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12 Days of Fandom Ornaments: #3

My Christmas tree is a mix of ornaments from my childhood and ones from later on in my life. Many of them are related to my favorite fandoms, naturally. I thought I would showcase one every other day in December in a 12 Days of Fandom Ornaments series.

Day 3: Gandalf the Grey

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Another Hallmark Ornament, this one from 2005, shows one of my favorite characters in the Lord of the Rings. How excited am I about the new Hobbit movie? So excited that Gandalf is near the top of my tree, wisely looking over it. heehee I bought this one for myself.

Craft: Harry Potter Pin Fail

Far more people RSVPed for the annual DADA (Harry Potter Meetup) Yule Party this year, which means I am scrambling to fill Christmas crackers (which, I hope, I’ll feel up to assembling tomorrow after my trip to the hospital for another test). Which meant that I once again attempted to make pins. There was more desperation in this attempt, so I kept working until I got some right. I found a fantastic tutorial. However, I ruined a whole lot of supplies in the process, which was painful but a good lesson for me to learn. I’m used to trying something, getting it right, and moving on. I’m not used to having such a high learning curve and wasting money and time in the process.

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Me: 6
Badge-a-Minit: 14

Fail! Luckily, I found a few from last year, so I will definitely have enough for all the crackers now. What a relief!

Category: crafts, fail, merch  Tags: , , ,  2 Comments

12 Days of Fandom Ornaments: #2

My Christmas tree is a mix of ornaments from my childhood and ones from later on in my life. Many of them are related to my favorite fandoms, naturally. I thought I would showcase one every other day in December in a 12 Days of Fandom Ornaments series.

Day 2: Jayne Hat

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Girl hangs a hat like this on her tree and you know she’s not afraid of anything. Pretty cunning, don’t you think?

I bought this mini Jayne Cobb hat from the TV show Firefly so long ago that I cannot remember where I purchased it. It was certainly in the days before Etsy. I know where I purchased my actual Jayne Hat (Wear with Style) and I’ve purchased one for a swap (Cutiehats). But this particular one? I can’t remember. It’s great quality and super shiny 🙂

Top Ten Things I Loved About The Day of the Doctor

I went to see The Day of the Doctor on November 23, 2013 in 3-D in theaters. I’ve found myself unable to write a review about it, though. I really enjoyed it and I loved the experience of seeing it with a bunch of fellow fans.  But recent spoilers have made my canon-loving and change-hating brain hurt. And I don’t yet know how events in The Day of the Doctor will influence the Whoverse.

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So instead of some review that I may or may not regret one day, I figured I’d turn it into a top ten list.

Spoilers below! Beware!

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12 Days of Fandom Ornaments: #1

My Christmas tree is a mix of ornaments from my childhood and ones from later on in my life. Many of them are related to my favorite fandoms, naturally. I thought I would showcase one every other day in December in a 12 Days of Fandom Ornaments series.

Day 1: Christmas Eeyore

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As Eeyore, from Winnie-the-Pooh, is my personal mascot, I thought I should start the series off with him. This is a 2013 Hallmark ornament, though I didn’t buy it at a Hallmark store. I feel like this every time I attempt to put lights up on my tree–but I’m too indecisive to buy a pre-lit Christmas tree (I want to be able to change the lights from year to year).

Catching Fire Review

CatchingFireI went to see The Hunger Games: Catching Fire in theaters with my local Harry Potter meetup group on opening night. I liked the first movie a lot, but I thought Catching Fire was even better. There’s more character development, some phenomenal new characters portrayed well, and the depiction of the arena really brought it to life for me (I had trouble picturing a few aspects from the book, like where the beach was exactly). The pacing, drama, and action were well done. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Spoilers below! BEWARE!

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Another Year, Another Win (My NaNoWriMo ’13 Concluded)

2013-Winner-Facebook-ProfileThis was, possibly, my easiest year doing NaNoWriMo. I struggled last year to make my word count, but last year I was playing by the rules and this year I did NaNoRebel again–so much more pleasant and enjoyable!

I really only wrote during 16 days or so this year. And some of those days I only wrote somewhere between a dozen and a thousand words. If you look at my bar chart, you can see my daily progress, or lack thereof. Much different from last year’s, when one of my goals was to write at least 500 words every single day.
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During the handful of write-ins I attended on various Fridays and Mondays, I got several thousand words written. But my big accomplishments were on Sundays. I didn’t do much of anything but stay in my PJs and write every Sunday in November, so you can see the huge leaps in word count on those days. Then I didn’t write much during the following week. Those were big writing days, where I did a lot of work, but it really feels to me like I managed to get through November only writing for a few days in total and hitting 50,000 words naturally, without much effort at all.

