This past weekend was Emerald City Comic Con and I had the most amazing time – and, to everybody’s surprise, I also managed to film a video while I was there! I am historically terrible at remembering to film at conventions, so I am quite proud of this feat.

This con has grown to be my favorite one of the year, and between the cosplay, the time with friends, and the incredible art/comic books I walked away with (I am such a sucker for artist’s alley) all I can say is how thankful I am that I get to start convention season this way, year after year.

If I got to meet or talk to you at the con, it was wonderful to do so! I hope to meet many more of you at the other conventions I will be attending in 2015. If you want to see a full list of where I will be, you can do so here.

I was so pleased with my cosplays and will be posting photos of those as soon as I get them back. Be sure to be following my Facebook and Instagram accounts for the most current news on my costumes.

Life has been fun lately. Not to say that it isn’t fun the rest of the time, but I made some big life changes recently and I’m really enjoying it. Between my new job, to really diving into cosplay, to turning my YouTube channel into a book channel, I’m very happy with how I’ve chosen to spend my time lately. I hope you’ve been enjoying what I’ve been creating as well. <3

Hello, lovely blog readers!

Yet again I have sort of fallen off the face of the planet, but I’m here to make amends by doing another little roundup of my favorite videos I’ve posted in the past month or so. If you missed any of them… go ahead and catch up! I’ll wait here.

So, first of all.. this video I’m about to show you is probably my favorite video I’ve ever made. Half the views it has are probably from ME, rewatching it and laughing hysterically alone in my room. I have no shame about this. It’s that funny.

Joe and I did a slightly different take on the whisper challenge. Rather than asking each other inane questions sent in on twitter, we just said nerdy phrases at each other. It was amazing.

The next video I want to share is my wrap-up from the #xmasbooktubeathon. I love booktubeathon. In fact, I am really coming around to just loving ALL readathons, and I can’t wait to do so many more in 2015. But this was the weekend long readathon I did right before Christmas, complete with a lot of struggles:

This year I am, of course, doing the 50 book challenge, so there will be MANY more readathons to come. And, I can imagine, more book struggles.

As we get closer to the end of the year, I started getting reflective. About books, of course. I realized too late that the trendy thing to do was your top FOURTEEN books of 2014, so I look a n00b only listing five. Whatever!

Then I had to show off all my NEW books, of course. This is a very book heavy blog post, I’m finding. No regrets! Here is my most extreme book haul yet:

I posted many more videos over the last month or so, so scoot on over to my channel to catch ’em all! Like a Pokémon master. Or you can stay here and leave me a comment telling me what kinds of videos you’d like to see more of in 2015. Whatever you want.

Thanks, as always, for reading my blog! It makes me smile. I like you guys.

I have just been terrible at updating this blog regularly. I have a number of exciting things that I’ve been dying to share, but with VidCon and the release of Job Hunters right around the corner, I just can’t seem to find a good balance for all the stuff I’m doing right now. But these wrap-up posts seem to be working just fine for now, so let’s see what’s been happening since the last time I updated.

1. I posted a video I am quite proud of, that people seemed to respond to very well – either they agreed whole-heartedly or they completely disagreed. I feel like that’s the optimal scenario in an opinion piece, so I’ve been enjoying reading through the comments. If you missed this video, it’s called “Tell Them Hi For Me”.

 

 

2. I’ve also been spending a good deal of time on costumes/cosplay lately, which I’m sure you’re probably aware of. I’ve found my forté is scouring the internet (ebay, etsy, google shopping) for that exact pair of shoes or a replica toy rifle you could paint and alter to look like the real one… but I’ve also been trying my hand at sewing. Sewing doesn’t come quite as naturally to me, but I managed my first skirt yesterday! And it hasn’t fallen apart! Well – okay the first one looked terrible so I started over but then the SECOND one… the second one was GREAT. If you want to get regular updates on my sewing and costuming woes and successes (as well as Eia’s!) you should follow our Cosplay Facebook Page.

Our current headache project is a fairy-inspired costume for an event my friends and I are all going to called Faerieworlds, though neither Eia or myself are actually going to be fairies because wings are the worst. Watching our other friend Jenn struggle with bending wire yesterday turned us both off wings maybe forever. It’s been a lot of fun (I say that now – yesterday during our sewing party extravaganza there were a whole lot of expletives coming from my living room) working on costumes for all of this stuff, but we could only handle doing one really involved costume for this event. The rest of the time, we’ll be wearing the stuff in this video:

 

 

3. The final thing I’ve been really trying to work on lately is reading more. It started with comics, which are a nice departure from longer books and something I am so thankful I’ve been learning more about. But funnily enough, it gave me the bug – and now I spend a lot of my time itching to get a book back in my hands. I’ve been doing a bit of lurking in the Booktube community on YouTube and I’m thinking about trying my hand at reviewing a few of the books I’m reading myself. Keep an eye on my channel for potential book reviews this summer. They’re coming.

