Happy 2010, everyone! It’s been a decade since the Y2K scare, isn’t that crazy? I remember 10 years ago, my family stocked up on food in case the end of the world was to happen :P I also intentionally left my computer on to see if the date would freak out. Luckily, neither of those happened. 2012, you’re next!

So, I missed doing a one-year blog anniversary post AND a Christmas post! Time flies when you’re having fun, haha. It’s never too late to give a one-year anniversary shout out to my blog. <3 I vow to myself to blog more often this year; I do have lots of things to write about in the next couple of weeks, especially with all of of the unopened DVD box sets, video games, and gunpla lying around the room. I’ll get to it, promise. I also want to try and finish up some art that’s been lying around, too (I know, I know; I keep telling myself this). I can’t find the sketch I did for Gordon a while back ^^;; So I need to draw it out again. I think it got thrown away in another stack of papers :( Humbug.

How was everyone’s Christmas and New Year’s? I hope everyone had a grand time!

The family ended up opening Christmas presents on Christmas afternoon. My parents and one of my sisters ended up falling asleep before midnight. No worries, though. My other sister and I ended up baking mini red velvet cupcakes! That was my first baking excursion :x After baking from scratch for the first time, it made me want to explore baking a bit more and gave me hope that I can really successfully bake. Usually, I tend to burn things. By the way, one of my acquisitions from Christmas was a pair of Gloomy Bear gloves! They’re very warm and make great puppets, too. I wonder if there are any bloody Gloomy Bear gloves…

Everybody scored really cool presents for Christmas, especially my dad. We got him Beatles Rock Band for the PS3 and a USB microphone so he can sing to his favorite Beatles hits. I bought my mom a Starbucks gift card so she can get her Mocha Frappuccino whenever she wants. I bought my sisters some shirts from Threadless when they had their Black Friday sale. And lastly, Lester got a shirt from 8Five2 (that was on clearance at Giant Robot) and DJ Hero for XBOX 360. If you haven’t tried out DJ Hero, do so NOW. It’s so fun!

As for my loot, you can see the Gloomy Bear gloves in the front. The cardigan is from Saltlick and the poo plush that has pockets is from Le Neko Noir, both obtained from the Renegade Craft Fair in San Francisco. Mom bought me a Swatch watch from the Navy Exchange (= no tax, woo hoo!) and Dad bought all of us necklaces. I now have another package of Chapstick. I’m notorious for losing my Chapstick a lot :x Lastly there’s a cupcake luggage tag and a DIY Bub from Kidrobot. Awesome gifts ftw!

Here’s a picture of the mini red velvet cupcakes my sister and I made alongside the cream cheese frosting. I’m thinking of what other recipes to get into. Does anybody have any baking recipes that they’d like to share with me? I want to explore and dabble into the world of baking! Or at least attempt to, lol.

Also, what did you all do for New Year’s? I usually stay at home with the parents to welcome in the new year, then knock out shortly thereafter. Again, I kept my computer on to see if the date would freak out, and it didn’t! Here’s to the new year. I can’t believe it’s already 2010 :P

I’d make a list of resolutions, but I like living in the now, so I’ll just tackle whatever comes my way. Bring it!

Almost a year ago, Konata and Yuki helped out with decorating the house with Christmas ornaments. This year, Miku wanted to help! Although, she seemed to enjoy posing with the decorations more than helping out.

I finally took her out of the DETOLF and changed some of her parts! I got really scared with taking her apart because 1. She’s my first Nendoroid and 2. The parts didn’t want to come off initially ;_; In the end, all went well and she’s more happy than ever.

This is our bare pre-lit artificial Christmas tree. To my knowledge, all we’ve had were artificial Christmas trees. They’re fairly easy to reinstall every year since you just have to stack the parts on top of one another, plug in, and let the magic happen. I do wish that one day, I’d have a Christmas with a fresh pine tree, but I’ll save that for another year. We never really had the lingering smell of pine in the house, although I’d prefer the smell of Mom’s cooking over pine any day :P Do you prefer a real tree or an artificial tree?

