Where did all that time go?

Wow. No blog posts since August of last year. Amazing, eh?

That’s mostly because… I’ve been lazy. Really lazy. But now, I won’t be lazy any more!  I’ve decided to get my act together and follow in my mom’s footsteps by making my name known on the general internet!  Okay, maybe just the crafting side of the internet, but it’s close enough.

Speaking of crafting, I’ve been exploring a lot with the sewing machine lately!  I’ve finished one costume and started another, harder one.  Well, I’m almost halfway done with it now, since I officially started in January, and I plan to have it finished by the beginning of June.  Only one more month to work on it!

One thing I’ve learned since August, though, is this: Costume making is not cheap. So, how am I supposed to get money to pay for my expensive hobby? By selling crafted things, of course!  Mom has already agreed to give me a little bit of space in her Etsy shop, since I can’t legally own one myself.

I don’t have an exact inventory planned out yet, though, so I’m just experimenting for now.  I have found a few things that are easy to make, look cute, and would probably sell well. And here they are!

Meet Nonnie and Charlie, my pair of Luma (from Super Mario Galaxy)!  They’re really just my guinea pigs, so they’re not for sale.  The ones I’ll have fore sale will have black, sewed-on, fleece eyes and little white highlights.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a bunch of different colors of fleece to make more Luma over the weekend.  This will be really fun!

I’ve also found out how to make fleece hats REALLY easily!  The one shown is the first one I’ve sewn, so it has a few mistakes in it. (This one won’t be for sale, either.) It’s kinda small, too, since I used too big of a seam allowance.

There’s me wearing it! (It’s not the best picture, but I can’t actually find the hat right now to take a new one.) The brim is the same fleece I used to make Charlie, and the actual hat part was found in the Little Red Barn.

So- what’s happened since August? Well, a lot of things.

Right after that blog post we got a call from the Transportation Department for my school and they told me that I actually needed to go to a different school.  So, to the different school I went! I’m actually pretty relieved, looking back, that I did, because this school has a way better track team and band.

Christmastime was fun, but it was tainted by the cyote attack on our sheep.  Poor Esther and Eli- they were two of my favorites.  (And I was actually the one who thought of Esther’s name, so that’s part of the reason I liked her.)

I’ve been getting through my new school pretty decently- I like it a lot better than my old one.  I’ve made lots of crazy new friends, and met a lot of very helpful teachers (even if they do seem strict or mean at times).

Now, looking ahead to the future! The next Anime convention I’m going to is June 4th-6th, and it’s going to be a blast! I’ve been to this particular convention before, but last year I wasn’t in costume.  I’m definitely looking forward to meeting up with fellow cosplayers, taking lots of pictures (with a better camera this time- last time I had a disposable one), and eating Japanese candy!

Before the fun starts, though, there’s a lot of work to be done. I still don’t have my costume completely finished, but I have a feeling that if I work on it fairly consistently, it will turn out nicely!  Speaking of working consistently, I probably need to go get something finished on it by this afternoon.  Hopefully I’ll be able to remember to blog in the near future!

Madness!

Oh, man. Just when you think life couldn’t get more hectic and crowded, something else happens!

I’m already excited/nervous about school- we went to the counselor last Thursday and we go to pick up my schedule this Thursday (maybe Friday? I don’t know, I forgot.). I’m already anticipating whether I’ll get a top locker or a bottom locker, what electives I’ll be taking, how I’ll get around the school, and what sort of friends I’ll make. (There are 300 kids in my grade- that’s about how many kids were in my entire old school! OMG!)

On top of that, I’m trying to make a costume for me and another one for my dad in time for an Anime convention on Labor Day weekend. (Dad just wants a costume so that he can cover his face and say he doesn’t know me. ;P) I’ve got my costume 2/3 of the way done (I still need to hem my shirt and make my pants), but I still have a lot to do on my dad’s costume. (Need to make him a beak, a custom shirt, get him some pants, get some yellow socks, and find a pair of shoes we can tear up and glue.) And I only have a couple of weeks to do this. Where has the summer gone?!

