MagFest 2014

In early January (1-6 January 2014), Carlos and I ventured to nearby National Harbor, Maryland to attend MagFest 2014. We attended this Music and Gaming Festival last year, at the same venue, the Gaylord National Hotel, and it was a lot of fun. We spent the final days of our winter break relaxing in the hotel, playing lots of arcade and console games, hearing concerts, and eating delicious dinners at the various restaurants around the harbor. Here are lots of pictures from our MagFest experience:

 

 

 This MagFest was lots of fun! Some of my highlights were: listening to the Bit Brigade, Megas, and Triforce Quartet concerts, seeing some really neat cosplay, beating Mega Man II (as per tradition!), and relaxing in and wandering around a very beautiful hotel (with Christmas decorations still up). We probably won't be attending MagFest again as we are moving out of DC, but I'm really glad I was able to attend MagFest twice while we lived here!

Holiday time art

I like to make most of the gifts I give over the holiday season and I thought I would write a quick little post about some of the art I made and gave this year.

As a Secret Santa present for my friend Jennifer, I adopted a yellow-backed duiker under her name at the Sacramento Zoo. The adoption package came with some great things like an adoption certificate, fact sheet about her animal, stickers, and some zoo admission coupons. I thought it would be neat to augment the gift with a little watercolor of her duiker and I am pretty pleased with the result! Jennifer and family made a trip to the Sacramento Zoo to see their adopted duiker and it seemed to be a really great gift.

I also had a good time making a cross-stitch of the Udea family: Shannon, BJ, Daphne, and Ernie. This was a lot of fun and I think the end product captured everyone's personalities.

 

We are currently digging ourselves out from the foot of snow we received from winter storm Pax a couple of nights ago. The government was shut down on Thursday (so the museum was closed), but we came in anyways and it was really weird walking around Capitol Hill that morning--it was a ghost town.

I have one more Christmas-related post after this (detailing our adventure at MagFest in January), then I hope to return to Walt Disney World-related posts until I finish documenting that trip!

2013 holiday cards

As per tradition (since 2009 at least!) I have made cards to send to friends and family so I thought I would make a post about my card-making process for this past Christmas. This year, I tried something a little different from years past. Before, I made every card individually by hand (painted/colored/stamped/drawn). My list of card receivers has grown over the years and I decided to try something new to save some time but still produce a nice card from my own art.

I created a gouache painting of a scene from one of my favorite places in the world: Las Cruces Biological Station in San Vito, Costa Rica. This was my first time really painting with gouache and it was great! These paints basically control like watercolors but produce very vibrant colors. You can also easily manipulate the opacity of washes so it is almost a little easier to use than watercolor paint. I ended up with a stylized scene of agoutis in Las Cruces interacting with seeds on a tree-lined hill. This is pretty similar to a view from one of the cabinas there!

After painting and scanning the piece, I uploaded it to MOO (the company I use to print my business cards) and made holiday cards using one of their templates. I could create a customized message inside the card and also on the back (where I added a small picture of the shrew train I painted for Shannon and BJ).

I am really pleased with the end result. Everything worked so well that I may have to do something like this again next year!

Christmas in Redmond 2013

I've finally gotten a little more organized at home and have had the time to download the pictures from winter break and edit them a little. I still can't believe how busy we have been ever since we returned to DC--it's like we pressed the fast-forward button. We have so much to get done in the coming months!

Anyway, I thought I would treat our trip to Redmond, WA as one big post with little comments after all of the pictures. Here we go!

 

My parents picked Carlos and me up from the Seattle airport and this view greeted us on the drive home--Mt. Rainier.

 

A very important component of any trip home is snacking! We stopped by Fred Meyer and picked up two types of pickle-flavored potato chips. After a thorough taste test, I preferred the Lay's.

 

Remlington was there to play with us and was always around as we were working or watching TV and playing Wii U.

 

We had some beautiful Christmas decorations including the amazing tree (it smelled good too!) with traditional ornaments (including Binky the polar bear). I also love our table all decked out for Christmas dinner.

 

Speaking of food, we had plenty of it over the holidays! We made some easy individual chicken pot pies, a lemon tart, and our traditional lunch o' snacks on Christmas day. Of course we also visited Haiku seafood buffet to celebrate Carlos' birthday early.

 

Overall, the weather was OK while we were in Washington--lots of cloudy and foggy days, even a little snow here and there.

Carlos and I had a ton of fun back home with my parents (as usual!). Who knows where we will be next year during the holiday season: Washington state, California, or Mexico!