crinolingremlin

Now as anyone who knows me, I’m a huge Disney nerd.  I’ve been to Disney World twice and I’ve wanted to go back since I was forcibly removed from the park during spring break my junior year of high school.  (No, seriously, the Julies put me in a half nelson, forced me back on the bus, and then sat on me until the doors were locked.  I’m not exaggerating.)  A few friends and I were planning on going down during Christmas break because UD doesn’t go back until the end of January but I ended up spending all of my savings in Hawaii.  So, would anyone be interested in joining me either after I graduate (sometime over the summer) or sometime after the younglings all go back to school? 
 
Another one I’d /love/ to do is Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, mostly because I want pictures in Disney World in my Disney cosplays.  Also, just because I assume it’s a given, we’d spend at least a day in Harry Potter land because I would cry if I were that close but unable to drink Butterbeer or run around Hogwarts in my robes SCREW IT I JUST WANNA GGGGOOOOOO *sad crys* downside to MNSSHP is that I budgeted it out to go over fall break and it was about the same cost as the entire trip below… yeah.
 
ATM the primitive schedule is to an
Day 1:  spend entire day driving down to the top of Florida and find a cheap hotel for the night
 
Day 2:  get up and keep driving until we hit Wonderworks (cos frankly it sounds AMAZING) then check into the hotel (I’m still up in the air as to staying in the hotel we stayed at with my marching band due to cost or staying in one of the Disney hotels and getting the bonus of the shuttles/sending shenanigans back to the room/not having to deal with parking/extra magic hours)
 
Day 3 – 11:  OMG DISNEY PARKS!!1!  Yes I know, 5 parks but this gives us two parks to spend two days in.  My only complaint with the marching band trip is that I always felt rushed and that I never really had time to enjoy it at my own pace, it was always ZOMG RUSH TO THE NEXT THING!!1!!  WE MUST SEE ALL THE THINGS!!  So we never really got a chance to meet the princesses or see the parades or anything like that.  I still regret it.  Also, the day we spend at Animal Kingdom I’d really like to go to 1900 Park Fare for dinner.  You get to meet Cinderella and co and other characters that are less than easy to find/get good photos with.  And they have strawberry soup.  (But I’m not gonna lie, I’m kinda pissed that the Wonderland Tea Party is cut off at 12.  I WANNA HAVE TEA WITH ALICE AND HATTER *pouts*)  Oh, I should also warn anyone coming, I turn into a 5 year old at the park and tend to squee my head off at any moment that makes me fangirl.  Which will be a lot. 
Also, one day will be WONDERFUL WORLD OF HARRY POTTER! (Most likely will happen on a tus/wed/thurs in order to avoid the younglings)  This will get me to finish my uniform (I just need the sweater and skirt) and will allow me to get epic pictures and OMG I JUST WANNA GOOOOO!  I’ve never been to Universal, well, I’ve been to the hard rock café twice… but yeah, it doesn’t count in my book.
Moral of the story, Day 11 will be the last full day and I’d like to spend it at one of the Disney parks, just taking it easy and getting any last photos and other stuff.  I know there is a Disney Outlet that has discounted things so I’d like to hit there before the last day in the park.
 
Day 12:  epic driving of death day.  According to google maps it’s a 17 hour drive/ right around 1,000 miles from Dayton and I have a feeling that by the time we’re done we’d really like to spend the night in our own beds but we should keep enough for a crappy hotel just to be safe.
 
The main reason I think we should drive rather than fly is that while it’s about $200 to fly and it’s only about 2.5 hours in the air (which is /nothing/ after flying to Hawaii… I still don’t think my butt has recovered… nor have my personal boundary issues… airline seats are really, really, really close… and people like to lean… merp) but the major downside is the car issue.  Now if we stay in a Disney hotel they have a shuttle from the air port to the hotel and they get your luggage and all that epic stuff.  Downside, how the hell would we get to WWoHP?  At least I won’t be 25 which means that renting a car will be through the nose…  Also, by having a car we’d be able to get groceries and other cost saving things as well as having the option to leave park property if we need to.   
 
I did have a prelim budget figured out for when we were planning on going this Jan but I’ll rework it to see how much we all need to save.

( weekend breakdownCollapse )Marcon

Oh marcon, how I love the. So after last year’s epic success I knew for a fact that I was going to come back. After stalking the website I discovered that if I did 3+ panels then I’d get a free badge. Heak yes! I signed up for a bunch, from Doctor Who to Eureka to Warehouse 13 to a ton of costuming ones. I finally heard back about a mth ago which was a bit problematic when it came to costuming. I wanted to have a costume to match each panel I was on so I was a bit paranoid about having enough time to finish them. I ended up being moderator (which I didn’t even sign up for… thanks Lee… love you too…) for Doctor Who and Women in Sci Fi and on the Costuming 101. I was also on the Doctor Who Match Game (oh Lordy…) and was cast as Dawn in the shadow cast of Once More With Feeling. I figured the children’s show wouldn’t be too hard so I’d have plenty of time to work on my costumes… yeah… murphy’s law was in abundance (more on that in a different post) which meant that I had several late nights sewing but still, I got everything done by the time I needed to leave which was a minor mericale. Now, on to the con report itself!