Tons of random ornaments in the boxes. They range from intricate Hallmark ornaments to McDonald’s Happy Meal ornaments to our very own ornaments made back in elementary school. My sisters’ ornaments seemed to have outlived mine, though. I used to have this clay Santa that I made in the 1st or 2nd grade, but his beard fell off and, eventually, the ornament broke :(

After decorating the Christmas tree, Miku finally decided to jump in and, erhm, “help.” Peek-a-boo!

After “helping” out with the finishing touches on the Christmas tree, she decided to befriend some of the other inhabitants that have taken over our living room. It never hurts to make more friends, right?

Miku also has a thing for the Coca-Cola bear. Whether she sides with Coke or Pepsi, I don’t know. Heck, she might even be an RC Cola kind of girl :P

And now, Miku bids you all a good night! Hope everyone’s staying warm and cozy for the holidays. We’ve yet to put up Christmas lights and decorate some more, but for now, our decorated Christmas tree will do.

As for me, finals are coming up :( Here’s to the next couple weeks of non-stop homework and studying!

]]> http://rhythmemotion.net/2009/12/deck-the-halls/feed/ 4 http://rhythmemotion.net/2009/11/whats-in-your-bag/ http://rhythmemotion.net/2009/11/whats-in-your-bag/#comments Sat, 28 Nov 2009 18:20:58 +0000 Lene http://rhythmemotion.net/?p=1070

This is an attempt to get back into blogging once more. I have so many things I want to mention, but I’m not sure if I want to keep at it since the events were long past. I have a ton of pictures from the last charity event Lester and I attended with the San Diego Star Wars Society, but that was from a month ago. Should I still do a recap post for it? I also have pictures from my little trip with Mom to the Bay Area (in which I acquired the durian Hi-Chew). Hmm.

Anyway, I’m curious. What’s in your bag?

I ran across a Flickr pool a while back and started to follow it. It’s interesting what people oftentimes carry with them. Do you use a tote bag? Purse? Murse? Messenger bag? I’d like to know!

Pictured above is a bottle of Lipton raspberry white tea (which I love drinking), moisturizer for my face, my sushi makeup bag, sunglasses, my trusty Nintendo DS that’s been through thick and thin, a travel bottle of anti-bacterial hand gel from Bath & Body Works that comes in handy, iPod shuffle named Exia (since I leave my 30 GB at home), Burt’s Bee’s lemon butter cuticle cream (great for keeping your nails in tip-top shape; it smells heavenly, too!), some pens (the Transcend pen was from CES), a notepad featuring art from Jean-Michel Basquiat, my Cupco Poketo wallet, and a bag of li hing sour watermelon candies that my sister bought for me from Hawaii. I love li hing candies!

Not pictured in here are my cell phone and my Chapstick. Those I usually keep in my pockets, not my bag. I’m notorious for losing my cell phone and Chapstick a lot. My Chapstick often falls victim to the washer and dryer because I always leave it in my pockets ^^;

I want to know what’s in your bag! :3

So…how many of you braved the malls and large department stores and did some Black Friday shopping? I know some people actually headed out to the outlet stores prior to midnight to do their shopping and some stayed in line to be one of the first in line to get deals on whatever. This year, I actually stayed clear of buying any kinds of electronics for fear of getting trampled on. I’m small, you know :P I also figured I’d save my purchases for online (or at least for Cyber Monday, *cough*Ineedanewrouter*cough*). However, my parents and I did find ourselves going to Fashion Valley this morning at 5:30 AM. I was actually surprised at myself for getting up and getting ready in record time; I could never do that when it comes to going to school :x

This post will actually cover some recently (and suddenly) acquired merchandise prior to Black Friday when I took a trip up to the Bay Area last weekend and today after enduring Black Friday. I will first start with this mini Chara Fortune from Macross Frontier. Can you possibly guess who this is? :x

If you guessed Alto Saotome…LOL! I was freaking out when I got Alto as the character. I was really hoping to get Ranka, but this takes the cake. Seriously. Pretty Alto is pretty.

