I promised big news today and here it is: The Parselmouths are having a GARAGE SALE! You heard right – back from hiatus for just a hot second, my retired wizard rock band has returned not to perform any shows, but to offer you the chance to pick up some of our sweet, exclusive merch you may never have had the chance to buy before. We have an eclectic assortment of shirts and CDs spanning the whole length of our band’s existence, including some of the very first shirts we printed back in 2007. These shirts have never been available online before, and they were taking up so much room in our house that we decided it was time to share them with you – the great people of the internet.The really exciting part is that the ‘proverbial, real-and-true’ end of the Parselmouths doesn’t just mean the end of an era… it, of course, means the start of something new! We played our last show at LeakyCon 2011 so we’ve been “in retirement” for awhile now, but Eia and I have continued to live together, make things together, and scheme together. The launch of this online garage sale coincides directly with the unofficial “grand opening” of our online cosplay presence, and the start of the DeviantArt account we’ve created to document this new chapter of our lives. This account is still in the very early stages, but we’re also very new to cosplay! Every dollar we make selling what’s left our our Parselmouth’s merch will go to our cosplay fund, to bring you guys fun new costumes and characters we’re just itching to make. If you were ever a fan of our band, I definitely encourage you to at least go check out the store and see if there’s any fun, exclusive Parselmouths merch you may have missed out on over the years. And if you never listened to the Parselmouths, we have physical copies of our CDs for sale as well, which are otherwise no longer available! Again, here is the link to our temporary store. Accio, Parselmouths merch! This is both a nostalgic and exciting event for us, and we’re so excited to finally be announcing it. The Parselmouths existed for six wonderful, magical years and being in this band brought us so many great experiences, friendships and opportunities. It’s both tragic to leave such an amazing part of your life behind, and wonderful to look to the future of what you might be able to accomplish next. Let me know in the comments either a favorite Parselmouth’s memory of yours, or a character you’d like to see either Eia or myself cosplay as in the future. Thanks for all your support, as always, and I look forward to this final month of Parselmouths fun. ^_^

Hello, lovely blog readers. I’ve been neglecting you and for that I’m sorry. However! I am not sorry for the reasons I’ve been neglecting you, which is a whole long list of fun stuff and projects. So rather than trying to break it down into a whole bunch of different blog posts, I’m just going to do an all-inclusive life update. Here are some of the things that have been taking up my time: 1. Cosplaying! Eia and I had a blast dressing up as Anna and Elsa at Emerald City Comic Con, and we’ve definitely caught the bug. We’ve been hard at work planning more costumes, getting our cosplay Deviantart account ready, and figuring out how this whole crazy community works. Expect much more fun us in the future on that front. 2. I was in LA! I headed down with Joe earlier this month and had such a great time hanging with friends – and the highlight of my trip was absolutely the day we hit up the LA Renaissance Pleasure Faire. It was great to jumpstart faire season early this year and it just gave me the itch to attend as many faires and festivals as I can in 2014. You can bet I’ll be filling you in on my adventures as the summer progresses. I can’t turn down another chance to hang out in costume for an entire weekend. 3. A secret Adventure Time project with Cinesaurus. I can’t say much about this yet, just that when it’s finished it’s going to be AMAZING. I think the plan is to have it finished by VidCon, but I will keep you posted. 4. Another secret project that will be announced tomorrow. Just one day of waiting, I promise! Keep an eye on my website for the details! 5. A total rewatch of all four seasons (and three movies!) of the original Sailor Moon from the 90’s. If you want to follow that adventure, make sure you’re subscribed to updates from my second twitter, MoreKristina. It’s been an amazingly enjoyable thing to do, which is a good thing, being that there’s nearly 200 episodes to get through. We’re about 60 in, so we have a ways to go! As usual I have a few new videos that have been posted since the last time I wrote a blog post. First up is my April Favorites video, featuring a lot of anime and television and misc. nerdy stuff:

And my most recent new video – the TMI tag. This video has 50 questions and answers covering just about everything you never realized you might want to know about me:

That’s about it for now… it’s getting a lot nicer here in Seattle so I’m feeling more motivated to be active. I’m hoping to use that energy for good and start roller blading again, or even dig out my hula hoop and start working on learning hoop dancing. I’m considering making progress videos, so please let me know in the comments if that’s something you’d be interested in at all! How have you guys been? Let me know in the comments, and also, tell me what sorts of things you like to do to stay active when the sun comes out! Have a great day and I’m hoping to start blogging a lot more frequently again, so thanks for sticking around.

