Frozen "Queen Elsa" Nendoroid Review

I would like to preface this review by stating that I will attempt to abstain from as many of the following as possible: 1. Gratuitous use of quotes from the movie Frozen. 2. Puns involving snow, ice, or frozen precipitation of any type. 3. Mock Norwegian.

I feel that I have to hold myself to higher professional standards at times. Carry on.

As any regular readers will have undoubtedly learned by now, I am nuts for Frozen. I have the movie on BD. I have the soundtrack (that I ran to buy the moment I got out of the theater). I have the Disney Store dolls. I have two shirts, a poster, a bracelet...you get the picture. When I learned that Good Smile had gotten the rights to make Nendoroids based on Frozen, I might have screamed my head off, rolling around and flailing on the floor. But only in my mind, since I was at work and I have to hold myself to higher, less crazy-seeming standards when I'm on the clock.

But anyway, I pre-ordered that so hard. Like you wouldn't believe. And she's here now! SHE'S HERE! All the glorious details will be available for you folks after the jump.

Edit: This was supposed to be the Black Friday review, but I got sleepy and couldn't finish on time. Sorry!

Black Friday!

Good morning, everyone! I hope your Thanksgiving was pleasant and that today hasn't been *too* crazymaking. (...I hope...)

The whole Scarlett family had a good Thanksgiving yesterday; my grandmother was having one of her "bad hearing" days ("Grandma! Would you like some mashed potatoes?" "Eh? Stop mumbling, Scarlett, I can't hear you!" "WOULD YOU LIKE SOME POTATOES?" "EHHHHHH?"), and my sister managed to burn herself making brownies, but those hiccups aside, it was fine. We now have lots of leftovers, and I had pie for breakfast. :) And now I've been roped into helping my parents decorate their house for Christmas. Every room *must* be filled with Christmas cheer. Must. Non-negotiable.

But that's okay, because I've finished my Christmas shopping, for the most part. Best Buy started their online sale yesterday, so I just made my purchase with them in the morning after we put the turkey in the oven. They had everything that I wanted with the exception of the Amazon Fire tablets; they sold through their online allotment quickly on Thursday morning, and I wasn't fast enough. Soooo I ended up buying it on Amazon, which was price-matching the deal. If you want the Fire tablet deal, I suggest going there, since Best Buy is not offering the deal online now, just in-store only.

Right Stuf is also hitting it out of the park this week; half of the items on my "must-have" list popped up again, so I placed some orders. Note that I am saying "orders," because this year, there is actually an incentive to place your orders in smaller quantities. They are running a drawing to win a $250 gift certificate, and each order that you place during the holiday sale counts as an entry. (You can also write in entries if you can't/don't want to buy anything) I have no doubt that doing it this way encourages more impulse buying. Also, the shipping turnaround is amazing; I placed my first order about 6 PM on Thanksgiving, and got a shipping notification when I woke up this morning at 9 AM.

The rest of today was spent picking up some necessities at the grocery store and Rite Aid (which was sold out of the bath puffs I wanted, boooo), and then helping my parents clean up from Thanksgiving. Laundry, dishes, floors....ugh.

I'm beat at this point, guys. If I can't get this next review finished tonight, I'll put it up tomorrow. Right now, I need pie and sleep. My Black Friday kill count is under the cut, but beyond that...Miss Scarlett is signing out.

Update time!

Okay! The Holiday Shopping Guide is ready for Black Friday. I've got most every big retailer on there, but you can check out Black Friday.com's site for smaller and more regional chains. Phew, I thought this would never end!

Some other housekeeping notes:

• Black Friday will be a two-fer; I'll make some small shopping updates, and also post a new review.
• Steam has announced that they are revamping the way that they hold their big sales. Instead of offering daily specials and timed specials, they're basically just doing what everybody else does: all games included in the sale are the same price for the entire sale. So you basically can just check the sale once it's up, decide what you want, and make your purchase without needing to check in constantly.
• Possible end-of-the-year retrospective next month?

