Miss Manga Mascara

Cousin T, ever on the edge of otaku trends, told me about a Loreal mascara called Miss Manga! Whaaaat. I told my sister, and soon we were down at CVS buying the shiny, pink $8 tube.

Is the "manga effect" supposed to make one look like a big eyed panda? @_@

The brush itself is very springy.

Since my sister is the glamorous one in the family, here is her before/after modeling:

I guess I can see a difference! But I'm not convinced she looks like a manga panda.  It's good that she kept the tube, because mascara is like, my least favorite type of make-up.  I always seem to get a clumpy :P

So what's the point here? We are suckers for otaku-consumer-commercialization. Haha. Shaaame. :P

Oahu: A Map of Food & More!

So I finally put together the Sak's map of Hawaii vacationing. Haha!  I'm sure it'll be an ever-evolving map as we do and eat new things each time we go!

Click here for my google map of Oahu

It's split into three sections - food, nature (flowers and swimming and such), and shopping.

My shopping list is pretty pitiful and consists only of craft stores and used bookstores. >.>"

Anyway, I figure this would be a pretty lame post without some pictures, so here's to food shots! Haha! You can find all these places (and more!) on my map.

Masago Ahi Poke with a hint of wasabi - delicious! (from Alicia's Market)

 Dried Aku poke - chewy and oishii! (from Highway Inn)

 An example of a poke counter at Alicia's market:

Poi doughnut from Kamehameha Bakery - purpley goodness!

How about an onigiri? This one is salmon and ikura (roe)...mother and child >.>"!

From Musubi Cafe Iyasume, which has a big variety of musubi and onigiri.

How about Penga-bro's favorite brunch place - Cinnamons?  I may have inhaled this kalua pork eggs benedict!

Err. My arteries! Let's get healthy again with this tuna salad from Aloha Salads.

Okay, maybe it's not that unique. I do eat salad like, practically everyday here in California :P Let's go back to unhealthy.

Yes, that'd be a shrimp po' boy from Dat Cajun Guy, a food truck. Yummo.

More dessert? How about this cutie from a bakery in the Shirokiya?

It may be super cute, but it didn't stop me from eating it. :P

Or how about something with a cute name? The snow puffy from Paalaa Kai bakery! Light and fluffy and full of custard!

But you really can't go until you've had the shave ice from Ice Gardens. Yes, that'd be FLAN ON MY ICE. 

And to think I wasn't a big shave ice fan before :P  This is on a whole 'nother level! (No seriously, it's hard to find, go upstairs :P)

If flan isn't your thing, there might be a few other options for you :P

Lastly, you can't eat him, but if you get a smoothie from Waialua Bakery, you just might see him or his buddies hanging outside the shop railings looking for crumbs :P

Ah, now I'm hungry.

What's your favorite Oahu eateries so I can add them to my map next time? :)

San Mateo County Fair 2014

This year, Sak and I had plans to watch War (lowrider song) preform at the San Mateo County Fair.  Unfortunately, I had a work trip pop up so we missed it.  On the positive side though, we went to the fair the next day, with my sister as well!

We grabbed some deep fried fair food and watched some amazing acrobats.

Then we checked out the (by then - 2 week old) baked good entries.

And we watched a cooking demonstration on pressure cookers.  My grandmother gave me an electric one, which I've been too scared to use!  The demo was pretty interesting, and they shared food samples at the end - the beef cheek stew was amazing!

Over in the kid handicraft hall, we have some Shield sock puppets.

And a wall of manga/storyboards!

We've got flowers..

Camouflaged succulents..

Ikebana..

And tablescapes!

(The grass tablecloth is interesting..but wouldn't it be itchy?)

I liked this hose basket.

And also this terribly cute rabbit!

But no fair is complete without at least one ridiculously fried food - a new one for us - watermelon!

It was a perfect balance of crunchy and juicy.  So good! But you have to eat it fast, because it will get soggy.  One was enough for the three of us to share.

Another lovely evening at the fair! Now to convince Sak to go to the Alameda County Fair this week because Shaggy is playing. Lol.

DIY AoT Survey Corp Dress

Okay. Last post on this cosplay. Probably.  I figure the interest in loli Attack on Titan uniforms is pretty low, but the tutorials/methods I used are good references for many, many other projects.

Penga-Sis as model reference :)

-Purse tutorial was covered over here in this post.

-Hat we ended up not using, but I might do a post on the construction later anyway just because we went through a lot of effort and burnt fingers :P

-The cape was made with Simplicity 1771A.  I traced the  cape pattern out on newspaper, then just cut the whole length down to make a capelet instead of a knee-length cape.

I followed the pattern for the hood, but since my fabric was so thin I made the whole thing double layered (seams all hidden that way too - yip yip!)

Embarrassingly - it's pinned together at the neck with a safety pin. Because I couldn't commit on a button or a string bow and I ran out of time :P

It's super comfy though. Makes you feel positively elvish!

