Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Well....

This past year, the posts on our summer adventures ended up very abruptly. I will be trying to add some more reviews of Conventions, Art Shows, Galleries and all the rest of the things we attend from now on. It might be a bit hard at times, but I would like to at least have a few updates here and there.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Kentucky Ren Faire

Shortly after Origins we ended up going to the Kentucky Ren Faire. I had an absolute blast throughout the show.
It rained an awful lot though, we are seriously rethinking open air shows. I hope we'll be able to do the Kentucky faire again, but I think that we might have to get a much better tent if that is going to be the case.
Everyone was absolutely great though throughout the whole faire, I can't wait to see everyone again at the Ohio ren faire now.
Nigel ended up reworking a logo for the equine acrobatic troupe, Cavallo, Still working on the next project for them, I can't wait to see what comes out of it, it's a great idea. We should have prints in the near future.

Our set up was pretty sweet:

The artist at work:

I got my hair braided, and I loved it. Sadly we were so busy on that last week-end that we completely forgot to leave a t-shirt in exchange, hoping that we can do that at the ORF


We had two nests, one that was in a gourd and fell after a really stormy night :( and the other that was built throughout one week in our tent.



On the last day we found a little mouse in Kay's (as in Coyote) booth, she was buried in a box.
Kay didn't like her at all, but I kept her in order to take her back around civilization.
Kay


And then we got Joey and Quinn to model our shirts for us, those guys were awesome !

Jessie also agreed to try on the shirts, she is the greatest !


That's about it for Kentucky Ren Faire. Lots of great time with friends, part of which was karaoke where I actually sang !

Leaving you with a pic of Nigel at the Port Washington Pirate Fest, I know it's a few blogs back, but I LOVE this pic:

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Origins

I didn't get a chance to take a lot of pictures from Origins, things were hectic to say the least.
Origins is one of the shows Nigel loves to take his kids to since it's a huge gaming show. The kids love it and enjoy both the hotel pool and going to different gaming platforms throughout the day. On top of it it falls on Xavier's birthday which is quite perfect.
Well it being Xavier's 13th birthday things did not go quite as planned, the day of his birthday he managed to slip on some slick marble and cut his hand on the bottle that he was holding. Nigel spent the day at the hospital with him and we both spent the night there as well. In the morning Xavier was released and he was able to have quite a bit of fun for the rest of the week-end even with his arm immobilized.
We did have a very good week-end and had quite a great time with the art show staff who were great throughout the whole thing and put up with us running around like chicken with their heads cut off.
Am excited about maybe at some point having enough money to get originals from a few of the artists that I've met at the show... we'll see.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Port Pirate Festival

Yup, I promised an entry and never updated until today. Things have been more than hectic, and I don't have my computer with me, so it makes things a bit hard. I now have to find time to borrow a computer and an internet connection in order to update on anything.

Let's see Port Pirate Festival was quite a blast despite the weather. We had tornadoes throughout the week-end, but while it did dampen customer attendace a tiny bit, it did not dampen our fun. That week-end was Nigel's birthday, so we made sure to have as much fun as possible.
We met Joel and Dawn there and since it was also Joel's birthday, we spent quite a while celebrating both with him and Nigel.

Everyone, especially Nigel had a blast living up to their pirate-ness by being fairly destructive.

When it wasn't him hacking things with his sword, it was Xavier destroying set pieces at the end of the fair with a 2x4.
The rest of the time Xavier enjoyed grossing everyone out, especially his sister with his dirty feet of doom.

This awesome couple, brought some rum balls that were to die for. But not only was Jenn an awesome cook, they both were absolute sweethearts.

We did get a chance to spend some quality time with the kids, when they weren't off enjoying the hotel pool.
I did manage to stop Auna for a second to take a pic


At the end of the week-end, every one got airbrush tattoos
I really liked mine :)
Xavier learned to be careful who he trusts when getting a tattoo on his back, hopefully he learned his lesson



As we started packing up, a torrent of rain came upon us, and we were all drenched, some more than others, but we kept fairly happy throughout it all.


All in all, even with the weather being temperamental, we had a great time and I quite enjoyed meeting the whole crew. Joel and Dawn were absolutely great to hang out with and I can't wait until we get to see them again.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Port Pirate Festival and Wizard World Philly

It's been a while since I've had a chance to take some time to update here.
We've been to a few shows already, and have been spending time up in Indiana for the past week.
First was Wizard World Philly, which was a lot of fun.
Here's a pic of Nigel at a gas station on the way over, Monster is very much needed throughout the summer drives:

I saw a stuffed lion's face there, found it kind of weird, they also had tigers though and that would make an awesome mural for a kid's room, with the tiger's head poking out of tall grass.

