The Cave.

Also a wonderful song by Mumford and Sons, but in this case I refer to my bedroom, which is becoming a bit of a cave seeing as I've had to spend so much time cooped up in here, thanks to my injured ankle. But all is good.

It's the last day of April today so I'm endeavoring to at least match the number of posts in March, if not better it.

I spent the better part of my afternoon printing photos and cutting up magazines to cover my wall with bits of lovely. I've finally covered one entire wall. Like whoa. I'm wondering what I'll do once I run out of free space... Here's some photos for you, just because I love this little space in the universe that I call mine :)

The complete wall. Pretty, isn't it? Particularly loving my newest editions, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield, hee.

The novel planning/Baz Luhrmann wall. Featuring my Romeo and Juliet poster, some Empire articles on Baz and his movies, my Buckingham palace research and Eloquence plotline, and plenty of free space to add more stuff :D

And this part of my room has all my favorite things - my kitty, my bed, Coldplay, the best of Marvel (ie Ironman, Spiderman, and X-Men), the Scream trio, and the first glimpse of Carey in The Great Gatsby. I get shivers of delight looking at all the goodness on my walls.

Right. Now I must find out what is on TV tonight and hope that there's nothing tempting so that I can get some writing done :) Tata. Hopefully I'll think of something good to make an 8th blogpost of the month, but if not, I will be back in the early days of May, fear thee not.

"I'm not crazy, my mother had me tested!"

What up.

Well, it's pretty much winter now so I'm enjoying the last few days my holidays holed up indoors with my Ravenclaw hoodie on to keep me warm. Hoping to get a few more decents blocks of writing in before TAFE begins on Wednesday.

So I'm finally getting into the serious planning of Eloquence. This has included and will include: combining several vague floorplans of Buckingham Palace to create a half-decent map of the interior; timing the minutes that the murderer will have to complete his or her deed between the different phases of a lunar eclipse; creating obscure steampunk weapons with which to assassinate the King of Collinsmere; researching poisons that will put someone to sleep; and taking all the game pieces out of Carcassonne and Monopoly to use as the thirty-one characters who are present in the palace at the time of the murder (and that's not including all the servants).

I think it kind of looks like a combination of a battle strategy map and a game of Cluedo. Thanks Mom for let me take over the world dining room :) 

This my Princess, and her dashing partner at the dinner party, Prince Gareth of Auchterwilde.

 Yes, I have been spending my weekend plotting a murder, no I do not plan to use any of my findings to assassinate the Queen of England. Promise.

Today

I have:

• Slept in til 10am
• Cleaned the shower
• Cleaned the kitchen
• Did the dishes
• Vacuumed the house
• Tidied my room
• Did 2 loads of laundry
• Went to Metro to get brown sugar
• Made a double batch of chocolate chip cookies
• Did my homework for 3D class
• Went to class

Productive day? I think so :)

Get excited.

Hello. I'm listening to Regina Spektor right now, because ever since Wednesday I haven't been able to get Samson out of my head. It's one of those songs that I loved and then somehow forgot about ... probably due to small memory space on my ipod.

Anyway. It's very late and I have to be at work in less than twelve hours so I should probably be asleep, but I felt like writing about something. I've been planning out more plot to Fat Beagles, and I need to get on with actually writing it now. Hopefully I'll find some time this week. Another thing I need to write is all the thank you's for my birthday gifts. I have such incredibly generous friends :)

TAFE is going good. So good, actually, that I can't help but sending up constant thanks to God for sorting everything out and making it go so well. I'm so glad that I trusted Him with the decision of what to do this year, because I was scared that I would make the wrong choice ... and I think I probably would have. I'm enjoying my classes and I've made friends already and I can just hear God saying, 'See? I told you it would be okay. Aren't you glad you trusted me?' Yes, Lord. I'm so, so, so glad. And so grateful. He has a plan for this year and I'm only just seeing the beginning of it... there's more to this story, I'm sure.

