If there’s one thing I’m looking forward to with attending conventions this year, it’s planning a new cosplay. It’s been a while since I have spent months preparing a new cosplay for a con. I usually figure something out last minute and it looks okay, but I’d rather have something ready to go. I have two big cons that I’m attending in March: Planet Comic Con and C2E2. This gives me about four full weeks to get everything ordered and ready. I wanted to share how I get inspiration for cosplay and the steps that I take to have the cosplay ready.

The first thing that I like to do is go to Pinterest. I have a cosplay board where I will pin cosplays that I like or that I want to complete someday. I have recently gone through my board and deleted any pins of cosplays that I’m not interested in. This is to help consolidate what types of cosplays I want to complete and when. Once I did this, I start searching different fandoms or characters to get an idea of what could be done versus what might be too complicated. I don’t cosplay professionally, it’s more of a hobby, so I’m not interested in doing any body paint or any massive art project for a cosplay. Once I get a few ideas, I have to figure out how to purchase or put together the look.

I’m not sure why I didn’t do this earlier, but I created an Amazon wishlist titled “Cosplay”. This is where I have been saving clothes, wigs, jewelry, or anything else I need to cosplay a character. I created this wishlist a few days ago and it’s helped to keep me organized. With cosplay materials, it can take weeks to ship on Amazon, so if I can have the items saved to order ahead of time, that would be ideal. I have two cosplays saved in my Amazon wishlist and I plan to order some of those items this week.

This leads me to the two cosplays I’m leaning towards. The first is Harley Quinn from The Suicide Squad specifically the red poofy dress with the combat boots. Harley Quinn is one of my favorite characters to cosplay as because she has so many different styles throughout her appearance in video games, comics, and movies. The red poofy dress is such an aesthetic and it fits Harley’s personality. The second cosplay I’m thinking about is a splicer from Bioshock. Splicers are enemies with wrenches or a fish hook that attack you throughout the game.

I’m excited to start putting more of my energy into cosplay! It makes me look forward to future conventions because I will have a new cosplay ready to go.

Football isn’t necessarily my favorite sport to watch. I’m personally more of a baseball fan with my devotion to the Minnesota Twins. To be fair, I have never been to an NFL Football game at any major stadium. One of my coworkers was selling her tickets to the Saturday, December 17th Vikings game versus The Colts. I jumped at the chance to see The Vikings live because I haven’t seen the new US Bank Stadium. Watching this game in person was incredible especially because The Minnesota Vikings broke an NFL record.

As the game started, The Vikings were having a rough time. At halftime, the score was 33-0 with The Vikings not being able to score anything. Fans were pissed! Our seats were in the season ticket holders section and there was a lot of swearing and frustration that could be heard. Being in this section was pretty entertaining. There was someone doing commentary in the back row of our section and his comments made us all laugh.

As the second half progressed, the same commentator would say “4 touchdowns to win” or “3 touchdowns to win”. Throughout the game, The Vikings kept scoring. The game started with “there’s no way The Vikings can come back from this” to “The Vikings have a chance.” The energy in the stadium increased as The Vikings kept scoring. Eventually, it got to the point where The Vikings scored a touchdown and the score was 36-34. The Vikings needed the two-point conversion to tie the game. There was silence in the stadium as we all watched what would happen. The Vikings did it and everyone cheered. It was time to move the game into overtime.

At this point, I’m sweaty and my heart is beating out of my chest. My Fit Bit recorded this as a workout for the day; that’s how energized I was. Overtime began and The Vikings won the coin toss. Winning the coin toss in overtime is crucial because if you score first, you win. However, The Vikings didn’t score when they had the ball. This meant The Colts had a chance to score. The Vikings stopped them and we got the ball back. At this point, fans are absolutely jumping up from their seats and standing to watch the game.

The Vikings kept moving the ball down the field which put them in field goal range. This was it. If The Vikings kicker made this field goal, we would win the game. If the kicker missed, The Colts would have another chance and that could cost us the game. It was maddening watching this play out, but then we saw the ball soar through the yellow goalposts. It was on the big screen at US Bank Stadium that we won! I was cheering and screaming in excitement. Fans in our row came over to high-five us. I couldn’t believe it! I couldn’t believe that I was at a game where The Vikings came back from 0 to win the game in overtime. I didn’t realize it was an NFL record until the announcers stated this in their commentary. On top of that, The Vikings won the NFC North Championship which meant that The Vikings were at the top of their division. This hasn’t happened since 2017.

As a side note, I wanted to know what record we surpassed. In 1993, The Houston Oilers came back to win the game in a 32-point comeback.

I’m in awe. I can’t believe I was at this game. This is something I will never forget.

