Trip to Galena, IL

I feel like rewarding whoever reads this blog with some pictures from this one-day trip I took to Galena, IL with my family the day after Christmas last December. If you read one of my previous posts I stated that the last time I uploaded pictures from my camera to my computer I only needed like 200 of them and it uploaded 2000. Well, most of those 200 were pictures I took on my trip to Galena. I've had these pictures for a while but have never actually gotten around to making any posts about it here or on my Tumblr for some reason. Even though it happened two months ago I can still remember it clearly because, although it got off to a rocky start, it's arguably my favorite day. It took around an hour and a half to drive there and an hour and a half to drive back. Most people would hate that but it was heaven to me because I LOOOOVE car rides. Only... I didn't like waking up early to go there haha. The morning of December 26, 2015 was very dreary but I also love dreary days so it was, like, perfect for me.

One perk of living in Iowa: Seeing this. Even though this is quite a ways from my town,

if you drive a few minutes away from the city you can see rural farmland like this. Turn around,

and you can see the city. It looks really cool at night.

I took quite a few pictures but they mostly turned out blurry. This picture also turned out blurry but I'd like to show it to you anyway so you can see what I was sitting with the whole ride: 

My Christmas presents!!

From left to right you can see: My camera case, my cheap MP3 player, Twist, Sugarberry, Galaxy, Stardancer, Num Noms, some Chester's Hot Fries (some of my fav snacks), my fucking shoes, and Mom's purse. I had taken off my shoes and put on these slippers I'd gotten the day previous because why wear shoes for an hour and a half when you can wear slippers?? Those slippers did make a funny malfunction later that night but I'll get to that later.

Anyway, here's a shot as we were crossing the Mississippi River into Illinois. 

It's mostly the sky but... if you look to the bottom you can see the river.

And Galaxy liked the Mississippi Palisades when we drove by. (I think they're the Mississippi Palisades anyway...)

"Can we go there? ...I don't care if it's winter and all the trees are bare."

When we finally got to Galena we went to this GIANT house my aunt and uncle rented. At first I went into the basement with my brother and our douchebag cousin who wound up pissing me off so much I wound up sitting on a pool table and then I finally went upstairs and enjoyed watching Harry Potter with my grandma who I don't talk to that much. We were sitting on a couch together and sometimes when she talked to me she farted and I could feel the fart vibrations in the couch and it took all my strength to keep from laughing. 

My brother and I also took turns flying this drone that my uncle had and it was fun as hell. I don't have any pictures of that but whatever. We tried to make it fly up to the top of the stairs and land there and then make it fly over these wooden beams on the roof which I was actually able to do. We stayed at the house most of the day and here are some of the pictures I took there:

Sugarberry on top of one of the posts on top of the rail upstairs. You can sorta

see those wooden beams that we tried to fly the drone over.

Twist in front of the fireplace.

Stardancer on the couch. Her tinsel's kind of a mess, sorry.

Surprisingly, I found a ladybug on the carpet there as well!!

Here he is. 

Because I love ladybugs, I decided to place him on the porch outside so nobody would step on him inside. Now, that brings me to outside. Oh boy. This house was literally in the middle of a goddamn FOREST. When you went outside it was chilly and you couldn't hear anything. I took Galaxy outside with me and took these pictures:

The forest itself. Just look at all those trees!!

Galaxy and the forest. I really like how this one turned out!

I also took some pictures of my Num Noms but they're just... sitting on the floor so I don't really think you'd be too interested in that. Besides, I've got way more interesting crap coming up. And that's the AMAZING shops of Galena... at night. Galaxy accompanied me there in my pocket.

Just an average pony in my pocket, officer. 

(Sorry this picture is blurry, I took it while I was walking

and I was already getting behind everybody else because I kept

stopping to take pictures)

This was taken by my mom on the way there. Look at THAT!!

Isn't it just amazing??

That light looks awful but it's the best shot I got of this scene.

There was this corridor/alley that I saw that I just HAD to photograph.

