Blessings and Blogs

I got this idea from another blog (here's the link: http://crazyfreefall.blogspot.com/ ) written by Ruth, another good friend.

I grumble a lot. Mostly in my head, though.

1. I have a pretty good family (probably like normal families).

2. Lots of friends!

3. I have a job. A 12 year old. How many 12 year olds have jobs? (Writer, btw.)

4. Even though the job isn't paying, I have parents who put up with me buying weird little writing gadgets with my allowance.

5. I'm homeschooled! And even though I'm homeschooled, I have amazing teachers and classmates at TPS.

6. I know more-or-less what I'm going to do when I grow up....But that'll change most likely.

7. I can dance (but it hurts right now because I'm currently disabled) and, more importantly, can walk and when I do get sick, it's all at once. Then comes a LONG time of being well (hopefully).

8. I have the most amazing brother in law on earth! (Yay for protons, atoms, and all those other chemicals that make people up!)

9. I have the cutest cat on earth. (And the crankiest rabbit ever made, too....)

10. LOADS of friends (mostly online).

11. I have a more or less decent writing capability.

12. I had a great-grandmother who lived through the depression, WWI, WWII, the wars after that, and through 8 years of this century.

*Ruth (Spits, Spitty, Spitsy), you're so cheerful and matter-of-fact! I will sometime get to see you in real life....
*Rob (Agent, Robbie), your ego is disgusting, but your information priceless.
*Kayla (Kaelyn, Kaylee), an adult who is not one of those old, crusty, dry people!
*Kelsey (Aly, Alyosha), a VERY good writer! (You still need to send Day of Ashes, btw....)
*Scarlett (Hathaway, Red, Jaggs), a very cheerful admin!
*Foxler (Joseph), a mad scientist and fox-oligist!
*Andrea (Andie, DWM, Detective Walking Mouth), hurry and finish "The Scrape to End All Scrapes!"
*Bella (Bella-BENT), a fellow Twilight-strong-dislike-er!
*Vince (Pence), a NaNoer who everybody thinks is a girl (is that a good thing?).
*OliviaPig (OV), a fellow lunatic in the land of lunatic.
*Sun E (Sunny) a cheerful, sunny girl!
*ilovebuny (Bunny), another lunatic.
*Ruth (Ruthie/Hey, you!), a singer of the sopranos.
*Helen (MDNNAH [most decidedly not named after hell]), altos unite!
*Ashley (Ashy), no, the pianist did NOT get run over by a goat, don't worry.
*Diana (no nickname), the cutter of hands on pointy objects (like bits of mirror)
*Valarie (Val), don't go to China! It takes YEARS for a letter to get there!
*Karla (no nickname), you're the queen of the games!
*Julia (Iulia), please don't get killed in boot camp!
*Lydia (no nickname), come and visit sometime!
*James (no nickname...yet), you always know something to talk about.
*Lily (Silly Lily), a fellow pinapple! Pinapples are awesome!
*Rachel (no nickname), thanks for always talking!
*Natalie (Nat), don't starve through college!
*Stepanie (Steph, Stephy, Tinny), we still need to beat Robbie in a fight.
*Mia (AM, Anna Maria, Mitzi), shall we hang Robbie up by his toes?
*Nina (no nickname), you're a great writer!
*Jesse (no nickname), *brandishes sword* Shall we continue the wars?
*GraceM (Gracie), study partner!
*GraceT (Other Grace), another study partner!
*Mrs. McKeemen (Mrs. Mac), science teacher!
*Mrs. Marsh (no nickname), writing teacher!
*Ben (no nickname), you're really British and even say things like "Naught" and have an accent!
*Darin (no nickname), glad to know that you're so into class that when Mrs. Spotts says, "Darin, you here?" you type in "Not here."
*Miss Corrin (no nickname), thanks for teaching my first writing class ever!

I've probably missed a trillion people. Sorry!

Knitting

There's no way I'll get all these knitting projects done. I'll try, but it'll fail. Who can knit a scarf and two hats before Christmas?

But, Mom and Dad are knitting things for Uncle Peter and Aunt Dawn. They're trying a new pattern:

Cast on an un-even amount of stitches (they used 27).
Knit a row.
Now do a ribbing stitch: Knit one stitch, purl one stitch, knit one stitch, purl one stich to the end of the row.
Knit a row.
Now do the ribbing stitch again: Knit one stich, purl one stich, knit one stich, purl one stich to the end of the row.
Repeat until you're almost out of yarn (keep enough to bind off on).
Bind off.