During the final week of November, I worked on:

  • BBC Sherlock fanfiction- finished the story I started earlier in the month. It turned out pretty good, I think.
  • YA Paranormal Novel- I started a difficult moment in the story and it’s stalled a little bit. But I’m still feeling good about how much I got written in this novel and I look forward to continuing to work on it next year.
  • Marvel Big Bang Fanfic- I got past the 15,000 word mark on it and came up with a bunch of great scenes. I’m still not feeling it as a full story yet, but I’m getting closer. I think I need to take all the scenes, put them on index cards, and figure out what needs to be filled in to make it a complete story.

Congrats to all the other winners out there and everyone who even attempted NaNoWriMo. It’s still more words written than you had when you started!

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Happy Geeky Holidays!

GeekyChristmasI happen to love the holiday season. Everyone is a little more generous, and everything is a little more magical. Maybe I wouldn’t appreciate twinkling light displays if I saw them every day, but I’d be willing to take that chance.

Today, I put up my 8-bit video game Christmas wreath. I’m scared to turn it on at night because I suspect I will forget to turn it off again and drain the batteries. I’m forgetful like that. But I know it’s going to make me smile every time I come home.

One of my favorite things about the holidays is decorating my Christmas tree. My tree and its ornaments are full of memories and fun things that make me smile. I thought that it would be fun to do a series on my blog, showing some of my fandom-related ornaments. Look for that here in December!

District Identity

I’ve liked TheFandom.net since it launched a couple years ago. As a multi-fandom fangirl, I like the idea of lots of different fandoms all in one place. Their latest Hunger Games test SPONSORED BY FANDANGO let me down a bit, though. The questions, designed to figure out what district I’m from, was a mix of obvious/revealing questions like what sports team I like best (to figure out geographic preference) and questions like how I I like to use FANDANGO for purchasing movie tickets. Did I mention it was SPONSORED BY FANDANGO?

This is the result it gave me:
District6

A morphling? The quiz thinks I’m a morphling? I know I’ve got an addiction to a lot of fandom things, but I’m no quite as bad as a drug addict! I can’t imagine anything less like me than someone in District 6. I don’t even like driving around town if I can help it. To have my livelihood depend upon transportation? Ugh! I’m not thrilled with this result at all. I blame that question about what reality show I like best. Just because I like watching The Amazing Race doesn’t mean I like it because I want to be on it; I like it because it’s a great show and shows me places to which I will never travel!

Geographically, I think I’m supposed to be in District 12. Although, technically, I think my exact location might actually be underwater. So I’d be dead. But that wasn’t one of the choices in the quiz.

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Top Ten Fandomy Things I’m Thankful For

TopTenTurkeyEveryone’s putting together serious lists of gratitude lately, in honor of Thanksgiving. This has always been my least favorite holiday, miles below holidays like Skyscraper Day and Opposite Day and National Beheading Day (wait, there’s actually a National Beheading Day on September 2? What’s that about and can I at least pretend it has something to do with Highlander?). Anyway, I decided my first top ten list on this blog should be of a somewhat less serious nature…

Top Ten Fandomy Things I’m Thankful For

  1. Podcasts I Don’t Listen To- podcasts that stop downloading automatically in iTunes when I can’t keep up with them
  2. TeeMagnet- one-stop shop for my daily t-shirt addiction, for which my bank account is less grateful than I am
  3. LEGO Fandom Licenses- it was the LEGO Harry Potter sets that brought me out of the dark ages. The DC, Star Wars, Marvel, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Lord of the Rings ones have kept me there
  4. Things that Shouldn’t Exist on YouTube- but totally do. I’ve spent countless hours watching old TV shows from my childhood that amazing people have put on YouTube so aren’t lost to time and old formats
  5. Slash Fiction- taking my love of buddy-buddy moments just that one awesome step further; also, it’s a great SPN episode
  6. Netflix Streaming- to obsessively binge-watch television shows I had no idea I wanted to watch until I started them… and then I can’t stop watching
  7. Comment Fic Memes- don’t know who thought this up, but it’s the best idea ever to have a sea of irresistible plot bunnies and no pressure to write anything long or involved–pure fun
  8. Wizard Rock Concerts- there’s nothing like singing along and dancing with tons of fellow fans to creative songs about one of your favorite fandoms
  9. Pound Puppies- hey, it was my first real fandom; I even wrote fanfic for it more than a decade before I even knew the term “fanfiction”
  10. Fandom Friends- once upon a time, I dreamed of having friends who I could talk to about my favorite TV shows. Then along came the internet and meetup.com groups. Wish granted!