New Year life update! (Patreon)

Happy New Year everyone! A million apologies for being gone for so long; I left on December 16th for an extended family Christmas vacation which started with a cruise where I had next to no wifi access for 8 days, and then quite frankly the most exhausting 7 day Florida Parks trip ever. I had a pretty good time, but handling the fear of being on a boat and then in Florida for two weeks, surrounded by people who refused to take the health of others into consideration by just wearing their stupid masks indoors when required to was... overwhelming. I feel like I need a vacation from that "vacation". And I know some people are going to ask why I went in the first place during a huge Covid variant spike amidst the busiest travel season of the year, and to that all I have to say is: I wouldn't have gone if I didn't have to, but my mom spent upwards of 50,000 nonrefundable dollars on her "dream vacation" and I simply am not in a monetary position to turn it down and pay her back for my part. We got back two days ago and since then I've been getting all my ducks back in a row. I ordered groceries, dealt with Ghost's upcoming vet appointments, had a follow up appointment for a fun little cancer scare (no cancer, phew), scheduled covid tests, booked a hotel for WonderCon, and made my favorite dinner. So here I am, finally in a place where I have time to catch up on the frankly daunting amount of things I missed over the past three weeks. I've read through most of the Discord, catching up with everybody's holidays, and I promise I'll be active there again soon, but I start jury duty in a few days, so it may not be until after that.

Boring stuff out of the way, Aaron and I have been talking A LOT about our plans for this year, barring any giant lockdown happening again. We're doing WonderCon in Anaheim. I'll layer several masks if I have to, but this is a well run con that has plenty of outdoor space, so I feel confident that it can smoothly go on this year with the new traditional vaccination and mask restrictions. We're visiting my mom in New Orleans at the end of February. We'd love to go to D23 Expo for the first time this year, and go back to DragonCon, but obviously we'll see how feasible these are as things progress. More than anything we really want to take an extended trip to Europe for Aaron's 30th and my 25th birthday. I don't know yet how balancing all of these things financially will work out, or how they will affect how many cosplays I'm able to invest in, but I do know I already have a long list of cosplans for this year! I'm gonna write out a few of them here!

-TASM 2 Gwen Stacy! This has been SUCH a long time coming and NWH really lit the fire in me again to get it done. I swore I would finish up a few other things this month but this is the next thing I'll be making after that.

-Three different Elizabeth Swanns (okay maybe four). I've got 3 Liz cosplays somewhere along the "completed" spectrum that I wanted to finish before I left for vacation (boy was that a pipe dream) so I'm prioritizing them now. I'm hoping to shoot them while it's still freezing and the beaches are empty.

-Across the Spider-Verse Spider-Gwen. Still need to decide what suit pattern I'm using, and then this is Aaron's Christmas present to me. I already have another of the base wig that I used for ITSV Gwen so I'll start styling that while I wait for the suit to come in. 

-Kitty Pryde, both her Star-Lord costume and an updated version of her X-Men suit. I've been putting this off for so long and this is the year!

-Alina from Shadow and Bone has been a real emotionally draining struggle, but I still hope to finish her this year.

These are just the things off the top of my head, so let me know if there's anything else you all would like to see!