Ember Costumes and Crafts

 Merry Christmas! We did Christmas photos early in December, and I'm so glad we did because this season has been BUSY! Especially this past week which involved a water leak in our house and no hot water for the past three days, three kids with the flu, and of course Christmas! Luckily the illnesses didn't strike until the day after Christmas, so we all got to enjoy presents and Christmas Dinner and family time. It was a great day! Hope ya'll's holidays are awesome! Love from Angela and the fam! The best of the almost 200 photos I took that day: 

What I'm Reading Binti by Nnedi Okorafor This novella was AMAZING and well deserving of it's Nebula/Hugo wins! More happened in the first 30 pages of this book than in the entireity of some of the Wheel of Time books. (Joking! Kinda...) I'm not going to give too much away, it's super short and I recommend you just read it, but the culture, the aliens, and the technology were all very cool and interesting twists on the normal sci-fi experience. Read it! Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor This one was as terrible as the first one was good. I was cringing through the entire thing and wondering why on Earth the author was dragging us through so much pointless teen angst. Even the sci-fi elements that were so cool and interesting in the first book became boringly over explained in this one. Why???? I pushed through in the hope that the third one would be better, and because the first one was so good, and because it was so short. Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okora...

This is so late, I know. But I'm posting what I have anyway because...why not? :) What I'm Reading Empress of Forever  by Max Gladstone Between the existential panic attacks and the abstract nature of the universe and the main character not jibing with me...I did not like this one! That's not to say it wasn't a good book. It had plenty of great parts and some really interesting characters. I especially liked Songe and her whole arc. I also really enjoyed the writing, the descriptions were very abstract and different from most sci-fi. It was the very opposite of hard sci-fi to the point of being almost whimsical. However,s those abstract descriptions did sometimes make the story hard to follow and the places difficult for me to imagine. I also dislike the main character, Viv, and was annoyed when the author described her in ways that didn't match her actions or actual personality in the story. In fact, most of her backstory didn't seem to match up with t...

Rosemary as Sailor Moon!!!! 😍😍😍 So originally I was going to just make a cute tutu for her because I have been so busy this fall, but the more I started making the more excited and extra I got, and I couldn't stop and before I knew it I had made this extremely intricate and accurate Sailor Moon costume for my 2 year old who doesn't even know who Sailor Moon is. I mean, I showed her the intro song from the old Sailor Moon R series and she loved that, but she's still in the Sesame Street and Daniel Tiger viewing age...but I'm glad I did it! It reminds me how much I miss making legit cosplays and costumes and stuff. Someday, someday. My kids won't always have me at a -14.  The outfit is made from a plain white gerber onesie with the sailor collar (blue broadcloth and white ribbon) sewed only onto the back edge. In the front it velcroes together and onto the onesie. This is because toddler heads are really big and I wouldn't be able to ge...

Ya'll...I am so behind on posting! I meant this to go up a month ago! And I haven't finished writing up any of the Halloween Costumes! And I also haven't finished writing my October watching/reading/playing post! And I have three baby quilts and some renfair stuff to finish this month! I'm also working on a video that John and I made! I'm excited, but definitely a little swamped right now!  So anyway.... I'm a big Sailor Moon fan and I have been since I was a little girl! My first exposure to it was actually the Manga, which I saw at a local Austin Comic Book Shop when accompanying my dad and uncle on their monthly comics and cards shopping trips. It was hanging in on a rack beside our usual Ninja Turtles and Duck Tales reads, but it had GIRL super heroes with long hair and cute dresses! I bought it and was hooked, and when the show aired in the late 90's in the U.S., I ate that up too! I even made a Sailor Jupiter outfit for myself back in college wi...

I did a lot of sewing and costume crafting this month! Details to come and better pictures, but I have to get ready for trick-or-treating tonight!

WOW this is late! I usually type this throughout the month as I read/play/watch, and then add pics and formatting at the end and post it, but October is kicking my butt! I have about 40 hours of sewing to do in the next few weeks and only about 10 free hours in which to sew...Halloween is like the Nanowrimo of the Costuming World! Luckily this means I will have lots of cool little projects to show off in the coming month, as I finish and take pics and write the posts for them...but it means that my regular posting schedule is thrown way out of whack! Anyway, I guess this is a cliff notes version of my September Reading/Watching/Playing post! What I'm reading The Red Threads of Fortune by JY Yang This was terrible. It had so much potential, but it didn't click with me. The prose was nice enough, but not very explicit (I didn't realize that the "raptors" she was using as scouts were actual dinosaurs rather than unspecified birds of prey until reading a review-...