gift exchanges yaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Part of that day my friends and I released lanterns yup.

Anywaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, to mirror last year's Christmas celebration, we did a 2011 Secret Santa and White Elephant gift exchange. It was lots of fun, I even met three really cool and funny girls for the first time. (ok well except for one I met several months back, but I'm not going to explain lol)

I bought a Dave Strider Broken Record Shirt and an artbook of pinup girls for my Secret Santa gift. The shirt barely came in a day before the exchange, so I was panicking for two straight weeks on whether or not the shirt would come in on time. I guess giving someone a print out of an order doesn't have as much impact as actually presenting them with the gift??? And then a week later, she spills 7/11 coffee on that shirt(ty choi.........................).

My own Secret Santa gave me a really adorable bunny with a picture of my face on it, and a Tangled poster her brother drew. It looked like a lot of copic ink was used, I kind of feel bad. ):

And theeeeeen came the White Elephant gift exchange. It was a lot more.......ironic than last year. I nabbed a Disney Princess coloring and sticker book, Donde Esta Spot(for the irony ok? I'm not learning Spanish nor am I of any race in which the native tongue is Spanish), and this....uh...I guess you could call it a card.....It's kind of hard to explain, since it's an inside joke of sorts....Well if you read Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, it's something to that effect. SOMETHING. But at least this "card" guaranteed one free art(aASRT) request, since the person who bought the gift is a really amazing artist. She's going to make me a Tangled wedding thing for my desktop wallpaper hehehehehehehehhehehehehehgehrfdjm.

The gift I bought for White Elephant was a Winnie the Pooh plush. I think my gift was the ~***~**~*~most wanted, as it was stolen a lot. This was not without the obligatory "EVERYBODY WANTS MY POOH" jokes. =^o^= (im a cat)

There was other particular gift which included the first three Shrek DVD boxes with ironic "movie posters" in them, and also a pretty awkward shirt with a picture of a half-naked girl from JCPenny.

I barely count that gift as ironic, it was just terrible.



Aftermath of the exchanges~*~**~.




The little feast we had earlier, involving homemade lasagna, peppermint brownies, sandwiches with a bunch of stuff in them including a river of mayo, spaghetti, and meatballs, which no one really ate. I would have, but I have an irrational fear of meatballs. There were also two bottles of sparkling cider which was mostly downed by one particular cider-loving girl. I can't take much of the stuff, it's murder to my throat.

After the exchange came a rather INTERESTING part of the day, which was a gingerbread house making competition!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111
So ya, my team pretty much won because you know, it's a gingerbread house making competition, not a gingerbread scenery/story competition.

Annnnyyyyyywaaaaaaaay, we had only 30 minutes to build a house and come up with a story. These were the results:



This was my team's house, which is actually a church.(I'm not going to say what it was supposed to be, it's too embarrassing). I had to improvise a story which the judge--who got my Winnie the Pooh plush after I convinced her to come to the White Elephant Exchange regardless of the fact she's not in Secret Santa--wouldn't let me finish. U_U

This is is pretty wowamzing, I mean making a circular base out of gingerbread crackers, wow. That's real skill right there, uh-huh.




The other team's haunted house.
You know what this should've been disqualified, this is out of season.

Anyway, so yeah. WE WON THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE MAKING COMPETITION.

I am so glad to be a winner.

Laanntttterrrrrrrnnnnnnnsssssssssss

Ahhhhhhh it's Christmas Break. I remember passing out as soon as school ended, and when I did wake up, I wobbled all bow-legged around cause my butt-muscles were in pain. Kind of expected when you sit in one spot for two hours with your eyes glued onto the test final. My butt muscles still kind of hurt.......

Anywaaayy, the day right after school let out, I went to a friend's house to participate in a 2011 Secret Santa and White Elephant exchange! Which I'll talk about in a later post, since I don't have pictures for that yet. <_>

Later on in the afternoon, we went to another friend's house(this was a friend I just barely met that day, so everybody kept joking that I already reached third base with her lolol), and we played a really traumatizing game of hide and seek which eventually turned into "hey let's run around in the pitch-black darkness and if we make eye contact with the person we're trying to find, we scream and run back to base!!!!!!1111" It was terrifying, what does this even have to do with Christmas????????

