Apple pie waffles

This past Friday was Chads birthday. He tells me "it's just another day" and he also doesn't like cake, he isn't a party person and he has everything he could want or need. I am limited. 

Now, as much as he isn't into sweets, he does love apple pie. 

This is my answer to all of that. 

Apple pie waffles. 

Warm fluffy waffles topped with Apple pie filling, cinnamon sugar and vanilla ice cream. 

Did I mention this was breakfast??

I used a pretty standard waffle recipe (that I found on Pinterest!!) and added cinnamon to it. We have a babycakes waffle stick maker and I love it! It makes the cutest little waffles. 

For the topping, I had to consult with someone who is better at cooking than I am. My mama! She told me to put apples, butter, brown sugar and cinnamon in a pan and cook it down, so that is what I did. I left the stove on a low heat to do its thing while I made the waffle batter. 

Once the apples were soft and the syrup was all gooey and thick and delicious looking I made the waffles. 

Waffles got buttered and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Top that with the apples and add a scoop of vanilla ice cream. 

It was so good. It could probably eat this everyday. I probably shouldn't though since I like when my clothes actually fit. 

I highly recommend you try this. Now preferably. You know you want to!

Let me know if you do!

Happy birthday, Chad!

xoxo

Animethon 21

This was my first time being at Animethon and it was different than I expected. A lot of the schedule was just different Anime shows that people could go watch. Other than that, there were panels to listen in on, a fashion show, demonstrations and the costume contests. I think it had the tiniest vendor hall ever as well. 

Something else I noticed, far more people were dressed up than not. The people in general seemed to be different than the comic con crowd. An interesting observation. 

I think we spent even less time than normal in panels and never stayed for the full days. Being on a relatively small campus compared to an events centre limits how much there is to do and how many times we wanted to walk the same hallways. 

The few things we did see where great though. The costume competition was both better and worse than the ones I'm used to. All the competitors did skits on stage in costume which I loved, but I felt like I barely new who any characters were. 

I also watched a Lolita fashion show which was a lot of fun and may or may not be my current obsession now. 

We went to a panel about prop and armor making materials/techniques as well, but I didn't love that. She hadn't worked with 2/3 of the materials she was talking about so it didn't really tell me much. 

As you would have seen by now, I wore a brand new costume to the event. Armoured Sailor Neptune. I'm so please with how well it turned out and how durable and wearable it was. It took a bit of thinking and some on site adjusting but it was generally a big success. 

I've been making it since May and I only just finished it the day before Animethon. That being said, I never had a chance for a trial wear before hand. Everything stayed as it was meant to, no damage was done to it at the show and very little discomfort for me throughout the 2 days I wore it. 

The wrist guards were painful because of where they sat, the wig was great, expect by the end of the day it started to feel a bit sore. The tiara was attached to my face with eyelash glue. That was such a good idea, in theory, until I realized it was glued in my hairline. Bye bye baby hairs. I also wore heels for the first half of day 1 but changed before they could do any damage. And lastly, the body armor was very comfortable to wear, but damn near impossible to sit in. It has no bend or flex at all and leaves very little range of movement. That only affected me in a few small ways; 1. No bending, only squatting down. (Don't drop anything!) 2. Bathroom.. Everything is fine and well until you have to re-dress yourself and have no assistant. The body suit I was wearing had snaps. So smart. Without them I would have had to take EVERYTHING off, with them however, I found it near impossible to do up. No range of movement or bending, remember. 3. Sitting was all but out of the question. The armor is to long to allow for comfortable sitting and because I physically couldn't bend or stretch or hunch at all, I had to sit up realistically straight and then the armor was cutting into my thighs. 

I realize now that I said "very little discomfort" and then proceeded to write an entire paragraph about discomforts it caused me, but it really wasn't TO bad. 

And that's about all I have to say. Here are a few of my favorite costumes I saw thoughout the weekend. 

Enjoy!

xoxo

A day in my cosplay life

I wanted to make a bit of a different post for this one. I take so many pictures all the time anyway that I figured capturing the extras would make a fun post. This is a day in my cosplay life. 

Get up to early and start the prep! Wash face, brush teeth, have breakfast. Normal things. 

This day was a bit different considering I would be wearing a wig. 2 tight French braids, twisted and pinned to make my hair as flat as possible. No one likes a conehead inside a wig. 

The white straps are part of the costume. I didn't want to put it on and pull the wig or ruin my makeup, also didn't want to get makeup on the white so I kept the black top over it. 

Put the wig cap on to make extra sure that everything stays in place. Attractive, I know. 

First layer of makeup. Definitely wear more makeup than an average day. Anime characters don't have imperfections, freckles, redness, etc...

Second layer of makeup. And no, I didn't get extremely tanned from one photo to the next, I assume the sun went behind a cloud..

Green eyebrows to match the wig, lots more makeup, false lashes. 

