Comic Review: My Little Pony: Friends Forever Vol. 1

I was lucky enough to get a chance to read My Little Pony: Friends Forever Vol. 1 a bit early (it comes out June 17!). I loved My Little Pony when I was a kid (this is long before Friendship is Magic came on tv). My cousins and I would play with our plastic ponies for hours! So it was a real treat to get the chance to check this comic out.

The stories really felt like episodes of Friendship is Magic, which I enjoyed. The style of the plot and the drawings was really similar, which I think fans of the show will enjoy. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is a fan of the television show. I didn't find the writing to be very difficult, so I definitely think this is suitable for confident young reader.

My only complaint was that the stories focused very specifically on a few ponies. Pinkie and Applejack shared a story, Spike had a story, Twilight Sparkle had a story and The Cutie Crusaders had a story. Which left of my two favourite ponies: Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy! Also, Rarity has only a couple of lines. I found this disappointing and wished that the stories had covered all the ponies more equally.

Overall, I enjoyed this title and appreciated how cohesive it was with the television show. Will you be checking this one out when it goes on sale June 17?

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary ecopy of this comic for review purposes.

Sewing and Sewing Indie

I'm just going to throw this out there: I love sewing. Like really enjoy it. Not just for costumes, but I love sewing everyday clothes as well. There's just something about building a connection to clothes and knowing it's history and where it came from that is so different than the 'fast fashion' you find in the shopping mall (but that's a topic for another post).

So basically, I wanted to announce that 'm going to be including sewing as a fairly major portion of this blog. It will consist of both cosplay and everyday garments and will be awesome!

It was through reading sewing blogs that I learned it's possible to move beyond the "Big 4" sewing pattern companies and into the amazing world of indie pattern designers. And as if the cute designers weren't enough to make you want to support these small businesses, a bunch of them have partnered together for Sewing Indie Month! There's an awesome competition that I've already made some plans for (fabric is washed for garment #1)! And, as an added bonus, one of my favourite indie pattern designers (I'm dying to get my hands on a Sugarplum pattern), Lolita Patterns is even having a sale to celebrate. Check out the post here!

Tea Tuesday: David's Tea Organic Peppermint Amour

Tea Tuesday is a weekly featured inspired by Ambur's version at Burning Impossibly Bright. It's been a while since my last Tea Tuesday and I've made a couple BIG trips to David's, so these are going to be a David's-centered for the next couple months. This week I'm featuring Organic Peppermint Amour. Here's what David's has to say:

Peppermint Amour (Organic)

Peppermint is said to enhance your dreams. It’s also said to stimulate passion and creativity. Not to mention its fresh, cool flavour and aroma. This peppermint tea is organic, for great taste and good karma. We didn’t want to compromise when each cup has so much potential to enhance your life. 

Source

Peppermint is one of the few herbal teas that I enjoy. I find mint really perks me up, so if I'm feeling sleepy, but don't want to have anything with caffeine, peppermint tea is my go-to. This tea is nice, but very simply. The only ingredient is peppermint leaves (grown in Oregon apparently). Because this is such a simply tea, I found it tasted the same as any other bagged peppermint tea I've tried, though perhaps not quite as good as my aunt's home-grown peppermint tea. However, it is organic, so if that is something that is important to you, this is a good option.

Holy Geek Weekend Batman!

This weekend was a super geeky weekend! Free Comic Book Day on Saturday and May the Fourth on Sunday. Yikes! Of course, it was SNOWING the entire weekend!

On Saturday the BF and I hit up once one comic book store because the weather so so crummy and he needed to go out to the mall for something. It was a 2 free comics per person limit and 25% off the entire store! Of course, I had to take advantage of that sale! I'm trying to save money, so I managed to keep myself to only one item: Ticket to Ride India! I mostly wanted this one for the alternate map (Switzerland) which is designed for 2-3 players. There also wasn't a crazy line, which I was kind of worried about. But at the same time, there weren't any cool events at that store.

Last night we played some board games with friends. Betrayal at the House on the Hill, Carcasonne, and Lords of Waterdeep. All fun and I even won the 2nd game of Carcasonne, which was a first!

Finally, today was May the Fourth. I didn't do anything special, although I did see some Starwars cosplayers outside of Toys R Us!

I hope everyone had an awesome geeky weekend!

DM Diaries: Diseases

DM Diaries is the ramblings of a newbie DM running a 4e campaign.

Dire rat (source)

As a DM, I've realized I love diseases! Which sounds creepy and crazy. But seriously. Recently, my adventurers encountered some dire rats and wererats. In the first encounter with the dire rats, they managed to infect the fighter and the barbarian (both the party's strikers) with Filth Fever. Two encounters later, they encountered some wererats, where the warden and ranger were infected as well, meaning the only character to manage to not be infected was the bard (he was so proud).

My players got a little crazy with this one. The players of the fighter and warden are actually engaged. When they were planning who would stand where, the fighter asked the warden to stand in a specific place, but he didn't. The fighter (who was already infected), got pissed off and actually bit the warden, thus infecting him as well. He was pissed! I guess this may be why some people dislike running games involving couples, but that for another topic.

During their next extended rest, the fighter, barbarian and warden managed to heal themselves of the disease. The ranger, with his limited endurance, did not. He was dismayed to find that the town nearby was not large enough to have a doctor and insisted they find a city large enough for him to be healed. Luckily, they were going that way anyhow. In the 4 days it took them to walk to the city, he's condition actually worsened, so I guess it was worth it (despite the barbarian getting them throw out of the doctor's shop).

So clearly, including a disease in my game added a lot more than just making things a bit more difficult for the players. It added some roleplaying (which my table tends to lack - they like hitting stuff) and influenced their decisions on where to go and what to do next.

While I certainly don't want to overuse this mechanic, I feel like it definitely has some cool features and I will be including more diseases in future encounters/campaigns.