Okay I couldn’t find a way to expertly make this last video relevant, but I also did a really fun unboxing video of a Ninja Crate, which is my current favorite mystery box subscription service thingy. Everything inside is kawaii and adorable and handmade and I loved it:

Thanks for continuing to read my blog, even when my projects keep me from updating it regularly! There will be a few new posts in the coming days, including where I’ll be at VidCon, so stay tuned! Hope everyone is having a lovely start to their summer!

 

This week marks my 7 year anniversary of making YouTube videos, and I’m sort of in shock thinking about how long that actually is. SEVEN YEARS of getting to interact with you guys on a regular basis, seven years of memories, and seven years of growth as a content creator.

I’m feeling really nostalgic and excited this week, so I’ve made a Subblime list highlighting some of the most pivotal things that have influenced my channel and my personality over these past seven years. You also have a chance at winning the new special edition paperback box set of Harry Potter, with those gorgeous new covers. Don’t miss it!

I also talked a little about Patreon and my future plans for my YouTube channel, which will hopefully include some fun new writing-related projects! Be sure to check out my Patreon page for information about that and how to get involved.

Thanks to EVERYONE who’s ever consumed any of my work, and I truly hope you’ll stick around to see what the future brings.

 

Do your legs itch when you run or do other strenuous activity? I just posted this new video about something I recently discovered is a real thing: Being Allergic to Exercise. No, seriously! Watch the video! Let me know in the comments if you’ve ever experienced this.

 

I was out of town this week and totally forgot that I had pre-scheduled this mad libs video, so this has been up a few days already! But – if you missed it, Joe and I did mad libs when we were stuck in our hotel in Montana. I still have the mad libs book, so if you liked this video, I would love to make more like it!

 

I know I said I was going to take a little break from blogging this week for the holidays, but I wanted to compile a short list of the videos I’ve posted recently. YouTube makes it tougher and tougher to find the videos you want to watch, so I think it’s helpful to have a different avenue to look for them. Every video I post will also be mentioned here, on this blog, so please bookmark this page!

First up is my Thanksgiving video. This was my Fiesta Mission for the month, as well as a party I look forward to every year. My friends are so wonderful and I’m so grateful to be able to share these holidays with them. We talk about our favorite Thanksgiving foods, make hand-turkeys and take you right to the head of the table for our feast!

 

Next is the “Would You Rather” video I made down in San Francisco with fellow YouTuber Karen Kavett and my writing buddy/housemate Liz Leo. This is a fun one for those of you doing NaNoWriMo or anyone who’s ever tried their hand at writing, because Karen’s silly noveling scenarios were a hoot.

Lastly, I wanted to point all you Buffy fans in the direction of the new series over on Team Hypercube. Justin and I started playing Chaos Bleeds, a terribly Buffy the Vampire Slayer game we started playing with little-to-no idea what to expect. Needless to say, it had us rolling on the ground laughing.

 

If you’ve never watched one of our Let’s Play videos, this is a good place to start. Even if you think you’re not very into video games, that’s probably only because you haven’t seen me repeatedly throw a temper tantrum and kick at a locked door that claims that there’s “another way in” for nearly twenty minutes. Trust me. These videos are fun.

Hope you have a lovely holiday weekend and that your family get-togethers aren’t too crazy. If so, there’s always the internet. 😉

 

I posted a new video yesterday (it had been a little while, but it’s tough to make video amidst all this traveling!) and I was quite pleased with it. I actually got home from New York on Sunday thinking “shoot. I need to make a video this week… what should it be about? But then I saw Leviosaa’s response to this tag and I knew I had to do it too.

It’s a video about firsts! First car, first job, first movie you saw in theaters – the title is sort of a fakeout – I know, I know. But we don’t talk about that first. Anyway, this was a super unscripted, super fun video and people seem to really be liking it in the comments. At least the ones who can work their way through YouTube’s new G+ labyrinth of a comment system.

Tell me about some of your own firsts in the comments! I think it’s always fun to compare answers to things like this. Especially first concert. Find out what mine was by watching the video above!

I’m off to San Francisco today, but I should still be blogging along the way! Except more outfit of the day posts and my first bucket list post coming soon!

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?

It’s time for this week’s video roundup! I know I post a lot of videos, and YouTube has been making it increasingly more difficult to find the videos you want to watch… so here’s a quick post updating you on everything I put online this week.

We are well into October now, but I think there’s definitely still time to talk about the list of things I discovered last month! My September favorites video went live yesterday, and it’s absolutely bursting with all the fun new games I probably shouldn’t have gotten myself quite so addicted to.

 

I also posted this month’s Loot Crate unboxing video recently, which featured a ton of fun items all related to animation and cartoons… which was totally right up my alley:

 

And lastly, Team Hypercube put a quick pause on its regular scheduled programming to bring you another BOARD GAME WEEK! This time, we featured Jetpack Unicorn, the game that was created by none other than myself and Joe (in conjunction with Wyrd Miniatures). I’ll post Episode One below, but make sure to head over to the channel and subscribe if you want to find out who wins!

 

Thanks for watching my videos, and more importantly, for reading my blog. You guys rock.