You know, I don't think people every appreciate how much LOVE God pours into the tiniest of things. I found the below quote on the internet, and you've probably seen it on my facebook or my tumblr, but I'll have to put it here too because I love it so much.

"What if gratitude was as natural as breathing, because we knew in our hearts that the air we breathe is grace?" 

I wish we all thought like this. Breathed like this. That off the cusp of every breath were the words 'thank you'. I wish we woke up and felt thrilled that GOD SAVED US. I read this blog post this morning and I completely and utterly agree with Kylee. She says "What would happen if we took great delight in being God's most important creation? The type of delight that enables us to wake up every morning absolutely giddy to speak His praises. Every second of every day?"

 I wish I could respond like that every time I woke up the morning. I wish that when I bumped into people I would have a bright smile on my face and be lit up with joy and they would ask me why I was so happy, and I would explain that's it's because my amazing God made me, and loves me, and saved me. Every. Single. Day. Ever. Can't we live like that? What's stopping us? Why don't I feel excited?

I'm going to pray about this. Pray with me. Let's be excited for God. Thrilled. Amazed. Awed. It's unbelievable, really. That the creator of the universe would love us unconditionally and want us to be with Him even though we turn away from Him. He has the power to destroy this earth and build a better one, and yet he hangs on to us. He loves us. And there's nothing that will ever stop him from loving us. He died for us. Doesn't that just bring you chills? The God of the universe died for you. And even more amazing, He conquered death, He rose again, and now we can be with Him forever. Honestly, it's more than my brain can comprehend. If I think to much about this thing called eternity, I start to freak out a bit. My human brain just can't take it all in. But God! He knows. It will all be okay if we trust in Jesus.

I'd really love to go into church on Sunday, and into TAFE on Monday, feeling thrilled because of Jesus. Let's be the Christians that are known for their love, their passion to serve, and their excitement for God.

I mean really, what's more exciting than knowing that because of Jesus' love for you, this earth is not the end, but the beginning?


p.s If you have a question, some encouragement, want to tell me that you feel encouraged, or you just want to say hi, please leave a comment :)

Just gotta!

I know I shouldn't be blogging right now ... I should be doing my exam paper, but I really really just felt like blogging and lately my blogging has been so few and far between that I thought what the heck, it's now or never.

Anyways, the reason I feel like blogging is the despite the major stress I'm feeling about my exam, I'm feeling really happy about everything else. Life is good :)

I'm enjoying TAFE so much more than I did last year, and I'm SO grateful to God for that. I kept doubting about whether or not I should even go this year, but even when I thought it wasn't the right decision, God knew it was. I'm glad I was able to leave it up to him to make that choice for me, because he always knows what's best.

So, I have three things to share with you:

1. The sun has shone for the past two days, so I'm hopeful that God will answer my prayer and keep the sun shining for my birthday party on Saturday. Praise God for the beautiful weather! I'm so geared up for this party - cannot wait. :)

2. I've recently discovered a TV show from the 80's called Family Ties. I think my fascination/new love for this show stems from A) the fact that Michael J Fox is the main character (and I have a teeny bit of a crush on him in his Back to the Future Days), and B) the fact that his character, Alex P Keaton, graduated high school the year before my Mom did. Thus a fascination that my parents used to live in a world that was a bit like what's in that show. Like whoa. Not to mention, it's pretty hilarious. I rewarded myself for getting a good bit of my paper done last night by Youtubing a couple of episodes, one where Tom Hanks shows up as a guest star (and he's pretty darn amazing), and another one where Alex and Mallory (who are aged 17 and 15 in the show) argue over who's babysitting their little sister. It's Mallory's turn to do it but she's organized a date to the movies with her new boyfriend, so when he walks in the door to pick her up the dialogue between Alex and the boyfriend (who is rather an insecure fellow) goes like this:


Alex: Jeff, you've got to be crazy, driving around on a night like tonight! 
Jeff: What?
Alex: I'm serious, I don't think you should go out. It's far too dangerous to drive. 
Jeff: What're you talking about? It's a beautiful night! 
Alex: That’s what makes it so dangerous – all the people who are afraid to drive in the rain are out there!

