I'm dreaming of white Christmas...

Merry (belated) Christmas everyone! i hope you all had a lovely time with your family and friends :) i know did!

This year, I had my first white christmas in the mountains of Mammoth, CA, where my family and i went snowboarding!  the terrible constant rain in cali led to 10-15 feet of gorgeous, powdery snow that covered the the mountainside and (thankfully) made for super soft landings and pretty pictures :D

views from our condo/the lift  It's so gorgeous! :)

so, never having gone snowboarding or even played in snow before, this little vacation was three days of firsts and lots of pain T_T i hate the cold and my uncle is a stickler for safety so i wore layers of undershirts/thermals/tees + hoodie + snow jacket + leggings/snow pants + wool/cotton socks + gloves + helmet + goggles + neck gaiter + wristguards (i highly recommend)...i was just like a giant puffy ball of warmth ^_^ almost too much so lol

i'm the one in yellow!  You guys are too cute!

I can summarize each day in just several words - Day 1: exhausting, Day 2: painful and Day 3: fun XD
Overall, snowboarding is just tough! especially for someone as unathletic as i am lol it requires you to really focus on your balance and you use sets of muscles that you don't usually (or in my case, ever) employ.  Lessons on the first day were soooo frustrating because we worked on gliding, heel edge and j-turns i.e. STOPPING lol oh it just hurt, mostly because to stop, i just fell -- faceplants, on my knees, on my arms,on my chest, on my tailbone T_T but it really does get better with practice :) last day on the slopes, i managed to get down the slopes in record time (1.5 hours to 20 min) and could count the number of times i fell on my hands lol 

the lodge

on the slopes

i was really tired...

me and ellie's winter serenade

 end of the day :)

once i stop hurting, i really want to go again :) and once i'm good, i really want pretty gear LOL  
I'm glad you had fun, even though it was painful ^ ^;
happy holidays!

'Tis the Season for Shows :)

So with the holidays coming around, there's a plentiful bounty of shows to watch :D  This weekend pretty busy for me -- I went to a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert and the Nutcracker ballet.

But before I go any further, I just wanted to mention this weekend was ALSO very special for our dear friends Jordan and Daniel.  This past Saturday was their commencement ceremony.  Congratulations on graduating, you guys!! v(^w^)v  (Now they just have to make it through finals >__<) yessss congrats guys! i wish i could've been there to celebrate with you all :)

So, if you haven't heard of TSO before, they are this interesting metal rock band in their own style of music.  They combine electric guitars and drums with classical vocals and string instruments.  I really, really like their Christmas music!  Here's a sample of one of my favorites (timed to Christmas lights!):

My top two other favorites are "A Mad Russian's Christmas" and "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo." 

The music is great, and the show itself was pretty amazing.  The tickets are a little expensive (~$100 each), but it's completely worth it.  The show combines the live music with lights, pyrotechnics, and the lead members running around on stage playing their instruments.  The Christmas show also had a narrated story that linked many of the songs together. 

Afterwards, they had an autograph signing.  I got a booklet from the night, but they sell other things -- posters, CDs, and even playing cards (I got a set of those, also).  They also gave us some fancy TSO guitar picks as we went down the line, and the band members are really nice.  If you ever get a chance, I would definitely recommend going to watch them :D

Ooooo i've always wanted to see TSO :P perhaps next year? did you go with anyone?

The Nutcracker Ballet was also fun but less impressive. (It's a more elegant show, without the fancy lights). If you've never heard of the Nutcracker and/or the ballet, you should watch the Nutcracker movie.  The ballet (and movie) are both renditions based on Tchaikovsky's song set that he wrote for the original Nutcracker story.

A sampler of the music (and ballet dances):

Thanksgiving Desserts :D

So for Thanksgiving, I baked a bunch of stuff :3  Thanks to Tiffy's tips on food picture taking from before, I have a billion (bad) pictures on my camera that would be better if the lighting in my kitchen were better XD  But anyways, here you go~

Dessert #1: Pumpkin Maple Pie
The first thing I baked was a pumpkin maple syrup pie, but the pictures didn't turn out well at all :(  So I'll show you the one they had on the recipe website, skip that, and just post the others XP

Dessert #2: Raspberry chocolate tarts~
My ingredients :3  My kitchen was super messy XD

 Fresh raspberries, raspberry jam, cream cheese, and semisweet chocolate :3

Tart shells, with hand-ground almonds pressed into the bottom.

Chocolate + cream cheese as a base. 

Fresh raspberries on top~

Warmed raspberry jam to hold everything together. 

Drizzle some melted chocolate~ 

 And lastly, sliced almonds as a pretty decoration :3  Om nom nom.

Dessert #3: Pumpkin Cheesecake
For Thanksgiving dinner, I made a double-layer pumpkin cheesecake.  I used cinnamon graham crackers for the crust and sprinkled walnut bits over the bottom crust.  Then there was a layer of regular cheesecake, then a layer with pumpkin and spices, and then some walnuts as decorations around the outside.