Have you ever been invited to the beach and just as you’re heading out the door, realized that “fuzzy” isn’t a strong enough word to describe the state of your legs? What about trips you go on in the winter, when “being beach ready” isn’t even something on your radar – and it turns out your hotel has a pool? No one’s gonna pass up a bit of pool time, but how do you handle those hairy legs?

I’m not saying it’s totally unacceptable to go au naturale – I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve thrown some nude tights over my unkempt legs and called it good. I am a walking ad campaign for shaving laziness since nine months out of the year, it’s really not necessary to even pay attention to your legs, as Seattle does us a solid and offers perpetual pants weather.

Thanks, Seattle! *high five*

But those three months we DO get to bare our legs to the world, it is quite nice to be smooth as can be. And for the emergency moments when I know my legs will be mingling with the great outdoors and I wasn’t prepared, I’ve resorted to some funky solutions. Grabbing a crappy two blade razor from the front desk at a hotel, “borrowing” a razor from a friend and hoping she won’t notice, or even just grin and baring it – hoping no one will notice the two months of apathy growing out of my legs.

We carry around gum, lotion, sometimes even emergency toothbrushes for similar situations, but it was never very practical to carry around an emergency razor – until I found out about the Venus Snap! I realize this sounds very product placement-y, but at the same time, I have no problem talking about products that are legit lifesavers.

These are so great. All the conveniences of a normal razor, in a cute little compact case that won’t raise as many questions as a normal loose razor would floating around in your bag. I can say with confidence that this will be a permanent staple in my travel bag, regardless of where I am going. You never know when you’re going to need it!

A few of my other favorite travel items, in fun little “airplane friendly” sizes.

This discovery came at the perfect time, since I’ve spent most of this week getting ready and packing for a family trip to Vegas for my uncle’s 50th birthday party. It’s supposed to be in the 70’s and I heard our hotel has a pretty sweet pool. Bring it on, Vegas. My legs are ready.

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

Hey, blog readers! I just wanted to tell you about something I’m launching today that’s sort of a big addition to the things I already do. I’m kicking off a Patreon page, and I am extremely excited about it.

What is Patreon? Well, the best way to answer that is to just show you the video I made on the topic:

Essentially, I’m taking a huge leap of faith for my art. I am inviting anyone who’s ever enjoyed the things I’ve made to become a patron of my work; to help fund my projects so I can focus even more time on creating the type of content YOU like to see, rather than relying on product placement deals to pay my bills. I love giving my honest opinions on the products I love in my videos, and I am tired of having that jeopardized by saying yes to sponsored videos for things I don’t actually care about.

Patreon will hopefully both make that a reality, and open even more new doors for me. Maybe that’ll mean more frequent videos. Maybe more creative writing. Either way, it’s going to be exciting for everyone involved.

All of the content you were getting from me before is still free – my videos, my blog posts, outfit of the day pictures, etc. Patreon is just a way to become more involved with that process as a viewer. At certain levels you can even give me topics to write or vlog about! Patreon will hopefully enable me to do more freelance work – doing what I love rather than just work that pays the bills.

The perk I am most excited about is just at the $5 level – you can take a personality quiz that I wrote myself to find out what kind of Unicorn Warrior you are, and then join a secret Facebook group to meet the others and chat and interact with me on a regular basis. It’s going to be a lot of fun – and that’s just one of the things I am offering!

Please go check out my page if you’ve ever enjoyed anything I’ve created. This new project is scary and fun and exciting all at once but it’ll only be successful with your support. <3

Yesterday was the laziest of lazy Sundays, and I mean that in a totally positive, awesome way. I had zero plans or pressing matters that needed my attention, so I got to relax and do whatever I wanted, all day long.