Finished my makeup and put the wig on. Hairspray. A lot. 

Glued the tiara to my face using lash glue. 

Super clever, in theory. 

Put on the chocker. 

On the first day I wore everything to the event. It was extremely uncomfortable in the car. Day 2 I put the armour on at the event. 

Everything is made by hand, by me. The only exception is the shoes and white body suit under the armour. 

And so the day begins. Take pictures. 

See as much as possible. Lots of walking. 

Brave the big scary lines. An unfortunate downfall of any convention or show. There are always lines to wait in. 

More pictures. It's always fun to take pictures with other cosplayers, especially if they are from the same show, game, movie, etc.. 

I take more pictures of other people than I do with them though. This was my absolute favorite costume over the weekend. 

Another unfortunate downside. Costumes aren't necessarily very comfortable. This particular one for example left me with slightly bruised wrists, a very sore forehead, and a sore back because I was unable to bend. The fact that i wore heels for 1 day wasn't ideal either. I still love it though. 

The aftermath of the glued on tiara. 

Onto the next event. A masquerade ball. 

Considering I don't own a mask, I was very pleased with the one I ended up wearing. 

More pictures. 

Chad being super cute with his lightsaber telescope. 

We played cosplay bingo. Each square had a task or person to find and to claim that square you took a picture of them. 

This is "cosplayer in a silly pose"

Lolita fashion show. I really loved this and it's my current obsession. 

If you don't know what Lolita is, I suggest you look it up. I couldn't explain it..

And to finish that day off, it turns out I was having a super good hair day under that wig!

And that's all. I had an awesome time wearing my newest costume and I really enjoyed my first Animethon. 

As usual, I'll have more posts coming soon about how I made my costume and my days at the show. 

See you soon!

xoxo

Day 2 - Banff and Lake Lousie

For the start of our second and only full day of camping, we got right to it. I was up first, as always, so I made breakfast. Chad refused to get out of the tent so I had to eat his breakfast for him. Eventually he emerged and made a new breakfast for himself. Breakfast leads to dishes so we trekked on over to the sink to clean up. With everything clean and put away we took ourselves on an impromptu pajama-clad walk. 

With only a short bit of walking, the stream running through the campground revealed it's true colours. It's actually a small river. And when we hit the end of the trail, we found that the river has a rather large waterfall. I love waterfalls. My favorite campground is on a river/fall so this made for a nice little discovery. 

A short trek "back" and we came out on the highway instead of in our camp. Fortunately the entrance to the camp ground was just up the road. 

After getting dressed and ready we decided to head out. 

<--- Banff

Lake Lousie --->

Lake Louise won out and the battle began. I say battle because there are even more tourists in LL than in Banff and none of them know how to drive or where they are going. It's necessary to fight through. Or be the bigger person and park far away and walk in, which is what we did. 

I wanted to go see the actual lake and the Chateau so we walked about a mile to get there. It's quite beautiful, but next to impossible to take a picture without a bunch of other people in the background. We took a little walk around inside the Chateau to check out the shops and restaurants but didn't go into any. Back outside we walked around the lake a bit before deciding we would do a hike up the mountain. If you make the long walk up you will find a tea house. We saw one sign that said it was a 7 mile hike and another that said 3.6 miles. We chose to believe the latter. Jokes on us. What goes up must come down. It's a 7 mile hike. 

On the way to the tea house we continually considered turning around. We weren't super prepared to walk that far and the trail has quite an incline. I could feel the incline in all my butt muscles the next day. There are 2 other lakes so see on the hike. Mirror lake is halfway up and Lake Agnes is at the top beside the tea house.  

Eventually, we made it. The tea house is old and rustic and adorable and sits right at the top of a waterfall. It has an amazing view, and pretty darn good lemon poppyseed loaf. 

We sat long enough to get really good and rained on, chatted a bit with another couple and watched the bravest squirrel jumping on people's laps and getting in their food. 

Going back down the mountain was infinitely easier and faster and it was so satisfying to reach the warmth and flat paths at the bottom. From there we had another mile to get back to the truck. An afternoon well spent. 

Unfortunately, lemon poppyseed loaf does little to fuel me from a 9 mile hike so it was back to camp for lunch and a tiny nap. 

The last thing we did was go to Banff Upper Hot Springs. Quite crowded and at +40, a little hot for my liking, but very soothing after our earlier hike. Chad could have stayed for hours, but I eventually convinced him it was time to go. 

Another short walk around town, some more food and back to the camp for a fire. The fire was very short lived though because of an 11pm fire curfew.. Not cool. 

And that was it. Day 3 was the pack-up, drive home and laundry day. 

In all our time we saw 2 Grizzlies, 1 mama black bear with 2 cubs, 1 lone cub, lots of squirrels, 1 bunny, and one elk/caribou (not sure which.) I love finding animals in the wild! 

Until next time

xoxo