It took me a couple shots to get one that wasn't blurry but it was so worth it.

Some pretty Christmas decorations on one store.

Sadly, even though I took a shitload of pictures, we only went into one store since by the time we got there it was around closing time for most of the shops. The store we did go to was this candy shop that had a BUNCH of assorted candies and even some plushies.

There was a bunch of taffy, and here are just a couple of the taffy bins.

(Yes I did buy a bunch of the taffy and it was GOOD)

Just some of the candy jars. There were way more than this but I couldn't

take pictures of everything.

Near the cash register the owner had a bunch of Beanie Babies on a shelf (not for sale) which I thought was cool. I bet my dad liked it, considering he used to be one of those Beanie Baby collectors back in the 90s. :P

Impressive!

The candy there was expensive as hell, about $25 for the candies I got, which you can see in these pictures I took in the car:

Bag #1

Bag #2-Just taffy

However, that still isn't all for my pictures of Galena. I have some pictures I took on the walk back to the car too. 

There was this display that had some retro stuff and, being a Beatles fan, I took a 

picture of this Beatles section.

For some reason I really, really wanted a picture of this sign.

I took all these different pictures of it and this was the

one that turned out the best.

I also really wanted a picture of this wine store for some reason.

And... That's all for the pictures from Galena!! God it took way longer than it should've for me to add all those in lmao. I've probably spent longer making this post than I did the entire time I walked around in downtown Galena.

The arrangement of the ponies on the drive back.

Now here's the funny mishap: Once on the way to Galena and once on the way home we stopped at a gas station for a bathroom break. Both times I wore my slippers inside, but it just so happened that on the way back the parking lot of the gas station was SOAKED. My poor slippers that I'd just received as presents the day before had been soaked through and dirty. I felt so stupid when that happened haha. The rest of the ride home I just wore (dry) socks. 

On the ride home at night, we would've seen a bunch of stars in the sky which would have been AMAZING but it was still cloudy from earlier. Only now it was foggy as well. Honestly I thought the fog looked neat. Here's a picture I took of the fog when I stuck my camera out the car window.

After we got into town we got McDonald's and they happened to be giving out Shopkins toys. My brother and I both got Happy Meals and I got his Shopkins too. Here are the ones I got who I might've also put in another post?? I can't even remember.

I see you, Stardancer, Twist, and Sugarberry's ass.

Alright well that FINALLY concludes this extremely long post. See, I could've spent my time writing but what did I do? Spend forever making this post. Well now I know I'm never making a post this pic-heavy ever again. Bye for now!

Explanation about lack of pictures

Alright, so here's the post where I talk about my awful pictures to text ratio. I mean, I always have tons of text and hardly any pictures. Well, the answer is because I... Can't really upload photos that much? I have my own camera but it takes forever to upload photos into my ancient computer and the last time I uploaded pictures into my computer it added like 2000 pictures when I only needed like 200 and it just chewed up all this space on my computer and I don't have the time to delete them all. I haven't uploaded any pictures from my camera in ages for fear of that happening again and then taking up the rest of the storage space on my computer.

However, my dad does have a smartphone which he lets me borrow to take most of the pictures on this blog. I don't have a smartphone at the moment and have the world's shittiest phone ever. It has next to no memory and I've used so much of it up that I literally can't even send texts with pictures in them anymore for some reason?? My phone's contract finally expires this June and then I can FINALLY get a smartphone. I expect I can take loads more pictures with that so I'll probably make more posts around then. And for my 16th birthday in May I'm getting a laptop so maybe I can take some quick pictures with its camera for this blog? They won't be that good but hell it's better than three pictures and paragraphs and paragraphs of text. 

That's... basically it for now? I don't want to leave you without any pictures in this post so please enjoy these pictures of Pearl.

"ROSE QUARTZ BELIEVED ALL LIFE WAS PRECIOUS

AND WORTH PROTECTING!!!"