Yeah. I laughed out loud. Anyway, I love sitcoms for their humorous dialogue like that. There are some episodes of Family Ties that cover some pretty heavy issues like commiting crimes and sexual abuse and yet it's always light-hearted so that after the serious moment, you're laughing again. :) 


3. This morning before TAFE I went out to Newtown with my classmate, Hannah, to take some photos of buildings and landscapes as homework for one of out classes. We took some pretty good ones while we were out walking, but as we were driving back, we saw an angle of a building that we'd missed before, and quickly wound down the window and took a snapshot as we drove past. It turned out to be the best photograph we got. Pretty awesome. :) 

 Okay, back to work for me! Hope you have a beautiful evening :)

A Few Awesome Things

Hi! I'm back! No, I haven't been away ... just lacking in the blog area of writing. So here I am, with a few awesome things to share with you.

Awesome Thing #1:

I got three days in a row off work. Which means I can paint my nails! I'm so happy. We're not allowed nail polish at work, which is very depressing in my opinion, and two days off work is never enough for nail painting to be worth it. But I got three! Yay. Now my nails are bright blue :) Awesome.

Awesome Thing #2:

I shouted Justin, Amber and Jordan Slurpees and Amber won a free one, and she gave it to me because they were leaving for Adelaide that afternoon. So today I redeemed the ticket and got a free large Slurpee. Awesome.


Awesome Thing #3:

I just made a chocolate/banana milkshake. It's awesome.


Awesome Thing #4:

I've begun rewriting my novella, Fat Beagles Are Unattractive. For those of you who don't know, it's a fun, slightly humorous story about a family with six kids and one very chubby Beagle puppy. It's currently sitting at 16,000 words so I'm hoping to expand that by 9k with the large plot point I'm about to dump on it, and get it up to at least 25,000 words.

If you were to ask me what age the book is for, I'm really awful about knowing exactly what age I'm writing for, but from the characters I'd say about ages 10-14. The narrator is 14 years old, and from what I've heard in regards to kids' stories is that the readers are usually about the same age as the protagonist or younger.

The goal is to get the rewrite done by May or early June, in order to use the story as my free proof copy from Createspace, which I won for doing NaNoWriMo. After that, I'll tidy it up until closer to the end of the year, and then submit the book for publishing. How exciting! I can't wait to get my first rejection letter in the mail. I plan on framing it. It's gonna be awesome.

Anyways ... that about all I can manage to write at the moment. I have uni work and rewriting to do, which I really should be prioritizing, but hey.... Ta ta for now :)

How to know who your real friends are:

No matter what you do, or say, or feel in front of them...

...even at three in the morning....

You will not be judged.

You will be loved.

Here's to a whole new year of poetry readings, guitar strumming, singing, playing with fire and enjoying everything just the way it is. Let's stay this old forever :)

It's him!

I'm just absolutely over the moon right now, because some lovely young man on NaNoWriMo offered to draw my character for me! And it's brilliant! So here he is, with his Victorian clothes and his shy stance and his awkward smile, the protagonist of Eloquence, Christian Rheese!

Yay! It's so epic. I'm so happy right now. Thank you, Buster Brown! I can't wait to see the other drawings he does for people....

Boxes of Joy

The boxes I ordered from Operation Christmas Child came today! :)

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, Operation Christmas Child is an event run by Samaritan's Purse. Last year OCC sent shoeboxes full of gifts to 8 million children in different countries all over the world who might not have ever received a gift before. 1 million children heard of Jesus through this ministry.

My church is participating this year and we're going to try to fill 10-12 shoeboxes for children with stuffed animals, games, school supplies, hygiene products and other toys, and send them off with Samaritan's Purse, where they will bring a very joyous smile to a little girl or boy's face.

I have a few extra boxes, so if you're interested in going on an early Christmas shopping trip, let me know and I will give you a box. I seriously encourage you to get involved, it's SO much fun, I know you can afford it, and really, why wouldn't you want to be part of this? Watch the video below, it's total worth the 27 seconds you will spend viewing it. 