Of course, I used this time to embark on my quest to re-watch all 200 episodes of the 1992 original Sailor Moon anime, a project I’ve been itching to do for years. Not only was the last time I watched Sailor Moon back in middle school, but I’ve never actually seen the original Japanese version of it. Not to say anything too terrible about the English dub – of course, I’m much more of a purist now, preferring to watch most anime in its original form with subtitles – but that English Sailor Moon dub was my personal gateway into the world of anime. I was eleven, I had no idea Dic was changing the show as much as it was, so I had no clue I was even missing anything. There’s a soft spot for me for the English names, the English voice actors, but it is quite interesting to watch it in Japanese and find out what was poorly translated and censored.

Anyway, I digress. The reason I am painstakingly rewatching all of this Sailor Moon is in preparation for the reboot that’s currently softly planned to be released this summer, July 2014. There isn’t really a whole lot known about the reboot yet, aside from rumors (and hopes!) that it’ll both aim to become it’s own unique show while also taking care to follow the plot of the manga a bit more closely. This is exceptionally exciting, both as a life-long Sailor Moon fan and a “good book to movie adaptation” enthusiast.

It’s been said that the show will be released online in Japanese and subtitled in 10 different languages, which is outside the norm and also wildly exciting for fans of the series and the future of larger scale anime releases.

I bring this up to you in blog post form because something very interesting occurred to me later, while I was in my bed winding down and playing Pokémon X. Pokémon? Sailor Moon? I am 26 years old and literally still consuming the exact same identical media I was at age 11. Fifteen years later and I am still enjoying Pokémon games. I am still counting down the minutes to a new episode of Sailor Moon. Have I not aged at all in those fifteen years? Did I somehow time travel back to my youth? Is Japan doing a FANTASTIC job of capitalizing on mid-90’s nostalgia?

Whatever the answer is, I’m really not mad about it. I’ll probably continue to consume these franchises forever, as long as they stay good.

This is the final installment in this week’s video series exploring my recent trip to Montana. Joe and I are definitely home safe and sound now, but I wanted to share the whole gnarly experience with you guys. Please let me know if you enjoyed this style of video and maybe I’ll make an effort to make it more of a norm on my channel!

In totally unrelated news, HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY! Regardless of your views on the holiday, I hope you manage to spend it with people you love.

Time for a bucket list post! Back in December, I took a road trip with Joe down the coast to LA, making a few choice stops along the way. One, of course, being the Winchester Mystery House. I had heard about this place before but never found a reason to stop – being in San Jose, it’s not exactly on the way to anything, so we factored an extra half a day into our trip and made it a priority.

We were not supposed to take pictures inside the house, so this picture below is usually all tourists walk away with. Our tour guide, however, was a huge geek about the house and understood the need to photograph the experience. She told us if her back was turned, there “would be no way for her to know we were taking pictures”. So, blog post commence, am I right?

The Winchester Mystery house is less of a house and more of a RIDICULOUSLY HUGE mansion that resides in Northern California. The property once belonged to the late Sarah Winchester, the widow of William Winchester, of prestigious Winchester Rifle fame. Sarah Winchester was also certifiably nuts. She placed the fate of her existence in the hands of a psychic after the death of her husband and only child. She asked this medium why she had suffered such a terrible loss, and the medium told her that the Winchester family was cursed. Sarah Winchester believed this, and felt the ghosts of those killed by Winchester rifles were pursuing her family. The medium told Sarah that she could confused the ghosts by building a house that was always changing. Sarah took this advice, moved to California, and begin to build. The house stayed under construction until the day she died. She had a permanent team of builders that worked on the house, and she kept many of the same ones for most of her life.

One of the first things she had constructed in her new house was a séance room,  which she used every single night. Each morning she would give her builders new plans based on what the spirits had told her the night before, which led to a lot of crazy building plans. Well, that and the fact that Sarah Winchester had very little architectural experience herself.

This is a second story door that opens to nothing but a straight drop off outside. Other doors open to blank walls, staircases lead to nowhere, and windows were installed in floors.