Well, that's all for now. Miss Scarlett, signing out!

Holiday Anime Sales!

Okay! Get ready for holiday sales galore! I promised I would write about this earlier, so here we go~~

In an unprecedented move, The Right Stuf started their holiday anime sale waaaaay early this year. Historically, they have always started the holiday season with a "Black Friday sale" the week before Thanksgiving. But this year, they started on the 12th of November--the second week of November--and announced that they would be running their sale from that day until December 27th. Instead of offering "waves" of sales, where they would update every few days, their new strategy is to add about 50-odd items into the sale each day. Doing some quick and dirty math, we're looking at around 2000 items (at least) going on sale total.

TRSI is also doing two more promotions during the sale. Each day will have a "Mega Deal," usually a new or popular release discounted heavily; normally, newer items take a long time to go on sale, so it's a good way to get new releases for cheap. They are also offering "limited time" promotions, where a deal will be available for a few days (or until their stock runs out). So far, the limited time promos have been Viz manga bundles, but we'll see if that changes.

It will be interesting to see how this new strategy works. I admit that it is more exciting to offer new items every day, but also a bit more hassle to have to check every day. It is also was a bit easier to strategically plan out orders when the sales were placed a bit further apart. But I have a feeling that if this strategy works at least as well as the sales models they've used before, then it is here to stay.

Not to be outdone, Robert's Anime Corner Store is offering their own holiday sale, but using the same model that TRSI has done previously: various "waves" of sales. (In this case, 12 total.) Only the first wave of titles is up, but their selection is mainly comprised of new titles, collector's editions, and figures, which is impressive. The prices are very comparable to TRSI, so it's more than worth a look. From what I can tell from the newsletter announcement, the last "wave" will be on December 18th, but the sale prices will be good until December 24th. The prices for each item are also only valid "while supplies last only," so it looks like no rainchecks or restocks. Free shipping is available for orders of $50 or more, so there's that. Also, they're giving out free chocolate coins with each order (again, as long as supplies last).

That seems to be all for now, so Miss Scarlett is signing out!

Crafting post: Duchess Swan Makeover, Part 2

Greetings, everyone! Welcome to the Hobby Haven! Today's installment in "Miss Scarlett finishes the posts she promised to do" is Part 2 of my Duchess Swan doll's makeover. Here, you can see what I did regarding her shoes, headpiece, stockings, and necklace.

Let's get to it! (And refer back to the prior post for the materials list.)

Hey there!

Hey, everyone! Miss Scarlett here, dropping in to tell you two things:

1. Keep an eye out for updates this weekend! More Black Friday ads have leaked, so there's a ton for me to update in the shopping guide.
2. The Right Stuf sale has started...TODAY! More details to come this weekend!

See y'all soon!

Busy day tomorrow!

Good news, everyone! My camera is back up and running! It seems to have taken an irrational dislike to Duracell batteries, and won't turn on if you pop those in. But any other brand--even the cheap-o ones from the dollar store--are fine. Who knew?

Tomorrow's my day off, and while I have some boring errands to run in the morning, I'm going to spend the rest of the day crafting, making some posts for November and December, and browsing through the latest round of Black Friday ads. I was right in that at least two retailers will be offering a sale on the New Nintendo 3DS; while it's only $20 off, it's better than nothing, and I'm not willing to wait much longer. Now the question will be who to order from...

Miss Scarlett, signing out!

Media Review: Sailor Moon Season 2, Limited Edition

Greetings and welcome to the Hobby Haven! I've decided to do something slightly different with the rest of the reviews for Sailor Moon; instead of reviewing each set as it comes out, I'll be looking at the season as a whole. Because honestly, doing it the other way will be incredibly repetitive and fairly boring. And honestly, if you pick up half of a season, you're bound to pick up the other half as well. So be warned, there's quite a bit of text and photo bombage below the cut

Odds and sods

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Hobby Haven!I'm your host, Miss Scarlett, and am coming to you LIVE (from work) with some bits of housekeeping business.