( Weekend breakdownCollapse )

So I have my two straws and you are going to force them from my cold, dead, fangirl hands!
Rory speculation below! Note: discussion is only that of officially released information. Please keep it that way in the comments!

( hey look over there!Collapse )

this is basically the MARcon costume update, picspam later, when/if my sister uploads the pics…

so MARcon was an EPIC WIN! Marty, Jenn, and I have been officially going for a while but others have joined our group and then left. We ended up with Kaity (my freshie) coming which was uber fun. Because I’m smart, I decided to be in charge of costumes of the four of us for the three days… yeah… Friday was Doctor Who, Saturday was Firefly, and Sunday was Doctor Horrible.

Doctor Who was rather straight forward, Marty was 11 and I got everything from the shop, boots, jeans, bowtie, and coat, so I just had to find the suspenders and shirt. I found one at goodwill that kinda sorta no not really worked but about five days before the con I found a damn good checked one. The suspenders came from Hot Topic (don’t judge) and the sonic from Think Geek. Jenn was Jenny so she just used my River boots, some rather scary shiny pants from the shop, and a tee-shirt from Michel’s. The BFG was a $12 water gun that I spray painted silver and then black. The paint was scratching off like mad because the paint wasn’t plastic safe; it was from my basement so it was free. My goal is to take paint stripper to it and we do it with spray paint meant for plastic, thus it still looks like a BFG but can be used to ward off drunken college kids. She used my Alice wig but we had to lower the pony tail from a high to a low to help hide her hair. Kaity as Rose was super easy due to the fact that I pulled one together for Amy for ComiCon last year. She provided the shoes and jeans and we found a gray tee-shirt that we ripped the sleeves/neck out. The earrings and wig were mine as well. It took the poor girl about eight applications of eye makeup to get the spider!eyes right. I was really happy with her outfit, she looked like a tiny Rose (love ya Kaity, but she’s rather small) but some jackass came up and said that he didn’t recognize her because her boobs were too small. He just about died. Me as Amy was a fun one tho… I had no parts to her. At all. The shoes were our Doctor’s thus they were three sizes to large… but I had to choose between a sonic or shoes and because I’m a nerd, the sonic won. Tights came from Walmart and the mini skirt was a pair of rather frightening mom jeans from Kohls (thank goodness for my sister working there) that were originally $50 but I got em for $2. I then ripped out the inseams, wacked em off to about three inches above my knees, sewed down the crotch, and slowly cut my way up from there. The hoodie came from American Apparel down in Cincy, my BFF took me to New Port Aquarium for my birthday so we stopped by the store and got the last one! I assumes (cos I’m an idiot) that the necklace and earrings would be the easiest, I mean, how hard would finding an “A” charm and star earrings? Oh silly costumer, I still haven’t learned. After hunting for an entire month, I found some white star earrings at Walmart which I then painted gold. When I have some money I want to get some from Simply Wispers, a hypoallergenic earring site, because they are much closer than mine. Michel’s had letter charms, in sliver, but had no A’s (>_>) and I was about to give up hope until I went to Factory Card Outlet to pick up some red hairspray for Saffron when I found an A cell phone charm! SCORE! I paint penned it gold (yet again, I wanna re-do it) and got a gold chain (that turned my neck green… it was only $3 so what do I expect?) The wig came from cosworth (Rose in 130) and the headband came from Target for a dollor. Not great, but in the large scheme of things, it worked for what I wanted.