Here comes the REBEL CHIRREEEEN part. One friend's Secret Santa gift contained ten FLOATING LANTERNS, as in the lanterns from the movie Tangled!!!(ok, not exactly like the ones from Tangled, they're much larger in real life, and you can't put designs on it. )':) We're supposed to release lantern in an empty area with no trees or buildings, or anything to that effect, but we released the lanterns in front of the house instead. HEE HEEE.

Well we started off with a test run with one lantern, in which two people sat on the roof of the house to light and release the lantern, another two people playing "I See the Light" through the speakers in a second story bedroom, and four other people on the ground to....er....I guess to catch the lantern if it falls, but that sounds really hazardous.



If you look closely on the roof of the house, you could see one person holding an unlit lantern. It took us five minutes to get the lantern, mostly because we were so scared we would light it wrong.



The lantern is lit here and is starting to balloon up!!! If you ever get a lantern, it may say it only needs a 45 seconds for it to be good enough to release, well ignore that, and go for a full minute instead, 'cause here's what happens when we released it after only 45 seconds of waiting.




When released from the roof, the lantern floated for a bit, and then fell, where the people down below held it quite haphazardly by pushing onto the top of the lantern, similar to dribbling a basketball. Eventually, the lantern ballooned up enough for it to float up!



Not the best picture of a floating lantern, but pictures don't matter that much if I got it stored away in my memories!

At this point we were screaming as the lantern threatened to set the roof of the house on fire, but it managed to reach the stars and land god-who-knows-where. I was sobbing at this point, since it was such a breathtaking moment, and it didn't help that I have a huge obsession with Tangled!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A couple of hours later, we released even more lanterns, since after the first lanterns, we became pyromaniacs and had an unquenchable lust to have those biodegradable rice paper warm at our fingertips only to leave for its cousins, the stars.

Shuttup.

We released one lantern, and then decided to release three more at the same time.





Unfortunately one of the lanterns ripped so we had to hose it down. ): But we still got two lanterns up in the air!


With hook lights.

However, one came down too early, possibly because it was held while burning for too long, and it landed on the next door neighbor's property. (Fortunately it could be confused for a plastic bag, instead of a possible weapon of terrorism.) BUT REGARDLESS OF THE ERRORS, IT WAS STILL SO BEAUTIFUL, AND BY THE TIME THE TWO LANTERNS WERE RELEASED, "I SEE THE LIGHT" GOT TO THE DUET PART. SUCH PERFECT, BEAUTIFUL TIMING. HHHHUUUUUAWWWWWWW......

We're planning to buy ten more lanterns, since now we're hopelessly addicted(although nobody is wiling to step up and order it!!!!!), and also to release those ten lanterns and the five we have left on New Year's Day. I'm sure that would shine some good luck on 2012.(But I wonder if the lanterns were to cause some accident, would that mean bad luck for the entirety 2012?)

Also, the Tangled Ever After trailer came out!!!!!!!(for those who don't know, it's a 6-minute short shown with the 3D rerelease of Beauty and the Beast)



They are just so beautiful eeerrrrrrrrrrghghhhg I am peeing my pants in excitement. January 13th here we come!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Santa Cruz!

Okay, this post is like a month late, but I have good reasons......not really. But better late than never...?

So anyway, a couple of weeks ago, a bunch of friends and I went to Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. One of our friends' moms was nice enough to drive us all the way there and /coughpayforourfood. Of course I took lots and lots of pictures. (please ignore the date in the bottom right corner of the pictures, I'm too lazy to set an accurate date on my camera. lolololol)


Pointless picture of a bunch of trees on our way there.



