Happy Sixteenth Birthday, Sarah!

My little sister turned sixteen today, and the first thing she did was go down to the DMV and exchange her Driver's Ed Completion certificate in for her driver's license. So if anybody out there values their life, you should probably stay off the roads for another decade or so. Probably.

Mom and Dad bought her a banjo for her birthday - a Fender one, and it came with extra strings, finger picks, an instructional CD, a learning book, and a case (a soft bag, not a hard one). It's a really, really pretty banjo, and she certainly wasn't expecting it in the slightest! 

I got her a Lumpy Space Princess pillow from my workplace - I had to fight my best friend, Hunter, for it because he wanted it too and we only had one. I won because I had enough tickets on-hand to buy it straight away. I may buy her a t-shirt or something tomorrow because I'm going out with Matt for our seven-months.

Sarah's having a sleepover in the basement with two of her friends right now, and tomorrow' they're going thrifting and possibly going to 2nd & Charles as well. (I absolutely love that store. We discovered it last year on her birthday. I have no idea how we hadn't heard about it before then!)

Have a great day!

My First Real Cosplay!

I have some really exciting news to share with y'all this evening - I've decided on what my first EVER, proper cosplay is going to be: Raven, from Teen Titans. 

I'm basing my look off of her Teen Titans television show - you know, the one from Cartoon Network in the mid-2000s? I've decided that's what would be the easiest for both my limited sewing skills and my poor college-kid budget.

The picture to the right is a reference that I'll be using to design my costume.

Now, what exactly will I use to piece together this costume? 

I started out by browsing cosplaying websites, to see what ideas other people had come up with. As it turns out, my room mate actually gave me the biggest lead: where to find the cape.

In the original Teen Titans show, Raven's cape/cloak is blue, with a black underneath. (Unfortunately, I couldn't find a good picture to use for the reference I showed you above). She's usually cosplayed with a blue cloak, though, so that's what I decided to go with.

This is the cloak I've decided to purchase. My room mate has two different cloaks that she got for Christmas and her birthday, so she was able to give me a great website to buy cloaks from. They're really good quality, and they're warm. I can always get it taken up: my mom knows how to hem things. I'd want it to be a removable hem, because I might want to use that cloak again sans-cosplay.

After the cloak comes what's underneath the cloak: the leotard. Now, as you can plainly see, Raven wears a turtleneck. Unfortunately for me, I can't STAND turtlenecks. I've never been able to wear them. Fortunately for me, I can wear normal leotards, so that's what I've decided to buy.  It won't be perfectly show-accurate, but I'd rather be comfortable, to be honest. Plus, the zipper on the back of the turtleneck leotard is rumored to be very irritating on the skin -- I read about 300 Amazon reviews last night when I was debating on what type of leotard to buy.

After the cloak and the leotard come the stockings, or the tights. Since Raven's skin is gray, I'm going to have to do some kind of skin-paint on my face and chest. To keep from having to paint my legs up, I'm going to just buy nice-quality gray tights to keep my legs paint-free. I have a nice pair of red stockings/tights that don't show any skin at all - they don't "thin out" anywhere, neither my knees nor my ankles. (All the girls reading this understand what I'm talking about here!) I just need to find a pair of gray ones - perhaps multiple ones, so I can have a backup! - to complete my costume.

I thought I'd  be able to use my own pair of ankle boots - but they have heels, so they're probably not appropriate Con-wear. Or Cobblestone-Streets-of-Montevallo wear. I'll probably end up buying myself a pair of no-heel ankle boots somewhere this summer. I'll make sure I can wear them with other things, of course, so I'm not buying an expensive pair of shoes just to wear with a costume.

After that, it's a simple matter of making Raven's belt and cloak-brooch thing, and I'll be all set. (I can make those out of felt, and sew them to the leotard so that they don't fall down, and safety-pin it to the cloak so it's easily removable.) 