It's really easy. Even Mom can do it, and she hasn't been knitting very long.

Ruth, your scarf is going to come along on the Christmas trip to Missury--er--Missouri, I mean. It'll get finished....Sometime. Don't worry!

A Blog Thingjigger

Hannah (not me, another Hannah) (http://hannahsscribblings.wordpress.com) gave me this thingy. (See the picture.)




1. Thank the person who gave you the award.
2. Copy the award.
3. Post it on your blog.
4. Tell your readers 7 things they didn’t know about you.
5. Link 7 bloggers as recipients.
6. Notify winners of award with a comment on their blog.
7. Keep being awesome.

1. I can not spell "Unforcenetly" (See? Use your imagination.), but I can spell "Antihistamine."
2. I get most stuff (like achy knees, crooked pinkies, and a crazy urge for writing) from Dad's side of the family.
3. I know how to knit a sweater.
4. I have no idea about sports.
5. I know almost any cure for the GP4 (softwhere that's used in the school I go to)
6. I almost never get scarred when watching a "scary" movie.
7. I sound like my sister, look like my sister, and dress (sometimes) like my sister--we get mistaken for each other almost every time we're around each other.

OK....Here's the next bit.

1. Alyosha/Kelsey: www.friendoftheabc.blogspot.com
2. Kayla/Kaylee/Kaelyn: www.thesongofmysoul.blogspot.com
3. Mia/Anna Maria/Mitzi: www.annoyed-director.blogspot.com
4. Nina/Cowgirl Poet: www.frontnotes.blogspot.com
6. Ruth/Spits/Spitsy/Spitty: www.crazyfreefall.blogspot.com
7. John Spalding/JohnS*insertnumberhere*: http://johnspalding4.wordpress.com/

Pass it on!

Emily Joy Stauffer

October 1, 2008 Emily Joy Stauffer, a TPS girl, was shot. She was 16 years old. (Emily was in Dad's Latin class, so we knew her pretty well.)

Some links:

http://newlumps.blogspot.com/2008/09/emily-joy-stauffer.html

http://johnspalding4.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/emily-emily/

I wrote a poem about her.


Emily
(to the tune of “Oliver” from “Olivier!”)
Hannah Spotts

Emily,
Emily,
What shall we do while she isn’t here?
She would like what people think.
There are crying classmates all over the world.
When we think of the murder,
Sadness and anger come over us,
Emily,
Emily,
We wonder why anybody would do that.
There is a dark, smelly prison where
The murder should be sent,
and where he won't kill anymore.
He won’t murder people when he knows what’s in store.
Emily,
Emily,
We shall all see you in Heaven,
But until then, we will miss you!


This is what she looked like: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQwRDmkkiuslTxEp2H9CNCYyHBXYTdgHyEfqmqQHYDObIuBmGA5iPQLj_J0WK9a0l0_8dpernS-zr1L3GBpUciYtlxaRvpjflAq7luHinPGweCfo99Gd5Hn06Uz6REsxpHk1tc1crI2X8/s259/Emily+Resized.JPG

New Giddy Thingy

I added in Write or Die's word bar at the bottom. Now, to figure out how to use it......

Reformation Day!

(That's Martian Luther, he had a big nose, but was a pretty cool guy.)

Reformation Day's on Saturday, but today (for some reason which I haven't figure out yet), trick-or-treat night is tonight.

For those of you who don't know what Reformation Day is or want to learn more about it, here are some things about it.

"In 1516-17, Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar and papal commissioner for indulgences, was sent to Germany by the Roman Catholic Church to sell indulgences to raise money to rebuild St Peter's Basilica in Rome.^[1] Roman Catholic theology stated that faith alone, whether fiduciary or dogmatic, cannot justify man;^[2] and that only such faith as is active in charity and good works (fides caritate formata) can justify man.^[3] The benefits of good works could be obtained by donating money to the church.

On 31 October, 1517, Martin Luther wrote to Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, protesting the sale of indulgences. He enclosed in his letter a copy of his "Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences," which came to be known as The 95 Theses. Hans Hillerbrand writes that Luther had no intention of confronting the church, but saw his disputation as a scholarly objection to church practices, and the tone of the writing is accordingly "searching, rather than doctrinaire."^[4] Hillerbrand writes that there is nevertheless an undercurrent of challenge in several of the theses, particularly in Thesis 86, which asks: "Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?"^[4]

Luther objected to a saying attributed to Johann Tetzel that "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory [also attested as 'into heaven'] springs."^[5] He insisted that, since forgiveness was God's alone to grant, those who claimed that indulgences absolved buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation were in error. Christians, he said, must not slacken in following Christ on account of such false assurances.