And then Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk! (kind of cheated with this picture, as I took it from on top of a ferris wheel I will mention later on)
We bought 50 tickets to split among the four of us, sounds like a lot, but nope! An average ticket quanity for one ride was like 4 tickets. -.-

The first ride we went on was the......how am I supposed to remember the name? It's been, like, a month. I remember that it was spinny ride with "rock and roll" music and......um, here's a visual:

The ride claimed to be a purely rock n'roll music ride, but they played Cascada. Cascada =/= Rock n' Roll. Now that I think about it, I don't recall one actual rock n' roll song. But it was really fun to ride!

We walked around for a bit, and stopped by a candy shop:

Everything looked mouthwatering! But horribly overpriced. So no, I didn't buy anything. My friend however bought a bag of saltwater taffy which she barely shared due to the over-pricenessssssss.

Also:

Why?

Afterwards, we went to play laser tag because we had so much fun the last time we played laser tag. Once again, I got the highest score. Awuauhauhdfugh. It was a lot easier, however it may be because that it wasn't exactly the place to go if you're a diehard laser tag player.

Then we ate fud, blah blah, here's a picture of my partially eaten burger, yaaaaay.

It was bland, in case you wanted to ask. I guess it's my fault, since I prefer my burgers as dry as a desert.
I was full afterwards, but not my friiieeeennnndss, they wanted to eat:

F**KING HEART ATTACK IN A TRAY.
Actually, I stand corrected. It was two trays, one for the deep fried oreos and the deep fried twinkies and fuawkdamnhellbitchwhoreson why would you eat this?


Taken post-devouring-the-two-deep-fried-oreos-in-less-than-two-minutes. They didn't enjoy the deep-fried twinkie as much. Were the pain in your chests to unbearable to enjoy anything?
Ahem, sorry. If you're a deep-fried everything fanatic, I don't mean to offend you. It just goes against my standards of food. But just hearing the words deep fried makes my arteries tremble in fear.

And if that wasn't enough, they went to get ice cream afterwards. Well, 2/3 of them did. Why even auhdhgfusdjhbjfhgfhfg.

Then, the beach!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111



"Dear?"
"Yes?"
"Do you have to go away tomorrow?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"It's the best for us."
"Dear?"
"Yes?"
"I don't want tomorrow to ever come."
"But then if tomorrow never comes, then the day will never come that I reunite with you with open arms. And then we'll have hundreds of neverending days together, not just here on this sand, but anywhere you want us to be."
"But you'll be away forever."
"No one said those hundreds of days have to be on earth."
"Dear?"
"Yes?"
"I'm an atheist."
"Damn."
Suddenly, heartwarming music.

It was the most fun part of the day, personally! We drew in the saaaand:

So talented, omg. ;_;

Collected seashells we were planning to make bracelets out of(never did....), chased the tides:
We had to leave the beach earlier than we wanted to, because the mom that took us there told us the park was going to close soon.(we later found out she read the time wrong, and it was in fact closing much later. Dammit.) So we went off to spend the rest of our tickets(by the way, it was a huge ass pain cleaning off the sand off our shoes).

Two of our friends went on a roller coaster which I forgot to take a picture of. Ffffff. I somewhat have a fear of heights, and falls....and hills......and speed, so I chickened out. One of my other friends was glad to go with me to thhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeee SWWWWWWIIIIIINGS YAYAY FUN FUN FUN.


It spun and tilted and that's pretty much it.

Then we all met up to go on the ferris wheel. I forgot to take a proper picture of the ferris wheel, but here's an.....angle of it?

One of my friends is looking down at us, but it's so far away, I didn't feel the need to block out her face. Oh weeeellllllll.
On a side note, the ferris wheel was the scariest thing ever, UAHSFDUHSGFGFFF. Brings me back to my fear of heights. Also, it was awful fast for a comfort ride, and the little cars were as open as open can be. I'm used to being in an enclosed box for ferris wheels. ;-; But I guess since it wasn't an enclosed box, I got some pretty magnificent views of the park.

Afterwards, we walked across a bridge and back. Okaaaay.


