The rest of my New York trip was even more fun that the first day – plus I realized I needed to start dressing warmer, which immediately upped the quality of my trip. This was my outfit on Friday; with a brand new sweater from Forever21, one of my favorite patterned scarves (also from Forever21), a mustard yellow basic tank and matching yellow backpack (the backpack is an old favorite from Urban Outfitters), black leggings, grey knee socks and my same bronze Cathy Jean boots. But the important part of this outfit, as I’m sure you noticed, are the gloves and earmuffs.

I always keep a pair of gloves handy – I have a pair in my purse, in my car, in various coat pockets… I never want to be caught un-gloved! But the earmuffs were a new purchase. I saw them at one of those seasonal outdoor booths in NY and I just instantly knew I had to have them. My travel buddies teased me a bit, but let me tell you – my ears were toasty warm. No regrets. I plan to wear them all winter, regardless of what anyone thinks.

Moving on from clothing – one of the highlights of the second day of my trip was visiting the giant Nintendo Store!

Not only did I get to totally geek out over all the Pokémon stuff they have out right now, I also got SO MANY STREET PASSES. It was glorious. Also, when I was purchasing a gift for my fellow Team Hypercube channel members, the person working at the register told me, “this is our phone number at the top of your receipt here; call us if you need anything. Even if you’re just stuck in a game. We can help.”

What! So awesome! I had a great time perusing the store and knowing everyone around me totally understood the fangirl tendencies coming out.

My favorite part of the store was that upstairs there’s this exhibit area that changes based on what game just released a new version… obviously the exhibit was Pokémon themed for my visit, and walking through the “Pokémon Through The Ages” and getting to both reminisce and also be slightly embarrassed by just how many Pokémon things I’ve owned since I was 11 was just brilliant.

I also got to eat at a whole bunch of great restaurants and meander through Central Park and finally experience Alice’s Tea Cup first hand. And to top it off, we closed out our trip by seeing “Once” with Arthur Darvill and not only were our “partial view” seats ridiculously amazing and close to the stage, the show was simply perfect. I enjoyed myself so much.

It was five whirlwind days of a trip I will never forget, one I desperately needed. I adore cons and shows and business trips but I think people really need a true vacation every now and then, and this one lived up to my every expectation. I can’t wait to go back.

Disclosure

This past week I had the pleasure of visiting New York City purely for fun – usually my trips to this bustling metropolis involve work of some kind (whether that be playing a concert, attending a convention, etc.) but this trip granted me three full days of unplanned, unscheduled exploration of a place I never seen to have enough time in.

My dear friend Eia Waltzer accompanied me on this trip, a friend I’ve traveled to many places with (including Rome, Paris, the Bahamas, and more). I think a good travel buddy is an important thing to find in life, truly. Eia and I have very similar priorities when it comes to exploring new places, which is a key element in traveling with the right person.

This first day of our trip was rainy, which didn’t lend itself very well to the outfit you see above. I wore a lacy pink dress from Papaya, magenta patterned tights from Nordstrom Rack, peach Volcom socks and a gold bow necklace. Paired with a black peacoat and my bronze boots from Cathy Jean, I felt stylish but not particularly warm. I had no idea how cold and windy NYC can be in November, so the follies of this outfit influenced how I dressed for the rest of the trip.

On our first day we ate at Chevy’s (because it was the nearest place with a roof and a happy hour once it started raining), did a fair amount of shopping and then saw Matilda on Broadway. I adored the show; the songs are catchy and fun, the lyrics are brilliant, the dancing was masterful and the kids were just utterly adorable and amazing. It was a fantastic first day to an already exceptional adventure of a trip. More to come in tomorrow’s post – be sure to check back!

If you’re following me on either one of my twitter accounts, I’m sure you’ve already gotten a general sense of how this National Novel Writing Month is going:

That twitter post was from a few days ago, when starting a 50,000 word writing marathon during a cold as well as 25 hours of gaming was a bit…. overwhelming for me.