The sale of indulgences shown in A Question to a Mintmaker, woodcut by Jörg Breu the Elder of Augsburg, circa 1530.

According to Philipp Melanchthon, writing in 1546, Luther "wrote theses on indulgences and posted them on the church of All Saints on 31 October 1517", an event now seen as sparking the Protestant Reformation.^[6] Some scholars have questioned Melanchthon's account, since he did not move to Wittenberg until a year later and no contemporaneous evidence exists for Luther's posting of the theses.^[7] Others counter that such evidence is unnecessary because it was the custom at Wittenberg university to advertise a disputation by posting theses on the door of All Saints' Church, also known as "Castle Church".^[8]

The 95 Theses were quickly translated from Latin into German, printed, and widely copied, making the controversy one of the first in history to be aided by the printing press.^[9] Within two weeks, copies of the theses had spread throughout Germany; within two months throughout Europe.

Luther's writings circulated widely, reaching France, England, and Italy as early as 1519. Students thronged to Wittenberg to hear Luther speak. He published a short commentary on Galatians and his Work on the Psalms. This early part of Luther's career was one of his most creative and productive.^[10] Three of his best-known works were published in 1520: To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and On the Freedom of a Christian." From Wickipidia.

He nailed the thesis to the church door because if you wanted someone to read something, you smacked it up on the church door.

Here are a few recordings of "How Firm a Foundation" by Martian Luther. He wrote both the words and the tune. There are a few other things scattered in, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4TeJJmQJqU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiRpUtVByxU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-61IKiGIZo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgw2hWMRaU4&feature=related

Writing, Knitting, and A Truly Amazing Book

First, I want to post this link. http://www.wingsoffireseries.blogspot.com/ My freind, Ruth, made that blog about a book series that she and another freind (Nina) are writing. Nina didn't know about it, but likes the idea. Please follow that blog!!

I've been writing pretty much anything lately. Not much journaling, but a lot of editing. I really should work on my bits in the sci-fi, finish planning my NaNo novel, and finish editing my book for a contest. And I'm only awake for 10 hours each day! It's almost IMPOSSIBLE to knit, do school, do that much writing, and accualy talk to people in ten hours. At least, for me it's hard.

I went to a writing confrence on Tuesday at the library. I LOVED IT!!!! The lady was really nice and really knew what she was saying. Even better, she was talking about publishing, which was just plain awsome.

I'm almost finished knitting my sweater. I'm working on the sleeves. I've finished Chris's scarf, started on Uncle Mike's hat (he likes hunting, so it's basil green and he can where it when hunting), need to start on Ruth's scarf, and finish Lizzie's scarf.

(A yell-out to Ruth: Mom and I are going to get the yarn for the scarf today. I'll start knitting soon! And hopefully get it to you before Christmas.)

Pictures

Does anybody know how to post a vidio on Blogger? I made a slideshow of wedding pictures that took me hours, but can't post it.

Artical

This is great! Full of sarcasum, but that's part of what makes it so funny.

http://www.secular-homeschooling.com/001/bitter_homeschooler.html

NaNo

http://www.writersdigest.com/article/spotlight-on-nanowrimo/

That's about NaNo.

Sewing, knitting, writing.

(Finaly managed to remember to make a post about crafts.)

Mom and I are making a quilt for my bed. It's just going to be made out of 6" squares (I wanted to do one foot squares, but Mom said it'd look to big for a twin bed), sewn together with 1/4" seam allowence. We're using an old matress pad (from the bunkbed) for the batting and a old sheet for the back. And bits of cloth left over. We're being misers, but the quilt will probebly be MUCH cheaper than a store bought one, and will last longer. When it's finished, my old one (a purple, green, blue, yellow, and white thing) is going into me hopechest along with the big quilt that used to go on the bottom bunk of the bunk bed of the same colors.

Mom's (so far) made one winter skirt this year. She's been making me skirts, since the ones in the store are so SKIMPY! Finding a modest dress is annoying, too, so mabye I can make a 40's one. You can't get much more modest then that, even though there was cloth shortages then (all on account of the Germans, too).

I'm knitting three scarves right now. One for my cousin Chris, my cousin Matt, and (by request) one for Lizzie, who has already got one. She even bought the yarn! Oh, and one for myself. I don't have a scarf right now.