Then we walked 20 minutes to a pier. The seagulls were huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge, at least in comparison the the seagulls over where I live. We stopped by a rather crowded place where they selled fried seafood. Two of my friends bought fried calamari, and it was dericious. Calamari was usually chewy, but these were bitten through like buttah.

Theeeeen we looked at some sea lions:

They were all sleeping. I wonder if they got splinters like that...?

My other friend and I came back to the same seafood place. Might as well get quality seafood, while we were there. My friend got three fish tacos, and I got fish and chips for ten dollars. At first I thought was a little overpriced, but then I realized how much food was in the tray. It took my whole family to eat it when I came back home! Although, it was super fresh tasting, like they were caught that morning. Mmmmmh.

On the car ride home, we played a game where we described movies super vaguely, and the people had to guess what the movie was. Ex)

"This was a story about a guy trying to find something."
"Finding Nemo?"
"YEAH!!!!!1111"

I was pretty bad at that game. I said stuff like:
"There's a green guy and a donkey trying to save a princess."

If you don't get it, then.......

Well that's it for Santa Cruz! I actually went to Fanimu this year for the 27th-29th. Expect a huge post on that. (: Also expect a seperate post for art. I was about to post my art on the same post as this, but it would get too cluttered.
Also, another seperate post on my new dog. Pweesh, this is what I get for slacking off on my blog.

Lasuuuuuh Tag

Aggggghhhh, why is the Tangled graphic novel so hard to find? Hopefully it'll be at this one mall by next week, as they promised. ;_;
Anyway, instead of pursuing another piece of my ever-expanding-Tangled-merchandise-collection, we went laser tagging yesterday instead.
....
Right then, whatever floats our boat. Five teenagers.
We were really scared at first, and we thought it was going to be really awkward with other players, but we might as well go through with it since we already paid NINE DOLLARS PER PLAYER. WHATSOOVERPRICEDIDON'TEVEN.
Anyway, we had to give ourselves codenames--we were planning to name ourselves after Tangled characters(or at least I was), but then we panicked so the employee had to give us codenames. I got Cloud.




Anyway, the game turned out to be really fun! For me at least. It was just a tiny bit scary though, since the whole place was a dark maze with a person popping out of every corner. And I kept shooting at this one person who kept turning out to be me in a mirror. Plus, the first five-ten minutes were really confusing, since we weren't totally sure where to shoot a person to get points. But we still got it--at least most of us did--however the number of times I got shot were countless multiplied by a variable. HUHUHUHUHHUUHHUHUHU. The game ended after 20-30 minutes of DERP, we got out, and checked our scores on the screen.

I got 224 points. Yay! The highest in my group of friends. (:
And some loser nicknamed Nitro got -104 points. AHAHAHAHAHAHA. Then I remembered that someone in my group was nicknamed Nitro.
Next thing I know, my friend standing next to me was making whale noises.

...................................

We're talking about going again, now that we're experienced, hopefully with more friends.

Oh, more tegaki-e Tangled art, if you don't mind:

In the past month...

Nothing terribly exciting happened, just a few trips with friends, and an order of a whole buttload of Tangled merchandise off Amazon. One of which is a PVG book(piano, vocal, and guitar sheet music book), which I need to remember to scan for a friend. We're attempting to play a song together from the book, she being a guitar-player, and I being a piano player. Not to say wer're a guitarist and pianis, that insinuates we're actually good at our instruments. Haha.

I could show you my new Yesstyle clothing from that group order a couple weeks ago, the total cost being over 150 dollars--we were really desperate to reach 150 dollars to get free shipping. xD And the shipping was suprisingly fast, at least in comparison to some of the blog posts I seen about how Yesstyle shipping takes up to two months. /shrugs


From left to right: Faux collared dress from Tokyo Fashion, Hello Rabbit long t-shirt from Dodostyle, Bow keyhole shirt from Ageha.

