I miss back to school shopping!

I was practically pee-my-pants-excited when Jacki suggested this week's list. An absolutely brilliant idea for our saunter into autumn!

If only I had some crayons to really spruce this up.

There's just something about binders. I love them! Searching for the perfect binder at the beginning of each school year was a treasure hunt. Sometimes I wanted a fat one, sometimes thin. Some binders didn't have the clear sleeve aspect, and I needed that for personalization purposes! I occasionally wanted a binder that had the additional 'protective' clip so that the three rings wouldn't... I don't know... suddenly pop open...?

The pen aisle is still draws my attention whenever I go past it, and I have to be careful to not go into stores likes Staples or Office Max too often. I pore over the pens, wondering with open-mouthed curiosity how they write, and how bold the color of the ink will be, and if it'll be smooth and if it'll become my new favorite. I remember in junior high some company came out with new pens that had clear ink inside the body of the pen, but when you wrote the ink would become COLORED! They still sell them, actually, but I can't remember what they're called. Oh well.

M-effin erasers, mirite? (image found here, I do not own it)

Sweet, sweet Lisa Frank. I was up to my eye balls in the stuff. Pens, pencils, erasers, stationary sets, you name it. My sister and I loved us some Lisa Frank. I still light up a bit whenever I happen to see a Lisa Frank folder in the school supplies center of Target or something. Those garish, happy colors and the demented looking animals really tug on my heartstrings.

I miss the age of Sanrio and Keroppi (image found here, I do not own it)

Each year didn't see the purchase of a new pencil box, because sometimes I'd pick out one that was sturdier than others. The pencil box shown above, however, is almost identical to one that I got when I was in late elementary school. I still own it, it's in the garage. I came across it not terribly long ago. I was overjoyed to see that I managed to hang onto it all of these years. I used to be completely Keroppi'd out. I love that little frog!

Colorful dividers. Hell. yes. (image found here, I do not own it)

My new binders had to be paired with some beautiful new dividers. I remember one year I purchased a malleable clear plastic binder, and inside of it I put colorful transparent dividers. The dividers didn't have the little slip-in area for labels, but instead you'd put a page in the back of the binder and you'd write the labels there. I still have this binder as well. Part of it is held together with duct tape. I just can't seem to let go of it! I really loved the feel of the traditional dividers too, though. Writing tiny labels to slide into the primary colored goodness of the pages. 

Can't wait to see Jacki's!

-Miranda

In the spirit of all things September-y...

Well maybe not all things... but mostly school things! It has been a little while since both Miranda and I have attended school. College doesn't count. It's school but nobody takes you by the hand skipping to the nearest Office Max or Staples with dreams of which new trapper keeper you will be gifted with or how simply functional - yet totally and completely extravagant your pencil holder/sharpener and eraser set will be.

This week, we will be thinking upon the happiest school supply shopping days of our lives. List your top 5 most anticipated purchases during your grade school years of Back-to-School Shopping! From kinder to senior, we all had those particular items on each of our colorful supply lists that we looked forward to above all.

I look forward to a post from dorky little grade school Miranda. And while we all would have loved to be on the Hogwarts Express on the first of this lovely month, I encourage you to refrain from listing items such as owls or robes... ;)

jackimissesschool

My First PAX! :)

Jacki here with a quick listsaurus update :) Unfortunately this will be a quick post as that my kid sister is waiting behind me to hang out. I have much to say about the great time I had so perhaps I'll go back for an edit but for now here it is:



It was great to see friends, all the cosplay was awesome and the free shirts and videogame previews were great! Battlestar Galactica was a blast and I LOVE my new swag from Sanshee (SO glad we discovered them at PAX) Can't wait for next year!

-jackisinahurry

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

This week's list has me in a bit of a tough spot. Jacki and I decided that we would do our top five favorite things about PAX, which was a fantastic idea, but tomorrow my geek blog goes up and I'll be doing a full run-down of my bursting-at-the-seams-with-awesome weekend. I don't want to do double posting, but alas, a teeny tiny bit of it is going to happen.

