Wizard 101 Giveaway!

Getting rid of my ugly helm.

Mrs. Greyrose liked my last post so much she gave me two codes good for one extra castle space and a Red Barn Farm house.  If you love gardening or just really like life on the farm, this house is for you!  What I mean to say is, I'm not keeping the codes for myself, but giving them away.  Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your schoolmates, tell your coworkers, tell your garbage man, tell your plumber, tell everyone about this giveaway!  I'll be giving the codes away, one to a commenter on this post, and one to a follower of my Twitter feed (@shawndrakai) who sends a tweet my way.  Tell me, why do you want the house?  Or, how will you decorate it?  Even better yet, what plants will you plant on your farm?  I will post the winners to both Twitter and my blog on Saturday, May 25th.

Writing the housing post made me stick my nose back into Wizard 101, and there were some new things there!  I didn't show even half of them in this video, so I may make another with my husband's character so we can see what the boys have available, and to see what new pets and mounts can be had.  I am excited to finally finish Celestia with Rowan and see the other worlds that have been released.  I have many new pets and wizards to level, houses to buy and decorate, and gardens to tend. So much to do!  See you in The Spiral!

Happy Easter!

We here are getting ready to dye eggs here at my house.In the spirit of the holiday, I have hidden one somewhere in my site for the Great Blog Noblegarden Egg Hunt.  There are at least 40 other participants, and the prizes are a fabulous character portrait from Mason Cole for the first place, and a montage of either Horde or Alliance races/classes for the second prize winner.

Good luck!

Awkward Silences

I'm still here. I've been kinda sick, kinda pretending to raid (sorry I missed tonight guys), and really dealing with a teenage daughter. See, she likes these things called boys, and, well, she likes to tip toe around and pretend she doesn't, and sneak visits with them while telling mom how she is being a wonderful daughter and retaking tests. Sorry, mom was a teenage girl once, and those excuses have been used. Not by me, I was too busy working and hanging out in a digital world to really date until I was nearly 18, but I saw them used by friends. Nope. It took me a day or so, but we got this all figured out. Mom now officially knows daughter is dating, knows boyfriend, has verbally pounded both over the head for being shifty and doing things both know are inappropriate, and they are both grounded until the girl gets out of the nunnery. All that done, it was too late to log in and try out Lady Deathwhisper (is that the boss after Lord Marrowgar? I forget) with everyone else, so I turned to suitor number two, Wizard 101.

Wizard 101 is so forgiving of someone who has to take seconds away from the keys, or minutes. The three year old was having problems staying in bed, so between the hubby and I we got up and put her down at least 4 more times. There are no safe zones in WoW, except for Shattrath and Dalaran. You can't kill anything but time in those two areas, anyhow, so why bother? In Wizard 101, I can hop to the walkway, swat a toddler, grab a drink, and hop out into the street to collide with another mob. Fantastic!


Unfortunately, I have hit a wall. I guess I bought an area for my second youngest last year sometime, so I didn't run out of content right away. Now, I am stuck needing everything for 4 quests that come from a certain area, and a dungeon I have to unlock and the teleporter to unlock Krokotopia. I will have to grab the calculator and decide how much I need to unlock it all. This still isn't running me near as much as my World of Warcraft addiction, but I can see it getting close to it if I decide I need a pony/dragon/cat/wings and that I need my outfit to look like the rogues gear (so cool!). I have been content, so far, with just coloring my items to match.

That iPod game is a real blast, and the kids have sent a bunch of gold and elixirs to my account while playing it. I played it, changed the wizard to my daughter's, and won an evil snowman transformation. I read a certain blogger is giving away codes for gold and the like from his play time of the WizardBlox game. Leave him a comment, you may get lucky. Or, you could ask me nicely, and I could dedicate an hour of my time (or a bored kid's) to trying to win something neat for you. Sorry, seems since I read this this afternoon and into tonight, he has gifted all his codes out, but stay tuned to his blog. There is more that just the codes to read, and you never know. I may have two or three codes to spare by Friday night, so comment if you want one of mine. I'll even leave it a surprise at what you get!

Well, enough of the awkward silence. I will make an effort to keep you all posted on what is going on in game for me and my guild in WoW. I will also be posting a bit more about this newest fling. If you are playing and want to add me, my favorite character is Rowan Trollstalker, a level 14 life/fire wizard. Just whisper in my ear first. All these random friend requests are unnerving!