I'm going to knitt a hat for Matt's wife (Megan), a hat for Dad, a hat for Uncle Mike, and a hat for Brian (another cousin).

Mom is also getting something, but I won't tell what it is since she reads the posts before they're posted.

I'm making a pair of legwarmers for my cousin Kelsey. She's a dancer, too, and so legwarms made sense. She wanted SOMETHING and scarves and hats can get kinda boring after a while.

I got a knitting book with something like 63 easy patterns. One of the patterns is socks WITHOUT heels, so those look easy enough to knitt.

This is a good post on a blog that Dad and Mom read. http://www.geneveith.com/recognizing-bad-writing/_3338/comment-page-1/#comment-68232

Bobby McFerrin and the Penotonic Scale

This is amazing! You have to watch it. All the way.

NaNo

Ok...Here goes another add for a insane challenge. :D

There's this program called National Novel Writing Month, and it's writing a novel in a month during November. You write from November 1st through November 30th or even less than that, if you reach your word count. www.nanowrimo.org is the "official" adult program, where you're not allowed to set your word count for any less than 50,000 words. www.ywp.nanowrimo is the kid program, where you can set your word count all over the place. If you're thirteen and abouve, you can either sign up for the adult one or the kid one but once you get to be eighteen, you must be part of the adult one, unless you're a teacher with a group of kids who are doing NaNo. It should be really fun! (I've never done it before.)

Ad over.

Hasn't Vanished....

...Just been busy with the wedding, then I found out about a novel contest (which is really a short story contest), so I've been writing for that...Sorry! I'm not dead. Pictures of wedding soon.

Much time between posts, Les Miserables, personalities, book list, (finaly) a craft progect, and National Novel Writing Month

Sorry for the delay between posts. I'll try to get more posts on. =}

Apparently, the BBC thinks that most people will have only read 6 out of the 100 books listed here...

Check it out and see how many you have read!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee -
6 The Bible- X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte -
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman -
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens -X

Total: 6

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy -
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller -
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare -X
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier -
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk -
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger -
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger-
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -

Total: 3

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell -
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald -X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens -
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy -X
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky -X
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck -X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll-X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame- X

Total: 6

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy -
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens- X
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - X
34 Emma-Jane Austen - X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - X
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini -
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres -
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden -
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - X

Total: 6

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell -X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving-
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery- X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy -
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood -
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding -X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan - X

Total: 5

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel-
52 Dune - Frank Herbert-
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons-
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen- X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth -
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon -
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley -
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon-
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -

Total: 2

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck -
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov-
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas-X
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac -
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy -
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding-
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie -
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville -X

Total:2

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens-X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker-X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -
75 Ulysses - James Joyce-
76 The Inferno – Dante-X
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -
78 Germinal - Emile Zola -
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray-
80 Possession - AS Byatt –

Total: 4

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell -
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker-
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro -
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert -
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom -
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle- X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton-

Total: 3

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad -
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery -X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks -
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams-X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole -
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute -
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas -X
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare -X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo-X

Total: Six

I read:
Pride and Prejudice, LOTR, Jane Eyre, HP, The Bible, Wuthering Hights, 1984, Great Expecations, Little Women, Complete Works of Shackspear, The Hobbit, War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, Grapes of Wrath, Alice in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows, David Copperfeild, CoN, Emma, Persuation, Winnie the Pooh, AoGG, LofF,Sense and Sensablity, A Tale of Two Cities, Moby Dick, Oliver Twist, Dracula, The Secrate Garden, The Inferno, A Christmas Carol, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Watership Down, The Three Musketeers, Hamlet, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, LM

I got 37, and Mom got 33.

SPOILERS BELOW. WARNING. WARNING.