AANND (this is somewhat small, but it takes a lot of effort), I have a part in a Radio Play (the infamous Narrator) that needs to be finished by the time school starts! I have four more episodes to record by next Tuesday, but there are a lot of long lines to record and it’s hard finding a quiet space.

Oh, just one more thing (that I bet you’ve probably already read about)- Mom threw out her back filling water buckets on Sunday, so now it’s up to me and Dad to take care of all the animals. I don’t mind it, really, but I’d rather be doing other things (like recording lines and working on costumes). It is fun to be around the animals, though, so I’m not complaining. =)

Okay, so that’s my little update for the week. I’ll probably start blogging more when school starts, so keep your eyes open!

Summer Foolin’

I just got back from feeding the sheep (how farm-girlish does that sound?!) so I decided to write my blog post for this week. (Or whatever.)

I actually haven’t been doing much this past month- except turn thirteen, that is. My birthday was on July 20th, and for my birthday I went to see the sixth Harry Potter movie and I  went to camp! The sixth Harry Potter movie was GREAT- except I wish they had put in a few more scenes from the book. Maybe in the seventh (and eighth) movies, huh?

I’ve been browsing YouTube recently and watching all these great horse videos. But one of the “related” videos wasn’t about horses at all- it was about people jumping on foot! The ones I watched were actually for a contest. (I bet they wouldn’t do that without wanting a prize for it. ;P) So, being bored, I decided I would enter the contest. The prize actually isn’t that much- the person who’s hosting it just subscribes to you I think- but I love to jump over things I find in my yard so I decided to have a go at it:

If that doesn’t work, here’s a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mcb3PXuSVic

Fourth of July!

Of course, I can’t neglect to blog on the most important day of the year for our dear America!

Since it was a holiday, I decided to wake up at 1 PM. Okay, I didn’t really decide to sleep in that late, but that’s basically how it worked out. I pretty much lounged around (like a normal teenager) for the rest of the day, occasionally putting on an ice pack for my sore muscles from my riding lesson yesterday. I’m still pretty sore from that, but I digress.

So once 5 ‘o clock came around, my family and I went to my friends’ house for Small Group, where we had fun swimming in their pool and, once it got dark out, lighting sparklers and setting off party poppers. We were careful to light the sparklers over their pool, just in case some of the ashes actually made it to the ground or one of us caught on fire. Hey, it could happen! By the time we were done with the sparklers, there was a lot of ash on the front steps of their pool… oops! But all of us had a lot of fun, as pictured to the left! (That’s me, Sarah, then Shannon from R to L.) All of us acted very crazy, but we were moderately serious with the sparklers. We still couldn’t resist waving them around while everyone else was out of harm’s way.

Moving on to a different subject, there’s a lot of stuff that’s going to happen sometime soon. First of all, my mom’s birthday is on Monday, the sixth, so if you could spend some time and go wish her a happy birthday day after tomorrow, I bet she’d love that! My dad and I have already gotten her a gift and some cards, so we’re all set! I don’t know when we’re going to bake her a cake, though. I might just make one myself on Monday, since Dad will be at work. (Too bad he doesn’t get summer off, too, eh?)

Annnd, MY birthday is (exactly) two weeks after Mom’s, so I’m REALLY excited about that! I really want to see the new Harry Potter movie that’s going to come out on the 15th- five days before my birthday! Hopefully by then all the Daniel Radcliffe fangirls will be gone. Too bad Sarah and Steph (not pictured… yet) can’t come, since they’re leaving on vacation and won’t be back until five days after my birthday. Shannon’s the only one that’s going to be able to come to the movies with me, since  my two other friends that I was going to invite aren’t allowed to see Harry Potter.

OKAY! Okay, It’s 11:30 and Mom is about to crash, and she hasn’t blogged yet. So, I’ll have to wrap it up for now.

Have a fun summer!

Summer is Awesome

Summer lazyness has taken over! That’s why there hasn’t been any new blog posts in a while.

This weekend my parents took me to Legacy Shops- the most fancy “town” in the middle of nowhere where mortals need not apply. The reason why we went there was to see this movie at the shmancy theater there called “Food Inc.” It’s actually a pretty good documentary about where all our food comes from. I won’t say any more or I might get sued. No, seriously. Just go watch it!