Now it’s Day 5 and I’ve just about caught up to where I am supposed to be. Today’s goal is 8,333 and I’m sitting at 7,122 with the intention of writing more tonight. It’s a good feeling.

HOWEVER! Tomorrow I leave for New York for 5 days. I just never make it easy for myself.

It’s going to be a trying month, but that’s honestly one of the things I love most about NaNoWriMo. Seeing these very obvious roadblocks in my path and figuring out how to crush them.

The word sprints I’ve done so far have been extremely helpful and lots of people on twitter have been joining in! It’s so nice to see so many people participating. It really makes the whole thing so much more fun.

This is just going to be a short blog post, but I’ll hopefully be updating from New York. Except fun outfit of the day posts and perhaps even a review or two of some Broadway shows! Can’t wait!

This weekend was a crazy one.

I spent most of Thursday and Friday sleeping and drinking water furiously in hopes of getting better in time for Extra Life, the 25 hour gaming marathon meant to raise money for the Children’s Miracle Network. I mentioned this on here before, but my team (Geekyhostess, Satire and the rest of Team Hypercube) host a 25 hour live show so folks can interact with us while we attempt to play games straight for all that time. I am now happy to report that we’ve done it for two years in a row, though I personally struggled a bit more than the rest of them.

We agreed that I should come a few hours late, so I didn’t start the day off poorly. While my lovely team began gaming at 8am on Saturday, I took my time, took some medicine, and waltzed in around 10:30. But then I was great! My nose was significantly less stuffy, my head felt less explodey and I managed to take part in a surprising number of games. I started feeling woozy again around 10pm, but to be perfectly honest – making it 12 hours on the upswing of a cold was largely impressive.

During the time that I was on, some highlights included: playing King of Tokyo, testing out the Job Hunters RPG, Cash and Guns, You Don’t Know Jack, and of course, Babycam. I also quite enjoyed scary game hour, and listening to the rest of the team making their silly themed Magic the Gathering decks.

It’s a bummer that I was sick, but we had a LOT of fun doing Extra Life anyway. Everyone in the chat was incredibly supportive and great, we got to try a lot of new games, and we managed to double our goal — hitting $2,000 raised by 6am!

Thank you to everyone who stopped by the live stream, and furthermore THANK YOU to the amazing people who donated. You can still donate here if you missed it and want to help out.

Now it’s time to catch up on NaNoWriMo after the craziness of Extra Life is over. Be sure to follow me on twitter for word sprints this month!

Hello blog readers!

Today is one of the craziest days of the year and of course, because fate is cruel – I’m a big pile of sniffling, achey congestion. So even though tomorrow I plan to play 25 hours straight hours of video games to raise money for Seattle Children’s Hospital, and it’s the start of my month-long novel writing marathon… the only thing I’m working toward today is seeing if it’s possible to use an entire box of Kleenex in a single sitting.

Currently I’m winning.

I’m also currently sitting at 315 words on my NaNoWriMo novel, because I’m a boss. And by “boss” I mean “really disappointed that the first year I’m finally not hungover from post Halloween shenanigans, my head feels like it’s going to explode anyway”.

Anyway, every word I type here is both taking up energy I don’t have and keeping me away from working on my word count (…or napping) so I’ll make this short and sweet.

1. If you interested at all in Extra Life, the gaming marathon to raise money for the Children’s Miracle Network, you can check out our live stream starting at 8am on November 2nd and going until 8am the following day. We have a whole list of activities planned that you can read about here, and if you feel sufficiently moved, you can also make a donation here. It’s for the kids. 🙂

2. If there’s any part of you that ever even once thought “NaNoWriMo sounds like fun…” today is your day. Just start. Start writing and see where it takes you. Finally give yourself the gift of time and focus and just start. Sign up on NaNoWriMo.org and add me as a writing buddy!

And if you want to send any good, healing thoughts my way… that would be much appreciated. I’m quite tired of this cold and would like to get on with all the marathoning I have planned for this month.