Lucy came along with us again, and was incredibly good. People loved her when they got a chance to see her, but most of the time she was so quiet that nobody saw her.
I had a great time meeting a whole bunch of new people again. The show went fairly well, although it was one of the smaller WW shows.
Nigel at the table

Me, with an awesome hat that was given to me, Nigel drew his skull on it

I got to meet Hannah, who was absolutely awesome and who kept Lucy company most of the week-end. She also helped with the booth and got Nigel and me food when we really needed it. So lots of props to Hannah! We wanted to grab dinner with her on Sunday, but sadly did not get a chance to do so because of Lucy not being able to stay in the car due to the heat.
Here we both are

Then Nigel found a big gun and was way too happy about it!


And this pretty much sums up WW Philly:




Then there was Port Pirate Festival, which I will write about probably tomorrow or later on today.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Media West Con 08

This last week-end we went to Media West Con, in . It was Nigel's first time at this convention and we had a good run, people were quite friendly and did their best to make us feel welcome.
The convention itself was a very different one than from the usual comic or anime convention or even art show, this convention catered to all the fan based fiction written about various shows. Lots of fan fic about Torchwood, Dr. Who, Star Trek, Harry Potter, and so on. This is something I was aware of was very common on the internet, however seeing a convention of it was pretty interesting. Not only was it very fan fic oriented, but the majority of the convention goers were female, Nigel was maybe one of 5 male artists/dealers, and I saw maybe 10 to 15 men at the convention itself. Apparently men just don't have as much imagination as women do when it comes to writing fan fic.

Lucy came with us to the show, this was a perfect first convention for her to attend. All animals were welcome, she got to meet many dogs and a few cats and well as two parrots. She did very well throughout most of the show. She was a bit scared at first of all the people who came to pet her, but after the first day she felt confident enough to just relax behind the booth and wait until the day was over.
She will be going with us to the Wizard World Philly Con, we'll see how that goes.
Here's Lucy under the table:


Nigel at the art show waiting for his money

And being Nigel


Right now we're up in the mountains getting some more prints done, and tomorrow we'll be heading out to Philly. Being away from everything is very nice, and there is a huge amount of land for Lucy to run through.

Nigel sprained his shoulder yesterday. It might actually be dislocated. He's been asking me to pull and prod on it and while I did it at first, I've now told him that I would not help anymore, I'm too afraid that I'll end up hurting him a lot more.
Hopefully he'll be feeling better soon since he needs to be painting and doing a whole lot of work in the next few weeks.

Alright, more after Wizard World. And pictures coming later as well.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Motor City Comicon

So we attended our first Convention of the summer last week-end. It went fairly well all things considered.
We left on Thursday night right after I finished with work. The drive wasn't bad, only about 4 hours to get to Novi. Nigel is the official driver for the summer since I still haven't gotten to renewing my license. We're going to try and get that done at some point this summer if we have enough time in between conventions. I personally love driving so having a license again would be very nice.
On the way to Motor City we stopped for dinner at a Dairy Queen. I didn't get the name of the town but it was around Exit 23 on I-94 in Michigan. We sat down to eat and after looking around a bit I asked Nigel if he thought that the huge family portraits belonged to the owner and his family, at which we both burst out laughing.
We became curious though and ended up asking one of the girls working there if it was indeed the photos of the owner, to which she replied with a shrug that yes, that's what it was. We couldn't contain our glee at the absurdity and pretentiousness of it all. (Now don't get me wrong, we get the appeal of small towns, and knowing all your neighbors and such. However going from being the cool owner of your local DQ to posting 6 ft tall pictures of yourself and your family in your restaurant is a bit of a jump in our humble opinion).
Here are the pictures we took of the offending photos. By the time we left the workers thought we were both hilarious and vastly deranged.



We got to the hotel and basically just went to bed early that night. We had one drink down stairs with the 501 legion and then went back to our room in order to discover the intricaties of sex in an unfamiliar bathroom. Which we wouldn't normally have had to do, but we were sharing the room with Tommy, Dirk and Primo.
The rest of the convention went well. The convention itself was fairly small, but had enough interesting artists to keep things going.
Eric Castrada had a blast hitting on every woman within 5 miles, and I was one of the lucky gals. He was a lot of fun and very nice however, even going out of his way to let us know that he does not indeed smoke while pulling a cigarette out of his pocket, I'm sure he was prepping for a prestidigitation act.
I got to meet Faye and her husband, as well as Art and Jimmy who were all awesome people!
We had dinner with several other artists throughout the week-end, and ended up spending the evening and nights at the hotel bar or in the lobby. Mostly we drank with Greg and Eric, two really awesome teachers who kept us in rum the entire week-end. In exchange they were able to take some very horrendous photos of us.
Here they are with me, and a pic of me and Nigel at the bar:
With Eric

With Greg

Us

By Sunday however we both felt horrible, and Nigel was so sick I sent him to take a nap in the car. Ends up he has strep throat, and I have bronchitis! Yay for summer sickness. We're doing better now, but the few days at the beginning of the week were really tough.
We have to leave tomorrow or Friday morning for Media West Con so we're both hoping to be feeling much better by then.