As I type this, here in Toronto we're currently experiencing a winter storm (and yet we're already several weeks into spring) so it's kind of hard to picture summer right now. Hopefully we'll get out of the grip of snow and cold weather soon and finally be into spring. I'm getting geared up for the summer con season. AN is a month and a half away now so I really need to get moving on the costume project I've been keeping under wraps. I'm almost to the point with it that I'll discuss the costume. I've actually teetered on the brink of giving up a few times because I couldn't make parts of the costume work. I'm about to hit the point where I bring everything together and I can finally tell if everything has been working. I hope it doesn't look awful! This costume has become a money pit so I have to make it work somehow!

Otherwise for AN things are looking pretty good. My plan is to wear Sailor Saturn, probably Casual Hotaru Tomoe, my secret costume, China Sherry Birkin and I'm thinking of re-wearing my Bulma costume on Sunday of the con. I have to balance quite a few things at AN. I'm hoping to sell a couple of ball-joint dolls at Doll North thanks to a friend that's allowing me to display them at her table on Friday evening so I have to coordinate handing off my dolls. I also have 2 panels to think about. Apparently the Resident Evil panel that I'm on will be late Friday night but I'm not sure when my other panel on figure collecting will be so my schedule is kind of up in the air.

Anyway, with the progress that I've made on my costume for AN, I should be posting about it in a few weeks. I would really like to get the costume done by the end of April although I already know I'm going to have problems with some of the accessories but I may have a backup so I'm crossing my fingers.

As for other summer plans, my friend Stillvisions booked hotel space at the Holiday Inn for Otakuthon in August. I wasn't really planning to go again, but some of my best friends have decided to check it out so I figured why not give it another shot. My whole family is going to Newfoundland over the summer, but I can't go with them so going to Otakuthon will be a mini vacation for me (as much of a vacation going to a con is). XD

Youmacon has kind of come up again as a potential con to attend. I swore I wouldn't go again, but I've been potentially offered a badge and I may have ride and hotel space. I'm really on the fence about it because I really need to save more money. I still live with my family and I've been putting money away over the last few years. I'm trying to decide if I want to move out and rent or if I want to try to ramp up my savings and try to save enough for a down payment probably on a condo. Either way I want to save more money so for this year I'm probably not going to make any more super complicated or expensive costumes after AN. I'm probably going to be taking a break from sewing for a while to be honest. My current costume is driving me nuts so I would rather take a break. I'm not going to many cons this year so I can just re-wear costumes. I still need to debut Super Sailor Chibi Moon for one, on top of all the new stuff that I'm bringing to AN. I'm getting a bit drained by Cosplay anyway.

As a bit of an aside, I've been getting photos back from some shoots from last year (such as photos of my Halloween Rei costume from Youmacon taken by SolarTempest and all of the shoot photos from the shoots around Halloween that I did with Stillvisions) so my costume backlog of photos from 2012 and earlier is now gone. Thanks so much to all of the awesome photographers that I worked with for taking and editing the photos! It means a lot to me!

Stay tuned for another update about AN!