Let me know what you’re writing about for NaNoWriMo this month in the comments. I love hearing what other people are doing! And good luck!

So, I have been hinting about this online for weeks – but my roommates and I have been tirelessly working on an epic Halloween party we threw at our house. I’m talking party committee meetings, organized shopping trips, and scheduled craft nights. We host a Halloween party every year, but this year… we went ALL out. Being a house full of Harry Potter fanatics, we decided it was time to give our party the ultimate theme: Knockturn Alley.

Upon arriving at our house, the first thing guests were greeted by was this flaming fireplace doorway and bucket of Floo powder. Our door is naturally lime green, so it felt only right that it would be connected to the Floo network. Wizards could shout “Knockturn Alley!” and throw a handful of sand, while unassuming muggles would mispronounce Diagon Alley as “Digonelly!” and show up in the same place.

Once inside, all guests were encouraged to put their name in the Goblet of Fire. We didn’t tell them why initially (just that they might be “chosen”), then random times throughout the night my roommate Justin (dressed as Voldemort) shown a dark mark symbol on the ceiling and drew names of guests from the goblet.

These selected guests would then become Death Eaters and would receive a green wrist band. Guests with wrist bands got special treatment (ie. prizes) throughout the evening.

To get down to where the party was, party-goers were encouraged to follow the spiders. A trail of spiders led all the way down the stairs, down the next hallway and into the living room.

Then in the living room, we created the illusion of the dark and creepy Knockturn Alley by covering everything in black tablecloths and shining a green floodlight across the room. Each corner had a separate “shop” with its own sign, theme, decor, food and beverages. The four shops we chose were actual ones from Knockturn Alley: of course we had Borgin and Burkes; this was the main and largest shop that took place at our built in bar. Next was the Spiny Serpent (which we know very little about from the books) so we turned it into a bestiary. The Cauldron Shop was next, which had food and drinks of and pertaining to all things cauldron-related. The final shop was the Apothecary, which mostly had interesting drinks as well as an assortment of creepy potion inspired decorations.

I will have blog posts up about each of these individual shops in the next couple of days (that I will eventually link to from this post) so please keep an eye out for that!

My favorite aspect of this party was that everything was supposed to be dark, creepy, and relatively colorless. Except, of course, for the drinks (to represent potions, and a wizard party, of course). We installed four black-lights around the living room, and used UV reactant cups as well as flashing plastic “ice cubes” for the drinks, so once guests started mingling and dancing and drinking, it kind of turned into a dark wizard rave. The image of a dark, foggy room filled with people in fantastic dark wizard costumes with only glowing drinks for lights was a pretty intense, amazing visual theme for the party; one I am quite proud of. It worked even better than we could have planned.

There’s so much more I want to share but I will save it for the next blog posts; in closing I will leave you with the creepiest aspect of the party: the bathroom.

Maybe it’s the Slytherin in me (sorry guys – newly sorted Hufflepuff or no, there will always be an element of Slytherin in my bones) but I really wanted to make people regret going to the bathroom. So we did this to our shower:

I tied it in by saying the brain was one from the Department of Mysteries… but even I’ll admit that was a stretch. I just wanted to freak people out.

It was a fantastic night, everyone seemed to have a lot of fun, and I was so thankful for all of the help I had in pulling it off. My roommates were absolutely amazing in helping get everything ready, as were a handful of my friends who came over early to help us finish setting up.

My roommates! Liz as a shop keeper, Justin as Voldemort, myself as Narcissa and Eia as the Grey Lady.

I don’t know if I’ll ever throw a party quite this grand ever again, but I’m pleased to be able to check it off my list. I don’t know if other people have thrown Death Eater or Knockturn Alley parties before but we had so much fun scouring the books for ideas. I’m curious to know your thoughts, as I know many of the people who read my blog are also huge Harry Potter fans! How did we do?