Here are some things I purchased while in San Francisco this past weekend. I didn’t want to spend too much since I wasn’t going to be there that long (therefore: not that much space to store goodies), but I did get what I wanted. First off, I went to the figure store that I always hit up and bought a chibi RX-78-2! Isn’t it adorable? I want to display it next to my chibi Exia :3 I can’t really find it anywhere else in San Diego, so why not get it now? The other things I also got were toe socks and Hi-Chew from Ichiban Kan (which I find superior to Daiso in terms of merchandise). The thing is, it’s not just ordinary flavors of Hi-Chew: they’re white peach and durian. Wait, what: durian?!

Yes, durian! The stinky fruit we all know and love. I opened it up and smelled the candy right away; it’s not too bad. I went ahead and done a taste-test after shooting this photo. It’s very, very subtle. Slightly stinky, but it’s not absolutely horrible. It’s bearable, actually. Think of it this way: if you can stand eating an actual durian, this is cake. As for white peach, you can’t go wrong with that :P

Burping after eating a durian Hi-Chew does yield some interesting results, though :x

And now for the Black Friday purchases! First stop was Old Navy where everything in the store was pretty much on sale. First section I went to were the jeans. I love their jeans! I scored a pair of Diva boot-cut jeans for $15! Most comfortable jeans ever. The fleece pullover was only $5; you could say it was more of an impulse buy. I think it’d be cute to wear either in the house or going out; whichever works. The booties were only ~$9. I’ve always wanted a pair! I’ve actually been on this weird boot high, trying to expand my shoe collection outside of my usual high-top sneakers. I wore them around the house already. They’re very soft and comfortable. Seal of approval!

Second stop for me was Forever 21. Hiding in the corner was a section with $12 boots. Yes, $12 boots. I couldn’t resist :x I also needed to get some tights as well so I just went ahead and bought those. All together? $20. Win! Welcome to the family, my second pair of boots (I don’t think booties count, do they? If so, then they’re my third pair haha).

I’m not quite sure if this picture does this justice, but my goodness, I fell in love with this dress as soon as I walked into H&M! $20 for this gem! Such a beautiful dress, and it fits nice too! It was well worth the wait to both try it on and to actually purchase it. I wasn’t paying attention much to some of the signs at the front of the store and didn’t realize that you could get an additional 25% off an item of your choice if purchasing something before noon. All together, this dress was only ~$16. Ultimate win!

After browsing through more stores and not finding anything else, my parents and I decided to call it quits around 9:30 AM. The line at Starbucks looked like a Disneyland ride, so we ended up at D’Lush and bought a smoothie and some hot chocolate. By the time we left the parking lot, furious shoppers were already raiding the parking lots, fighting for that one parking spot. Oh goodness.

Hope your Black Friday went well today, whether you shopped or not!

Long time no blog! Apologies for the sudden hiatus: again, school has taken over my life. That, and I also had no idea what to blog about since school started. I’ve had a repeating pattern of school, work, rest, randomly go out, then repeat, but now I have things to share!

For the longest time, I’ve been meaning to get a shelving cabinet to house my figures. To be honest, I didn’t even know where to start! I’ve been eyeing on other people’s blogs about different kinds of shelving cabinets and ran across IKEA’s DETOLF. There’s an IKEA within 20 minutes from where I live, so I decided to check it out at their showroom and see how it looked. Once I saw it, I instantly fell in love.

I went to IKEA on my own to go pick it up, only to find it out that it’s a hefty 88 lbs. :x so I had to ask Lester to see if he could help me out. We took another trip and finally picked it up! How we got it into the van and into the house, I don’t know, but that’s okay :)

The thing is, before putting the cabinet into my room, I had to do some rearranging. Lots and lots of rearranging.