Then yesterday was hotter than pete, so I figured that the alpacas might like to be hosed down. The big alpacas loved it, but the new alpacas weren’t quite so sure if they liked it or not. I know Dewey LOVED it, but the rest didn’t want anything to do with the hose. Dewey was so funny, too! When I first started spraying him, he liked it so much he just decided to lay down- in the BLACK mud! Oh no! I figured that if Mom saw all the black mud in his white fiber she would kill me in two seconds, so I tried to spray it out. Of course, he just lay down again. I managed to get all the mud off him in the end, though. WHEW!

So today, Mom is trying to get me to clean my room up a little bit by getting the TONS of paper off the floor. I like to draw a LOT, so my floor is almost completely covered in white paper. I don’t know how I’m going to clean it up!

No Internets?!

You’d better believe it! I woke up this morning to my mom trying to figure out what was wrong with the internet connection. We still don’t know what’s wrong, but the verizon guys are coming to fix it sometime early (to me) tomorrow.

So, how am I posting this blog? Starbucks. Best coffee place in the world, even if their internet does cost money. (Haha, I’m not the one paying for it. Mom is! Gotta love her.) Actually, this Starbucks is actually quite deserted right now… It’s closed, and the two people working there have left. I think there might be a few people sitting around the corner, but I think they might have left. It’s just me and Mom.

Nothing really new happened today, except that I got my first sunburn of the summer. Yaaay. It’s on my upper back and my face. I had actually put a little bit of sunscreen on my cheeks, but not much right on my cheekbones, so it looks like I’m wearing a lot of blush. Haha, like I’d actually take time to do that sort of makeup during the summer.

Oh, actually, I lied- something marginally exciting happened today. Our alpacas LOVE to rub against the fence to itch, and Dewey decided to do it on the (unplugged) electric fencing. He somehow got his neck stuck in it (you can imagine how easy that is with how long his neck is), so I had to trudge out and get him un-stuck. He was such a good boy and listened to me when I asked him to put his neck down so I could get him untangled. At first he had just gotten his neck twisted in it, then when he tried to get out he accidentally got his head stuck in another loop, but it was pretty easy to get out. Again, he was a trooper and he let me smooth out his neck fiber a little bit before letting him loose. =)

So, I only have 26 minutes of battery left, so I guess I’d better close down for the night. Sorry for no pictures- I didn’t have the camera with me at all today.

All the Legend of Zelda I Know

So, maybe it’s time for some reviewing!

I’ve always been a huge fan of the video game series “The Legend of Zelda”, starting with LoZ: Wind Waker…

I was about seven or eight (maybe nine) when I first played Wind Waker on my friend’s big brother’s Game Cube. I didn’t actually get that far, and I still haven’t completed the game, but it was still really fun and so I was sucked in. I guess that’s the mark of a good game.

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker is amazing. I’ll go out and say that. The cel-shaded graphics are cute when needed, but also gravely serious when needed. The music is great, enough to get my pumped every time a villain popped out at me or a shark came out of the Great Sea. I sometimes even turned the sound off just so that I could concentrate on finding that key that I needed, so I wouldn’t loose my head and give up for the day. Most of the characters in the game are believable, but some just seem like people you need to talk to in order to get farther in the game. Actually, by the end of the game I was starting to feel like, “I have to do THAT now? Ugh. Fine.”  … Which is exactly the reason why I haven’t actually completed the game.

All in all, I’d give Wind Waker a 7/10.

The next Legend of Zelda game that I found was Twilight Princess, at the same person’s house. (It’s all his fault! JK, JK!)

Did I say Wind Waker was amazing? Okay, if Wind Waker is amazing, then Twilight Princess is EPICLY AWESOME. At first, I just played around and didn’t really think much of it- I just liked the fact that it had a horse in it. Then, I saw it at Blockbuster for rent, so I decided to rent it. Best decision I’ve ever made in choosing a game.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is the most realistic-looking game in the series so far. (Another one is in the making, who knows if it’ll be better!) The music is more orchestrated- I could definately pick out brass, strings, and woodwinds while playing, and it wasn’t too much. I don’t think I ever turned the sound off, except for at the last part of the game that I won’t say. I liked the controls for the Wii, too, even after playing it halfway through on the Game Cube. Shaking the remote actually feels pretty good after you get used to it (it takes about five seconds), and it lets out any energy or excitement you might get after finally getting to the boss of a temple or something. I could go on and on about this game- I’m obsessed. But I guess I’ll edit this later if I think people will be able to stand it. Haha!

