Christmas Week

Christmas is already over and we were too busy with family and the normal Christmas festivities to really do a post, so here is a little bit of what we did this week. First off, we all went to the train depot and took a short ride on a train a few days before Christmas. They had Santa Claus in a train and hot cocoa and cookies for everyone. I got some pictures of the trains and stuff around there.











Any idea why this might be written on a train car? Found it amusing.



We received a package from a friend of ours in the mail a day before Christmas Eve. Yummy Japanese snacks! Neither of us have had the pleasure of any kind of Pocky besides chocolate, strawberry and Almond Crush until we got this. She also sent us a Japan Rail Pass from her last trip to Japan, and some face wash and honey lip gloss for Riiana. I thought I'd take some pictures of the snacks since most of these are impossible to find around here. We're trying to savor them instead of munching out right away.





Do not buy pre-made Gingerbread House kits from stores. We learned our lesson this year, and next year we're definitely going to make the whole thing from scratch. The pieces looked fine on the front and back but in the middle they were all broken. So for your pleasure: Gingerbread House Fail.



And here's our little Christmas tree before the little guy opened up his presents. Perhaps in a later post we'll show you what we got. Most everything was for our son though. We went back to the train depot again for Christmas dinner, it was quite crowded and Santa was a bit creepy this time. He was good with the kids but he triple-eyed up Riiana before asking if she was good this year... was very awkward. His face kinda looked plastic too, but he was real. So, overall we had a good Christmas. Our son got a NES thing so I've been playing some old school Nintendo games with him, bringing back the 8-bit nostalgia. Sorry we didn't do a post on Christmas day but we were busy spending family time.

It's So Empty: Shelf Life

Today I was going to post up a photo shoot of my Ryoko Asakura Figma, but something else came up. I've been wanting a new place to put my figures other than on my very wobbly computer shelf. I've only been collecting figures since June I believe. The picture below is the now nearly empty and lonely shelf I had the figures on before.



All my Figma were on the middle shelf that Tabitha is sitting on. It seemed pretty cramped and crowded so it was time to figure out how to compensate for my growing collection, since I got pre-orders lined up all the way to April so far, I'm obviously going to need more space. Plus, as I said, that computer shelf is very wobbly. I have a son, and well, he likes to jump around and make the whole house shake when he's playing indoors (this is a trailer house we're talking about here), so must secure figures from falling to their death. Speaking of my son, he helped a little with the shelves.




The shelves aren't very pretty, nor are my walls. This is a project for another day. I planned to paint the living room walls either castle-like or perhaps just buy new paneling all together. The shelves will get touched up when I get around to it as well. You can see Yoko is hanging from the Christmas lights, waiting to snipe anyone who comes through the front door unwelcome. Also Chi is hanging out on the tree, since she has no base, and can't stand on her own. I really wish I had a better Chi figure, will be getting a PVC one in the future. I'd be extremely happy if by some crazy stroke of luck they made her into a Figma. Just looking at my shelves makes me realize how small my collection really is. I thought I was going overboard but I have tons of space for figures now. I'm willing to bet I'll be running out of space by this time next year though (if I continue the way I'm going).






The diamond shaped shelf here is the future home of my nendoroid collection, Miku from the Mixing Box is guarding it for now. Then you can see my old shelf above the Chobits wall scroll holding pictures random knick knacks and part of my manga collection. If you're wondering what that other little thing on the wall is next to the Chi wall scroll, it's cardboard cover to a fat pack from a Magic: The Gathering (collectible card game) set. I liked the artwork so it got a spot on the wall, this tends to happen, since this is a rent-to-own deal I don't need to worry about tape/nails etc in the walls.



And last of all, all my current figure boxes (minus Miku Mixing Box and a figure who shall remain nameless for now). Also, after getting annoyed by hunting for pieces of Figmas to swap in and out when they were in their original boxes.. a shoe box filled with Figma bags and spare crappy Revoltech stand parts.