Things That Make You Go Oooooo (August 2013)

August is over, I'm another year older but still as young and foolish as ever. This summer has been all about friendships and it's made me realise that I'm not completely alone that I do have some pretty awesome people in my life and that they're constantly inspiring me and bring fun to my life even if they live on the other side of the globe. It's back to the grind in September but I'll still be spending all the free time I have crafting, playing dress up and getting myself one step closer to the dream life, so here are some of my favourite inspiration links from this month...

♥ The CardCuff - This is such a neat little design and perfect for anyone like me who spends far too long fumbling in their bag for things, there's only a few days left so be sure to check it out and get your Cuff on!

♥ 5 Tips To Stop Making Comparisons and Stop Feeling Bad About Yourself

♥ You won't See it until you Believe it - Dreams will never be achieved unless you put some self belief into them, once you start to see them as a possibility achieving them becomes easier.

♥ Staying Motivated to Blog - Elizabeth gives some awesome tips on how she keeps motivated to blog, most of these tips are the same ones I would advise to and if blogging seems like a chore to you then maybe a break is all you need.

♥ How to Be Your Own Best Marketing Tool

♥ 23 Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts - If you're looking for new readers and ways to increase your traffic then check out these simple tips and tricks, all of them are definitely doable and a great way to get those new blogs noticed.

♥ Rock n Roll Bride for Crown and Glory - Possibly one of the best collabs EVER! There is not a single piece of this collection I would not buy or wear I LOVE IT!

♥ I've Known One of My Best Friends for 6 Years & I'm Not Entirely Sure If He's Real!

♥ Networking Like a Pro - Some really useful tips here so break out of that comfort zone and get yourself out there.

♥ Study Shows Shopping Can Make You Lonelier - What do you guys think? I used to do this all the time but now I'm much more likely to wait and just go in a "shopping treat binge" once a year when I feel I've earned it.

♥ The Truth

♥ Stuff We Don't Need: 5 Reasons Why It Doesn't Lead To Happiness - I've been going a bit crazy over stuff since Comic Con and now I'm having that overwhelming feeling so it's time for a clearout!

♥ 22 Things Happy People Do Differently - Happiness can be a choice and I chose happiness, these are some easy to follow tip which will make like that little bit easier and more full of joy.

♥ Getting Your Family On Board With Life Changes

♥ 8 Tips for Editing Your Life that Work for Any Budget - Some interesting tips here if you're looking to minimise your life although maybe don't get of all your books, books can be beautiful things.

♥ What Colour Is Your Underwear? - Because sometimes you just need to put on a pair of sparkly knickers to make your day a little bit more awesome!

♥ You Don't Need to Go Back to School

♥ Fall In Love, Love Deeply - Love is work and learning to love oneself and open your heart is one of the hardest yet most rewarding things you can do.

♥ DIY: Fruit Soled Shoes - Summer is not quite over yet and this is such a simple idea that would at a touch of colour to those boring old shoes.

♥ Surprising Beauty Tools That You Probably Already Have at Your Desk

♥ DIY Dinosaur Bag - So awesome, I just want to turn a bunch of plushies into cute bags now!

Friendships & Magic

Cate

xoxo

SDCC: Cosplay, Lego & Random Encounters

I'm no stranger to being asked at cons who/what I am wearing and embarrassingly giving the reply "This is just how I dress" so I thought for a change I would actually go in costume and where better to do my first actual cosplay than San Diego Comic Con. I only recently started reading Justice League Dark so when I saw this image of my girl Zatanna I fell in love and just had cosplay as her!

I did a Zatanna "costume" a long time ago for a Halloween party I went to but it was more inspired so this time I wanted to get the look as close as possible in the short time I had to prepare and luckily for me Zee and I seem to have a similar tastes in clothes so that was the 80% of the challenge already completed.

Not too bad for my first attempt although notes for next time invest in a better hat that actually fits my child-sized head and to get myself blue contact lenses that actually look blue because the FreshLook ones did nothing to change my eye colour. Unfortunately unless you find any random ones online these are the best photos I have of my full costume as I was so busy that day I didn't get a chance to take better ones DOH!

Friday was pretty much Game of Thrones day for me but that really does deserve a whole post of its own so before I go into that craziness I'll talk about some of the cool things you could see in and around the Convention center.

Lego was just pure mayhem the whole weekend so I never got a chance to shop there or try and get one of their exclusive mini-figs but they had a whole bunch of awesome sculptures inside and outside the con to look at my favourite being the life-sized version of Bag End, I totally wanna build myself a house out of Lego to live in now!