Rest and Relaxation

Tamarind over at Righteous Orbs gave me the most wonderful present of a topic to write about for Christmas, and I thought I would unwrap it and write about it early. If you haven't been following, pop on over and start reading. Tam and Chas' posts are always good for a grin and some "yeah, that's me" moments. So, here is my gift from Tam:

"...if your characters (or you can just do Shawndra if you prefer, since she seems to be occupying your time and attention at the moment) were going to retire from the adventuring life, where would they settle down, and what would they be doing instead?"

Shawndra fell in love with Nagrand the minute she set foot in it. The fishing is plentiful. The grasslands are lush and green, and the herds of clefthoof and talbuk offer a good living, giving up their skins and meats. Living in Nagrand, after the toughening Shawndra experienced fighting the minions of the Lich King, would be the easy life. If the orcs of Garadar wouldn't put her up, there were one or two abandoned camps or outposts she remembered that would do fine. Just give her a pole, a fire with a kettle, a rude shelter, and she'd bring her knife and live well and happily.


Delgada would not retire easily. If she came to the point when that was all that was left to do, I imagine she would bank all but the necessities, find a corner of the world she hadn't explored thoroughly and continue working. If forced to retire, she would probably find a shallow grave and hand the one responsible the shovel. Sitting idly fishing or twiddling is just not her style. She did enough of that after a lovely piece of scourged toast with honey.


Halinka is rather young and the idea of retiring really hadn't been thought about until now. Halinka loves to read and would happily watch the world go by from the window of any number of places, so long as there was a room with a view. I'm sure Minya would like to see her retire. At least she is no longer hanging out in the Exodar waiting for Halinka's findings. Stormwind is much healthier!

I don't see Dinnaeh (formerly Esoterique) retiring. I do, however, imagine her being the tragic victim of casting fire spells in her sleep. She should probably see someone about that...


That's all I have right now. I looked back at some of my roleplay posts to see who had back stories, and it turns out I have many, but the main characters are listed above.

Now, for the second part of this gift. This is the part I give to you! Comment below if you would like a present of a topic to write about for your blog. I will respond with your very own topic, chosen with your blog's personality in mind. As stated in Tam's post, this is a gift, with no strings. Use it, don't use it, regift it, use it to paper your parakeet's cage, it is your choice!

It's Crunch Time!

I am a little late jumping on the bandwagon to lend my "voice" to the Hearts, Hands, and Voices campaign to raise money for Child's Play charity. To the right of this post you will see the Hearts, Hands and Voices logo. Click on it and it will take you right to the main page for the campaign. Click on the donate button, and give! Child's Play is an excellent charity that buys gaming systems and games for hospitals, helping invalid children to play.

Since this is really the last week, I wanted to chip in an incentive to those that read my blog to donate. Comment below this post to enter a drawing to get a handmade t-shirt with the faction logo of your choice (Horde or Alliance). Pictured below is my first shirt, with the Alliance logo (the picture really doesn't do it justice). The winner will get their choice of shirt color and size, sent to them with my thanks for donating. All I ask is that the chosen winner (or two or three, depending on interest) forward a receipt for their donation. Feel free to black out private information.


Here are my kids modeling different designs (for the Horde!) and colors (lighting is not my strong suit, thhat alliance shirt looks so cool in person!).


Even if this doesn't appeal to you, please, take the time and give. Every dollar helps put happiness in the hands of a sick child. I know I am glad I gave.

Need A Security Guard? Please Comment.

In my blog reader there have been at least 5 accounts in the last week that have been compromised. I know the number is much larger than that, but 5 in one week on my blog reader seems large. In the interest of helping my little corner of the World of Warcraft community a little safer, I will be choosing one person from the comments on this post to receive one gently used authenticator, from the Blizzcon '08 goody bag. I used it on my account up until today. I just installed the nifty authenticator on my Ipod, so I won't be needing this key fob style authenticator anymore.

So, leave a comment! If you already have an authenticator and still want to comment, go right ahead. Just play nice and let me know in your comment that you do not want in on this raffle, to give others that really need it the chance to secure themselves, free!

Good Luck!

Edit: I forgot to give this an end date. I will have the drawing for the authenticator on Monday, August 3rd. This will give people a week to post comments and find my blog :) I will announce the winner in a short post that same day, as well as on Twitter (my username is Shawndra).