I read Les Miserables. The un-abridged version. It was great. Victor Hugo waxes on for pages and pages about the Bishiop of D--, and he's only in for about eight pages with Valjean (main character). Ditto for Fantine, but she's at least a secondary character, while the Bishiop of D--is a third character. Grantire (always drunk revolutinary) has a few questionable scenes, but then again, he's always drunk....Engolras is an amazing character, and somehow when Grantire tries to get him drunk, never gets drunk. Not so the case with Marius, who (in the words of an Urik-hi (sp?) in Two Towers) "Can't take his drought!", but Marius is a good character non-the-less; and is in love, so if he didn't spend as much time climbing over fences to get at Cosette, day dreaming about Cosette, etc, he'd be great. Cosette is a pretty good character, extreamly ignorent at times, but can be smart sometimes and is in love with Marius. Eponine is a street-girl, who happens to be in love with Marius--Don't let the musical fool you about her being love sick and wimpy! In the book, she's a street girl who'll do anything to stay alive and keep her freinds alive (hence the reson she dies of a bullet wound in her hand saving Marius at the barricades). Gavroche is the second best secondary character in LM (Engolras is the best secondary character), he's Eponine's brother, and he dies--bravly mixed with ignorence that bullets can kill, but he dies! (I always cry during that part.) Javert is very leagilsist, and continualy drives me up the wall, so--ahem--I was kinda glad that he died. Ahem. Just a little. Almost everybody dies. In order of death: Bishiop of D--, Fantine, Alzma (Eponine's sister, mentioned four times then dies), Madam. Thenariar, some of the Paris gaurd, Eponine, Engolras, Grantire, the other revoultionaries, half of Paris, half of the Paris gaurd, Gavroche (who didn't seem very sad about 'Ponine dying, for some reason....), Javert, Valjean.

Grantire-- ? He's always drunk. :)
Engolras-- Saunguine Meloncoly
Marius-- ISTP
Cosette--INFS
Fantine--ENFS
Javert-- ? He's very leagilistic.
Valjean-- IFPJ
Thenardiar-- Extrovert Idiot Heap of Frog Droppings (I don't know of a personality type for that)

Couroumbrafrace (or something like that)-- ENFJ
Gavroche-- ENTP
Bishiop of D-- INSJ

I've forgotten a lot of people, but those are the people who show up the most. I tried very hard not to pass Thenardiar off as too bad. He does have a good streak once in a while....If you want to know what those abriviations mean, just leave a comment!

My freind (Alyosha, A. K. A, Aly) did a post about Les Miserables here http://friendoftheabc.blogspot.com/2009/07/in-which-i-unmask-conspiracy.html http://friendoftheabc.blogspot.com/2009/07/one-day-more.html I want to warn you, that in the preview clip in the second post, there's part of a song in it that has a lot of bad words. Ye be warned! She's a great blogger, so here's her blog adress. www.freindoftheabc.blogspot.com

National Novel Writing Month (www.ywp.nanowrimo.org if you're under 18, and www.nanowrimo.org if you're over 18) is only 90 days away! I can't wait until it's time to start writing! What you do is write a 50,000 word novel if you're on the adult site, or write a novel for however many words you set your word count at on the young writer's site. Why write a novel in a month? This is what the FAQ says about NaNo: "There are three reasons.

1) If you don't do it now, you probably never will. Here's the truth: 99% of us, if left to our own devices, would never make the time to write a novel. The structure of NaNoWriMo forces you to put away all those worries and START. Once you have the first five chapters under your belt, the rest will come easily. Or painfully. But it will come. And you'll have friends to help you see it through to meet your word-count goal.

2) Aiming low is the best way to succeed. Once you start evaluating your story in terms of quantity instead of quality, you take that pressure off yourself. And you'll start surprising yourself with a great bit of dialogue here and an genius plot twist there. Characters will start doing things you never expected, taking the story places you'd never imagined. There will be horrible writing, yes. But along with the bad writing, there will be beauty. A lot of it.

3) Making art for fun does wonderful things to you. It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It makes you want to take naps and go places wearing funny pants. Doing something just for the heck of it is wonderful medicine."

So go sign up! Miss Stewart and Miss Dudly always like writers to sign up for NaNo.

Finaly a craft. (Sorry it took so long.) It's a collage thingy. What you do is:

1. Find a lot of old magizines and get pictures of whatever you want from the internet.

2. Get some scrapbook paper and/or stickers (I didn't use stickers, just markers) and some markers and pens in different colors.

3. Cut out the pictures and glue them onto the scrap book paper however you want.

4. Decorate the page if you want.

5. Write a caption of what the page is of using the stickers or markers.

It's really easy to make one.

Lizzie's Birthday Pictures

Here're the best pictures.


(Lizzie (left) Justin (middle) and Lizzie's freind, Aurdry (right)

Lizzie and Justin, Lizzie's 19th birthday

Lizzie's Birthday

Her birthday was really yesterday, but the only reconigition she got was Mom and me waking her up by singing Happy Birthday. Today is her celebration. Justin's coming up from AL to visit that day. I'll get pictures sometime.