Some things

Happy leap day! Here are some things from Friday that I completely forgot to post about till now. So I went to Wal-Mart on Friday and found some interesting things.

Cheezey B. plushie and new McDonald's Fluttershy

Before going to Wal-Mart I got McDonald's (Hooray for healthiness!!) and got this Fluttershy toy. I don't know why but I have several Fluttershy McDonald's toys?? The first piece of G4 merchandise I got was a Fluttershy McDonald's toy, then I got one of those Cutie Mark Magic Fluttershys (or is it Fluttershies?? Idk). Or actually, two. I gave the other to my brother to destroy but he never did. Then I got this one. Her tail is a mess and I haven't actually seen if it changes color outside because this weekend I was too lazy to do that. 

Onto Cheezey B. I found him on this Easter display near some Easter crap with a bunch of other new Shopkins plushies like Suzie Sundae. I saw a picture of his plushie around a week ago and thought he was so cute and I was super surprised to see him at Wal-Mart!! He's so cute and cuddly. However, the threads holding his right arm down were loose and wound up snapping Saturday morning so I just snipped his other arm free and now he looks like he's constantly reaching out to give me a hug. <3

Funny story time: I was talking to my brother at Wal-Mart and he reached to grab Cheezey B. from me and I said in this deep voice, "DON'T TOUCH HIM GOD DAMNIT!!" and right as I said that this ginger kid from my chemistry class walked by. I hoped he didn't recognize me lmao but I sat in front of him in English II and I don't see how he couldn't at least vaguely recognize me. I also saw several other people I recognized from school, including this chipmunk-cheeked asshole guy I used to be friends with when I was like six. Ah well I'm rambling now. I have too much text in my posts and not enough pictures. More about that in another post. Anyway, let's move onto...

A beautiful filly I like to call the "Kill Me Now Fakie"

These guys actually weren't in the toy aisle, they were down near bikes and stuff. The Kill Me Now Fakie came with like three other ponies and they all had "normal" muzzles but this one for some reason had the G3.5/G4 muzzle. Anyway I thought it was hilarious so I took a picture of it. You can find more pictures of these fakies in Veni Vidi Dolli's Flicker stream.

If anybody who might be reading this is a 2000s kid like me you might remember Wonder Balls. They were chocolate balls filled with candies and stickers and other things. I remember when I was little I used to like to get the Spongebob ones. But of course they were discontinued because some idiots let their kids swallow some stuff or they posed a choking hazard or SOMETHING. The whole world cried. Of course, now Wal-Mart sells those "Yowies" which are monsters that have these giant capsules inside them that nobody could possibly swallow and they contain little animal figures inside. I got one once this summer and it was so hot that the chocolate literally melted when I started touching it so I had to eat it really fast and it tasted like SHIT and gave me a stomach ache. So, yeah, not buying those again. And of course America doesn't allow Kinder Eggs, so I've got no surprise chocolatey goodness to look forward to. Woe is me. 

So all that jibber jabber aside, you can probably imagine how happy and surprised I was when I saw the Wonder Ball logo in the candy section next to the check-out. And you can imagine my absolute disgust and absolute unbridled RAGE when I saw those goddamn over-advertised one-eyed Twinkie fuckers with the overalls on them. You know what I'm talking about.

HOW DAAAARE YOU

(excuse my pink thumb lmao)

Like, why. Nobody asked for this. Nobody ever asked for this... this disgrace to my childhood. 

Alright, so here's the end of the post. Bye for now!

URL change & The Grossery Gang

Alright, so anyone who comes here has probably noticed that my URL has changed from cherryrambles to aka-cherry, and that's just to match my Tumblr URL and some of the usernames I have for my accounts elsewhere.

Aside from that I just wanna say how excited I am for Moose's newest toy line, The Grossery Gang. It's a spin-off of their discontinued line, The Trash Pack. They literally look exactly the same as Trash Pack but apparently there aren't as many hidden characters in the packaging, which I prefer to the old Trash Pack packages where most of the characters were hidden.