 

NaNoWriMo!

Hello!

Now, I know I've been away for a long time. And I'm sorry. But I've had zero motivation for decent blog posts lately so all my stuff has been going on Picture Poetry and my tumblr. But I'm back here now, to tell you how excited I am for NaNoWriMo 2010!

I failed miserably last year with only 4,000 words, but I'm hoping I'll do a lot better this year. I already have my story idea, my title AND my book cover, which I made today on Photoshop. Thought I'd show it to you on this public blog seeing as I can claim no copyright to any of the images anyway:

Huzzah! It's about a girl and her siblings setting out on a road trip across Australia to find their long-lost Dad. I think it will be fun to write. I recycled some of the characters from a story I started writing about a year ago, so the character development I already have should give me a jumpstart, seeing as the biggest cause of failure last year was the lack of character development.

So yeah anyway. Hopefully this is the nudge back into proper blogging, so ta ta for now fellow unschoolers (as you're probably the only people who will read this)!

come back and look for me, look for me when I am lost

This lack of facebook thing is really impacting on the amount of blog posts I have this month. I might possibly make more blog posts than there are days in June if I keep going like this!

Went to TAFE today to hand in my second-last assignment. Class runs til 12:15 but I left after only twenty minutes, since my video was complete and rendered. Happy me, happy teacher.

Going out to Birkenhead point outlet with Mum to return the suitcases we bought because we found some better ones. Also going to look for new walking shoes, a carry-on bag and sunglasses for the trip. Only 3 weeks to go on Thursday. I'm so ridiculously excited that I got on the Disneyland website the other night and watched teasers for the rides, which were made in like the 90's and look a little lame but it got me bouncing up and down in glee nonetheless.

On another note, I have a birthday present for Kristen (in my mind...) but Jessie and Katherine's birthdays are also only days away ... and I have no idea what to get them! If you're reading this, darlings (and I know Jessie is!), what would you like?

Want to write more but Mum is dragging me out the door right now, so I guess I'll just make another blog post later! Tata. :)

few things awaken my soul quite the way travelling does...

 Celebration! This post is number 22 for June, meaning it's the most posts I've EVER had in one month! Which is quite an achievements considering there are still twelve days left for posting...!

So anyway, I'm sitting in my fourth-last TAFE class for the year. It's a good feeling. Just a couple of assignments left and then I'm free!

Very much looking forward to the trip, and the couple weeks before it of busyness and nothingness together. I'm going to go shoe shopping, and write my books and screenplays and prepare the bible study; I'm going to play guitar and go out to breakfast with my friends, buy pretty nail polish, get new sunglasses, have a sleepover, play a duet (or two), get some birthday gifts, read the bible, send a package, pack my bags and get on the plane.

27 days to go. :)

And He knew what was going on all along....

Everything is good now.

Oh and nothing else compares ♫

It's been a good morning. Class was canceled so it feels like a Thursday. I stayed in bed til 10:30, then had breakfast of peanut butter bread and chocolate milk.

Yeah it was good. Been listening to the likes of Coldplay, John Mayer and Jon Schmidt while I tidied my room. Haven't finished yet. Hektor was in the way of me making my bed.

But I can forgive him.
Ta ta. I'm off to take a walk down to Officeworks to pick up some new notebooks, do some homework, get laundry done, and read Terry Prachett.

SALT

Haha, success!

So yesterday I went to Gough Whitlam Park to do the stop-motion photography for my TAFE assignment. I'm making a 30 second promotional video for my youth group, SALT. The majority of this video is going to be taken up by a stop motion clip of some kiddies from Salt making a mural on a wall in the park.

It went quite well, considering only 5 people turned up in time for filming. It was a bit cold, so thank you to those who made an effort to help me out! And thank you Lord for the sun!

