Making a bookmark

A while back, I participated in a mini swap via lovely iggles on twitter, or twiggles. We exchanged bookmarks. I made them, and started taking pictures while I did them... but I got distracted and forgot to keep taking pictures. Whoops.

Then that love story book exchange happened, and I realized that my swap partner was actually my original iggle secret santa from December! So I decided I wanted to make her a bookmark too, as a small thank you.

And I remembered to take pictures the whole way through this time. lol.

Here's almost all of what I used. Not pictured is a small penguin bead, a couple of markers, a homemade stamp and a heart shaped paper puncher.

5 Fandom Friday - One Fandom Item Styled Five Different Ways... JUST KIDDING

Yes, just kidding. Today's post is not about today's 5 Fandom Friday topic because, simply said, I do not have the ability to style an item five different ways.

My wardrobe is 87% geeky Tshirts. 10% jeans. 3% etc.

The thought had crossed my mind to make a joke out of it. Wear my TARDIS necklace and snap five almost identical pictures of me wearing that necklace with five different Doctor Who shirts. But eh, I didn't want to put all that effort in to the joke. lol.

So! Instead! I've decided that should a topic not work for me in the future, that I shall go back and do a topic I missed! I started in January, so there's three months of topics I did not do.

I won't be doing all of them, because a few of those topics don't work for me either - for instance, I'm assuming they want interesting apps I can't live without... and not just gmail, the camera, and like, Chrome. *shrug* lol

MOVING ON!! Today's post will be... in no particular order...


Comfort Foods That Always Make Me Feel Better



1: Baked Chicken and White Rice

Image found here

I am a fan of chicken. It is my favorite meat. I loved so many chicken dishes. But baked chicken with plain white rice on the side is a comfort food for me. When I was younger, our family couldn't afford fancy. And chicken quarters (quarters being the thigh and leg together) were cheap. A pack of four chicken quarters was baked for dinner almost daily when I was little. My mum and dad would have one each, then I would have two thighs and my brother would have two legs. We'd eat this with plain white rice, a staple in my family.

Despite having this dish almost daily as a kid, I never got tired of it. And nowadays, I find myself craving it when I'm bummed. It's so simple to make, too! Cover chicken with whatever seasons you feel like putting on it, stick in oven and bake until cooked. lol. ♥




2: Sweet Rice Soup

Image found here

Googling "sweet rice" to find a picture was not so helpful, although it did suggest I add "Filipino" to the search, and, since my mum is filipino, that made sense to me. But that proved unsuccessful as well. Instead I searched "sweet rice soup" and finally "rice soup" to actually find images that look similar to what I'm used to.

Turns out Rice Soup is a Chinese-Thai thing. I think my mum has distant relatives from that area, so it makes sense. Whenever I was sick, she would make this for me. From the recipe I found, it looks like this is often served plain when sick, or as a side dish to spicier foods. But my mum always gave us sugar to add to it. And now that's the only time I ever want this dish - when I'm sick, and with sugar.


3: Meatloaf

Image found here

Meatloaf. Heck yeah. I used to absolutely adore my dad's meatloaf. So tasty. SO TASTY.

...And then he found a long lost recipe of the meatloaf he loved that his own mother used to make and switched.

I personally liked his old recipe better. A lot better. Go figure.

As a result, a few times a year you'll find me trying to recreate his original recipe from taste memory. It was fairly simple, and involved spices, mashed potatoes, cheese and ketchup. Sometimes I feel I'm close, sometimes not so much. But I never write the recipe down. I've found it's kind of fun, constantly trying to recreate a dish I loved so much when I was little. And the meatloaf is always good, regardless of whether I'm close or not.



4: Eggs

images put together from all over the internets

EGGS!!! Eggs eggs eggs, eggs eggs eggs eggs.

Eggs.

My ultimate comfort food. It can be the easiest and quickest this to make when I'm in need. It can also get a bit more complicated, but I love it all no matter what. Scrambled is my current go-to, when I find myself in need of eggs.