And then yesterday, three other friends and I went to some obscure, kind of shady Vietnamese resteraunt. The food was good, and my Korean friend seemed to enjoy her share of bun thit nuong(accompanied by at least a pound of chili sauce), but the beef pho my other friend and I ordered didn't have much lean meat. It was mostly meat with huge strips of fat still on it, which we hated--and it reminded me of bacon, and I hate bacon. ): My other friend ordered bun bo hue, which had globs of pure fat floating in it. Jeebus. Although what was funny was the look on my Korean's friend face as my two other Viet friends spoke to the waiter in fluent-ish Vietnamese. Haha. I would've spoken to the waiter too if my Vietnamese wasn't so broken with an awkward Amuuurican accent.

Besides all that, nothing particulary exciting happened. We are planning to go to a beachside amusement park over the spring break, but I'm a little reluctant to do so, since I vomit in the extreme heat real easily. Ahehehehehe...........................................We're also going to continue to pursue our quest for a Tangled graphic novel in a mall at a upscale district(upscale as in the mall is located near a Prada, Gucci, and a Burberry store. Yikes!)

That's it, other than a few drawings--yes, most Tangled related. I will one day make a blogspot that doesn't mention Tangled at all. xD I can't imagine it happening though.

This image contains Tangled spoilers! If you have not watched the movie yet, please do not click.




Tegaki-e Panty and Stocking cause I like raeping fandoms.

On an unrelated note: Vampire Knight chapter 68 came out two days ago, yay! The plot is picking up speed and has me on the edge of my leather, pimp armchair.

EDIT: Happy Valentine's Day! I hope everybody finds love in something, even if it isn't a human being. /coughcough

San Francisco!

So on Sunday, three other friends, Jessica #2's(number additive due to there being a total of three Jessica's in the group)parents and I went on a road trip to San Francisco. But before I get to the actual trip, let me tell how scary foggy it was in the morning. Like seriously, I could not see over a 20 yard radius. I thought I was going get run over by a truck before I even make it to my friend's house.

We first stopped by Mountain View--where the said parents owned a pizza place. We stayed there for two hours, where we stopped by CVS pharmacy. The first thing we did was try to find Tangled Valentine's Day cards. No, we did not find any. ;_; Then then we bought chocolate. By the way, Wonka's Scrumdiliumptious(hope I spelled it right!) bar is not that scrumdiliuptious. Then we bought a bag of vegetable-fry-chip-thing at Trader Joe's and acted like obnoxious teenagers in the middle of the street. Afterwards, we went to Party City, where we had no choice BUT to find the Tangled party supplies.

I didn't buy anything, since there wasn't much worth buying. But it was still pretty cool that there was a whole shelf completely dedicated to Tangled party supplies, so yeah, picture. :)

We went back to the pizza place to eat free pizza. I only ate two small cheese slices, because I'm such a slow eater, and everybody else had at least three normal-sized slices. T_T

AND NOW BACK TO THE ROAD TRIP WE GO, where Caitlin screwed up my hearing by blasting 'So Happy I Could Die' by Lady Gaga in my ear. Last time I'm accepting earphones from her. I fell asleep in the car, well, kind of asleep because I kept zoning in and out of conversations held by my three other friends. And then finally came the big city! (I suppose the words 'big city' doesn't hold much meaning on my part, since I already live in the big city)



Tall skyscrapers~



Fountains.



Gorgeous archictecture. We kept seeing this type of structure throughout the city.

Traffic....

Angry owl on the wall.

THIS IS A VIETNAMESE PHO PLACE. I SAW IT AND I GOT OVER-EXCITED BECAUSE I LIKE PHO. Well, almost as excited as when I spotted the Disney store from a distance.

We eventually found parking near a billboard advertising whiskey. /shrug

We went to a huge Urban Outfitters first, where we skimmed about for less then ten minutes. So we walked across the street to the three-story, church-looking Forever 21. I felt compelled to spend my Forever 21 gift card I got from the Secret Santa Gift Exchange while in San Francisco. After going up to the top floor, and eventually coming back down, I decided to buy a plain, pink cardigan for only 13 dollars:

I'm happy with the purchase. It has pockets! xD

And then we stopped by at Ross to meet up with the parents to let them know we haven't been shanked yet we were safe, and sprinted over to the Disney store!