First is that my camera died. YAY. I'm seeing if there's any hope to get it back up and working, but it's pretty old, so my hopes are not high. Chalk yet another item onto my Black Friday Wish List. What this means is that I'm probably going to have to borrow a camera until I can get a new one; and this could possibly mean no picture posts. Sigh. Everything always breaks at the same time, huh?

Second, I am desperately working on getting Friday's media review up. Hopefully I can work on this during my break today, but if it doesn't make an appearance until later...sorry!

Third, I will probably have the Shopping Guide up by next week. I might be able to get it up before then, but I think we're talking Monday at the latest.

Fourth, the Ever After High Dragon Games dolls should be released soon, according to the fan page. "Soon," in their parlance, usually means a few weeks to a month, so I am expecting more of a December holiday release. Momo and I might go together to look at them. The dolls are $19.99 apiece (except for Apple; she comes with a pet dragon and is $29.99), so I might get one for the time being, unless there is a good sale, like 2-for-1. (I want Darling and Raven, Momo wants Mira and is undecided on the others.) Also, the Target-exclusive Tricastleon set (Hunter, Cerise, and Lizzie) is now available for $49.99 and is in stores.

Fifth, the Good Old Games fall sale is LIVE! You get free games when you spend $5, $15, or $30, plus there are new daily deals every 12 hours, plus daily bundles. It's 11 days full of gaming goodness! (I wonder when Steam's sale starts?)

Miss Scarlett, signing out!

Quick sales post

Just a quickie, everyone: if you're interested in picking up Inuyasha: The Final Act (basically, season 8 of the anime, and the conclusion of the series), the Blu-ray pack is currently sharply discounted to $19.99 on Amazon, while supplies last. Happy shopping!

The most wonderful time of the year?

It's that time of the year, everyone. Halloween is barely over, and already every major retailer in the country is jumping up and down with glee. The Holiday Shopping Season is now upon us (and it feels like it's earlier every year; I fully expect to see a jack o'lantern with a Santa hat one of these days).

Thanks to my new job, I now have almost the entirety of Thanksgiving week off (plus Black Friday off), so that means I can, indeed, spend some quality time snuggled up with my laptop browsing sales. I will, like last year, be posting a holiday shopping guide, but that will not be going up for another week or two. I'll be putting it up once the sales flyers leak, basically.

I already have my family's Christmas gifts acquired, so any shopping done is going to be for me--okay, and probably gifts for next year. But between the raise I got earlier, and the promise of some pretty lucrative overtime coming up, I have some cash to spend on myself.

I've already decided that I'm going to bite the bullet and splurge on the "New 3DS," which is still the dumbest name ever. Nintendo just can't figure out how to properly name their hardware, geez. I debated getting a PS4, given the recent price drop, but I think I will wait another year and see if we get a second one. And I know that I'll be buying some anime during RightStuf's sale: I'm looking to pick up some of the Yu Yu Hakusho Blu-rays, plus Log Horizon, and last year they offered a Final Fantasy artbook set which I didn't get and now am crying over.

Not quite sure what else I'll get beyond that, but I have an idea of what I'm keeping my eyes open for:

• Sales on the re-release of the Monster High "original ghouls"; looking for Frankie and Clawdeen in particular
• Some kind of super cheap deal on the new Jurassic Park BD collection (the one with all 4 movies)
• Last year, lots of retailers offered deals on Nintendo eShop cards, like "Pay $40 for a $50 card"; I'm hoping to see something like that again, since there's quite a few digital releases I'm considering buying
• As always, fingers crossed that GOG or Steam runs a sale during the same time!
• Cheap BDs: the Daniel Craig Bond movies, Bridesmaids, etc.
• Cheap CDs: Nightwish, Within Temptation (both have new CDs out!)
• A new electric kettle. I am so exciting.
• Some nice, basic shirts, like from Old Navy
• I've been thinking about getting a Kindle, so if Amazon offers a price cut like last year, I might consider it this time.

So stay tuned, everyone! Miss Scarlett, signing out!