Love, Lydia - Notes from a geeky, plus sized artist.: board games
Showing posts with label board games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label board games. Show all posts

Friday, September 9, 2016

Let's Play: Molkky


Hello friends,


I've got a lot of exciting things in store for you this month as fall brings things back into focus.  Today's post is a fun review of a game called Molkky.  The game's maker, Tactic Games sent me a copy of the game to try out and review for you all (Nope I'm not paid to review it, they just saw I write about games sometimes and thought you all would like it!).  Molkky is a game that originates in Finland and is one of the most popular lawn games in Europe.  You can read more about it's history here.

Molkky




I was hoping to try it out with family before or during Labor day weekend, but nature had other plans and sent us some rain with the remnants of hurricane Hermine.  But take a peek at the video to see Bryan and I playing and enjoying this game!  It gives a much better view of the game pieces in action.

My Molkky Experience




In terms of the quality it's nicely boxed up in a very sturdy cardboard carrying case with a comfortable plastic handle.  The wooden games pieces seem to be made of a sturdy, but lightweight wood, probably pine.  The whole set is built to last well, and I think families will not only get a lot of use out of it since it's a game that's easy for all ages to learn and play, but also keep coming back to it each summer.  (Or if you're like us you can play indoors with bad weather!)  It's not as complex as some of the board games I play, but I really like games like this that can be played at parties and family get togethers.  If you'd like to get a game you can find them here through my Amazon affiliate link.  And you can check out Tactic's site here as well for more information.

Thanks for reading!  Let me know if you have any other fun board games or lawn games you want me to try out in the comments.  I'll have some more posts coming up soon.





Saturday, July 9, 2016

News + My Nerd Origin Story

Hi Friends,


This week has been a crazy one, with lots of good and lots of bad to report.  Honestly it breaks my heart to think about it all too much.  However I'm going to try and write about some of it and we'll see what happens from there!


News

Giveaway


First off I'm pleased to announce a winner to my giveaway (found in this post).  Congratulations to Melissa K!  Her prize will be shipping soon, and if you missed this giveaway please stay tuned to my blog.  I'll be hosting another in the near future!


I'd also like to thank everyone who entered my giveaway.  I loved reading your ideas for what I should be writing about and noted many folks want to see more about plus size fashion and reviews.  I can't wait to bring you more of this!

Liebster Award



Last week I was nominated by my lovely colleague Sadie at Sadie By Design for a Liebster Award!  The Liebster is an way of giving bloggers a better platform to tell their story to the world.  I wanted to acknowledge it in this post even though I haven't had time to fully address all that goes with the nomination yet.  I'm thrilled and flattered to be featured this way and can't wait to write more about it.  Please watch for a more in depth post about this in the next few weeks!

#BlackLivesMatter


This is just exhausting to keep track of, and the more hate that builds as people start to see race as an issue to take sides on the more sick I feel.  I can't think about other people that way.  506 black lives have been lost so far this year, and now more are being added from the police force thanks to a few renegades who are taking things into their own hands.  One of the 506 was my cousin a few months back.

I keep thinking things will change for the better, and then there is only more violence and tragedy.  It leaves me an emotional mess, feeling guilty when good things are happening in my own life and others are experiencing so much loss.  Guilty for being white and having the privilege to go and do what I want without being anxious for my life.  I feel bad that the best I can do most days is simply have dialogue with you, my readers, or the other folks I know in person or online.  It just feels like nothing I do will be enough to help.  And for that I am sorry.

However I try to read and stay educated about what is going on.  I don't just block it out with my own moderately happy life.  If this strikes a chord with you and you'd like to learn more about concrete ways you can help find peace and ensure a better future for everyone in this country please check out this amazing article featuring a list of practical ways to become an ally.

Pokemon Go


This has been the happy thing of my week  I have been enjoying this app I have eagerly awaited the past 8 months.  I'll be writing more on this in the near future, including a full review!  For now I have my Bulbasaur, a gym next door to my house (First to claim!  Though it's already been taken over and....well, I'll come back to that later).

My Nerd Origin Story


My friend and fellow blogger Mickey came up with this writing prompt and opened it up as a bit of a group project within the Geeks & Beauties community I'm a part of.  I think it's a great topic to think about as we get introspective about life because it helps us look on the bright side of things and view our own life as a story that we get the power to write.  Just as some of our favorite superheroes lives were shaped by adversity so are our own at times.  And as with superheroes, sometimes we keep our nerdy identity a secret from the general public.  However, today I'm opening up about it to you all.