This was my initial set up: a wooden bookcase sitting in the corner of my room, totally cluttered with tons of stuff. I initially liked the set up because I was able to display everything. However, it was a pain in the rear to dust in between and to get access to my DVDs and manga! I didn’t really have the willpower to actually get around and clear this out until I finally got my new cabinet.

I ended up putting all of my figures into a laundry basket for the meantime. My PVCs and expensive figures were put in another room.

Everything’s all gone! Now where do I put it?

All by my wee self, I moved the old bookcase to the other side of the room next to my dresser. You can see how dusty my dresser and other bookcase got :x This was a pain in the rear to clean too especially since that bookcase was on top. It wasn’t easy getting my books from the top. Also, if there was any kind of sudden movement, the CDs on the CD rack on top would topple over and fall over, knocking over everything. I used to have my PVCs be on top of my dresser until my Asuka broke due to my Remy figure falling off its stand and knocking it over :( Never again.

Again, by myself, I took away the bookcase that was sitting on top of my dresser and moved it elsewhere. I decided to have all of my anime DVDs line the top of my dresser! I haven’t even opened some of the boxsets yet :x Eech. I also started filling up the other bookcase with my books and other media.

I decided to have the bookcase that sat on top my dresser relocate to the other side of the room. Excuse the massive mess on the floor :x

Started to move around some stuff and see what everything would look like if I were to put stuff in the shelves! I’ve yet to complete my Nodame collection :( I actually had to move this out of the way again to make room for the shelving cabinet.

With help from my dad, the detolf was lugged upstairs, all 88 lbs. of it. The glass panels are what make this really heavy ;_; Time to assemble!

After putting the cabinet in the empty space, it looked like my room suddenly got wider. Yay! My room’s always been notorious for being extremely cluttered and messy. Hopefully this’ll help my room breathe.

We got the cabinet set up and I started to rearrange my figures last night. I ended up finishing this afternoon. Here’s the final result:

Top shelf would be all of my pretty PVCs. I finally got to unbox my Kaiyodo Parfait and Cammy and SEGA Aphrodite v. 2 Rei and Asuka. Nendoroid Miku finally came out of her box, too! Wave Yoko came from HLJ. Max Factory Mikuru is actually my first PVC ever ;_; I love her too much.

Second shelf is full of blind box figures, gashapon, and other trading figures. How many series do you see in this picture? What’s scary is that I still have more on top of my TV :x

Third shelf is designated for designer toys. Recent acquisitions would be the orange Dunny, the Spongebob Bearbrick, and the stacked doppelgangers from Kid Robot. As you can see, Uglydoll Babo = my most favorite ever! Oh, and my drooling Labbit, too :)

I’ve decided to leave the last shelf for my Gundams and other mechs. I still have the following to build: 1/100 Exia and Dynames, 1/144 00 Gundam, 1/35 Lancelot, and the non-painted Kinokuniya King Kittan and Gurren Lagann. I’m lagging so bad ^^;

My Pinky St. dolls are now in front of my manga. Some of them have really bad leaning issues, though :( Any suggestions on straightening them out would be highly appreciated. My poor Pinkies T_T

My Pinky St. babies from left to right: Hoshi, Beezy, and Ramune. I had names for Hoshi and Ramune before, but I realized I never named the middle one since I got her later than the others so I just named her right now, lol.

My lone Figmas just chillin’ by themselves. I haven’t bought any Figmas since Konata, but I really want that Reimu figma… homg. She looks so beautiful.

I’ve moved all of my plushes that were on top of my old bookcase to another area. And yes, I’m still a huge Digimon fan :x

How the other end of my room looks. You can kind of see my box tower on the side ^^; I also finally get to display my Silver Surfer Mighty Mugg! My first Mighty Mugg ever courtesy of Melvin :)

Some more little figures that I decided to keep on my drawer. My most favorite one of them all is the Oryzae, hahaha.

And there you have it! My figures now have a beautiful space to be displayed in and my room benefited from all the rearrangements. I’m tired from moving everything around, but I think it’s all worth it. I still have some things to move around in my room but for now, I’m content with it :)