Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everybody! Thank you for a wonderful year, and here's to all your lovely dreams and aspirations in the coming year!!

Snow / 千葉 紗子 (Chiba Saeko)

For lovely Christmas day, I decided to sing one of my favorite winter j-pop ballads, "Snow" originally by Chiba Saeko. It's just so peaceful, like a snow-blanketed Christmas morning (not that there's any snow this year T_T). I think among all the seiyuus I have heard, Chiba Saeko has one of the most lovely and soothing singing voices ^_^

Holy Night / Toradora! (Rie Kugimiya + Eri Kitamura)

This year, I decided to sing one of the most perfect anime Christmas songs ever (in my opinion), "Holy Night" from Toradora! It's got the perfect feeling for Christmas Eve - happy and comfortable!

It's been a busy and exciting year for me, with its ups and downs. It's sad that everything on my old channel is gone now, but at least I have all the memories and friendships that came with it still intact, and I'm really looking forward to building up my new channel in the future. Life has gotten busier, and I don't have time to upload as many videos as I used to, but I hope to keep up a more regular posting schedule in the coming year (a New Year resolution, perhaps?).

Thanks so much to all my subscribers who followed me in my channel move, I really really appreciate all of your support and friendship!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a Happy Happy New Year!

渡良瀬橋 (Watarasebashi) - 松浦 亜弥 (Matsuura Aya)

This song has always been one of my favorites - not only is the music itself beautiful, but the lyrics are also really touching.

I had a cover of this up on my previous Youtube channel, but I feel like I've improved since that first attempt, so I thought I would re-record it and upload a new version ^_^

Hope you enjoy!

New Youtube Channel

Unfortunately, my old Youtube channel recently received its third strike and was subsequently deleted, hence why all of my old videos no longer work. I have made a new channel now, and will be reuploading some of the old videos (and of course fixing the posts they're in), but not all of them.

Apologies for the inconvenience... I'm not exactly happy about it either...

New channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/KyttyeeChii

Some Changes to the Site

Now that the flood of final papers and projects has abated, I've decided to do some maintenance on all of the various social media sites that I use. I had been keeping a Blogger about my fashion interests and daily life happenings, but it just seems silly to have to update two blogs simultaneously. Since many of my crafts revolve around fashion and fun events in my life, it's really not much of a stretch to simply combine the two into a central location. Thus, I've imported all of my old Blogger entries, and will be continuing with the "Me Myself and I" category posts more frequently here in the future.

That means more posts for everyone to read, and less complication for me! ^_^

[Outfit Post] This Week in Outfits

Oh hey, a less gigantic backlog of outfit snaps this time!! And I was actually un-lazy enough to take a decent amount of outfit snaps this week.

Skirt: Bodyline
Cutsew/Cardigan/Tights: Target

JSK: Metamorphose Temps de Fille
Cutsew/Cardigan: Target
Tights: Sockdreams

Skirt: Baby the Stars Shine Bright
Hairclip: Innocent World
Cutsew/Cardigan: Target
Tights: Sockdreams

T-Shirt: Kokufuku Shop
Skirt: Lolita Princess
Hairclip: Chocomint
Hoodie: Target
Tights: Sockdreams

Getting Back Into Ballet...

In the almost 10 years since I stopped the intense ballet training I had as a child, I've been drifting lacksadaisically in and out of ballet classes.  For awhile, I found a nice friendly  studio in Boston, and even got back into pointe classes, but the 40-hour roundtrip to and from the studio was just too much for my lazy busy undergrad self to handle.  I tried attending classes at the Joffrey for a short time after moving to Chicago, but again, the travel time was more than I really wanted to spend, especially because I was living in a less savoury area at the time.

However, after watching the first season of Dance Moms followed by random related videos including ones of the cutest little Russian ballerina dancing the Swan Lake variations (all of them... yes... 8 years old and dancing Swan Lake... I can't even...), I've determined that I do want to get back into ballet, and back en pointe eventually.

Even better, I found a little pilates/fitness/dance studio that's all of a 5-minute walk from my current apartment!  One Hundred is the name of the place.  Their website and advertisement board claims they offer adult pointe classes, although I have yet to find them on the schedule.  I think once I feel like I've gotten back in the groove and regained a reasonable amount of strength and balance, I'll just ask directly about them.  The classes here are relaxed, and though labeled "beginner" they actually have a wide range of adult dancers, ranging from beginners to professionals (some of the other studio instructors do the classes too).  They only have ballet class in the middle of the day on weekdays, but it just so happens that this quarter, they fall on my non-campus days, so I think I'm going to try to go twice a week for the rest of the quarter. In any case... COME ON MUSCLES!! REMEMBER WHAT YOU USED TO BE ABLE TO DO!!