My own story starts when I was learning to read.  I was homeschooled and my mom had some curriculum to help that included a series of books with stepped difficulty and little racetrack to move along as you read each.  I remember after the first dozen or so I think I completed the rest in a day, and then started begging my mom to take me to the library.  From then on I loved reading and would get a dozen or more books each visit, multiple times a week.  When I was 10 years old my mom, brother and I spent some time living with my grandmother and great grandmother to help them out.  As soon as we realized we might be there long term the library visits started there too, and in some ways reading became my best friend when there was no one my age to play with.  While I love my brother, when you're cooped up in a house together you get sick of each other eventually.  Books became my escape from that, and later my comfort as I had to figure out how to make friends with kids again when I had left a kid and came back to my hometown a middle schooler.  Fantasy books were my favorite, from retellings of fairy tales to waiting for each new Harry Potter book.

I was the kid who while perhaps 13 walked to the mall on black Friday to buy myself a Game Boy when they were finally cheap enough to be affordable to my family, and then patiently wait to receive it on Christmas day along with a cartridge for Pokemon Blue (my brother got Red!).  We had an old Nintendo we shared and played the first few Super Mario games on, and I vividly remember playing all of the Legend of Zelda on a 6 inch black and white tv.  As he got further into his teens my brother took over most of the gaming systems in our house, deeming me unworthy to play them as a female.  But I was already hooked.

Growing up we had a closet full of board games, stocked by my mom that we used often.  Before she homeschooled my brother and I full time she had been a librarian at a university, and before that a high school biology teacher.  She loved learning and finding us new projects to work on that stimulated our curiosity.  Even when we watched tv with my parents they would often be watching Star Trek or other science fiction shows.  On Saturdays my dad would take us on walks to 7-11 to pick up some small item the family needed and buy me a Barbie or Strawberry Shortcake comic.  I didn't realize how nerdy this all was until much later in life.  I just took joy from reading about gardening and teaching myself to grow roses, or learning to identify birds, trees, and insects.  I never thought of myself as an outdoorsy kid, but I loved nature and the science and beauty of it.  To this day when I'm creating art or decorating my home themes from nature are constantly finding their way into my work.

Later in high school I wanted to run my own website for a church group I was in and learned to code some in HTML.  We didn't even have a computer at the time, just a WebTV unit that allowed us to do very basic web surfing and checking emails.  But I figured out how to make it work, and later when we did have a computer I was the one keeping that up and running for the 5-6 years we owned a desktop the family to shared.  And I almost ended up in the field of graphic design, except I fell in love with darkroom photography and preferred it to sitting in from of a computer for long periods of time.  And now my work involves a computer (or smartphone) all the time!

For most of my life I didn't think about myself as a nerd, I just did the things I loved, which happened to be geeky.  Nowadays when I'm looking for new friends or trying to find my tribe I often go straight for the nerdy girls first.  And most of the time that's exactly what works best.

If you'd like to hear some other great nerd origin stories please go read Mickey's here at the Nerdily blog, Sadie's at Sadie By Design, Andrea's at her YouTube channel Chibi Drea (coming soon), and Evelyn's at Princess Eevee.  I'll update these links to go straight to their stories, but for now you can check out their sites and get to know these lovely ladies.

What's your nerd origin story like?  Let me know more in the comments!  And as always, thanks for reading.  I really appreciate all my visitors.


Monday, February 15, 2016

Valentine's Day Celebrations, Beauty Swap, and Card Exchange

Hi Folks,


Update

I've been busy this past week and fighting off a cold.  This winter is just a tough one for my body apparently.  But there are lots of good things to appreciate as well.  I've been filming a bunch of videos, mostly unboxings of fun beauty and lifestyle boxes.  I also have that darn winter capsule wardrobe post nearly ready to post.  I know I keep saying it's coming, but I keep running into snags while putting it together.  It'll be here soon, promise!  (Maybe today!?)