Dessert #4: Pineapple Bread Pudding
I also made bread pudding for the first time.  The special touch was canned pineapple mixed in, and I used oatnut bread (with hazelnuts and oats) instead of white bread, because my mom likes the nutty bread.  I think it turned out a little drier than restaurant bread pudding, but people seemed to like it :)  I also sprinkled walnuts on top.

wahhhhh everything looks so good!!! :D

Oni-con 2010

Hi everyone!  Time for a "real" post... first in a while~ (Actually, it's super super late. Sorry, I got lazy XD)

So Oni-con 2010 was this past weekend a long time ago XD -- along with Halloween! :D  

I took a day off from work so I could go to Oni-con on Friday and Saturday.  Jordan and I left for Houston on Thursday afternoon after work (I totally left kind of early even though I probably shouldn't have, so that we would be there in time to get our pre-registration badges).  The drive was about 3.5 hours through a fairly lovely countryside :)  If you ever decide to drive from Austin to Houston, you should do it in the late afternoon, so that you see the scenic drive in the sunlight, at sunset, and then at night :3

I'll have to say upfront that the best part of the weekend was that I got to see Tiffy ^___^ and my favorite part was getting to catch up with Christine! :P

So we got there and picked Tiffy up, then drove to the hotel where the con was at.  This year's con was at the Houston Marriott Westchase, not too far from where we were staying.  It looked kind of ghetto on the outside when we had driven past it before (well, it was in the dark, so I guess I'm just bad at estimating ghetto-ness of a place in the dark), but it was actually really pretty!  We waited in line for about an hour to get our badges.  (By the way, if you haven't been to a con, be warned -- for some reason, nobody knows anything and they're all really slow, so it takes a really long time to get your badge and if you don't know where to go for something, asking doesn't help.  They're all volunteers, so can't expect too much.) yeah i think  we just need to get used to this now -_-

After that, we met up with one of Tiffy's new friends from Rice, Steve, and went to have dinner at the House of Pies.  It's a nice diner that has breakfast and lunch foods and is open 24 hours... and apparently it has amazing pie.  I'll let Tiffy talk about that XP

House of Pies is amaaaaazing :) besides that fact that it's open 24 hours in case you get the late night munchies , their food is reasonably priced and desserts are so good XD my fave? apple pie (or dutch apple pie) a la mode

The next day, Friday, was the first day of the convention.  Tiffy and I got up and got ready at a much more leisurely pace than A-Kon, since the con actually started at 12 PM and there weren't too many events.  For some reason, I take forever and ever to get ready =w=;;;  We did BlazBlue again, because we didn't get around to making our Advent Children costumes XD;

New additions to the cosplay:
- Tiffy's awesome Bolverk guns :D they're not that awesome lol but i'll put up a final progress report soon :)
- My slightly less evil new wig
- Tiffy's new green contacts
- I put on fake eyelashes that apparently made the red contacts even more noticeable o_o;

Yeah, not much aside from Noel's guns. >__>;  No, I didn't make Nago and Gii.  I am lazy.  Stuffed animals are hard.

lol it was still pretty fun, beyond getting hugged by random strangers/getting hit on =\ Ran, Faruk, Wei and Owen came along with a couple of my friends from Rice.  Jordan, of course, was there, and Ran's friend Huan also :)  Oni-con, unfortunately, was a bit small so it didn't have all the people and excitement like A-kon, but it did make for a relaxing con experience :) 

Yeah, Tiffy got hit on in the parking lot as we were still completing our costumes XD  Noel is a very popular character, it seems.

Since the convention was so small, we didn't get bombarded nearly as much as A-Kon, so we actually made it through the dealers' room on Friday ^w^  We wanted to stay for the opening ceremony, but like at A-Kon, the volunteers don't really know much, so we had no idea where it was.  On Saturday, there were a LOT more people, and we even saw another Rachel/Noel set.  Ran and Wei dressed as Hazama and Carl again, and Faruk came as Masa from Seto no Hanayome:

Faruk doing an awesome cosplay of Masa!  Photo courtesy of Huan.

We got some nice pictures of some pretty good cosplayers, but like Tiffy said, it was a lot more relaxed than A-Kon, so there were proportionally not as many people cosplaying.  There was one guy, Michael, who actually remembered us from A-Kon and took another picture of us XD  I chatted with him a bit near the end of the day on Saturday while I waited for the boys to get out of the maid cafe, and he's a hardcore anime convention goer.  Pretty nice guy.

Cute... bear thing!  (I'm sure I should know where this one comes from, but it's super cute~)

I think this is supposed to be Kuroshitsuji mixed with Alice in Wonderland :D

ZACK! 8D  I need one for A-Kon XD

Awesome Jack Sparrow.  He even had the speech and crazy hand gestures down.

No idea who these people are, but they looked like a cool group~  Any idea who these people are? 

 

 Kuroshitsuji~

 

Madame Red! 

This is the awesome guy who played Jet at A-Kon.  I have no idea who he was playing here, but he was still awesome XD 

Cute Mario family :)

Saturday night, we met up with some of Tiffy's Rice friends for dinner, and then we headed to Rice's Halloween party for a while.  Tiffy dressed as a magician, and I went as a generic school girl.  We got to wear our new wigs from ImageAnime, though :D  (They are STILL amazing, btw.)  Most of the boys went in a white shirt and black tie or something similar.  I think they were trying to go for mafia, but I guess they decided they'd be more convincing as a K-Pop band XD  Steve went as a 1920's guy, and Angela as a cute fairy :)  I didn't realize how "stand around and do nothing" parties are, but it was fun to just chat with everyone, and they had a funny costume contest XD

I can't wait for A-kon 22 next year though! Christine and I are going (trying very very very hard) to finish FFVII AC Aeris and Tifa as well as Kuroshitsuji Ciel and Grell.  Hopefully we can get a huge group to go and maybe cosplay *fingers crossed*. if anyone out there reading would like to join us, that'd be awesome :D

Yeah, definitely let us know if you want to join us!  It'd be awesome if we got a group :)