I only have like 30 Trashies, and I just love the Trash Pack but they were discontinued very soon after I got into them which was a real disappointment. But now with the Grossery Gang, I can fill the void the Trash Pack left in my heart! ...Okay, that was exaggerating it just a bit but I hope you get what I mean.

I don't know what else to put so I guess that's the end of this post.

Today's finds

Wow I've been neglecting this blog a lot. Anyway I went to an indoor flea market today and found a bunch of goodies. Accompanying me on this oddly warm February afternoon was my newest pony, Baby Graffiti!

"You just got me yesterday, now you're looking for other ponies? Hmph. The nerve." 

The first interesting thing I found today was this plushie. It's nothing really special, but thanks to those cheap GoAnimate videos Caillou has been ruined for me. 

"Kayloo you are GROUNDED GROUNDED GROUNDED GROUNDED 

for 54665498746514679 years."

I also found the coolest sunglasses ever. They're rose tinted, gold-rimmed, and are from around the 70s or 80s. I usually don't wear sunglasses but these ones just seemed to speak to me.

God I love them.

Something I found that made me laugh was this old 1949 Christmas book that I flipped through and I happened to find this page that killed me. 

A Gay Nineties Christmas

If you look in the background of that picture you might be able to see... Barbie?! Yeah, this flea market has TONS of Barbies there all the time. I mean TONS. I've only been able to find a handful of ponies there over the course of a few years but I've bought over 20 Barbies from there, mostly from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. I found a reproduction of the Twist N Turn Barbie in box for like $26 but didn't get that or take a picture of it. I did, however, almost shit my pants when I saw these two for $15 a piece. 

A 35th anniversary reproduction of the very first ponytail Barbie from 1959!

Another reproduction of Barbie in this very long, beautiful black dress called "Solo in the Spotlight."

I could only get one of them, and it was pretty tough choosing. I could get Barbie in this absolutely stunning outfit, or I could get a reproduction of the ORIGINAL Barbie. I wound up getting the original Barbie because, hey, it's the first one! I also like the arched eyebrows on that Barbie better that the Solo in the Spotlight one. 

The top of the box on the Barbie I did buy was ripped and there was a book inside that moved around whenever you shook it so I just took her out of the box. Hell, even if the box was perfect I would've taken her out because that's just the kind of person I am. Uh oh, looks like the doll police is coming after me!! Honestly the only toy I'd ever leave MIB would be a pony because they're my favorite toys ever.

Oh well, that's all for now! 

Mirror Mirror mini-restoration??

Wow I haven't made any posts in ages. I really haven't had anything to post about?? Anyway this is a post about how I sort of restored my Mirror Mirror pony. I got her for only a little over $5 and of course she has some stray marks on her. I always noticed some of them but yesterday night I noticed she had more than I'd though so today after I came home from school I took them off with nail polish remover--I used Target's name brand if you're curious. I used their brand to get the excess cutie marks off my Cutie Mark Magic ponies.

Anyway, here are the before picture of Mirror Mirror. They aren't great, but they turned out the best out of all the photos I took:

Why yes, that is my Tumblr! I used my Tumblr because

I also posted about it on there and I put watermarks

on everything I post on there (and not here) because I figure

more people see it there than they would here.

Sorry if that logic is a little weird but I don't know

how else to explain it?

A closer view. She had a white mark on her neck.

(With my cat photobombing it in the corner)

Some marks on her left forehoof and a pen mark on the side of her right back hoof.

When I took off the marks, the acetone also took off a layer of dirt on Mirror Mirror so I scrubbed at her a little more intensely with a Q-tip covered in soap. 

Wow, a black watermark this time!

In hindsight I should've used this angle in the before picture so you 

could see the pen mark better. Oh well.

That's all for this post I guess. If you got this far then you deserve this bonus picture of Glow and Mirror Mirror looking absolutely adorable:

I think they look so cute from this angle.

Well, bye for now!