Oh, and I have to purchase a purple wig. I can find that in any number of places on the internet, so I'm not too worried about that. It's just a matter of typing "Teen Titans Raven Cosplay Wig" into eBay or Amazon, and I'll be good to go!

All together, I'm probably looking at a $200 cosplay here, maybe $150 at the LEAST. The cloak is $60 by itself, and then the leotard is $20. The two most expensive things are going to be the cloak and the boots. I'm waiting for a REALLY GOOD PAYCHECK before I buy the cloak. I'll collect the parts slowly over the summer and then assemble them at the end.

Best of all, Matt wants to be the Beast Boy to my Raven. (Of course, he needs to lose a little weight around the middle if he wants to fit into some tights!) I think it'd be an absolutely adorable couples' costume. We could probably win a costume contest somewhere - or at least I could. I don't know how many people would be excited to see a man in tights!

I'm hoping to take this cosplay to Dragon*Con someday, but I'll settle for the small Kami-Con that Birmingham throws every year in January. I just need to figure out a way to work some kind of bag into my cosplay. I don't want to have to carry everything, of course! I'm thinking a simple over-the-shoulder satchel that I can wear against my body. Shouldn't be too difficult.

And of course, I'll take picture of my progress and show y'all EVERYTHING!

Anyways, what do you think? Do you have any ideas? Suggestions? Do you think I'm getting in over my head? Or, do you side with my mother in thinking that I'm too old to play dress-up?

Free Comic Book Day

 I do apologize for the EXTREME lateness of this post (it's a whole week late), but I've just been so busy lately that I haven't had time to sit down and just work on my blog. I'm going to have to remedy that this summer, and get a nice stack of draft posts built up so that I have something to publish when the going gets rough during my JUNIOR year of college. 

Anyway -- FREE COMIC BOOKS! I'd never been into comic books before I started dating my current boyfriend - I owned a few Scooby Doo ones, and I enjoyed reading Betty and Veronica, but I wasn't into the whole Marvel-vs-DC war thing. But when Matt mentioned our comic shop (Legion) was doing free comic book day, I jumped on the chance for an outing with him. My sister tagged along, too, and I really hope she had fun, despite Matt's incessant yammering.

We got there about 30 minutes early, just to be sure there would be comics when we got there. They didn't open until 11:00, and we got there around 10:30. You never know with Birmingham traffic and all if you'll make it to your destination on time. 

One of our friends from Montevallo, Miles, was there, so we had him to talk to while we waited for the doors to open. The owner's kid was also running around inside the store, pressing his nose to the glass and taunting everyone with the comics that we were waiting for.

Once 11:00 hit, the owner's wife stepped out and gave us a few simple rules: No being rude, only one of each comic per person, and show your comics to the cashier to check out. Easy enough. So we all filed inside, one-by-one, and went down the table, collecting the comics that we wanted to read. 

I got a huge stack of them, but I didn't get all of them. Next year, I'm going to pick up one of every comic, even if they don't interest me, because maybe someday they'll be worth something. I did get some cool ones, though, most notably a hardcover comic anthology called Mouse Guard. It seems to have been really popular - someone came in about half an hour after Legion opened asking if they had any more. (Sorry, buddy, but if you want the whole collection on Free Comic Book Day, you'd better get to the comic shop early!)

Next year, I'm going to ask my friend Hunter to come with me. I'm sure he'd have fun. I think he's been to Legion a few times, but he doesn't have a box there. I picked up a few comics just for him, like the Kaboom comic, the Megaman X/Sonic comic, and the Power Rangers comic. He didn't get to go this year because he was working, so I wanted to give him something special.

After we finished up at Legion, Matt, Sarah, and I went over to the Brookwood Mall and shopped a bit. I had some Hot Cash to use at Hot Topic, and Sarah got a record from Coconuts on our way out of the Summit. We had a great afternoon, and got back home by 3:00 that evening. 

Have you ever been to Free Comic Book Day? Are you going next year?

Year's End

WELL.