Writing

I guess writing is an art.....There's a thread for writers at the school forums about writing being a art, so I'm assuming it is. :P Anyway, I'm going to write about what I came to write about and stop lolly-gaggnin'. ;)

I sumbited a poem to a kid's magizine called Stone Soup. ( www.stonesoup.org ) They pay 40 dollars if they publish whatever you sent in, so spending 88 cents on postage is worth it if they publish it. I'm hoping it gets published......But the poem isn't very good, so I don't think that it will be. I have to wait 4-6 weeks to know if they're going to publish it or not. If they are, then they call you or something, and if they don't then whatever you sent in isn't going to be published.

D-Day

People crossing over to Normandy.

Saturday is D-Day. If any of you don't know what D-Day is it was when the allied troops landed at Normandy and won World War Two on June 6, 1944. That's the short version--the one without any cool details like who the commanding officer was or pictures of D-Day. Go put your nose into a D-Day history book, and you'll find out much more about it. But I did find some pictures on the internet of D-Day, so here they are. And yes, Esenhower did send photographers along. It makes writing the history books much easier if you have pictures and not just stories. Plus the serviviors probebly got copies of the pictures, so they could put them in the album and teach their two year olds all about WWII--including all the details that even high school text books leave out.

Paratroopers in a plane going there. (Wouldn't it be fun to jump out of a plane going very fast with all that stuff on and--if you're afraid of hights-- be afraid of forgeting to pull the string that made the parachute come out and lower you instead of dropping you?)

Esienhower giving orders to the men who were going to Normandy. (Esienhower is the one in the middle.)

Bridal Shower

Lizzie had her bridal shower yesterday night! It was the one for the family members in MO. She and Justin traveled down to vist Justin's dad and step-mom (please don't ask me to explain Justin's family tree. =P I'd just confuze everyone.) and then went up from GA to visit our family. Justin was invited to go hang out with Uncle John, Uncle Mike, Matt, Brian, and Chris, but he wanted to go to the shower with Lizzie. Here're some pics. Aunt Laura sent them to Mom and Mom forwarded them to me, so as I could post them.

Dancing and Pictures

Note: Lizzie's fiance, Justin, is coming to visit for a while, and he's bring the camera back from AL. I'll get pictures of some crafts I've been doing up soon, now that the camera's going to be back where it belongs.

Ballet rehersals have been happening a lot lately. Every Saturday, Dad has his ballet class, then it's a rehersal until about three, then the next day, there's a rehersal at 2:00 in the afternoon. Some of us *cough* would have a fit if it was any earlier on a Sunday......Church comes before dance. ;) Then, on Thursday there's a rehersal from 5:30-8:00. That's until the week before the recitle. That week gets REALLY hectic. Rehersals every day at the local college where the recitle will be for about six hours. That's about 4:00-10:00PM. It's VERY fun, though.

I found the picture off of the internet. Not even Lizzie, who's very good at photography, would've taken that. Just the fact that the lightening might hit you and the camera is the reson she wouldn't have taken it. And that there is hardly any flat land in WV. (Which is very good. How do people in the plains keep from going crazy what with all the flat land around?)

Script Frenzy

The little banner thing that says, "I'm in! Script Frenzy 2009" is from a site called, "Script Frenzy." It's a crazy program that is for crazy people who want to write a script in a month. I did it this year and LOVED it. There are two different Script Frenzy sites: One is for young writer's and the other is for adults. Google, "Script Frenzy" if you want to try it. Unfortunately, it's almost over for this year, but you can still sign up and do it next year. =}

Updates

Lizzie has the camera in AL, hence no pictures. She's mailing it back. I'm hoping it comes soon, though.

While it's being shipped back, I'm going to be in MO because my great grandma, Gammy, died. She was 95.

Hey, all!

This is my first try at blogging and it is for school. I'm homeschooled and Mom is helping with my crafting. This blog is about the crafts. There will probebly be other things in here, too, like pictures from my sister's wedding or my cat blogging once in a while, but other than that it's about crafting.

I'm twelve and live in West Virginia. Mom and Dad teach on an online school. They've been homeschooling me. Lizzie, my sister, is getting married in Augest. My cat, Felix, just got over a really nasty, smelly abesses on his abdomen. My rabbit, Velvet, is about two years old and a pretty spoiled lump of fur. Sir Wulfric Tortius, Esq. is Dad's turtle who is ? years old.