But I also love and have made (many times) every egg dish you see in that picture: scrambled, poached, hard boiled, volcanoes, eggs benedict, egg drop soup, fried eggs, omelettes, egg salad sandwiches, scotch eggs, and deviled eggs.

These were all the eggs I could think of when I was writing this post. And seeing all the pictures here right now makes me wish Boyfriend hadn't eaten all of our eggs yesterday!!! Must. Get. More. Eggs.




5: Spaghetti

Image found here

Finally, we have spaghetti. Sometimes I prefer the spaghetti with meatballs, most times I just like adding ground meat to the sauce. No matter how I make it, I love it. Boyfriend and I have mixed tastes sometimes, and spaghetti is often one of the things we split on.

We end up having to make two different sauces. Because he prefers a simple, no veggie sauce with mixed ground meats, while I prefer a sauce with ground beef and plenty of delicious veggies added, oh and a smidgen of sugar added for some sweetness.

Sometimes, if I'm cooking just for myself, (because Boyfriend hates this one) I'll make whole wheat spaghetti with vodka sauce.  Mmmm.





Iggle Squiggle's 5 Fandom Friday

Swap Project - Love Your Inner Geek art book [Pic Heavy]

The last thing I made for my #loveyourinnergeek swap buddy was an art book. It took me way, way too long to make it. As usual, I bit off more than I could chew. And, as a result, I ended up sending this super late, and she got it three days after the end of the swap. *blushes*


I had never attempted to make an art book before, so this was all pretty new to me. I had attempted to start a beginner art book a while back, but that was by altering an already made book.


I had originally thought I would take pictures of the whole process, but realized pretty quickly that this book was going to take a long time already, so I didn't bother taking progress pics. These three are the only in progress pictures I took.

I jumped the gun and cut the pieces of chip board before the book was actually done. Lesson learned - I ended up having to cut a wider middle piece. The bubbly pink paper I found while looking for other papers at Michaels. I saw it and thought it would be the perfect cover for this art book.


I also found this pretty space-themed paper at Walmart.

My buddy likes space, so... I figured it'd be a good inside cover design.



I decided to use greeting cards for the pages.

They're all already the same size and folded in half, so it worked out nicely. I actually sent some of the extra cards as a day in part of the rest of the swap for her.

That's all as far as in progress shots. lol. On to the rest of the book!!

Geeky Hostess sprinkles

Last year, in January, I backed a kickstarter for geeky sprinkles from The Geeky Hostess. Last month, towards the end, the sprinkles arrived!

She kept those of us who backed the kickstarter informed the whole time, so I knew the troubles and delays that were happening along the way.



Inside, there was an envelope.

And a cute note from the Geeky Hostess.

Then there was a set of recipes.

I'm looking forward to giving these recipes a try! Maybe I'll even blog about them!


There were also five empty recipe cards, four share the same theme as the four types of sprinkles, and one is a mishmash of the four.

I didn't buy all four sprinkles though, I don't even know what Meeples are, so I opted for three of them, and an extra of one.



Here they are!!

I got one of the Lightning Bolt, two of the Police Box, and one of the Steampunk.


Here are some closeups of the beautiful, sprinkle-y goodness!


First, the Steampunk:

How cute are these tiny gears???




The Lightning Bolts:

Adorable!!



And finally, the Police Box:

TINY... TARDIS... SPRINKLES! SQUEEEE!!!




Overall, these are delightful. They're tiny and adorable and I love them all so very much.

As far as flavor... they're... not very sweet. As in, very low on the sweetness levels. But I don't have issue with that, frosting is plenty sweet enough. My sprinkles don't need to be sweet at all! They just have to be edible. Hee.

The Geeky Hostess sells them in her shop now! So if you didn't get in on the kickstarter, you can still pick some up. You can even check out the Meeples Srinkles if you want.

5 Fandom Friday - My Comfort Films

Comfort films!!