Last week Jacki wished that I would have been more comprehensive in my post, i.e. I would have talked a bit about my favorite toys like she did. I have absolutely no qualms, holds, reservations or hesitations in saying that she was 100% correct and I truly promise that I had every intention of rectifying the situation with this week's post.

However! In light of the first paragraph of this post, I am sorry to say that I will not be adding additional information to my list. I am so incredibly sorry to disappoint. I'll be better next week, I swear! I really want to save up my PAX-memory mojo for the post that'll be going up tomorrow because I can guarantee that it'll be a lengthy one!

So now without further ado, and that introduction out of the way, I present to you my Top 5 Most Fantastic Moments of PAX 2011!

In order to assuage your feelings of remorse for my lack of supplemental information, I will provide you with a few photos of these five favorite things!

Be sure to check out my geek blog tomorrow if you want to hear all about the amazing things that happened, including a lot more information about the five things pictured here! I promise they're pretty good stories :D

-Miranda

Not sure how this one will be possible

This weekend is PAX, the tremendous and amazing penny arcade expo. I am a veteran attendee, proud and pleased, whereas poor Jacki has never been before! I'm really excited for her to see all that there is to see, and participate in the fun events.

She suggested that we do a video game themed list in honor of PAX, and I posed that we do a "favorites of PAX" list! She doesn't know what to expect, and I love it all, so we'll both have a difficult time creating a top five. Wish us luck!

-Miranda

TOYS ARE AWESOME

Ok. I had WAY more fun with this than I thought I would. I was excited at first but emotionally distraught over missing my sister. I didn't give myself a chance to really soak in the idea of toys and all the nostalgia it would come with. So here it is:

We decided to keep boardgames and videogames out of it, which I'm glad for since this list was hard enough to come up with as it is.

POLLY POCKETS. My sisters and I could not get enough of them. If we were good during our family outings to the navy exchange, we all got to decide on a brand new polly pocket from the store. THIS WAS MY SHIIIIIIT.
I remember we got a lot of different ones, beach houses, animal related ones that came with tiny puppy figurines to train (I don't remember what brand they were and if I could remember I'd lose my mind with joy) we had off brands of different mansions and stuff that we just mixed together and created an entire city or village or what have you. My absolute favorite was my tree house though. It made me really really want to live in a tree house one day. it had a hammock, and a trap door, cameras and a little creek...AND A WORKING SWING? yesssss. No matter what new awesome mansion or shopping center or pet shop we ended up getting, the treehouse was always my homebase. Everything about this toy has me brimming with joy and my imagination is running away with me. I used to pretend the little magenta bird sitting on top of the tree was my camera security system. YEsssssss...

MCDONALD's AMAZING WILDLIFE PLUSHIES.These toys were a big deal for me and my sisters. One, because we loved animals and making animals have amazing lives with awesome personalities. Before we got super into barbies, our little animal friends were there with their crazy adventures. Two, because my parents never let us buy happy meals...but they finally did so we could get these specific toys! We lost our cute little azn minds over these things! The best part about these little critters was that we created an entire universe, with families and drama and social lives. We just kept adding and adopting to our animal families and creating strange dynamics between each of the creatures. We used to write stories where I would illustrate in a comic book style fashion... Gosh I could go on forever about these critters. We never left the house without them, which worked out well because they were pocket sized! This was my little fella. His name was Brownie. (I think that later I got another happy meal with another koala...she was dubbed Cupcake, Brownie's girlfriend). These little toys later trickled into an obsession with TY beanie babies but let's not go there....

BARBIES were another obsession of ours. We had soooo many barbies. All kinds of accessories. The coolest part was that my mom would often just let us pick and choose from garage sales and we ended up with really ghetto but awesome set ups for our dolls. We'd create dramatic lives for them of course, with adventures and story lines that lead us all around the house and sometimes into the yard (weather permitting). My favorite toy of all my barbies though, was the only toy I ever threw a legitimate tantrum for in a store. My mom was LIVID.....she fooled me into thinking it would never ever happen since I cried in the store for it. BUT...Low and behold, the toy of my 7-8 yr old dreams appeared on my birthday (thanks mom! ;D). I've searched high and low for the correct image of the horse she got me...I'm not sure if it was Tawny or not and honestly I can't even remember what I named her myself. I was just so enamored by her beauty. I literally combed her hair all of the time. I didn't even comb my barbie's hair. Just the horse. hahaha. Of course she couldn't walk on her own for very long like the commercials boasted, and she certainly couldn't trot or hop over fences. Barbie wasn't even able to properly sit on her without them both toppling over. I didn't care. She was mine! I'm certain my love for this horse trickled into my obsession with aimlessly riding Epona when I started playing Ocarina of Time later in life ;)