We were warned multiple times on our tour not to wander off, since it’s totally possible to get lost meandering around for hours in the confusing mess of rooms. Staircases and doors weren’t even the strangest features – probably the craziest part of the house was the “Switchback Staircase”, a flight of stairs that only went up nine feet but includes seven different flights of two inch steps. There was also a staircase that went up and immediately back down to take you to a floor just mere inches higher than the one you were just on.

Also, despite the 160 rooms in the house, 40 bedrooms, 2 ballrooms, 47 fireplaces, 17 chimneys – the entire house only has one shower. Bet that makes dorm life seem a little easier now, doesn’t it! The house also included an incredible amount of technological innovation. For the late 1800’s, it was quite rare to have furnishings such as steam and forced air heating, modern toilets and indoor plumbing, push button gas lights, and a hot shower. The house also contained three elevators, as well as stained glass windows created by the Tiffany company. These stained glass windows still reside in the house, specifically one designed by Tiffany himself that’s value is said to be inestimable. It was carefully designed so that when light hits the crystals in just the right way, the room would be engulfed in thousands of rainbow prisms. Of course, Sarah Winchester chose to install the window in a room facing a wall with no direct light whatsoever.

Before the giant earthquake in 1906, the Winchester House was seven stories high. Sarah Winchester never bothered fixing most of the damage done to the house, so the house remains to be merely four stories to this day.

As I said, there was round the clock construction on this house for 36 years from her team of loyal builders. She paid them quite well, as she was well-equipped to do so. She inherited more than $20.5 million when her husband died, as well as fifty percent ownership of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Her income was around $1,000 a day, which, back in those days was more liked $30,000 a day. THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. PER DAY. I’D PROBABLY GO CRAZYTOWN TOO.

Sarah Winchester died in 1922, at which point construction on the house immediately stopped. The total amount of money spend on the construction has been estimated around $5.5 million, which in today’s terms would be more than $75 million.

Nowadays, of course, the staff at the Winchester Mystery house still believe the place is haunted. This man in overalls (pictured below), one of Sarah Winchesters esteemed builders, is said to be seen walking around the house, doing maintenance and continuing to work on the house even after all these years.

I don’t know if I believe it, but the house sure is crazy. You can feel the vibe of crazy thick in the air as you walk around, ducking so as not to hit your head and you wander through tiny doorways, secret passageways and stairways meant for incredibly short people. I immensely enjoyed my tour through the Winchester Mystery House, but then again, I do love a good haunted house. Sarah Winchester’s story fascinates me, and I am so glad others felt the need to preserve her life and allow us to experience a small piece of it.

Have you been to the Winchester Mystery House? Have you driven by it? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments! Also, please recommend other haunted houses or must-see locations for lovers of spooky and unexplainable things!

Thanks for reading, and hopefully I’ll be back soon to cross another thing off my bucket list!

So, 99% of my life, I would consider myself someone who really couldn’t care less about football. I don’t care about players stats, I don’t care who’s fumbled the ball, I don’t care what team we’re up against this weekend. My dad considers this one of his shortcomings as a father: not managing to pass his love of football on to his eldest child.

But, in that final 1% of my life, when our home team makes it all the way to the Superbowl, giving my city something to get excited about in the midst of dreary February… I can get a little like this:

I feel bad for the people who continue to hate sports even when they give us something to celebrate about. Seattle hasn’t had a major championship win since 1979 – That’s before myself or any of my friends were even born. The Mariners are an embarrassment, we don’t even HAVE the Sonics anymore, and the last time the Seahawks went to the Superbowl we were totally stomped. The past few months (and especially these last few weeks since the Playoffs) have filled Seattle with camaraderie, sportsmanship, team spirit and best of all hope.

I’ve seen more 12th Man flags, more buildings shining blue and green lights, and people walking around jerseys than people in wizard garb at a Harry Potter con. You can help but get involved. It’s infectious.

I might not really care about the game itself, but I can appreciate an exciting event when I see one, and more so an excuse to throw a good party. Which is exactly what my friends and I (and most of the city of Seattle) did yesterday.

We came up with all sorts of silly traditions, such as taking jello shots at kickoff (and then again after halftime) – Justin ended up eating the final 1/3 of a cake he began eating during the Playoffs game, David wore a football helmet during the offensive plays and everyone pretty much sat in the same seats we sat in two weeks ago – there was obviously some sort of good luck vibe going on so we couldn’t mess any of it up.