Maybe I can keep myself motivated with the goal of cosplaying Princess Tutu and entering a dance number in the ACEN 2013 masquerade ^_^  Ballerina-Kyttyee Go!

My Updated Room!

I rearranged and slightly redecorated my room fairly recently, and I figured I'd snap a couple of quick photos of it to share!

When the RCN technician came over to fix our wireless, he told me that my room looked like a kid's room XD

View from the door ^o^  I've got a full collection of all the main My Little Pony characters from the Friendship is Magic series now.  Plus my Arashi Beautiful World concert clear-files ^o^

You can see one of my new Smileage posters on the wall, and you get a better view of my petticoat too!  Although that's now put away in a drawer ^_^

It's so much nicer actually having a bedframe - my back was beginning to feel the effects of my mattress being bowed all the time due to lack of support on the ends.  It's a little hard to get past it to get to the half of my room next to the closet, but it's workable XD

[Outfit Post] Daily Outfits

It's been awhile since my last outfit post XD  Here they are from the past 2 or so weeks!

 

Sweater: Liz Claiborne
Skirt: Lolita Princess

Cutsew: Baby the Stars Shine Bright
Skirt: Metamorphose Temps de Fille
Hairclip: Chocomint

Cutsew Dress: H.Naoto Frill
Cutsew: Target
Skirt: Bodyline

Cutsew: Target
Skirt: Baby the Stars Shine Bright

Cutsew: Target
Parka: Angelic Pretty
Skirt: Baby the Stars Shine Bright

Blouse: Gap
JSK: Boguta

Blouse: Target
Skirt / Hairclip: Innocent World

Cutsew: Target
Skirt: Baby the Stars Shine Bright

Cutsew/Parka: Target
JSK: Metamorphose Temps de Fille
Shoes: Secret Shop

Cutsew: Google
Dress: Jelly.J
Pants: Target
Boots: Sugar

Homestuck Figurine - John's Wise Guy Slime Suit

I've been reading MSPaintAdventures for awhile now, after my boyfriend introduced me to it (some of the stories were used in the MIT Mystery Hunt awhile ago). And we've been reading and discussing the current ongoing story, Homestuck.

Since John is his favorite character, I decided it might be fun to make him a little clay figurine of John. So, here's John in his Wise Guy Slime Suit (my boyfriend requested this outfit) and his awesome Pogohammer!!



John

I sculpted him out of white polymer clay. I basically started off with a cylinder-ish shape for his body and a sphere for his head, then added pants and jacket in separate pieces, and then added extra things for his hair shape. Here is the figure pre-paint:



Aaaand here he is after painting! For awhile he looked like a derpy Dracula (I think it's the hair/head).



Pogohammer

I actually didn't take a pre-paint photo of this T_T However, it was also made out of white polymer clay, with coiled jewelry wire for the springs (so yes, those are in fact actual miniature springs). The slug was made as a separate piece and then glued on after everything was painted.





And here's John together with his Pogohammer!





They even stand up!!





This was a lot of fun to make, and I'm totally considering making figurines of other characters so the boyfriend can have a whole set ^o^

[Outfit Post] Plaid & Robot Cat + J-pop Haul

Life and outfits have all been pretty unexciting since classes started.  I don't even have that many classes, it's just they all have a lot of reading and I feel like I'm spending my entire life teaching my ESL class.  Anyways, I remembered to take a photo of my outfit today!

Skirt: Innocent World

My t-shirt has an upside-down robot cat with lightbulbs on for its feet.

Also (perhaps more excitingly), my latest J-pop haul finally arrived!  That's what happens when I tell them to "ship after everything is released."  I get to wait until the last release date before I get anything XD

Anyways, I got the #AAABest album along with their relatively recent single "Daiji na Koto" which I absolutely adore.  Those came with photocards (luckyyy!!) - Chiaki and whole-group.  The album also came with an awesome poster that is currently laying face-down on my floor with books on it in an attempt to uncurl.  I also got Takahashi Ai's farewell Morning Musume single (TTT_TTT) featuring her solo song.  *sigh* it was a good run, Ai-chan... I will miss you T_T  She's one of my favorite J-pop singers of all time <3<3<3  And last but not least, Arashi's "Love Rainbow" just because.  I'm slowly trying to collect more of their singles, although it's going to be harder and harder to get the older ones >_<

And that's my haul ^_^  Whee!!

Next Dance to Learn... AKB48's Kaze wa Fuiteiru

Usually I only post about actually finished dances, but this time, I can't contain my excitement about AKB48's newest single (the PV of which I just saw). "Kaze wa Fuiteiru" Not only is the song exactly to my taste (angsty, but still with a hint of gentle), but the dance just looks like so much fun!!!