What can I say about Sideshow Collectables but WOW I can't believe I've never seen these before. I really need some of those Hot Toys figures in my life because they are so beautiful and so realistic if I had the cash and the room in my suitcase I would have bought that 60's Batman set right there and then!

Assassin's Creed decked out a whole pirate ship for Comic Con, although when I passed it the queue was long so I didn't bother checking it out, the ship they used was The Star of India which is normally docked just outside of the hotel we're staying in, it's a pretty awesome looking ship to so maybe next time I'm in San Diego I'll check it out.

Whilst wandering around the exhibition hall found myself trapped in a sea of people, looked over and there was David Boreanaz doing a signing for Bones, I was SUPER excited because Angel is quite possibly one of my favourite TV shows ever, I mean I was and possibly still am obsessed, I even have an Angel puppet!

And that wasn't my only random sighting at Comic Con I happened to pass Brent Spiner taking photos of people on preview night, Lou Ferrigno browsing a comic stall and a couple Game of Thrones people but more on that coming soon...

Super Hugs & Superheroes

Cate

xoxo

Happy Birthday to Me

It's the 22nd of August which means today is my birthday so I just wanted to check in to say a big thank you to you guys for supporting me and reading this blog. Massive hugs to anyone who has bought stuff from my Etsy and Storenvy as it means so much to me and if you bought me presents from my wishlist you are amazing thank you so much!

Birthdays used to be a time of fear and dread for me, getting older can be scary but I've realised it doesn't matter how old you are, age is just a number and as long as you're happy and enjoying life who is anyone else to judge.

Birthdays are all about having fun with the people you love so my wish today is for you to treat yourself to something special and enjoy 20% off all purchases in my Etsy Shop for the rest of the month with the code BIRTHDAY, thank you all again for your continued support and I hope you all have as great a day as I'm having today.

Cuddles & Cake

Cate

xoxo

SDCC: Fannibals, Flower Crowns & The Hannibal Pannibal!!!

Whilst waiting in line to get into 6A a Will Graham cosplayer walked past me in a flower crown, how flower crowns have become synonymous with Hannibal I do not know but it's hilarious and I love it! I love my flower crowns and I love this show, weirdly enough this happened to be the one day I wasn't wearing a flower crown and for the past year this is how I've been keeping them organised.... it must be fate!

I spoke briefly back in May about how I liked the show and after seeing the whole of the first series I'm now obsessed, it's really an amazing show so beautifully captured, meaningful and so amazingly done if a bit gorey but if you haven't seen it yet GO WATCH IT so anyway onto the panel I'd been waiting all day to see.

Aaron Abrams came of stage first and introduced us to a video montage of the first season then disappeared, it would seem that his character wasn't important enough to be part of the panel although they did invite him to the Nerd HQ one, sorry Aaron maybe next year right?

Bryan Fuller is quite possibly the biggest "Fannibal" ever, I loved his enthusiasm, his smile and way he speaks to the fans and it was such a great moment when he put on that flower crown, I mean can you believe this is the same guy who made Pushing Daisies? Yeah, kinda blew my mind to but when I think about it it makes perfect sense as both shows are full of beautiful visual symbolism and deal with a guy with a terrible affliction that helps him solve mysterious deaths.

As for Hugh Dancy could this guy be any cuter? He looked so excited and overwhelmed by the fans response to him it was adorable and definitely the highlight of this panel for me is the look of delight on his face when my friend Violet gave him a Will Graham plushie she had made for him complete with flower crown!

 

There's nothing more awesome than seeing your friends dreams come true, I'm not quite sure who was more excited me at that point me or her but it was definitely the start of even more awesome Comic Con happenings for us!

Then to end the panel they showed us a hilarious blooper reel, which I can't wait to watch in full when the DVD comes out and if that wasn't enough of a treat every single person who attended the panel got a special poster of one of Hannibal's drawings so all in all an AWESOME panel and definitely worth the all day wait!

Next up cosplay, the exhibitions hall, outside events, random encounters and Game of Thrones!

Antlers & Flower Crowns

Cate

xoxo

Pssst if you love the little Will Graham plushie my friend Violet made be sure to check out her gallery and buy one for yourself!

Inspirational Quotes #41

"Don’t make fashion own you, but decide what you are, what you want to express by the way you dress & the way you live."
- Gianni Versace

SDCC: Failed Plans, More Swag & Camping in 6A

Thursday I had planned to pick up all my goodies, finish shopping then hit Ballroom 20 for the Sherlock, X-Files & Brave New Warriors panel then head on over to 6A for the Hannibal panel or "Pannibal" as they were calling it, however at about 6am I was seeing tweets that there were already over 1000 people in line for Ballroom 20 and most had been camping overnight for the X-files!