- The shirt was a tennis shirt my mom found at the thrift shop.  It had some wonky label on it already too. Good thing I have heat transfer vinyl! I covered that sucker right up with a fancy survey corp shield.

This is probably my favorite part of the outfit other than the purse - even though no one saw it under the cape.  It's subtle enough to be worn around with regular clothes.

- The skirt/petticoat: I used three different tutorials. For the skirt, for the waistband of the skirt, and for the petticoat.  Basically, I followed the skirt tutorial until I got to the waist, and then I switched to the half-elastic waistband tutorial.  Then for poofy cupcakeness I used the crinoline tutorial (doubling the amount of tulle and using the thick itchy stuff instead for guaranteed maximum fluff).

Other outfit bits added after our backyard photoshoot - brown fabric bows to the back of the skirt (made per the skirt tutorial), various green hairbows made with ribbon and hot glue, white $5 tights from Target, brown boots/shoes, and diy shrinky dink earrings.  Survey corp wings for me - and Marco half-faces for Penga-Sis :P

I think that just about covers it! There were a lot of components to this outfit. (In comparison, for the guys, Friend E made the sword canes and cufflinks - the vests, ties and white pants were bought from Amazon :P)

Nisekoi Chitoge Charm

Much to the detriment of my productivity, we have Netflix, Hulu, and Crunchyroll access. Which means..I watch a lot of anime.  And even though I prefer binge-watching shows, Sak and I have started the habit of "watching the first episode of new series".  And then only continuing with the ones we like :P

Nisekoi was one of the 2014 winter anime series that we picked up, and I kinda liked it at first.  School life, with the two leads forced into a fake relationship by their gangster parents. Nothing too groundbreaking, but it was funny and the art was nice.

Unfortunately, as the season progressed it got more and more harem-ey. Love triangles I can do, but when it gets to three, four girls liking a guy (who really has very little in the way of attractive qualities)..Not my cup of tea (unless it's really funny).  But I'm not going to knock the harem genre too much - because I am guilty of watching my fair share of reverse harem.  There's just something about picking your favorite 1 dimensional guy and rooting for him? Haha. I usually go for the reliable, yet angry/grumpy boy that only awkwardly expresses his feelings or the intellectual megane (glasses) type. Interestingly, Sak can fit both those categories.  I am nothing if not predictable :P

In any case, I stopped watching around when girl #4 entered the scene. Episode 15 or so?  I might pick it up again later just to see if the guy picks one of the girls in the end.

I made a charm of my favorite character from the series, the tsundere - Chitoge Kirisaki.  Daughter of a mobster, she's got attitude, which I find more entertaining than the sugar-sweet type of girls :P

I wanted to draw her because her outfit is cute! It's rare to see an anime school girl uniform with a tie - much less a tie clip.

I used the printable shrinky dink material again (more info on that here) to make this charm, coated with a thin layer of clear nail polish.

It's a pretty small charm.

In other news - anyone else looking forward to the summer anime season? The re-make of Sailor Moon! Gwah! Sak is looking forward to Sword Art Season 2 more though :P

Hiking Hawaii: Oahu's Waimea Valley

Despite my running title, this isn't a "hike" in that the entire place is paved, you pay to get in, and there's a shuttle if you don't want to walk.  Oh, and there's also a giftshop :P But, seeing as we did meander among the foliage for several hours, it was good enough exercise .

Waimea Valley is in North Oahu.  It's $15 a tourist to enter, but you can tell that the admission is put to good use in the creation and maintenance of a very extensive garden.  This is a great place to come and practice floral photography, or to learn more about plant species!

These leaves look like they were painted!

Saplings :3

I enjoyed walking around, on the look out for the little blue tags that explained more about different kinds of flowers, trees and other plants.

Weird tree

Love how it spirals

These remind me of Lotad..

These may look like blossoms on the ground - but they are really sprouted flowers that grow close to the ground without their leaves! Weird, and cool.

Non-water Taro garden~

Sak had remembered coming here in his youth - but could only really remember throwing a spear at a target in the demonstration area. But I'm sure the variety of hibiscus is not really on the mind of a 10 year old boy.

This was my favorite hibiscus variety - it's like a flower on a flower!

The park is laid out in different sections, such as gingers, hibiscus, different world regions, etc.

...This was the Jurassic Park section, obviously. 

There's also a reconstructed village and demonstrations of early Hawaiian life. I liked the animal pen, which was made of rocks.

At the end of the path, there's a waterfall - the highlight of the park.  They allow you to swim in the basin, provided you wear one of their life jackets.  There's a life guard on duty as well.  Though I can't really see why you'd want to swim in a muddy waterfall basin - especially when there's signs all around warning of leptospirosis.  But all the kids there seemed excited about it :)

This is a nice place to visit if you like plants and paved ground.  There are many picnic spots too, though Sak and I didn't bring any snacks.  Luckily there was all the good eats in Haleiwa down the road!