RagsReborn is back from summer break.

I'll type this out later... I know it's a little small to read.

I have a craft show this Saturday!! \(^_^)/ My first one since May. It was nice having two months off but I'm eager to get back to showing my pillows. I've missed the craft show excitement and my fellow vendor friends. What have I been doing this June & July? Well, lets see...

I started working with various fabrics. Don't worry, I still sew t-shirt pillows but I've also started exploring different fabric options. (Every artist needs to grow!)
       A coworker suggested that I sew burlap pillows, which is currently my major project. I hope to have a large selection of burlap pillows at my upcoming shows--everyone cross your fingers & pray that I finish in time. I've also played around with lace, satin and velvet (all pretty difficult to work with). And I've purchased a bunch of fun patterned quilter's cotton. If you have any fabric or pillow ideas, please send them my way!

Aside from sewing pillows, I've also branched out to be the local seamstress of my workplace. LOL I turned a shower curtain into a two panel window curtain for a coworker. Almost all of my coworkers are familiar with RagsReborn and we have tossed around ideas for all sorts of projects. I have definitely seen an increase in custom orders over these past few months. Passing out business cards to any and everyone is starting to pay off! 

While I was on summer break, I visited some local boutiques. I stopped in Sparkle Shack Gifts/Jenny's Thrift and Velvet Bird Antiques to chat with the owners and leave business cards. I'm not ready to be showcased in a shop, yet, but I'm certainly entertaining the idea. I also participated in craft show "swag bags" for the first time. There are three shows that I wanted to do but couldn't, for one reason or another. To show my support, I met with the show coordinators and left some business cards for them to use with their promotional goodies. 

So, that was my summer break. Now back to business! Here is a list of my upcoming craft shows:

SATURDAY JULY 30:

Summer Fun Craft Bazaar

9am - 4pm

Norman Masonic Lodge #38

1700 N. Porter Ave.

Norman, OK 73071

SATURDAY AUGUST 13:

Indian Taco Sale & Indie Market

11am - 2:30pm

OK Choctaw Tribal Alliance

5320 S. Youngs Blvd.

Oklahoma City, OK 73119

SATURDAY AUGUST 20

A Bazaar For All Seasons

9am - 3pm

Del City Christian Church

4340 SW 15th

Del City, OK 73115

FRIDAY AUGUST 26:

Quarter Mania "Fun"draiser benefiting The Friends of the Mustang Animal Shelter

5:30pm - 8:30pm

Mustang Town Center

1201 N. Mustang Road

Mustang, OK 73064

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 10:

Third Annual Classic Car Show

Noon - 5pm

Doo-Wop Glam Shop

5581 NW Expressway

Warr Acres, OK 73132

Wes takes Erica to a video game convention, day 2

Well, technically it's days 2 & 3 but day 3 was just us driving home; not too interesting. Anyway, Day 2 of RTX went a little like this...

The guy in the top middle picture was wearing a hollowed out sexualized female body pillow. Hahaha!

       The first person we saw in the morning was Spider Man. He was a true actor in full costume and posed when I asked for a picture. After that, I decided that I, too, would be a dedicated RTX attendee. I would ask cosplayers for their pictures, play as many games as I could and even buy something as a souvenir. We did drive 6 hours to get here, gotta take it all in, right?
       We first went to the Free Play panel. This panel was a lot better than Game Attack Live!. The members of the show, Free Play, answered audience questions and ended the interview with a mini rave. We all got glow sticks! LOL After that, we headed to the main video game expo.

I think this guy paid for his pug to get into RTX just for this picture.

The small selection of vendors who weren't t-shirts or posters. Wait, why is my picture crooked?

The first game I wanted to play was Butt Sniffin' Pugs. Your character is a pug and you pair up with another pug to run around a park. You can bark at a hotdog vendor, pee, take a dump and, of course, sniff butts. The game was pretty silly. There were a lot of indie game developers at RTX. And there were some big name ones, too, like the newest edition of Halo. I wanted to play some of each but that would have to wait until the afternoon. Next we went in search of our souvenirs. We each bought a t-shirt. 