PLAYDOH. Playdoh. playdoh. PLAYDOH. How can anyone not like this stuff? I used to eat it, I loved it so much. Hahah well, no I didn't EAT it, eat it. I merely tasted it out of curiosity and sometimes the food creations I made out of it just seemed so convincing. I am so thrilled that I was able to find an image online of the exact toy my mom got for us when I was 6. I LOVED this thing. My mom has an adorable video of me, my sisters and my cousins all playing with this stuff and gosh it makes me miss it so much.

And finally, POKEMON CARDS. This one I was hesitant to add to the list cause I wasn't sure if it counted as a boardgame or a toy....I'm just going to go ahead and call it a hybrid. It is everything and anything I ever wanted. Hahahahah. Collecting the cards was a blast, battling was always epic, drawing them and imagining and trading...all of it! :D I wish it were still socially acceptable for me to carry them around and show them off and battle. hahahaha. <3 I'll have to look for where my sisters and I kept our collection...We even had fun japanese versions on some of the pages. And our holographic cards were so awesome! Argh!!! I must look for them 8)

Anyhow. This list theme was VERY FUN. I encourage anyone else to think of their favorite toys from their childhood and maybe look for images of it online to see if their memory of it is still fresh. and just for funzies, I wanted to list a few runners up:

1. POGS
2. Creepy Crawlers
3. Sky Dancer Fairies!!!

I was so stoked to find a picture of the exact Sky Dancer my mom bought me! I used to take her outside and see if I could get her stuck in the trees. Kind of dumb, but hey kids are kind of dumb sometimes. <3

My mom refused to buy me POGS and creepy crawlers (they were boy toys...harumph). But boy was I stoked when I got my own Sky Dancer Fairy. That bitch was awesome. Hahahahah. And with that, I bid you all good day.

-Jackisrollinginthenostalgia

Favorite toys! I just have so many.

So this list wasn't easy.

Many items popped into my head, it's insane how many toys children have. There were tons that I loved, that I remember being completely enamored with. I attempted to pick the ones that I played with longest and wow, I really enjoyed playing with dolls.

We'll have to do another list for board games and video games. It wasn't easy to exclude those items from this list, but I knew that I had to!

Nothing too flashy, but it gets the job done.

For number five I almost put Puppy Surprise, the dog stuffed animal that had a velcro pouch in its belly that held anywhere from three to five tiny puppies. I also had Kitty Surprise, and probably even a bear one. I remember bringing it to school in second grade and playing with it at recess. I loooooooved it.  But then I remembered Skip-it, and how amazingly fun it was and how devastated I was on that fateful day that I left mine in the park and someone took it. Still makes me feel choked up.

I wish I could find a photo of the genie dolls, but I can't seem to find them online anywhere. I forget what they were called exactly, but they were tiny dolls that had a bunch of accessories and they fit inside of lamps. The lamps would open up hinge style and you could set up the room. I had a whole bunch of them and they were awesome.

Just a final note: I absolutely regret getting rid of my Barbies. I had school teacher, doctor, vet, and I miss them so much D:

-Miranda

EDIT!!

After additional research encouraged by Jacki, I managed to find the name of the genie dolls and even some photos!

I had all four dolls AND the magic carpet!

My Magic Genie was awesome. Once I got into junior high I stopped playing with them, but I kept them in my room alongside my Garfield books and my nail polish collection.

Just for fun, here's a runner-up toy:

Pretty flower princess!!

I only had one Princess of the Flower doll, but I thought it was so awesome. I'd open it and close it over and over again with the provided toy key. And here's a fun fact; Fun Dip was my favorite candy when I was little and I liked to use the key to scoop up the powder because I didn't like the white sugar sticks. Children are weird.