn’t go all the way up to 10 if no one used them, right? Anyway, stick the bagel in the toaster and let’s stop getting off track.

Next you should cut your avocado open by cutting it lengthwise. You’ll only need half, so stick the side with the pit (it helps it keep longer!) in a ziplock bag or tupperware and toss it back in the fridge for tomorrow. Or make guacamole; you’re a grownup, you can do whatever you want.

Once the bagel is toasted, spread cream cheese on it evenly, then place pieces of avocado on top, cut into strips or cubes or however you want. Then, top if off with your favorite seasoning. I like Johnny’s Seasoning Salt (it’s sort of an all purpose seasoning) but you can use garlic or an italian seasoning or whatever you want. That’s all there is to it!

This is such an easy afternoon snack, and it’s relatively healthy. I hope you enjoy it!

This has been a video heavy week for me! I posted a few more videos of note, in case you missed them. First off is the BEST TAG EVER, a ridiculously silly video tag that’s been going around YouTube lately. I was tagged by the lovely Kiri Callaghan, so I really couldn’t refuse.

I don’t tend to do a lot of tag or challenge videos, mostly because I have a lot more videos ideas that I just think are better than trying to eat dry cinnamon or tell the difference between coke and pepsi with a blindfold on… but every once in a while a tag video slips through the cracks, and this one turned out to be quite weird/funny.

Next up is this in depth review of Monstermatic. Monstermatic is an app I mentioned in my September favorites video, but I wanted to do a followup. It’s an app that allows you to create these custom monsters on your phone, and then gives you the option to actually get that monster 3D printed… so he can come to life and live on your shelf! I think it’s super uniquely awesome and I was so pumped to get to try it out:

Their kickstarter only goes for a few more days, so definitely go check it out if you think this sounds like something that would be fun to try! The app won’t exist if they don’t get funded!

I’m going to be in New York this weekend, for NYCC! Will you be there? What should I definitely do with my 48 hours in the city?

In addition to being in up to my eyeballs in Halloween party planning and putting together another epic 24 hour live show for Extra Life – I’ve also got the pre NaNoWriMo jitters something fierce. We’re still three weeks out, but I find it creeping into the back of my mind pretty regularly already. What am I going to write? How am I going to make the time? Is anyone going to do it with me?

That’s why I decided to post a pep talk video early this year, to make sure those of you on the fence about it have ample time to mull it over. Here is that video!

I will likely be posting more videos to help participants along this year, as well as hosting my usual word sprints on twitter. Make sure you’re following me if you want to join in the fun!

I’ll also be heading down to San Francisco for the Night of Writing Dangerously – it’s a gala/write-a-thon they throw every year to raise money for their organization (as well as their free creative writing programs in hundreds of schools and communities all over the place), which I am all about supporting. I am trying to raise $500, which is minuscule compared to the amount this project has done for me over the years. If you’re interested in donating, here’s a link to my funding page.

How do you decide what to write each year? Usually I start with format – do I want to write a “diary” book? First person? Letters between people? Back and fort POV between two characters? Then I figure out the genre I’m interested in, and then start to flesh out the details. Let me know your methods in the comments!

And as usual, if you get stuck, you can always rewatch my NaNoWriMo music video. It’ll be trapped in your head for days, at the very least. 🙂

I was emailed by a company called Sammydress to try out a few of their products, and having used these wholesale one-size-fits-all sites before to relative success, I decided to give it a try.

I found that the trick is to just not try to buy clothes. I’m not a tiny asian women, so any blouses, sweaters or dresses I’ve ordered from sites like this before just… didn’t work out for me. But accessories! Oh the accessories!

First I picked out the lovely brown purse you can see above. It’s surprisingly large and roomy, the buckles and sturdy and functional, and I can’t wait to give it a try. I also got a cute brown belt, as well as that pink belt (which I’ll admit, I only grabbed because it’s identical to the one i need for my Barbie costume.) Also, the double layer brown bracelet will match the accompanying belt almost perfectly.

Let’s zoom in a little on the jewelry.

I’ve been on a big gold kick recently, so I used this as a simple way to pad out that collection. The two gold necklaces are just lovely, the ring actually looks like a cup of coffee (it has a little spoon on it, too!) and the earrings, though silver, will fit nicely in my quirky jewelry collection.

Shipping does take a very long time with this site, as it’s coming from the other side of the planet – but that almost makes it more fun. By the time it arrives you’ve likely totally forgotten what you’ve ordered, which makes it a bit like Christmas.

I’m curious what your favorite online clothing stores are? I have a handful I cycle between, but I could always use more. Let me know in the comments!

This weekend I was helping Joe move into his new apartment, when we noticed this adorable little Farmer’s Market settled in a lot about halfway between his place and mine. I’m not quite sure how I never noticed it before, but you can bet we pulled off to check it out.

As pictured above, my greatest conquest of the trip was a crate of four boxes of blackberries that I can’t wait to turn into pie. I grew up next to a long, long street rich with blackberries along the entire left side, and ever since I moved away from home, I feel a nagging to pick berries come September. I don’t have any wild bushes around me anymore, so finds like this will have to do.

I’m wearing a basic olive tank, a mustard crocheted cardigan and medium brown boots from Forever 21, think comfy olive socks from Target, and some fun patterned leggings I literally bought at a random K Mart in Montana because I did not pack warm enough clothes for my family road trip to North Dakota last winter. Fun and functional! The heart pendant necklace was a gift, so I’m not sure where it came from.

Speaking of fun fall activities, I’m also currently running a great giveaway on Subblime to win a pair of Finn or Jake footy pajamas from ThinkGeek. Check out my recently posted list of Favorite Halloween Accessories and enter today!

Great for pajamas, a rainy day at home, or a super simple Halloween Costume!

What’s your special “fall” tradition? Apple picking? Hikes in the crisp autumn air? Going to a pumpkin patch? Let me know in the comments!