Twilight Princess definately gets a 9/10 to a perfect score of 10/10. I really enjoyed this game!

Now, onto The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, the first LoZ game for the DS.

Phantom Hourglass is basically a sequel to Wind Waker. Everything looks the same, if not a little bit worse because of the different platforms, but at least the story is a little bit different. (Besides the usual save-the-damsel-in-destress part, of course.) I would say the gameplay for Phantom Hourglass is a little bit boring, just tapping around the screen to move Link (the hero of all of these games) and to use different items. And even though scribbling notes on your map is fun, they don’t really give you enough room to write much, let alone legibly. I ended up just drawing arrows, numbers, and bombs where needed. Another thing that I didn’t really like was that you have to keep going back to the “Ocean Temple” to get farther in the game. The Ocean Temple has dozens of levels, but on the first try you only go down one, the second you go down some more, and by the third time you’re getting pretty tired of doing the same levels over and over again, then adding a new challenge that you really don’t want to do anymore.

Phantom Hourglass gets a… 7.5/10. Not great, but not bad.

On the Road Again…

Just pulled out of Ann Mayes’ alpaca farm, which was probably my favorite place to stay out of the two we actually did stay at. She and her mom live in two different houses, but they’re right next door to each other so it’s really just one whole property. They both have a lot of dogs- Great Peers for guard dogs, a Lab, a little terrier, a Cocker Spaniel, and another dog that I don’t know the breed of. Her mom also has a cat named Holly that has a face that looks like she ran into a wall in a bad mood and it stuck that way. They’re all really friendly, except for the Great Peers, of course, because they’re guard dogs.

She also has a LOT of alpacas! (You can see some of them in the picture to the left.) I was surprised to find out that most of them were white, but she did have some dark brown, black, and fawn. They’re all really funny to watch, and they’re all really soft. (Not quite fluffy because I think they were just sheared recently.)

I mostly stayed at Anne’s mom’s house while we were there, and we talked for a while about things like horses, where I live, and what we saw on the road. Then I went outside and met Odie, a huge witish-yellow lab that will probably lick your face off if you let him. He was my buddy all night, and he pretty much woke me up the next morning, even though I really wanted to sleep in.

So this morning we loaded our four suri boys into the trailer- Big, Magic, Mushroom, and Dewey. Big is self-explanatory, Magic is the smallest, Mushroom is really weird because he has one blue eye (he always reminds me of Mad-Eye Moody from Harry Potter), and Dewey is the normal one. They’re all really freaked out- humming like crazy (because they don’t know the words). Big is the huge whiner. He might even be up there next to our alpaca at home- Moonstruck. If you even touch Moonie’s feet he screams like he’s being skinned alive.

Still trying to keep myself occupied in the car. I think I may try to get a hold of my friend back at home, Shannon, as soon as she gets out of church, which is probably only ten minutes longer. Then we can talk and I won’t be bored for a while, unless we run out of things to talk about. Which is actually pretty likely.

One of the things that I’m looking forward to when I get home is my ocarina that I ordered. If you don’t know what an ocarina is, it’s kinda hard to describe. There are two major types of ocarinas, maybe three (I don’t know the name of the other one), sweet potato and pendant. Sweet potatoes are pretty self-explanatory- they’re shaped like sweet potatoes and have anywhere from four to twelve holes to put your fingers over. Pendant ocarinas are also pretty easy to figure out, too- small, circular and about two inches in diameter with four or five holes. Me? I’m getting a pendant ocarina! I’ve been waiting for it to come in the mail for two weeks already.

————

Wow, I left that post up all day. I’m writing now from about ten miles from my house, feeling VERY relieved to be home again.

Haha, everything electronic that I brought with me is almost out of batteries. The laptop’s battery is in the red zone, (even though I still have a little over half an hour of juice left), my iPod is on its last few dribbles, and the light on my DS is red. I’m using these suckers until they won’t turn on anymore!