We chalked up the whole wall, but I'd forgotten to bring some cloths to clean it off at the end... ended up making a dozen trips to the toilet block to refill a water bottle to tip over the wall, and used Justin's socks to rub it off. Aren't we clever. We did a pretty okay job considering our lack of cleaning resources. Got a bit worried when a police car drove through the car park, slowed down, and finally kept going. It did look a little bit like we were doing daylight graffiti... luckily the police didn't think so, or at least weren't bothered to get out of their car and question us.

Here's a few quick snapshots of the 1,877 photographs I took! That's 4GB worth of photos, for you techy people ;)

It's not the end of the world! God is in control.

So, I was just crying for like half an hour, because I was frustrated and so confused, and a little scared ... and then I opened my bible and read this:

"God is our strength and refuge, and ever-present help in our trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging." ~Psalm 46:1-3

And now I'm the happiest I've been all evening.

Crazy Kids

 

Here's the video of us crazy kids at the park from Sunday night... being silly after drinking too much sugar! :)

Are you ready, are you ready for this? Are you hanging on the edge of your seat?

You know you had an epic sleepover when:

• The person you invited to sleepover brings homemade brownies that her sister made (I love you Beth) 
• You eat the brownies, but then dinner is too far away so you cook a whole pack of wedges and frequently pause the PS3 to eat them.. fighting over the last ones
• You play COD til the screaming gets so loud your parents kick you outside...
• ...so you go to get Slurpees
• You play crazy games of spinning around in circles in the park in the dark... AFTER drinking Slurpees and eating brownies and wedges
• Walking home you pretend that the group of people walking down the street in front of you are actually a group of drooling zombies going to kill you
• You decide not to go home but to keep walking up the hill and rent Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat from Network Video
• You dance up the hill singing Another One Bites the Dust
• You run home and are so psyched you can't eat dinner ... even though it's already 8:30pm
• You videotape yourselves on with nightvision, being idiots in the backyard, playing that crazy spinning game again til one of you nearly falls off the patio onto the carport
• You get so dizzy you stack it and almost put your hand on the mint your brother spat out on the wet grass in the previous round...
• You take cold showers in quick succession, then snuggle on the couch in pjs to watch the movie
• You finally decide you're all hungry at 10pm, so reheat dinner and eat during the movie
• After the movie you play COD til midnight
• You fall asleep in the middle of a conversation.... 

 Oh these two... they're crazy, but that's why I love them. Thanks for an awesome night kiddies.

Who's to say we gotta live that way? ♫

So I'm sitting in a freezing cold TAFE classroom at the moment, waiting for the teacher to get back from the coffee break. It's a good day for five reasons:

1. I'm about 70% of the way through my Flash assignment, and our teacher gave us an extra week to finish it because of the public holiday.

2. I'm drinking my favorite fizzy drink in the world. I've only had it twice, but it's really awesome. It's Schweppes Agrum Collection, Blood Orange. A bit of a long fancy name for a bottle of soda, even a glass one, but it tastes really good. Kind of like a glorified fanta.

3. Our teacher just showed showed us the most awesome website called The Art of the Title Sequence. I love title sequences. I just subscribed to the site on my blogroll. :D

4. I'm wearing my New Empire tshirt that I got for free; it matches the shoes I'm wearing and when I left for TAFE this morning mom said I looked nice. :) 

5. When I was texting Beth earlier she said we need a girly night soon to watch Sense and Sensibility and cuddle up and eat chocolate. Sounds good to me.

And that's why it's a good day. So I'm happy.

We ♥ it

Well good morning.

I'm sitting here in my room on this beautifully rainy day (yes, I'm surprising myself by loving the cold weather); I'm alone but I feel warm and fuzzy and very loved, mostly because of the hot milo I'm drinking and the warm hoodie I'm wearing, but also because I had a wonderful night's sleep, and closed my eyes last night with many a happy thought in my mind.

Anyway ... I'm actually blogging because I found this gorgeous little website yesterday, http://weheartit.com, and I am in love with all the pretty images. I spent a good amount of today and yesterday stealing ones I liked. Here are just a few:

Oh, how I wish they were mine. I wish I'd taken them, I wish I knew the people in them, or knew the story behind them. Which ones do you like best?