I was checking out this website today, that tells you the “Secret Language Names and Personalities” of people based on their birthdate. It’s kind of interesting; rather than being totally made up (like a lot of astrology) the Secret Language Name is derived from a study done on over 20,000 actual people over a period of forty years. The data is supposed to reveal your “true identity” based on the information collected from other people born on your same birthday. I’m a total sucker for stuff like this, so I plugged in myself and a few of my friends, and here’s what I found:

I mean… that sounds about right. I can’t deny that. Generally I’m of the mindset that this sort of cultivated life advice is generally nothing more than that: advice. Maybe the day we come into this world really does have some effect on who we become (how cool would that be!) but even if it’s all just coincidence – who’s to say it’s not still helpful to take a step back and evaluate ourselves and how we operate now and then?

The way this site works, having scrolled through it a bit now, is that it breaks down your personality traits on a few different planes. First it gives you a breakdown of the type of person your particular birthdate has made you. Then if you scroll a bit further, it takes you to the Week of your birth, and then there’s a section about your Path and your Way. Then it jumps out to the Month and then the Season. Each one obviously get a bit broader, but the larger picture shows you how it all fits together to make you a complex high functioning person rich with a lot of these traits.

The part that spoke to me most from my results was actually from my Path. There was a section about what my “fulfillment” is, which was the following:

Again, maybe it’s not that I was born on the 27th of December that set my path as someone who makes their own rules – but I think there’s definitely something to be said about that fact that I was able to sift through a huge page full of information and pick out this quote, realizing it to be true about myself. Now this statement is something I’m thinking about. Now it’s something that will help me make future decisions; not because some horoscope told me to, but because it helped me realize it was part of who I am already. I think that’s interesting.

I looked up a few of my friends to see if there was anything I thought was true or interesting about them, which was a lot of fun.  Most of them were pretty accurate, surprisingly, but this particular quote about my friend and roommate Eia made me crack up, but mostly because she always sleeps until midday:

Anyway, there’s a whole bunch of information to read through and it’s all pretty interesting, so if you have a bit of free time and wanna check it out, you’ll probably learn something about yourself!

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

Last week, my good friend Tara of the GeekyHostess threw one of the strangest dinner parties I’ve ever been to. All we knew upon arrival was that we should wear “whatever you would normally wear to a reading of a will for a distant relative/acquaintance in his fancy home. ” I took this opportunity to wear a lacy black dress from H&M I don’t have nearly enough reasons to wear, black heeled boots from Cathy Jean, purple tights, emerald nail polish, a peacock feather pendant, a sock bun and my favorite piece of jewelry – a “poison ring”, which has a hidden compartment for storing things.

We arrived at Tara’s place and were met with the creepiest tea party I have ever seen. Don’t get me wrong: the food and drinks looked amazing (Tara always outdoes herself); no, it was the dolls placed everywhere with broken faces and bleeding eyes that set my teeth on edge.

Then, even though I was surrounded by my best friends, we entertained the most forced, awkward dinner conversation of all time – pretending no one knew each other and all had to discover how we were acquainted with the deceased (Harold Winchester the Third, a man who loved dolls more than anything else). It was the craziest meta-game ever. I can’t even explain it.

After dinner was the reading of the will, or rather, a game of Betrayal at House on the Hill where we were instructed to find Harold’s favorite room in the house so the will could be read there. The only catch – we were the characters in the game. Quite literally:

The game turned into a crazed hunt through the house to find the voodoo doll versions of ourselves and destroy them before Harold’s equally frightening attorney could kill us as keep us as dolls in his newly inherited collection forever. I was a paper doll, as seen above. I died.

I don’t want to spoil too much, as Tara is writing up a post on her own blog about the evening, and there’s a Team Hypercube video about the event as well. Basically it was another perfect example of how weird/awesome my friend group is, and how I don’t think we’re even capable of doing anything normal. Of course we’d attend a murder tea party. Of course we would.

Note: This post may contain affiliate or referral links.

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!