That screen cap I think captures exactly how I feel about this song/dance. It's got attitude (tons of it), but it's also flowing and breezy. I looooove this sort of combination.

So, this is officially the next dance I'm learning!! Starting now! o(^o^)o

[Outfit Post] Fun at Mitsuwa!

My roommate and I made a trip to Mitsuwa this past weekend, just to stock up on things and to de-stress (I just can't resist their food court).

It was a bit warm, and I was feeling too lazy to dress in anything elaborate, so I just went with a cute pop-kei type of outfit.

In addition to food and stuff (yeah Asian bread!!) I also bought a KERA and the first 2 volumes of Shugo Chara, because all the text in there has furigana so I can read it easily.  I'm guessing Ciao Comics has furigana on at least some (probably all) their stories, so maybe I should look into reading them.  Maybe I'll even learn some more kanji more quickly this way ^_^

And the adorably tasty baked good for this time is... a Doraemon custard bun!!

[Outfit Post] Playing Catch-up ^_^;;

It's been awhile since I've posted my everyday outfits!  I usually post them on tumblr, but forget to make a post here, so here's a compilation of some of the more recent ones ^_^

Overdress: 59 Seconds

Boots: Sugar

Hairbow: Chocomint

Brooch: handmade by Oli

Skirt: Baby the Stars Shine Bright

Shoes: Secret Shop

Hairbow: Chocomint

Skirt: Bodyline

Headbow: Innocent World

Necklace: handmade by Oli

Skirt: Metamorphose Temps de Fille

Parka: Angelic Pretty

JSK: Rose Melody

Blouse: HMHM

Salopette: Urban Outfitters

Shoes: Geoxx

Blouse: Gap

Paris: Tour Eiffel

Day 2 of my trip finished with a long walk from Montparnasse over to the Eiffel Tower...  Very long walk, but very nice.  We passed a couple of landmarks and otherwise interesting things on the way. First was le musée de l'Armée.

And then this store in particular was amusing ^o^

I do not think they had in mind the implications of the store name in English... ^o^

There wasn't anything really Sioux about the products I could see in their shop window...  It looked like a pretty average cute baby clothes store.

In any case, with such amusement, the Eiffel Tower was finally reached!  I stopped at the far end of le Champ de Mars to get a pretty picture.

And then continued on my way to go up the actual tower.  Needless to say, there were hordes of street vendors with little Eiffel Tower shaped trinkets hanging on giant keyring-like things, trying to sell them for super-cheap (compared to the souvenir stores with physical setups).  It was like an obstacle course, trying to circumvent them...

As it turns out, there's a choice to take the stairs, or take the elevator.  You can only go to the very top of the tower if you choose the elevator option, although that seemed iffy, because half the time while I was looking at the sign, it said the top was "full" and therefore closed off at the moment.  It also cost more than twice as much.  I felt like just the observation deck was sufficiently high to satisfy my Eiffel Tower experience.  Soooo many stairs... but I climbed a lot of stairs in Paris, for some reason (maybe because I stayed with someone who lived on the 3rd floor?).  In any case, it was actually quite a nice walk up the tower, and the view from the observation deck was already plenty amazing, I really didn't need to crowd with the tons of people going to the very top (I hate crowds...).  I managed to snag a photo from two sides of the tower (the two most interesting sides).

Le Champ de Mars:

Trocadero:

And this is what the tower looks like, looking up from the 2nd observation deck:

WHEE!!  It was pretty awesome ^_^

And then of course we had to climb the stairs down... XD

Annual Midwest Lolita Meetup 2011

Yesterday was the second anniversary of the Midwest Lolita Meetup!!  I had a lot of fun both seeing old friends and getting to meet new people!!  It seems like the meetup has grown in attendance since last year, so that's also really awesome ^_^  Too bad it ended up raining (spectacularly, if I might say so) so we couldn't have our picnic outside in the park, but we ended up taking over the Cultural Center's cafe area, which worked out pretty well.

First off, my Dessert OP from BTSSB arrived just in time.  Well, technically they tried to deliver it Friday but my roommate decided to be awesome and deliberately ignore the mailman (*sarcasm*).  So I ended up picking the package up from the post office in the morning before the meetup.  In any case, it worked out pretty okay XD  It's a simple outfit, but I rather like that about it - I think I tend to have a penchant for simpler outfits anyways.  My hairstyle was inspired by a recent post from Midori, in which she showed off "Minnie Mouse" hairstyle with a giant bow.  Good thing too, since the only hairthing that really matched was my giant sax bow...

OP: Baby the Stars Shine Bright

Headbow: Handmade (LJ Millenaire)

Shoes: Secret Shop

And I actually remembered to bring my camera to the meetup this year (although I  still failed pretty bad at remembering to use it XD).  In any case, here's a few snaps of my friends (old and new)!