Star Wars Subscription Box - Smuggler's Bounty Unboxing!

Smuggler's Bounty is yet another awesome monthly subscription box from Funko! This one focuses on Star Wars, and I imagine it's going to pretty much be the same as the Collector Corp Marvel one. The November box is the inaugural box, featuring goodies from the upcoming Force Awakens film. Let's see what's inside!

Here's the outside of the box! OooOOhh.

The immediate inside, with Funko's usual themed patch and pin.

After that, the insides of the box!

It contains a cute lanyard with a snowtrooper on it!

This shirt with an adorable Snowtrooper on it! Side note: these shirts always seem to run so big; this is a small and it looks too big for me.

Not one, but TWO Funko Pops! The TIE Fighter one is cool, but I'm really loving the shiny and chrome Captain Phasma!

Business Vegas, not Fun Vegas!

Last week I took a business trip to Las Vegas to attend a conference. I haven't been to Vegas in 2 or 3 years, and to be honest, I feel like I still haven't! I didn't get to see much, or any, of Vegas outside of my hotel room and the conference center.

We stayed at the MGM Grand, which was also the location of the conference, so that meant I pretty much didn't see anything outside of that particular hotel/casino!! Not a bad view from my hotel room, though, as you can see above.

Even though I didn't see much of Vegas, I did get to eat at some great restaurants, at least! The first night, we went to a Brazilian BBQ place called Texas de Brazil. It's the kind of place where waiters go around with chunks of different kind of meat, and cut it off right onto your plate. So. Much. Meat.

We also had a dinner at Emeril's, which is at the MGM Grand. I had a delicious chicken plate; seriously maybe one of the best chickens I've ever had! The last night, I had dinner with a co-worker at Fiamma Trattoria, also at the MGM Grand, and had a pretty great chicken alfredo. At that point, the show was over and we were heading to the airport after that, so that chicken alfredo tasted like freedom.

The conference itself was... interesting. It was oddly similar to many pop culture conventions I've been to, in terms of booths and exhibits and such, but with medical stuff instead of toys and comic books. It was a new experience to be the one working in a booth, rather than just walking by!

The Las Vegas airport is weird. Check out this sculpture of a giant lizard, for no reason.

DesignerCon 2015!

On Sunday, we attended another new convention (for us), Designer Con! This annual show, held at the Pasadena Convention Center, showcases artists, independent toy makers and designers. 

There were 300 vendors selling all kinds of good stuff. It was basically like an extended Artist's Alley, like you might find at any Comic Con. Artist's Alley is often one of my favorite parts of any convention we go to, so this was right up my... alley (get it?!).

100% Soft is one of my new favorite things. You may know them from the recent cute Star Wars emojis. Everything is beyond adorable. As I'm looking at this picture now, I'm kind of regretting not picking up some prints. To be fair, there were so many cool and cute and clever things at this show, it was hard to decide what to spend my money on!

Super Emo Friends was there as well! I can't believe I don't own more prints from them, they're all so cute!

Lego Studs had a booth featuring Lego recreations of comic book covers. Pretty amazing!

There was an Ewoks comic??

They also had a Back to the Future art exhibit. I love this Lego Marty, and check out the bear with two ties (a la 2015 Marty) by one of my favorite artists, Luke Chueh.

This is some fine art right here. I would hang this in my living room. Also, it's the only other picture I took, as there was a security guard roaming around and it made me nervous.

Of course, I picked up a few goodies while I was there. The shirt is from a great vendor Funhouse Labs, which sold not only these shirts, but actual plastic dinosaurs in tiny little fabric sweatshirts!! Adorable.

I also got a Pug Pack from Nerfect. Each pack contained a pug in a different occupational outfit. I got a luchador one!

The fuzzy purple thing is a Fureek pom tree. Finally, a plant that won't die on me!

DesignerCon is definitely a con I'd like to add to our list of regularly attended shows. I love to see what kinds of creativity people can come up with.

My November Stitch Fix Box!

I got my latest Stitch Fix box for November, and it was outstanding! After my last box, I was pretty disappointed. I wasn't impressed by anything really, and I felt like they just didn't really get my style. But this box completely restored my faith in StitchFix. I loved every item of clothing, and the only reason I didn't keep everything was due to price point.

Pixley Dido Mixed Print Knit Top

I love this top! It's super soft, and I love the sheer polka dot back. And look at the cuffs with the same fabric as the back, ahhhh I love it! I for sure kept this one.

Zad Layered Metal Cuff

I do love a cuff bracelet, so this one was a spot on pick for me. However, it was a little too expensive for my tastes.

41 Hawthorn Addison Striped Knit Cardigan

I love cardigans, and I love stripes, and I love navy, so of course I loved this! It's soft and pretty, and I absolutely had to keep this item.

Splendid Fays Thermal Knit Top

I do love purple, and I love Splendid clothes, I just didn't love this top. It was a little too big and unflattering on me. Still, good effort!

Mavi Freida Skinny Jean

These jeans fit great, and were a great dark wash, but they were $98, and I just can't justify spending quite that much on jeans when I could get them for $20 at Old Navy. Maybe someday a pair of designer jeans will earn my trust, but it is not this day.

I also got a cool silicone mobile pocket! It attaches to your cell phone and will hold your cards!