What. A. Year.

What an absolutely crazy, positively spectacular, definitive year.

I don't think I've had such a wonderful year since my senior year of high school. This is probably my top school year, ever. (I know, I know: my senior year was only two years ago. But it feels like so much longer ago.)

What made this year so much different from last year? What made this year be so rockin'?

FRIENDS.

I actually made friends this year, mostly through my roommate and me going out to different events, and it made this year a million times better. Last year, my roommate and I didn't go out to events, and I only went out at the very end of the year and met a couple people at a late-night Steak & Shake run because my (then-current) boyfriend was off in BCT and I didn't have anybody else to talk with. 

THIS YEAR.... This year was so different. I dragged my roommate places this year, and she introduced me to other people who had come into the Honors Program as a freshman, just like her. She was a freshman, and I was a sophomore, and most of the new friends that I made were freshmen. I guess that's just something I do easily - make friends with the younger people. My best (male) friend is a grade below me [you remember all my posts about Hunter, right?], after all.

I'm actually excited to go back to college this fall - and not the least bit because I'll be able to see my boyfriend nearly every day of the week. I miss my friends, and my roommate in particular, already. Sure, it's nice being in my own room, with my cats and my books, but I had a lot of fun running around campus and going to weird events with my new friends.

I managed to finish out the second semester on the Dean's List (I got President's List last semester), with a 3.6 GPA. Overall, with all four semesters combined, I'm sitting at a steady 3.8 GPA, which would qualify me for the President's List if they did an overall thing. I got two B's this semester, one in Spanish 202 and one in my English 300 class. The English professor hated me, and she's just not suited to be a teacher in general. She talked down to us, changed the grading scale at the last minute (AFTER finals!), and was just a terrible teacher in general. I learned nothing in that class that I didn't learn in my ninth grade English classes. I'll be trying my hardest never to get her again.

Now I'm ready to tackle the summer - gotta work a TON so that I'm able to afford all the things that I want for my dorm next year. Gonna be a long, hard summer, but hey - four months of earning spending money? If only I could get the hours I want now...

Anyways, see you tomorrow for my post about Free Comic Book Day! I know y'all are going to be looking forward to that! 

Six Months!

Last Tuesday marked six months since Matt and I started dating, and it's been the most wonderful six months that I've ever lived through. So, to celebrate (despite the bad weather), we went out to the mall and ate at Five Guys and then we went to Build-a-Bear.

I've never been to Build-a-Bear before, because we didn't have any around us when I was growing up. Then, when we moved here, I was "too old" to do one, and they were "too expensive" for my parents to buy me one.

But when I mentioned to Matt that I'd never been, he picked up on the hint and took me to Build-a-Bear for our six-month anniversary. It was awesome! The ladies that helped us were really, really nice, too. 

They made us do the Bear Ceremony, too, even though we're both in college. It was awesome!

What we did was, we went in and looked at the outfits and the animals. We told each other our top three picks in the animals department, then I went outside while he built my animal. Once he was done, we switched, and I made him one. Then we took our boxes and went to the Food Court, where we could look at what we had made.

Matt made me a bunny in a Captain American costume with a tutu from the Hello Kitty collection. It was absolutely adorable. I've named her Peggy. 

I made Matt a monkey in a Superman outfit with Aviators. He loved it. (I also got him a little Lego Joker keychain, and he absolutely loved that as well.) 

We then got the lady who helped Matt to take our picture with our animals. I haven't slept a night without Peggy since.

After we got our animals, we walked around the mall, and I was able to get the new Bravely Default 3DS game at GameStop. We looked in Spencer's, and then we went home. We even got home before the bad weather hit. 

It was a wonderful day :) I'm sorry I've been so late in posting this, but Finals took over my life last week, and this has been my first day to actually sit down and blog (even though I'm supposed to be cleaning my room at this moment). Look forward to the year-end wrap-up, and then my experiences at Free Comic Book Day coming up in the next few days, okay?