So by the time I hit the Convention Center around 8am the line was ridiculous! I decided to give Ballroom 20 a miss, take my time shopping and get that out of the way so I can enjoy the rest of the con. Marvel was my first stop with my "fast-pass" to pick up all my goodies as well as a free con exclusive Captain America poster and tickets to the Agent Carter screening which in my Friday Game of Thrones delirium (more on that soon) I totally forgot about!

I had my first celebrity spotting on the way back from picking up my Batusi Batman, Rob Benedict AKA Chuck from Supernatural which if you know me I'm also obsessed with, the photo is terrible of course because I was having a mini freak out and fumbling with all the huge bags of swag in my hands.

By around midday my feet were already tired from standing in line with my giant swag bags so I decided to grab a large Frappuccino from Starbucks and camp out in 6A until the "Pannibal" started, luckily there were quite a few interesting things going on in there before it started so that kept me amused.

I sat through several panels in 6A before Hannibal the first being about Hanna-Barbera which showed us some old skool clips from the cartoons which was fun, the second was called "Ode to Nerds" which included one of my favourite authors Chuck Palahnuik on the panel who announced that there will be a Fight Club sequel in comic book form which I'm super excited about! Then James Spader showed up with the pilot for his new show The Blacklist which was kinda Silence of the Lambs meets The Following nothing very original although James Spader's character was kinda cool.

Robert Kirkman has to be one of my new favourite human beings, I loved his panel despite the fact that I've never read a single issue of The Walking Dead and was completely confused at times about who the characters are and what was going on (a tiger what!?) but after seeing his panel I will most definitely be reading it as I loved his sense of humour and I love the show, in fact you all should watch the panel and see his awesomeness but be warned there a spoilers!

After a very boring "Unofficial" Hobbit panel which I spent the majority of fiddling with my phone trying to get us tickets for the Nerd HQ Hannibal panel (no luck boooo!) it was finally time for Hannibal to take the stage but I think that deserves a whole post of its own so stay tuned!

Zombies & Superheroes

Cate

xoxo

My August Birthday Wishlist

It's my birthday this month and I have to say I'm really excited about it! I'm normally quite low-key about my birthdays but this year I've decided I want to do all the fun things I can and treat myself to some awesome presents to so here are just a few things I would love to get for my birthday.

Game of Thrones Funko Figures

Comic Con was a big Funko fail for me every time I got to the Funko booth the line was closed and when I did eventually get in there almost everything was sold out (boooo!) so no Comic Con Exclusive Ned Stark for me but I will happily settle for any of the other Starks, especially Jon Snow I need that cute little Jon Snow in my life!

Black Milk Star Wars Manga Print

No wishlist is complete without some Black Milk, I really want to get myself a dress from there sometime as their swimsuits and leggings fit me so well and I adore this Star wars comic print design so much. I'm also kinda kicking myself that I didn't get these Marvel leggings whilst I was in the US, I mean one can never have too much comic book print in their wardrobe!

Hot Toys The Avengers Captain America

Godamn Comic Con and all its cool stuff now I have a new obsession in Hot Toys figures which are made of 100% pure awesome, they're so realistic and so detailed and I have to admit not as expensive as I thought they would be (although out of my price range) and of course I'm totally in love with "The Avengers" version of Cap as this is probably my favourite costume of his so far but I love the "Rescue" version to, yep so if anyone wants to buy a dozen Direscarves so I can buy this it would be much appreciated *wink*

Special Edition Animal Crossing 3DS XL

Animal Crossing was my favourite game back in the day I was so addicted to it and spent all night fishing and digging up fossils for my little town. Unfortunately I got rid of my DS a few years ago and have not really played any games for a long time and a big part of me misses gaming (yet another side effect of Comic Con) so I would love to get myself a new DS and get back into gaming again.

Winged Running Shoes

Now I'm trying being healthy and working out a lot I want to get myself a cool pair of workout shoes and these beauties happened to catch my eye on eBay and they would totally match my superhero workout wardrobe to because if there's one thing that gets me motivated to workout it's Superheroes!

LEGO!!!

I've loved Lego my whole life but OMG is it me or has it just become more awesome lately!? I get so excited everytime I visit the Lego shop it's ridiculous I want pretty much the whole Lord of the Rings/Hobbit collection and the DC collection is pretty awesome to but those sets can kinda be on the pricey side so I will happily settle for some Lego keychains.

What's on your birthday wishlist? Be sure to let me know in the comments!

Love & Glitter

Cate

xoxo