Then it was lunch time!! We ate at a creperie. I've only ever had sweet crepes so I decided to order a savory one. It was amazing. The smoked salmon was soooo good!! After lunch, it was back to the arcade at JW Marriot (my request). I played Centipede as well as some other games. I played a five-person group X-Men game. I was the weakest link but we still managed to kick some villain butt.

       We spent the rest of the afternoon at the video game expo hall. I played Song of the Deep (a new PS4 game) and Capsule Force. I didn't enjoy Capsule Force but Song of the Deep was fun. There was a ten minute play time limit. I spent seven of my ten minutes trying to navigate through a simple maze of waterfalls. I'm sure all of the gamers around me were screaming in their heads with frustration. We played a few more games but I don't remember which ones. Most of the games had a long waiting line so I didn't play as many as I would have liked.

       I took tons of pictures of costumes. My favorite was this group of girls dressed as RWBY. It's some anime that consists of four teenage girls dressed in either red, white, black or yellow. These girls' costumes looked exactly like the posters of RWBY that the vendors had for sale. (There's a small picture of them on last week's blog.) Unfortunately, we missed two of the costumes that we really wanted. We saw a girl walk by dressed as Spider Woman and a guy dressed as a character in Fallout. I couldn't catch them in time and we never saw them again. 

       There was a beef jerky vendor there (JerkyXP) and their mascot was an adorable Yorkie. He was one of the main attractions. 

Jack the CEO was so well behaved and precious. 

After a full second day of RTX, we went back to the Congress Avenue Bridge for a second night of bat viewing. This time we went to the park underneath the bridge. There were a lot of people camped out there the night before so I figured the viewing might be better there. And it was!! We saw more bats fly out and we could see them clearer because we were right there close to them. It was a long day so instead of going out to eat, we opted for pizza in the hotel room.

I wanted to take a video of the bat flight but couldn't capture it. So here's a pre-bat flight view.

The next morning, it was time to say goodbye to Austin. There was surprisingly no traffic going home. Still had construction but people were driving normally. We stopped at Texas Smokehouse somewhere between Austin and Fort Worth for some beef jerky. They had free samples so I asked for the most exotic one I could find, python jerky. It was not good. It was hard, chewy and extremely sweet. They had a varied selection but we settled on plain original beef jerky.

The world's finest gas station.

On the drive into Austin, I kept seeing billboards for Buc-ee's. It's just a gas station so I didn't know why there was a billboard advertisement every few miles. On the drive home, I decided that we needed to get gas at Buc-ee's. It was not "just a gas station." It is probably the largest gas station in existence. And the convenience store was about the size of Wal-Mart. I have never been impressed with a gas station/convenience store but now I am. Buc-ee's is a mecca for travelers. Come hungry, come needing gas, come to relieve your bowels, come for snacks, come for souvenirs...Buc-ee's has it all! They even had a mascot beaver walking around posing for pictures with the children. I'm not going to lie, Wes & I wanted a picture with Buc-ee but he walked away before we could snag him.

We had a nice two days in Austin. All of the other trips we've taken (Fabric District, visiting my relatives, Elvis wedding ceremony) were my ideas so it was nice to partake in one of Wes' adventures. I enjoyed my RTX experience, I finally got to see a bat flight (still bitter that we missed the one at Carlsbad Caverns), the food was good and our hotel was top notch. And of course, Buc-ee's. LOL 

Wes takes Erica to a video game convention, day 1

Over the Fourth of July weekend, Wes & I went to RTX 2016 in Austin, Texas. For those of you who don't know what that is
   1. don't feel bad because I didn't know what it was either until we got there;
   2. it's a huge video game expo hosted by Rooster Teeth, an Internet entertainment company
   3. it partnered with SGC (Screw Attack Gaming) so, basically, two video game conventions for the price of one!