DISNEY STORE, YES. WHAT I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR. YES. Of course we had to go over to the Tangled merchandise!



No Tangled Graphic novel though, even when my friend, Jessica #3 called in a week ahead of time to see if it was in stock. ;_; But she did find a 'reusable' Tangled sticker book. We're actually not sure if the stickers are reusable, since they just look like normal stickers...She's not willing to find out. And then we found Beast, the mentally challenged fairytale character.



I'm sorry, but are my friends and I the only people that laugh at this Beast-doll costume?

Then we went upstairs where Caitlin found a Mr. Pricklepants and Eeyore plushie to buy for only fifteen dollars total. And there on that floor, we found a huge honking screen with a Disney playlist for visitors to customize. Of course we had to put the Tangled trailer next on the playlist:




Jessica #3 doing the typical tourist thing in front of Flynn's smolder. Mmmm. Then we went back downstairs to get in line for the cash register when all of a sudden, the faces of Disney villians projected onto the walls! The lights darkened, and thunder played....And then a random employee ran up to hug me in an attempt to act scared. She told us rub our hands together to call forth Tinkerbell, who came projected on the walls and SAVED US YAY. Then we all cried tears of happiness and agreed that working at the Disney store is a dream job.

And then we went back outside to take a group picture:

I JUST DON'T WANT BLIND YOU PEOPLE WITH OUR ACNE.

Then we went to the Apple store to check a Tangle fansite and finally went back to the car, where I took a picture of all the Disney merchandise we bought:

A Tangled tote bag for me, a Tangled sticker book for Jessica #3, and a Mr. Pricklepants and a Eeyoore plushie for Caitlin. JESSICA #2 DIDN'T BUY ANYTHING, HOW COULD SHE?

...Wow, you'd think a bunch of three year olds bought that stuff.

And then we drove up to Chinatown, a.k.a the Asian hills of doom. I didn't take any pictures of Chinatown itself, since the I was too tired from walking up and down steep hills and stopping every five minutes at some cramped store. Jessica #3 bought a 'I heart SF' shirt at one store to match her 'I heart NY' shirt........We eventually stopped at a small restaraunt thing-a-majig where we shared a plate of the parents' selection of food:

A variety of wonton thingies--I don't even know. They were good though! And then Jessica #2 and #3 ate a Chinese sticky bun, followed by my eating a sesame seed round thing with a red bean paste....I should really learn the names. I eat this stuff almost everyday. v_v

And then onto the final part of the day: Yesstyle! It was quite a long trip deeper into SF. I remember at some point, the elevation was so high that our ears popped. I did recognize the Stonestown Galleria almost immediately though. When we got into the mall, we jogged up the escalator, ran to the wrong side of the mall, and finally sprinted to Yesstyle...Where we saw the dad at the entrance. Okay, lovely, even with our sprinting, the parents whom we got a five minute headstart over still beat us.

The store was rather small--not suffocating--but small. But they had a REALLY nice selection of clothes. My friends and I were tearing apart the store, looking to buy as much as we can! Sadly there was only one dressing room, so the wait time just to try on clothes was rather long.

At the end, I bought the same dress as Jessica #2(xD), Caitlin bought a hoodie, and the mom bought a questionable dress for Jessica #2...very questionable indeed. The prices were awesome though! The dresses were only $25 and the hoodie about $30.(I think, correct me if I'm wrong Caitlin)

And then we went back to Jessica #2's house where we did an -ahem- art project. An art project I imagine would offend a lot of people so I'll just keep the picture of the art project in my Facebook. ^_^; And then Jessica #3 showed us that the whole Yesstyle site was having an up to 80% off sale! We all agreed to do a group order before the sale ends. We're trying to hit $150, so we could get free shipping, even though shipping is only $10. US FOBS. I still have the whole Yesstyle site to look through before January 24th!