This month I managed to read *9* books over the course of the month, including a number of brand new releases (like Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen, The Heir by Kiera Cass and An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir).

Watch this video to find out what I thought, and to see what I’m hoping to read in June!

Okay. I am determined to keep current with my videos on this blog, STARTING NOW. However, this was not the case for a few months there, and because of that, we missed a good chunk of videos I posted on YouTube. So! This post is going to be another good ‘ol fashioned roundup of the videos of note over the last 2 months.

So, first – Joe and I buddy read Ready Player One, which was an amazing book that we both loved. Here is our joint review:

Then I wrapped up all the books I read in January:

It was feeling pretty book heavy up in here, so I took a little breather to talk about something extremely important for Valentine’s day… which is, of course, OTPs:

Then I shared my favorites with you, for the month of February!

I posted a number of other fun videos, including books hauls and unboxings, but to find those you can go check out my channel directly. Which of the types of videos that I make are your favorite? What do you look forward to the most? Let me know!

 

Here are the books I completed in February! I read a total of 9 books, hitting 9 of the challenges in the Popsugar Reading Challenge.

I am zooming ahead of schedule for reading 50 books this year, but I have a feeling that convention season is going to slow me down a bit — and that’s just around the corner!

What are you reading right now? Have you read any of the books I talked about in this video?

I’ve been trying my hardest to make it up to you guys lately that I took such a long blogging break by making it really easy to find everything I created in the absence. Between my cosplay news, books I’ve read and videos I’ve posted, I’ve been a busy little bee!

Today’s blog post will give you a round up of the most noteworthy videos I’ve made in the last month or so, starting with this GeekGirlCon Candyland video I posted yesterday!

 

I am quite proud of it, and my friends were all such good sports for being involved. I love showcasing the things that make me happy for others, and I think this video did that perfectly.

Next was this hilariously exciting Snack Exchange video I filmed with Joe – we had organized a collab of sorts with a couple living in Korea named Evan and Rachel. They sent us a big box of Korean snacks in exchange for a box of American foods they missed from home.

 

We had a BLAST trying everything. Some of it was weird, some was absolutely disgusting… but a lot of it was really great! Thanks again, Evan and Rachel!

The last video I want to share with you is my FALL BOOK HAUL! I can’t get enough of books and reading lately and this is my newest stack of stuff to read.

I can’t wait to get through many of these, and October has been a big reading month for me. I’m only 2 books away from hitting my 30 book goal for 2014! You can bet I’m gonna raise that goal next year – 30 was easy!

I hope you enjoyed my videos, and I’ll be back soon with some more October/Halloween fun!

Okay, I’ve been slacking a little on this blog. It’s summer! I’ve been busy reading, traveling, etc. It just occurred to me that I’ve totally forgotten to post my videos on this blog, so here’s a few of my most recents to catch you up (if you’ve fallen behind).

This is the video that went live today, a little glimpse into the madness that has become my cosplay obsession. My roommates and I have been scheduling weekly work dates to sew costumes, make props, read tutorials, customize wigs, and so on. I thought it would be fun to give a little work in progress before I reveal the finished costumes at the end of the month:

 

Then I shared this past month’s favorite with you in a standard recommendation video. These are always some of my favorite videos to make, since I’m always obsessing over new TV shows and app games and products, so make sure to watch it if you missed it!

 

And the last video I wanted to share with you for this particular update is a fun little vlog I posted that was much more in my ‘older’ style of videos, musing on the idea of lost things and sharing a few of the items I’ve lost over the years. This one is a tag video, so feel free to make a response if you are so inclined!

 

That’s it for now! I’ll be back tomorrow with this week’s installment of Device Theft Awareness Month, as well as a few more video updates over the course of the week (I told you, I got pretty behind but I didn’t want to overwhelm you all in one post). Thanks for reading and I’ll be back soon!

It’s that time of year again, folks… the PROJECT 4 AWESOME! As a dedicated nerdfighter, this is one of my favorite projects of the year and I am so stoked for everyone to see the video I made for it. I feature a different charity each year and this year I chose to finally talk about a personal favorite… National Novel Writing Month.

I’m gonna be hanging out in the live stream for most of the next 48 hours, and I should also be hosting it later on tonight or tomorrow when John and Hank need a break (or to like, sleep/eat). If you’ve never heard of P4A or never participated yourself, please go check out the Project 4 Awesome website, donate at the indiegogo page (there are so AWESOME perks, including a handful of UNCUT SHEETS of Jetpack Unicorn that will be going up soon!) and watch/like/comment on as many videos with this year’s thumbnail as you can.

We can get so caught up in the holidays and shopping and gifts that it’s nice to have this annual reminder that we can use YouTube as a force for good, bringing real humans together to donate money to things that really matter to us as a group. I am so proud to have been doing this for seven years and I can just tell this will be a P4A to remember.

Did you make a P4A video this year? What charity did you choose and which are you voting for on the site?

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!

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.

At VidCon this year I managed to hook up with the people over at Loot Crate — which was a grand decision on my part! I’ll be honest with you. I’ve been at other events that Loot Crate was represented at in the past, and it’s not that I wasn’t interested in it then… but just that at VidCon they were selling My Little Pony Funko Pop! Vinyl Figures. Which instantly attracted me like a bug to a flame. While purchasing said My Little Pony figurine, we started talking, and they welcomed me into their YouTube Loot Crate community. Don’t know what Loot Crate is? Watch the video!

I posted my first unboxing video on my main channel pretty much just to inform people that I’ll be getting these each month, so if you want to catch any subsequent unboxing videos, you’ll want to make sure you’re subscribed to my second channel! I post a lot of casual/supplemental content like this over on that channel, as well as daily vlog type stuff, fanmail videos, and a strange series I call “Questions of the Universe”.

I’m working diligently on getting my Cave Diving/Spelunking video edited… I am so excited to tell you guys all about this crazy adventure I had. That’ll be going up soon, so keep an eye out. In the mean time – what kind of videos would you like to see most from me? I just bought a new handy vlogging camera so I’m playing around with the idea of filming more stuff out and about, which is something I kind of stopped doing for awhile there. Let me know in the comments!

 

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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