It’s about 7:40 right now, so we should be home by 8:00, then I’ll put this up! So, if you’re reading this, I can tell you right now it’s after 8:00 p.m.

Onward, dear Pattsy!

 

Yay for St. Lewis!

Monty Python joke. Don’t ask. ;-P

 

Just got back from the wedding, which was short and sweet. =) My cousin, Bob, was the one getting married, and I haven’t seen him since I was two. His sister was there, as well, and people wouldn’t stop saying how much we look like each other- profile wise, at least. We both just smiled and tolerated it.

I met a TON of people who I didn’t even know I was related to, nor even knew that they even existed. I was just kinda walking around and saying, “Okay, and you’re related to me… how? Cousin? Uncle? ‘Kay, got it.” But still, I enjoyed dressing up a bit and wearing some makeup that I actually managed to put on without looking like white trash or something. (It’s a shame that my aunt didn’t get to do my makeup; she does cosmetics for a living!) All my relatives are really nice, and of course they all have to look at me and exclaim either, “WOW, you’ve grown so much!” or “Oh my gosh, you look so much like your cousin!”

Sitting in the back of the SUV is getting old really fast now, but I’m just glad that I have the laptop. I don’t know if I should try to play one of my games on my DS, (The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass or Pokèmon Emerald- go Nintendo!) read my remaining books, (Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception or The Book Thief- both very good) or attempt to draw something that is actually recognizable. It depends on how long we go before stopping again- blogging is keeping me pretty entertained right now.

Wow, I can’t believe we’re actually heading in the direction of home now. I want to stay! This is as close to an actual “vacation” that I’ll probably get this summer, with this stupid recession or whatever they’re calling it. (I blame everything on global warming- it always works, even if I don’t actually believe in it.) But still, it’s pretty entertaining to see signs directing you to Chicago or Indianapolis. Chicago is one of those places like New York- I always hear about it, but I’ve never actually been there.

Oooh- just now seeing “The Arch” on the horizon! We must be in/near St. Louis now. I took a TON of pictures of it on the way here, and I’ll probably post some later- when I get some internet. And now, we’re passing over the ol’ Mississippi River! I’m trying to remind myself not to look down at the water- I hate bridges. Especially when there’s traffic on the bridges. Or even changing lanes on bridges. Standing still is the worst.

Ya know, they should put solar panels on The Arch. The shinyness of it is reflecting into my eye, and I can’t help but think it would be more useful as electricity.

Just saw a sign that says, “Hit a worker, $10,000 in fines and loose your license”. I’d better be careful when I’m older! But then again, I might not be driving in Illinois. Who knows! (But still, you can’t just go around road raging the workers in Texas, either. Darn.)

Road Trip… yaaay.

Okay, my first post for my blog and I’m not even on the farm. How bad is that?

So, I’m sitting here in “St. Louis Bread Co.” (a.k.a. Panera Bread) with my mother, the genius behind Jacob’s Reward Farm, and her friend Ms. Mary, when they come up with this awesome idea to do a blog with MY side of all the events that happen around the farm! So, here it is!

We left the farm yesterday at the crack of dawn. Mom pretty much had to drag me out of bed, and thankfully I remembered everything I was supposed to pack before we left for a 11-hour drive. At first it was okay, I read a book called “Jars of Glass” or something like that that I got from the library. I think that lasted about one and a half hours. Then I tried to draw, even though the road was way too bumpy to actually make anything look good. So, I gave that up and played around with the video podcasts on my iPod for a bit. Between trying to draw and watching videos, I think I killed about two hours max. Still eight hours to go.

After that I tried to just go to sleep and watch the scenery, but I was too wide awake to do actually drift off. So, I pulled out my Artemis Fowl book (The Opal Deception- awesome book!) and read a couple of chapters before I started to get hungry. Got a cereal bar and camped out for a while longer.

Hopefully by now you can tell that the road trip was really boring. Boy, was I glad when we stopped at a Mickey D’s somewhere in Oklahoma.

Well, that’s all I have time to say for now. Don’t you just hate it when they say…

TO BE CONTINUED…?