I know a lot of the country thought yesterdays game was boring, and I understand that. Winning by a landslide is not nearly as thrilling of TV as an evenly matched, down to the wire game. But please just imagine what it felt like for a Seattleite, watching one amazing play after another and just feeling totally awesome about our city. The perpetual underdogs, rising up for a freaking amazing win. I am so proud to be from Seattle right now, I’m proud to have experienced this crazy event, and I am so happy for my friends and family (especially my Dad) who spend so much more time being invested in this team.

Today marks my retreat back to being a non-sports fan, but I enjoyed it while it was happening. I’m happy this made so many people in my city so happy.

There’s a lot of really great improv companies around Seattle, so I frequently get the opportunity to check them out. It’s a completely different kind of live performance, and my favorite types of improv shows to see are the long-form ones based on a larger theme. I’ve seen a Final Fantasy show, I’ve seen one that emulated being inside a video game with movement tracking “game screens” behind the actors, I’ve seen one that took place on a doomed space mission – but this most recent one (by the Seattle Experimental Theatre) was Doctor Who themed. I wasn’t really sure what that was going to entail, but my friends and I of course bought tickets to see it together, making it a perfect Friday night outing.

The skirt is brand new; I got it from Forever 21 a few weeks ago. I didn’t want to look too fancy (especially since my dang ‘whoops I didn’t shower today’ sock bun really makes a person look dressed up!) so I paired the maxi skirt with a simple D&D t-shirt I absolutely love. Then I threw on my bronze Cathy Jean boots and a black hoodie and that was that! I’ve been playing around a lot with dressing up t-shirts, so this was an interesting study doing the opposite – dressing down a skirt and hairstyle.

The show was interesting. I had a good time, and a couple of my friends were in it, so that is always an added bonus. The premise was that there was an actor that played the Doctor, and a companion. The rest of the cast became either the good guys or the villains. They asked the audience for a location on Earth (we chose Paris) and a problem (lice). Then they made a Doctor Who episode out of it.

The best part of the show was the full sized beautiful Tardis they had on stage. The Doctor ran in and out of it all night (obviously) and waved a sonic screwdriver around and made all sorts of references to the show while still creating something new and unique out of the story. I think we might have been there on an off night, because there were quite a few things that didn’t pan out or didn’t make sense or were totally abandoned, but overall, it was still a very enjoyable experience. Improv is hard. I have no idea how those actors come up with all that stuff so quickly, night after night. I have the utmost respect for talented improvisers.

Unfortunately the show is now over, but if you ever see a themed long form improv show in your area, especially one based on something nerdy and fun, go check it out! They’re a lot of fun, especially if you can make it to multiple nights of the same show. I love seeing how different the shows turn out on various nights.

Have you been to any of these types of improv shows? What did you see? Let me know in the comments!

Mine and Joe’s birthdays are less than a month apart, so we decided to find a way to celebrate them both (with each other) around the same time, creating two fun-filled days of nonstop celebrating. It started with a surprise bloody mary and brunch early on Tuesday, organized by Joe. I used the outing as an excuse to wear my brand new dress from Forever21 and my favorite Bandmate Bootie in Red from ModCloth. Also pictured is my brand new iPhone case, which I love, from DandyCase on Amazon. 

We got to try 3 different bloody marys – this one is called the “Bloody Pirate”. See the sword? And the cannon ball?

Joe knows me so well – I saved Tuesday night for whatever he had planned, but he told me to leave the morning open instead (because he knew I’d love breakfast food and bloody marys even more). He was right.

His birthday party was next (which I put together) and it included a homemade game he pretended to roll his eyes at but I think he secretly loved it. I was quite proud of my creation.

My only regret is that I didn’t take an “after” picture. Not a single person even got close. It was a facial hair travesty, believe me. Overall it was a relatively low-key birthday, but I think everyone had a really great time. Good friends, good food, games, and music – sometimes the best parties are simply the ones where all of your favorite people end up in the same room. I’m so thankful to have the friends I do and I’m glad I have Joe to share these important moments with.