Saturday was Firefly and this is where the horcrux dress of death comes in. Marty was Simon, all that needed was a vest and he provided the dress shoes, dress pants, and dress shirt. Bata bing, bata boom, ya have a Simon. Kaity was bed sheet!Saffron. Dress/shirt was one mom made for my sister years ago to go under a Meadville dress for school, the apron was a pillowcase chopped up, and the shawl was a table runner that I chopped up into a triangle. I sewed the living daylights out of the edge and then shredded the extra fabric to make the tassels. River was easy as well, I had fixed this up for Amy for SDCC last summer, thus I had the skirt on hand and a sweater that would work but I really wanted a better one. I ordered the yarn from dev back in March and she ended up getting it done at 12:30 Friday morning of the con… yeah… but hey, it was finished and that’s all I cared about. I went through three tank tops before I was happy and I used boots I got back in 8th grade. I think that all in all, I’m going to end up re-doing the costume, I think I’m going to make it into a dress, thus the lines will be cleaner. And was there another costume? Ah yes, the horcrux dress of death. Jenn wanted the purple dress that Inara, I wanted Jenn to be Kaylee but nnnoooo, she just HAD to be Inara. I ended up modifying a Simplicity pattern to work the way we wanted, I extended and widened the straps so we could do the folds in the bodice. We made a muslin out of purple quilting fabric which then turned into the lining. I’ve sworn off brocade… again… it wasn’t that bad, I just had to deal with the fact that it likes to shred like mad and is a pain to work with but I think I’ve come up with a way to work with it the next time I’m forced to work with the stuff again. So the dress was rather straight forward, I just fitted the pattern, cut it down to size and then cut it out of the real fabric. The insert was just the reverse of the purple. Everyone was freaking out about it and saying how epic it was but I still don’t find it as such a big deal… I don’t know, it could just be me undermining myself… the accessories were another kettle of fish tho. The belt was made of wooden disks that were painted gold and then attached to the chain with epoxy. The gems were clear stones that were painted purple and attached with more epoxy. The slave cuff started out as three pendants that we popped out of their casings and used a crapload of epoxy to attach the chain… and then the fun begins… we ran out. So I had to attach it to the bracelet with hot glue. Jenn ended up not liking the way the chain was set so she re-hot glued it; only problem is that it then made the chain to short. The necklace was another chain, cut it in two parts, attached the claps and clipped the rings open to attach the disk. The pendant itself started out as a wooden disk which Jenn dremeled down to the right shape. The stone was one left over from the belt. Add in some temp hair and bata bing, bata boom, you’re Inara.

Sunday was Doctor Horrible which was, once again, rather straight forward. Marty wanted to be Doctor Horrible but I put my foot down. I told him that unless he could get the outfit himself, it wasn’t happening. So he was Caption Hammer instead… we reused the Doctor Who boots, found some cargo pants at Good Will (after a month of searching…) and the shirt was a youth large with an iron on transfer of the logo. Yeah, I know it’s backwards but I thought that it was a reverse transfer. Ah well. I kinda also almost murdered the printer doing this project… I went to print the first page and it made a really angry sound, went kerthunk, and then stopped working… daddy was not happy… but we got it working in the end. The fangirl shirts were as simple as taking a pic of Marty, cutting it out on paint (because I discovered the night before at 1am that I didn’t have access to photo shop… fail), printed, cut it out, add copious amounts of SQUEEEE and you have instant fangirl. Penny was fun… I wanted to do shrapnel!penny but it wouldn’t stick. It took me forever to find a dress that would work, I gave up trying to find fabric, and it cost me $50 so there was no way in hell I was cutting up the dress. I just basted the sash on so it could be removed later for use as a normal dress. The spaghetti strap was kidnapped from my mom’s closet. The sweater started out as a scary mom sweater with a… ruff… thing on the bottom. I cut that off and gave it a lettuce edge, cut the sleeves down to 3/4ths, removed the buttons and switched em around with rose ones. One of my future roommates was going to paint on the flowers but she decided that studying for finals was more important than that. Lame. I wasn’t recognized on con day because I kinda forgot my shoes at home, decided not to wear my wig, and had my glasses. Wasn’t a big deal because everyone liked the outfits that were made rather that just pieced and by then I was so tired of being in a dress for three days in a row, something I haven’t done in over a decade. For a reason.

All in all, it was a huge success, especially considering that all of Kaity’s outfits were put together in under three weeks. Next year I’m gonna be a buttface and make us do Doctor Who on Saturday, just cos I’m a bigger Who fan than Firefly (I know, I know, blasphemy to the Joss). If we do Doctor Horrible again it’s gonna be Penny w/ jeans, if nothing else so I’m in pants for at least one day.

Also, if you made it all the way down here then WOO! You get a cookie! Picspam IF MY SISTER EVER GETS THEM TO MMEEEE!! Also, please stop spazing, *cough*Jenn*cough* they’ll get here when they get here!

Hey LJ, long time, no see? Well… that’s not true… I stalk you almost every day, I just don’t write as much as I should…
So last night was strike for Spelling Bee, the last main stage show of the year. All the seniors go up to the grid (where the curtains live when they aren’t down) and write their names and whatnot. Then they go on the roof and talk about what all has happened in the past four years. When Brendo came down he told me that there are a bunch of notes written to me up there. This floored me. I never expected anyone to write a note up there. The grid is for important people… for years I’ve been paranoid that everyone hates me… not sure why, I just am. And then when Brendo told me that, it just shocked me so much. And not just one note, but “a ton of em”. After all the crap I’ve put up with this year, this has truly given me hope. Hope that not everyone hates me and that they are only my friends out of pity. My meds keep me from drowning but I still have to tread water. For the first time in a while, it feels like someone threw me a life preserver. And it feels awesome.