1: The Birdcage

This movie. THIS movie. I love this movie. So. Very. Much. I've loved this movie since it came out. And sometime during early high school, when I was prone to nasty nightmares and crippling panic attacks, I found out that this movie was the only thing to calm me down. There were some terrible days when I would fall asleep to this movie... only to wake in panic as soon as the movie ended. So I'd rewind, (REWIND, yeah it was a VHS) and press play. This would continue throughout the night. Even now, if I'm super upset for what ever reason, I'll put this on. It still calms me down.




2: How to Train Your Dragon

Most of my comfort films are newer, this one being from 2010. The sequel probably also falls under the category of comfort as well, but I'll just choose the first one for this list. It's just so cute, I love it! I love the human characters, and I love the dragons. It's so great. I can marathon this movie. I do marathon this movie. It's great background when I'm creating things.




3: The Princess Bride

As a kid, I would most often watch one of two movies - Dirty Dancing, and The Princess Bride. Dirty Dancing is still a movie I'll watch every now and then, but The Princess Bride is still a movie I watch pretty often. Every few months I think, more or less. It's just such a great movie. And Cary Elwes! Mmm. Also, look at how cool that title is on the 25th anniversary cover! LOVE IT.




4: Tangled

 Honestly, for this, it was between Enchanted and Tangled, but Tangled wins just by a bit. And really, it's probably because I own the widescreen of Tangled and the fullscreen of Enchanted. I hate fullscreen. Either way, they're both comfort movies. I love this movie. I have it on my phone so I can watch it if I'm on the train or something and don't have data. It's such a cute movie.



5: Pitch Perfect

This has become my current default movie. When I'm sitting there, wanting to watch something but don't know what... I turn this on. It replaced What's Your Number? in default movies. I don't know how many times I've watched this movie. Enough to bore the crap out of Boyfriend. Haaha. I don't care. It's my default movie, dag nabbit.




Those are my top five comfort movies! Another runner up is, well, Up. But I don't know where my copy of Up went! So I haven't watched it in a long while. Every single one of these top five movies I've watched in the last two months. ❤






Iggle Squiggle's 5 Fandom Friday

Thriftbooks experience #2, and also, my need to use Amazon

Helloooo, here again with another post about thriftbooks.com.

 I mentioned in my last thriftbooks post that I ordered a love story book for my iggle swap partner. Well, I ordered those in early February! And I didn't hear from my iggle swap partner until the 25th. From her, I learned she enjoyed paranormal romance.... and The Princess Bride, while many things, is not a paranormal romance. ROFL. *sad trumpet*

So, I went back to thriftbooks to pick up a book for her that actually fits the genre she likes. I decided to get the book Warm Bodies, by Isaac Marion. I think a zombie romance counts as a paranormal love story right? Heee.

Aaaaand then, just like last time, I decided I would also like a copy of Warm Bodies. I've only ever seen the movie, but I've been meaning to read the book. I wandered on to the site and ordered two copies - $4 each!

This time, both copies are fairly recent, so I didn't care which one I keep. I also noticed that, this time, they were being sent from two different places. One coming from Maryland, one from Washington. Opposite sides of the US! Haha.

I decided I would send the first book to get to me.

But alas! Within hours of my order on February 25th, I received an email stating they could not find one of the copies I'd ordered! They issued a refund for the book, so I went back to see if I could find another copy for around the same price. I couldn't. Soooo I ordered a copy for $5 on Amazon.

More Funko Pops!

A couple more Funkos for me!!

I picked up my first, and possible only, Dean funko.

FBI agent Dean. Hehe. I love Dean, but for some reason, the original Dean funko pop just doesn't do it for me. This little agent Dean is adorable though. So yes. I doubt I'll be picking up any version of Sam, and I'm also not too interested in Charlie's pop, which makes me sad because I love Charlie.


Next is Mrs. Potts and Chip!!

This one's been on my wishlist for a while, and I found it at BAM (bookstore) at the mall! HECK YEAH. When I saw it, I had to prevent myself from hiding it so I could come back to get it another day. lol. No need though, because there were two when I got there to buy it on Thursday. Woot woot!!