So Stitch Fix definitely made me want to continue my subscription after I was feeling kind of ambivalent about it last box. Every single item worked for me on some level, even though I only kept two items. Great job, Stitch Fix stylist!

American Cinematheque Awards Honoring Reese Witherspoon

On Friday night, we had the amazing opportunity to attend the American Cinematheque award gala at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza. The American Cinemathque is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of cinema, and each year, award a filmmaker for their contributions to the art. This year, they gave the award to Reese Witherspoon, and gave Jeffrey Katzenberg the first-ever Sid Grauman award.

It was a black tie affair, so we had to get all dressed up. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good picture of my whole outfit and makeup and everything, which was disappointing because I attempted and almost succeeded at doing a smokey eye. Oh well, next time.

There was a cocktail hour first (open bar ftw!), and then we were let into the ballroom and sat down at our assigned tables. They served us dinner (a very delicious salmon which I didn't take a picture of), and then dessert (below, yum). And then the award presentation began.

I didn't take any pictures after that, because I didn't want to seem like a total tourist/n00b. Katzenberg received his award first, and spoke about the movie-going experience, and how you don't clap after you watch a movie on your iPad, but you do clap when you're at a movie theater.

After that, multiple celebrities came on stage to praise Reese's virtues, Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Garner, Laura Dern, Kate Hudson, and Matthew McConaughey among them. Chris Pine and Robert Downey Jr. also provided pre-recorded videos, and Kenny Chesney performed 'Wild Child'. 

It was a pretty amazing night and I'm so glad we were able to experience it! Plus, we got a gift bag!! It contained issues of Variety and Hollywood Reporter, a Fiji bottle, Wild on Blu-Ray, Election on DVD, a Hot Wheels car, crispy seaweed strips from Seasnax, salted caramel popcorn from Cosmo Creations, a can of spicy tuna from My Gourmet, a tiny bottle of quinoa vodka, and a few other odds and ends! Oh, plus the bag it all came in was pretty awesome too!

Stan Lee's Comikaze 2015!

On Saturday, I attended my 17th (or so) convention this year, Stan Lee's Comikaze! 

This marks the very first time I've gotten a Press Pass, though, so that was extremely exciting!

This year, the convention was held for the first time in the West and South Halls, rather than the Main Hall. This meant that not only was the show a bit smaller, it was also spread out over two different places.

Comikaze, as always, had plenty of cool stuff to check out: all kinds of vendors selling toys and comics and Funkos, artists, crafters, and cosplayers galore.

Funko was there promoting their Marvel Collector Corp and Smuggler's Bounty subscription boxes with an enormous box and Groot Funko. I already subscribe to both, and I was actually wearing the T-shirt that came in my last box. When I went to the booth, one of the workers thanked me for wearing their shirt, and gave me a free Ant-Man poster!! Pretty awesome.

I don't know if it was because it was Halloween or what, but there was a TON of cosplay. I would almost say it's more than I would normally see. It's always so cool to see how incredibly creative people can be. I saw a lot of Mad Max cosplayers, and a lot of Bob's Burgers, Back to the Future, and Mario Kart, as well.

Also, several dinosaurs!

This was a new one: a Shia LaBeouf cosplayer performing his infamous "Don't just dream it, do it!" speech.

The West Hall contained the majority of the exhibitors and vendors. The South Hall had a lot of cosplay stuff, plus the Gudetama kitchen. Gudetama is the newest character from Sanrio; it's a egg/eggyolk that's really lazy. I've been seeing posters all around town about it, and now I finally got to see what it's all about!

The South Hall also had Comikaze's Main Stage, which featured panels and cosplay competitions throughout the day.

They also had the droid builders area set up. I love this drink serving R2 unit!

I took a picture of this awesome Baymax, not realizing that one of my favorite YouTubers, Traci Hines aka Helvetica the Hipster Mermaid was in the picture as well!

Grumpy Cat had an appearance at the Hot Topic booth! I had almost completely forgotten about it until it was almost over, and I rushed over there. I was content to just see her from afar, like in the picture I took below.

But then they said I could get in line, but couldn't guarantee that I would get to meet her. But then, not even 10 minutes later, THIS HAPPENED:

I was so excited!!! She is SO cute and grumpy. She barely moved at all the whole time, except to smack her little mouth and lick her nose. I died.

Not long after that, it was time for the panel my boyfriend moderated, a screening and cast Q&A of the movie Live-Evil! It was a very Halloween-time appropriate movie about a demon that shows up in a small town on Halloween and causes the dead to rise and zombies start to wreck havoc.

It was the West Coast premiere of the movie! Everyone that came had a great time.

I didn't buy very much stuff this year. Maybe it's because we go to so many shows; maybe it's because I already have so much stuff and am feeling a bit over-saturated with my nerd possessions. I did get the US Agent Funko Pop (which was a Comikaze exclusive), and a couple really cool phone cases from Flex Comics of a Stormtrooper and a pink R2-D2 (or maybe it's an R2-KT). My only swag consisted of a Gudetama pin, a Grumpy Cat pin, and the Ant-Man poster I mentioned earlier.

It was a great, well-run show this year, no complaints to speak of! It always feels like a really enthusiastic show; like everyone that's there is really excited to be there. Being in 2 different halls was a little strange and not ideal, but they made it work. 

See ya next year, Comikaze!