I don't know much about video games, and I know even less about YouTube and podcast celebrities so this was a completely virgin experience for me...first time in Austin & first time at a video game convention. LOL It was pretty much just as I expected: tons and tons of very passionate geeks in their geek heaven. It was definitely interesting and I ended up having a good time. And, most importantly, Wes liked it as well.

       Austin is quite a way's away from Oklahoma City so we decided to stop at the half-way point and have brunch in Fort Worth. We ate at the Ol' South Pancake House. It was delicious! I got the smothered biscuits, which came in a huge portion; I couldn't finish them so I packed them up to go. They ended up going bad so I couldn't even eat them that night after carrying them around all day. I was pretty devastated.
       The rest of the drive was awful! There was construction practically all the way from Fort Worth to Austin and traffic was moving slower than molasses. I assumed there was a bad accident up ahead or various lane closures but there was nothing. Just regular construction; the construction on I-35 going through Moore is worse. But for some reason, it took us about three hours to get from Hillsboro to Belton, only 76 miles away. I stopped timing it after the City Limit sign for Belton because it was just too frustrating.

People were in costume at the convention, obviously, but also out on the street and at local restaurants. 

The only thing that I had made plans to attend (aka watch and take pictures) at RTX was the costume contest. It was from 4-5pm and we got into Austin at 5pm. Arrrrgh, just missed it!! But I was still able to take a TON of pictures of costumed convention goers throughout the weekend. The convention was held at the Austin Convention Center, JW Marriot Hotel and Hilton Hotel. There were only panels at the Hilton so we didn't go in there. The JW Marriot had panels, a section for computer based games and a section for arcade games (my favorite). The Austin Convention Center had numerous rooms for panels & signings and a huge room of video games & vendors. That is where we spent a majority of our time.

Top: arcade at JW Marriot. Bottom: a group of people playing Just Dance. The lady in front was on fire!

We spent a couple of hours at RTX exploring and deciding on which games we wanted to come back to play later. We also looked at all the vendors and Wes picked out a few panels to go to. The vendors were a bit of a let down. They were waaaay too similar. I guess I'm used to showing at craft shows where only one type of each product is allowed. Almost all of the RTX vendors there were either selling t-shirts or posters. If I had the money and time to rent booth space, I would probably make a killing selling my RagsReborn pillows. 

Just before dusk, we left to go to the Congress Avenue Bridge. There is a huge colony of bats that live under the bridge and they fly out nightly around 8:30pm (their website stated 8:32pm for the month of July). We lined up along the bridge with all the other spectators and waited...and waited. The bats ended up flying out to fetch their dinner an hour later. There were tons of bats but we could hardly see them because we were too far away. 

After the bat viewing, we went to dinner. I didn't really like Austin (I honestly thought the city was kinda ugly with poor landscaping & litter everywhere) but there was good food downtown. And good food is one of the reasons why I travel. We ate dinner at Gus's World Famous Hot & Spicy Fried Chicken. It was sooo good! 

Candid pictures of cosplayers. My favorite part of RTX.

We headed to the JW Marriot after dinner for a little more video gaming before the night was over. I discovered my new favorite arcade game, Centipede, and we watched the Game Attack Live! panel. It was four grown-ass men dressed in onesies playing video games & cursing at each other while someone recorded it all and put it on YouTube. I was not impressed. We left the panel early and I played a little more Centipede before going to the hotel. Our hotel was amazing. It was an extended stay hotel so our room was huge. It was probably the same size as the apartment that I am currently living in. All in all, we had a good first day! Day 2 blog to come next week!!

Hue & Mike got hitched...about time!

A friend of my mom's from church was hired as the wedding photographer so he has all of the professional pictures. Mine aren't that great but they have a candid quality.

The past two weeks I blogged about all my DIY wedding ideas but, I haven't even blogged about the wedding itself...how selfish of me! No juicy wedding drama, just a good ol' time to be had by all! I got to see some of my family from out of town, catch up with some of my mom's friends from church & her job and finally meet Mike's family.