MuteMath

Friday I headed out with my brother in law Michael to see MuteMath at The Cat's Cradle.  The last time I saw them live was back in 2006...the last time they were at the venue with Switchfoot actually.  While I don't think they allowed SLR cameras at the show I did take some reasonable phone shots and a little video I thought I'd share.  The show was just amazing, MuteMath is one of my favorite live bands hands down!



02-12-2016 Mute Math


Hopefully you can get a feel for their energy!  I think I was dancing almost the whole time!

Valentine's Day Celebrations

Next up is the real reason for this post - I wanted to share a pair of videos I made for Valentine's Day!   I did a card exchange with some fellow bloggers and YouTubers from the Geeks & Beauties Community.  And I also participated in a beauty swap challenge where Zainey Laney and I bought each other the makeup for a Valentine's Day date look for under $10!  These were both loads of fun and if you hop over to the videos on YouTube you can see links to other folks from the group joined in as well.  Part 1 has the cards and me opening the items for the beauty look.  Part 2 is putting on the makeup and chatting about life!




The cold I've had also made me have to take off the makeup almost immediately after putting it on....my eyes were just so itchy.  It made me sad.  And things stayed that way for our actual Valentine's Day date as well.  So I went with some extra bright lipstick and a couple doses of medication to help me make it to our double date with Bryan's parents.  We decided to see The Force Awakens again, and went out to lunch once we realized we'd have to catch a slightly later show than planned because the show we wanted was sold out.  It gave us a chance to go eat at Chili's together, and do a bit of shopping before the movie as well.  We oogled some board games at Game Theory, a great local gaming shop.  There may need to be some board game review posts here in the future!  We also discovered once we arrived at the theater that it was newly renovated and had super nice reclining seats.  We had a wonderful time watching Star Wars a second time and came up with more fan theories (you can hear some of my initial ones in this post) and discussed what we'd observed since we listened to the Hello Internet podcast on The Force Awakens this past week as well.  Here's a parting shot of us!



Thanks for reading, I'll see you all again soon.

www.lydiadickson.com

Saturday, August 1, 2015

Blue Moon Fashion

Hi everyone,

Today we've got a blue moon in the sky (a blue moon is when there are two full moons in the same month) and I thought I'd share a rare outfit too in keeping with that theme.  What I did was allowed my husband Bryan to choose an outfit for me to wear on our date night this week, and I opened up my closet so he could use things in and out of my capsule wardrobe, coaching him through how things might work.  Here's what we got:

Top - Macy's, Necklace by Suzanne Love Jewelry (Raleigh artist), Purse - Target, Skirt - Torrid, Shoes - Toms
And here's an OOTD (Outfit of the day) I wore to the family reunion in Georgia last weekend:



The hair clip is from Modcloth, Top - Catos, Skirt - Catos, Sandals - Modcloth (Keri was my photographer here!)

The next day on the drive home I wore this comfy outfit.
Top - Anthropologie, Neckalace Phoebe Marie (Cleveland, OH artist),
Shorts - Levis via Amazon.com, Shoes Converse Kids via Macy's


And here are some shots from the trip and the reunion itself:

Hummingbird moths!



Mist on the Nantahala River


Teaching Keri to play Ricochet Robots



The yearly DS party

Sharing chips with our 8 year old cousin

These shots are at what has got to be one of the most beautiful rest stops I've ever seen.





All the Confederate flags!! But it was a cool little flea market.


At the Blue Ridge Parkway Folk Art Center...the lighting from those windows was too good to pass up!



As you can see I really enjoy taking pictures of nature when I can get out into it some!  It's been a busy week here and we're packing up to head the the beach, with DJ valiantly staying home to take care of the bun (our rabbit Scarlet, which you can see a video of here).  I'll write again once I get to the beach.

Love,
Lydia

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Days 153-154

Hi everyone,

Today's update is all about art!  So What have I been doing?  Well, In April I participated in Live & Local Raleigh, where I had a booth showing my art as part of the street festival.  It was a fun day, there was live music, and plenty of friendly folks stopped by my booth too.  I look forward to being part of the event next year as well!  Here's a shot of my booth thanks to Groucho's Deli via Facebook.

Additionally April 8th was Draw a Bird day, so while I drew my bird that day I'm just now getting around to posting it!  I looked some of my older reference photos and selected one of a Brown-Headed Nuthatch at the feeders from our old apartment.  I drew it on watercolor paper with various colored pencils and it ended up having a nice soft look to it.