November was such a busy month for me! For me, that’s pretty unusual since I’m normally busy during the peak Fall season i.e. September – October. Last month, one of my best friends got married and I was so happy to be included in all of the festivities. I had this post in my draft for a while because I was waiting for the photos to come back and they are such beautiful pictures.

The photos were taken at a hotel in downtown Minneapolis, so we had the skyline in the background. When we took this photo, it was 32 degrees out, so we all were shivering next to each other. Photos always manage to tell a story and bring back lovely memories.

Throughout my blog posts, I tend to repeat myself every now and then. One of the things that I will continue to say is that I’m so fortunate to have my friends. My friendships have carried through my teenage years, through college, and now as we continue on into our adult lives. New friends have been added to the mix and some friends I have grown apart from. With all of that being said, I have a good group of friends and I couldn’t imagine my life without them.

With 2022 coming to a close, I’m already prepping my end-of-year blog posts. One thing I noticed right away was I was only able to attend one convention which is pretty low for me. I wanted to make conventions more of a priority this year, so I have started planning out 2023 and which conventions I could more than likely attend. I wanted to share a portion of my convention schedule along with conventions that I have on my radar, but I haven’t confirmed just yet.

The two conventions I know that I will for sure be attending are C2E2 and Plant Comic Con. C2E2 is a convention that I attend every year as one of my friends from college lives outside of Chicago. Luckily she lets me stay with her, so I don’t need to pay for a hotel. I end up taking transportation to downtown Chicago and it’s so slick! C2E2 has so much going on and there’s something for everyone with this convention. Planet Comic Con is more of an every-other-year convention. The last time I went to Planet Comic Con was last year as it was my first convention since the Covid-19 pandemic. I love Kansas City, it’s one of my favorite cities in the US to visit. My cousin still lives outside of the city and I’m able to stay with him. I’m fortunate to have family and friends outside of Minnesota to stay with which makes traveling for a convention much cheaper.

Besides C2E2 and Planet Comic Con, I want to get back to attending Convergence. Convergence will always have a special place in my heart because it’s the first convention I have ever attended. The last time I went was in 2019 before the pandemic. If I were to attend Convergence this year, it will probably look a little different. Some of my convention friends who I would meet up with have moved away or are planning to attend another convention on the same weekend. It probably won’t make a difference to me whatsoever because I always manage to have fun at Convergence.

Finally, I wanted to share a few conventions that are on my radar to attend, but they may not happen in 2023 due to other travel plans. The first convention is Gen Con. My first Gen Con was in 2019 and I was completely mesmerized. There were so many booths in the vendor area and there was so much going on in downtown Indianapolis. Attending Gen Con was easily one of my favorite memories of 2019. I hope to get back to Gen Con soon! Besides Gen Con, I have Siouxpercon as a potential convention to attend. Sioux Falls, South Dakota isn’t too far of a drive, so I don’t suspect this to be an expensive trip. I know a few people who tabled at Siouxpercon and they said it was a good convention.

Attending conventions will always be a blast. I love sharing my interests with other people, cosplaying, and going to panels. Let me know in the comments section if you are going to any conventions in 2023!

I finally made it to my first convention of the year! I try to make it to a few conventions every year, but I quickly realized that my schedule was packed. I had Twin Cities Con on my radar for this year and I was happy to have been able to attend on Friday. I tabled at the Twin Cities Geek booth which is the online magazine I occasionally write for. Twin Cities Con was one of the most organized conventions I have ever been to especially since this is only the second year for the convention.

Prior to Twin Cities Con, there were several bigger conventions that tried to move into the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. However, these conventions were focused on profit and driving away the local community. Each convention never stayed longer than two years. With Twin Cities Con, there was more partnership with the community. One of the runners of Twin Cities Con talked to the local cosplay community to get a gauge for what weekends Twin Cities Con would work for everyone. With Twin Cities Con happening every November, it doesn’t run into some of the local conventions in the summer. It’s neat that there was a lot of thought put into this convention.

As far as cosplay, I always wait till the last minute. I went through all of my previous Halloween costumes and ended up settling on a Jessica Jones cosplay. I already had the leather jacket, the light jeans, and the combat boots. All I needed was the black gloves and the white t-shirt which I found at Target the night before. It was such a quick cosplay and I did get recognized which is always fun. I do wish I would have thought more about what I wanted to cosplay as. I have an orange wig sitting in my closet that I haven’t been able to wear yet.

Twin Cities Con was a blast to attend. I’m excited to see this convention grow. Minneapolis and Saint Paul need a bigger convention that’s similar to a C2E2 in Chicago and I think Twin Cities Con can get there.