And finally, a Pocket Pop:

Discord!! I didn't know Discord was made in to a Pocket Pop, but I was super happy when I found him at Hot Topic! I love Discord!! ♥ ♥ ♥

Fangirling over Cary Elwes

A month later, here I am, blogging about my Valentine's day. Shows I keep on top of things, right? LOL.

So on Valentine's Day, Boyfriend and I went to see Cary Elwes. He was at a nearby spot for Anderson's Bookshop, signing his book, As You Wish. Boyfriend bought me a book so I can get a book signing ticket. I'd been wanting the book for months already, so I was super happy I hadn't gotten it yet!


Below is a bunch of pictures of mostly Cary, because Cary. ROFL. He's too cute. OH MY GOSH is he cute.

Wizard World Fan Fest Chicago

Happy Pi day!!

Today I thought I'd post a tiny bit more about Wizard World Fan Fest Chicago.

In case you missed it, I wrote a post on IGGPPC's +5 Charisma Blog. And I really was honest about how I felt on the con, so there's not much more to say... but there are some more pictures to share! I limited myself to a couple dozen on +5 Charisma.  I've got about 20 more pictures to share, plus pictures of my haul!


First, let's start with my camera:

When I blogged about what I bring to a convention, I had a picture of a camera in the image. It is the same brand as mine, but a stock photo. So this one is mine. It's 6 years old. Was a gift from my dad. And has been falling apart for a couple years now. It's the bottom, where the batteries go in. Gravity has been affecting that hatch, which was only held shut by tiny notches of plastic. Seriously, what I wouldn't give for a camera that utilizes metal for that battery section, or even for the battery to go in on the side or top. But yeah, those tiny notches broke and slowly got worse, to the point where no amount of any sort of tape was working to keep it shut. So I stopped using the camera.

But Fan Fest was upon us, and I committed to blogging about it on IGGPPC, and I didn't want to just have whatever I could take on my phone as pictures! So... I hot glued the battery hatch shut. Even then, it took a couple tries, because I was hot gluing smooth plastic to smooth plastic. To reinforce it, I also used red washi tape (seen in picture) and hot glued that over the hatch. I made sure to put in fresh batteries. The idea being I could always go in and use a craft blade to cut open the hot glue when I need to replace the batteries, then hot glue it shut all over again.


Turns out I don't need to do that anymore.

5 Fandom Friday - My Fictional BFF's

Interesting... I think this week means the fictional characters I would like to be best friends with, yes? OKAY!


My Fictional BFF's


1: Luna Lovegood

I feel like being friends with Luna would mean never having to worry for lack of conversation. She's an acceptable amount of weird for me. I would love to have her as a friend.





2: Tony Stark

Often times I have nothing to say. I even prefer to listen. I think Tony would have a lot to say, and I'd be totally fine with that. It'd be totally cool to be able to call Iron Man my BFF. Bah hahaha.




3: Giselle

I need more happy in my life, and Giselle is a happy being. She's also innocent and kind and everything I would love to have in a friend. I'd be fascinated to hear about her life in Andalasia, and it would be fun to hear a random tune she happens to start singing. lol




4: George Weasley

The Weasley twins were my very favorite characters from Harry Potter, heck yes I'd be George's best friend if given the chance! He's a fun guy and loves to laugh. I know he's lost Fred, but I also know Fred would have wanted George to keep being himself. I think I'd enjoy having George as a best friend.



5: Pinkie Pie

Again, I need more happy in my life. And this chick loves being happy and having sweets and throwing parties. I'm not a fan of too many people, but I imagine just being around Pinkie Pie would dramatically increase my mood for the better.


These were a lot simpler to think of than I thought it would be. An honorable mention: the entire main ensemble of Psych. Haha. :)


Iggle Squiggle's 5 Fandom Friday

New Funko Pops!

