Refuse To Abuse 5K

Here's a little bit of trivia for you~ my best mile in high school was about 16 minutes. Seriously. I was consistently one of the last five people in my P.E. class to finish the mile every time. Maybe I was a dwarf in a past life because I can sprint just fine, but anything longer than that kills me.

Anyways.

Last March my sister had a baby and was determined to get fit so she decided to run a 5k in Seattle a few months later. That sounded so scary to me, as I couldn't fathom running that far (especially so relatively soon after having a baby), but she's not me and she's built a bit better in the running department than I am. When the time came around, her and my youngest sister ran the Refuse To Abuse 5K at Safeco Field and had a BLAST. They got to walk or run through every level of Safeco Field~ from the parking garage to the main concourse to the baseball field itself!


This year, Aaron and I have decided we want to participate in this 5K. It's July 19th, so it'll be about three months after Dean is born and that'll be enough recovery time and what not for me. Neither of us have ever done one before so we're a bit nervous, but when I think back to all the walking we did while we were in Japan (and the running we did that one drunken night in Nishinomiya) this will be cake mix. And by cake mix, I mean, I can totally speed walk this.

Our store created a "team" for this event which is pretty cool. My parents, Aaron's parents, his nephew, and my sisters will all be joining in. It'll be fun to have so many people I know and love doing this event together. We encourage anyone and everyone in the Pacific Northwest to join us! The date is Saturday July 19th at 7pm, and is $40 per person. No strollers are allowed, which is the only bummer since Dean can't be there. Regardless, this is going to be one awesome night!

Do you like running? Have you ever participated in a 5k before? ♥

RadCon - Our First Convention

Valentine's Day weekend was RadCon, the local SciFi/Fantasy convention that takes place every year, and our store Sunken Treasures Games made it's vendor debut there. Having never done a show before, we had no idea what to expect, but figured at the very least the exposure would be good. RadCon exceeded all of our expectations and plan on being a vendor there from now on.


Now the cool thing about this show was that the hotel it takes place at sections off an entire wing of hotel rooms that vendors can rent and use as a store front. When we first heard this I was weirded out and turned off to the idea because it sounds really creepy. But once I talked to some other local business owners who are vendors each year, told us that the hotel takes out all the beds and furniture so we can use the room however we want, and showed us pictures, we decided to do it. The biggest pro for us was that we could pick our own hours; we could open early and stay open late if we wanted, and when we were done we just closed the hotel room door and that was that. Our merchandise couldn't be more secure.

Aaron did all of the hard work putting the "store" together. We were clueless as to what merchandise would be best so we brought a little bit of everything. Here's a video I took the first morning we were open:


I should have taken the video horizontal, I know, but oh well.




It was a crazy, fun, stressful, tiring, great weekend and we are excited to participate at RadCon again next year. Now we have a better idea of what to expect and how to handle certain things. Next year will be even more fun!

Have you ever been to a "con" before? PAX? ComicCon? What is your favorite part about the vendors there? What do you think about setting up shop in a hotel room?

Owari - The End

You guys, this year is finally over. I'm typically not one to wish for anything to just be over but this year- I'm so glad it's over. It wasn't a bad year by any means, no no no. It was a great year! So many wonderful, amazing, thrilling, life changing, and awesome things happened this year. It was in fact, probably one of my fave (if not my fave) year of all time!

Here are a few highlights for me:

First thing I did was release a super cute knitting cowl pattern~ Etna.


Aaron and I went to Osaka Japan for my birthday and and saw my fave Japanese wrestler live:


We found out we were having a baby!


I have enjoyed my growing belly:


Released another cowl pattern~ Mina:


Aaron and I celebrated our 12th anniversary and went to a Nine Inch Nails concert:


We found out we were going to have a baby boy in April:


And opened up an Etsy shop~ TheFoxShop:


Tons of things happened in between~ Rinoa turned 12, went to Bumbershoot Music Festival, worked a butt-ton, hosted lots of fun events at the store, got a bunch of knitting done... I mean it's been a great and full year! 2014 has a lot in store for us, and I'm excited to welcome and embrace it all.

Lastly, I want to say thank you to every single reader~ Thank you for stopping by and reading my blog. Thank you for taking time and leaving me comments. Your words and thoughts are super encouraging to me and I love reading them. ♥

Happy New Year everyone!!!

Sunken Treasures Games

A few weekends ago, I posted this little post about some work we were doing at the store. Well we finished all that work and had a few requests to post more pictures so here they are!

Here's a look at part of the front of the store. Some systems, STG t-shirts and bags, games, etc.

Aaron, being the always enthusiastic character he is, in front of the new slat wall fixture my parent's got us for Christmas. We have tons of import items like card sleeves, deck boxes, games, and wall scrolls.

"The Monster" holds our NES, SNES, and Atari games. Next to it is a wall full of new shelves that Aaron's parents got us for Christmas. These new ones are deep enough to spine games so we can have more up there. We were able to put up almost 30% more games on the walls thanks to these new shelves!

More shelves and more games!

This isn't even all of the anime we have for sale. We went from about two shelves of anime to easily 2+ big bookshelves full this last year. It's incredibly exciting!

Part of our "game room" where we have Magic the Gathering card singles for customers to shop through, two really nice kitchen tables for people to play games on, and 4 arcade cabinets: After Burner, Double Dragon II, Rolling Thunder, and Marvel vs Capcom 2. It's a pretty popular area! d^___^b

That's all I have for right now. I'm sure there will be lots more pictures in the future as our store keeps growing. <3

A Christmas Work In Progress

For Christmas, both my parents and Aaron's parents bought us shelves for the store. Today we spent the evening putting it all up.

Tomorrow we'll pick up the pieces. XD