Trevor and Athena are laughing at the same joke.

After getting new contacts, a haircut, taking both dogs to the vet, doing laundry and finishing up the wedding decorations, I was ready for family to come into town. I spent a day with my favorite second cousins, Trevor & Andrew. They're grown teenagers now so they're a bit harder to entertain but we still had a good time. We hung out all day at my apartment playing with Sadie & Athena and playing Street Fighter 5. I also took them to the Asian grocery store and we made sushi for lunch.

Wes, myself, Sandy, my mom, Mike & Bill. Patty, the music teacher, took the picture so she wasn't able to be in it. One of the flower girls had plans so she was also absent.

First on the to do list was the wedding rehearsal and dinner. The music teacher at Gatewood Elementary (where my mom teaches) sang the Ave Maria, two of my mom's former students were the flower girls, I was the matron of honor, Mike's best friend whom he's known since the second grade, Bill, was the best man and Wes walked my mom down the aisle. The rehearsal was straight forward and simple. My mom & Mike opted for an abridged wedding (no Catholic mass) so that saved a ton of time!

 Then it was time to eat. Mike suggested Fuze for dinner because it is a giant buffet with all types of food. Everyone would find something they liked. The restaurant was packed and they sat us right next to the live music. Aside from the noise, we had a nice dinner.

Andrew & Wes with matching Fallout shirts.

After dinner, we all went back to my mom's house. Everyone stayed up chatting and swapping stories. Then after that, Trevor & Andrew came home with us to play more Street Fighter. Correction... they played with Wes. I got home and went promptly to bed. LOL

The kitchen crew was amazing; they cooked & served the food, cleaned up the entire kitchen and kept a happy attitude all day.

WEDDING DAY!!! The decorating and cooking started at 8am. One of my mom's former students and her mom were already at the church when we arrived. They helped with decorations all morning. A handful of my mom's friends from Gatewood prepared an amazing lunch. A teacher baked and assembled the cake. Another Gatewood teacher did my mom's hair & makeup. I think every teacher from that school was present that day.

The bells tolled at noon and it was showtime. We all looked sharp as we walked in. The wedding was short and sweet. My mom and Mike were extremely happy. Everyone did great and no one fainted. LOL After the ceremony, we took tons of pictures. Then Wes & I witnessed the signing of the marriage certificate.

Check out the paparazzi! 

Two out of three of Mike's brothers - Nick & Pat.

When the photographer was happy with his portfolio, we headed to the reception party. (Mike's eldest brother, Jim, and Wes were the reception photographers since the wedding photographer had anther engagement.) For lunch, we had eggrolls (a gift from one of my mom's friends), salad, oven roasted chicken, green beans, fried catfish and rolls. Everything was delicious! It was nice to see everyone as my mom & Mike made the rounds (I followed behind them as their unofficial photographer). I got to catch up with an aunt who I haven't seen in probably five years, our Statefarm agent, my mom's neighbors who've known me since I was in grade school, all the teachers at Gatewood and my former Sunday school teacher.

All of my mom's new in-laws.

Mike didn't do much of the decision making during the wedding planning but he did want some say in the cake. They ended up with a three tier marble cake with yellow frosting and nerdy wedding toppers. He kept joking that the wedding would represent the joining of two empires. I didn't think my mom would let it happen but Uhura and Darth Vader ended up on top of their cake!

Before everyone left, my mom did the traditional bouquet toss. All the single ladies went out to the parking lot. One teacher's teenage daughter, Heather, caught the bouquet. 

The day started off stressful (as I assume most wedding days would) but everything went smoothly and I had a really good time. My mom works with the best and most supportive coworkers. I've never seen an entire school rally together and come out to one of their own's weddings. I think they did about 50% of the work before and after the reception and comprised 75% of the attendees at the ceremony. Wes was also a wonderful help and looked handsomely stunning in his tuxedo. My mom & Mike were beaming with happiness and love all day.