I love weddings. With all the despair going on in the world, weddings are positive and light. My aunt got married last weekend and I couldn’t be happier. This ceremony was smaller which honestly, I think smaller weddings are more enjoyable. I felt that I could actually congratulate the bride and talk to people on a smaller scale. After the wedding, we went out to an intimate dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. It was so fun to be able to celebrate their marriage.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but me and my husband bought a house! We spent all last weekend moving our stuff with the help of friends and family willing to take the time to assist. It’s been a process of unpacking and deciding where everything is going in our new space. While living in an apartment worked for a while, it always felt temporary. This is the house that me and my husband plan on living in for many years to come.

Our house hunt started shortly after our trip to Austin. Me and my husband talked about what’s next for us this year and my husband brought up the idea of starting the process of buying a house. He was looking forward to the idea of making our house a home and putting our money into something that’s a long-term investment. Shortly after this conversation, we proceeded with the next steps including partnering with a realtor.

Our house search in a lot of ways was pretty organized. We knew exactly which area of the Twin Cities we wanted to live which helped narrow down our search. We devoted a full day to walk through six homes back to back. From there, we found a house that we loved which led to us putting in our offer. Our offer was accepted the next day. I remember my heart felt like it was going to explode out of my chest when our realtor told us that our offer was accepted.

From there, it was a lot of paperwork to fill out and different things that needed to be aligned. The process itself moved fairly quickly. I’m grateful to my husband who took on a lot of the work and made this process a lot easier to handle.

2022 has been a jam-packed year and I’m thrilled to add geek elements to our home.

I took a little bit of a writing break which was quite refreshing. During this time, I went with my husband’s family on a short trip to Door County, Wisconsin. Door County is a county in Wisconsin that consists of several towns that are right along the water. Green Bay is on the left side of Door County and Lake Michigan is on the right. If you look at a Wisconsin state map, there’s a portion of Wisconsin that sticks out and that’s where Door County is. I have never been to Door County before and I was stunned by how beautiful this portion of Wisconsin is.

Everyone who has been to Door County would easily say it’s the most beautiful portion of the state. We would walk through all of these bay towns and it felt like I was on the East Coast. There were all these restaurants, coffee shops, and small businesses that bordered the water. I found myself enjoying walking and taking in all the scenery. Walking and hiking in general are one of my favorite forms of exercise and Door County has plenty to offer.

Door County is one of the best places to visit in the Fall. As my husband and I drove up to Door County, we saw several billboards for a winery that made Halloween wines. Door County Peninsula Winery has three specialty wines that they make every Halloween. When we went to their indoor space, they had it all decked out in Halloween decorations. It made the experience more fun. Everywhere we went in Door County seemed to have some sort of Halloween decoration hung up. Besides visiting various distilleries and wineries, there are also plenty of apple orchards and barns to visit that sold local homemade goods. No matter where we went, each place was so lively.

Visiting Door County was a perfect, local trip and I’m glad I could take a mini break to unwind and come back feeling recharged. As far as vacations, this is my last big trip of the year. I have a friend getting married next month and with the holidays coming up quickly, I probably won’t have the time to commit to traveling anywhere else. Door County was exactly what I needed and now I’m even more excited for Halloween.

I last went to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival in 2019 or pre-pandemic. I was planning to attend in 2021, but wedding plans quickly booked my weekends. I wanted to make it a priority to attend this year. I’m so glad I was able to go.

Normally, we always drive to Ren Fest, but this year we decided to take the bus. There’s a bus that will do drop-offs at the entrance. It’s well known that Ren Fest has extremely long wait times to get into the fairgrounds. By long, I mean you could easily be waiting 2+ hours in order to park a car. Once I found out the bus was an option, I kick myself as to why I didn’t do this years ago. It was so slick. There were times that the bus had to wait, but once we got closer, there was a bus line that was created, so we could bypass a lot of the car lines. I think it took 20-30 minutes to get there versus hours waiting in a car.

In previous years, we try to go towards the middle of September as it’s supposed to be cooler. However, the weekend we went, it was 80 degrees! It was nice to not be cold, but it messed with the tradition. I used to always order soup in a bread bowl, but it was too hot. I opted for potato skins, chicken fajita, and a chicken wrap for dinner. I did stick with the apple cider float which I still love. It’s the perfect Fall beverage.

This year, I decided to wear a full costume! I decided to go with a pirate look. I rented my costume from Royal Fashions Costume Emporium which I have been doing since 2018 except I would always rent for a convention and not for Ren Fest. Renting a costume is great because it’s cheap and I don’t have to store it anywhere. It was a little bit hot, so I ended up not wearing my red pirate jacket as I really didn’t want to overheat. Wearing a costume for Ren Fest is so fun and I plan on doing this every year going forward.

We spent six full hours at Ren Fest which included seeing two live shows, shopping, and walking around. I missed going to Ren Fest, so I’m happy that I was able to go this year.