I picked two Funko Pops up at Fan Fest Chicago this weekend. I was looking for more, but couldn't find them at a reasonable enough price. Ah well, two is good!!


Red eyed Crowley

I knooooow... I just bought Crowley. But this guy was only $14 and since Hot Topic sells their Funkos at $12.50, it was an acceptable price for me! Plus, it's Crowley.



Jayne

JAYNE!! My second Firefly Funko Pop, and certainly not my last. I had originally hoped to pick up Wash too, but he sold just before I got there. Ah well! Next time. Hee. I love Jayne. ♥

Thriftbooks.com Quick (not so quick) Review or Look at these books

Note: This was my intended love story book for the iggle swap, but then I heard back from my partner, and found that this book didn't fit! Serves me right for jumping the gun and ordering early! LOL. Oh well, I'll keep the book as a backup to giveaway in the future. lol. 


So one of February's IGGPPC Swaps was a love story book swap. I decided to sign up for all of the swaps in February, so I sat there for a good long while, just thinking about what kind of book I would want to send to an iggle.

I'm actually a lover of sappy romance novels. I love how, no matter what, there's always a "and they all lived happily ever after" ending. That being said, I don't read them too often. They're great, but not priority books. Although sometimes I find myself needing to read a sappy romance, because soooo many books I read have sad endings or have characters I just can't get behind. And I need some cheering up. So enter sappy romance. I've only ever found a small handful of romance novels I didn't like. Therefore odds are I'll be grinning like an idiot with tears of joy by the end of a romance novel.

ANYHOO... I know I love romance novels, but I also know not everyone does. In fact, I feel like it's one of the most hated upon genres. So what do I send as a love story book? I thought of Nicholas Sparks, but then... I'm not that big a fan of him. I loved the first of his books I read - A Walk to Remember. But then, after reading a few more of his books, it started to feel... the same. Someone dies in almost all of his books. Sometimes it's a secondary character, sometimes it's a main character. And it gets tiring.

So I didn't want to send a book I probably wouldn't like! And now what???

The idea came to me as I was reading a chapter of As You Wish.

Why not The Princess Bride?

A quick search online showed some fairly reasonable prices, although with shipping it wasn't so great. As I searched though, I found an ache forming in my stomach.

I do not own a copy of The Princess Bride.

And I was afraid I might not want to part with the copy I end up buying...


So, I decided to halve my budget, and try and get two copies of The Princess Bride. One for me, and one for my swap partner.

And then I found thriftbooks.com.

This website has millions of used books with free shipping to the US!

And they had The Princess Bride!  Hoorah!!

5 Fandom Friday - Favorite Snacks/Drinks To Consume While Blogging

Snacks! YAAAAY!! SNACKAGE. Yum Yums!

Okay. Seriously speaking though, most often, I'm not munching on anything while blogging. I'm usually drinking tea or water, but not eating. On the rare occasions I do though... these are on the list.



Favorite Snacks/Drinks To Consume While Blogging

1: Tea
Of COURSE tea! It is my favorite to drink, but I have to make my serving a double or else I'll drink it too quickly and won't feel like getting back up to refill it. lol.

2: Munchos and Barbecue Sauce 
This is a snack that actually used to be my preferred lunch for a good chunk of my high school years. Munchos and barbecue sauce. *shrug* I got the craving for it again a couple years back, and it's become a more regular snack. Not too often, because I rarely remember to look for Munchos, but when I do, it's glorious.

3: Biscoff Cookie Spread
Sometimes I eat it on apples, sometimes on Biscoff cookies, but mostly, I just grab a spoonful and eat that slowly on its own. Mmmm. (I am eating this right now.)

4: Cereal
I'm a fan of munching on dry cereal. I have many faves.

5: Instant Ramen Noodles
Yeah, not healthy, but soooo good. And yeah, I'll set a bowl aside and type for a bit, then pick the bowl up and grab a tasty bite of noodles before putting it down again.






Iggle Squiggle's 5 Fandom Friday