I think I'll try to find a nice sketchbook next time.  Speaking of which I'm thinking I really should start to keep a regular one and hopefully share some bits of things in future entries.  I poked around my studio a bit and found a tiny sketchbook that isn't made of watercolor paper...I think I might need to go shopping though.  Hehe  If so I think I will get something similar to a Moleskin style book since I will soon be getting an Imbue creative tool thanks to my friend Stephen Hughett and his collaborative partner Igor Zemskov's fantastic Kickstarter!  The tool will be very useful for my Irish inspired pieces or really any pattern based art I work on.

In other news I finally have a new camera!  A friend of mine was looking to sell hers and the timing was just right for things to work out.  I'm so incredibly thankful too!  I now have a Canon T3i DSLR, which I have been having a great time getting used to over the past two weeks.  So, here are a few bits of what I've been up to with it.  First there were test shots, of which the following two were lovely.



Then we went to one of our relative's 1st birthday party.  They had the nicest spread of ice cream sundaes and toppings set out, and of course the birthday princess was adorable!



I've also been keeping an eye on the creatures in our yard, birds and bunnies, there are squirrels too, but they're just annoying buggers.  The feeder is just outside our kitchen window, but the rabbits are used to us enough that I could walk just off the porch to take this picture, the Tufted Titmouse didn't mind either.  Then while I was writing the beginning of this post I kept hearing at least one fledgling Carolina Wren, and soon after had one come and investigate what I was doing on the porch!


I also took a few shots during our Memorial Day board games.  We were playing Tzolk'in, The Mayan Calendar game, which is why there are little crystal skulls involved.  A young relative was arranging the extra pieces while her dad played with us.  The lighting made it irresistible, and I went to grab my camera partway through the game.
                           

                           

                           

                           

Lastly, today I was working on my first Pinterest style project.  It's inspired by this pin of a chalkboard cheese plate!  I had given one of my brothers-in-law a beer sampling paddle, and during the party I realized it would be perfect to add a chalkboard paint finish to, so I'm doing that, plus painting some lettering on the back for him too.  I'll be going through the steps of how I make it as part of my next post.  Here's a teaser shot of all the items I'll be using to put it together.


Enjoy your last day of May and I will see you all in June.  Thanks!

Love, Lydia



Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Days 19-21

Hi everyone,

The past couple of days have been more restful between a family birthday Sunday and a board game get together Monday.  I'm always glad for the chance to play some board games and yesterday was no exception.  I ended up teaching "De Vulgari Eloquentia" to a group who'd never played it before.  It's a game based on the late medieval period culture of merchants and clergy....at the end of the game someone will even become pope!  It's a fun game, through the instructions are horribly written, we didn't expect too much from it since it came from a bargain bin.  You can read more about it and see some pictures - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/75165/de-vulgari-eloquentia

We also played Dominion which is one of my husband's favorites.  It's a card based game where you're building a deck over the course of the game and trying to collect the right kind of cards so that you gain the most points at the end of the game.  However you can use different cards each time you play the game making it mean or friendly depending on your mood.  And there's more info on that - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/36218/dominion

Today has been filled with lots of little bits of progress and getting back in to the swing of things.  I've worked on two pieces today plus some other odd jobs I've had.  Also I saw that my hometown newspaper, The Roanoke Times, has published a piece on their website about my Kickstarter.  You can find that - HERE

So, all that's exciting, and I'm up to 3 pledges on Kickstarter now, with emails being sent out every day to people who've shown interest in my work previously via Etsy.  I'm getting in lots of writing practice, though I don't mind it too much these days.  And just in case you haven't seen the link yet here is my Kickstarter!

Hopefully no ones minds my departures from strictly writing about art to talk about board games for a bit.  I expect to be adding some of my interests and experiences along the way, and these are some great examples of that.  Other than all that this evening I've been distracted by the snow we've been getting.  Finally!  Sadly we're not even getting a full inch....I wish it was much more though.  This is the first snow we've had this winter that's actually stuck and it always gets me excited like a kid to see it.  If there's any left on the ground after my breakfast tomorrow I might take some photographs to work on some new pieces from.  For now though I need to get some rest so I can get up early enough to hope to see that snow!  Goodnight everyone.

Love, Lydia