Beads and Bows... Pencil Cup

Okay, so I've been cleaning my room all morning, well, other than washing our van... Ewww!
Anyway, when cleaning my room my biggest issue was my desk. I'm am a pile freak. I have stacks of books and papers and receipts completely overwhelming my desk. It took me forever to figure out, but as soon as I      revealed my desk I saw that I had pens and pencils strewn everywhere. I'm beginning to feel the lack of a pencil cup. So I went and, duh, pulled a can out of the recycling bin. Now what to do with it?

I got a set of beads for four dollars at Walmart and used some blue fabric that I already had. A little glue and a lot of wrapping and tying and I had a pencil cup. Now for the pens.

For the pen cup I got a salsa jar out of the recycling and spray painted it with light blue and dark blue. (I couldn't tell you how the colors corresponded so well. The fabric and the paint came from three totally different projects that took place over the span of several years, so it was quite a bit of fun pulling it all together.) Then I go some rub- on decals from hobby lobby and put them on with some Rhine-stones. I think it all turned out very well and now my desk is spick and span. Let's see if I can keep it that way. :)

Little Lanterns

 

This project of mine is thanks to my Grandma. I used crotchet cotton and my Grandma's recipe for doily starch to make the little lanterns around the lights. I ran the crotchet cotton through the starch and wrapped the string then around water balloons(filled with air). After it had set up overnight I popped the balloons and attached the resulting product to a string of lights. I gave them to a friend of mine for her birthday and they conveniently fit perfectly in her window. I asked her for some pictures to post for grandma, and Julia is quite the photographer. Enjoy! And thanks grandma!!!

 

From Great Authors Come Great Quotes

I have to memorize some quotes for a memory exercise, and I found a lot of really good ones, so I thought I'd share a few with all the people who take the time to read. By the way, hello to those in Pennwood!

But if I am able to understand you, let me have the benefit of your brevity.
•Socrates

An adventure is an inconvenience en rightly considered And inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
•G.K. Chesterton

Those who walk slowly can- if they follow the right path- go much farther tan those who run rapidly in the wrong direction.
•René Descartes

Let it be noted that there is no more delicate a matter, nor more dangerous to conduct, nor more doubtful  of it's success, than to set up as a leader in the introduction of changes.
•Niccolo Machiavelli

I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He couldn't lie; I can, but I won't.
•Mark Twain

A pretty face can be enough to catch a man, but it takes character and good nature to keep him.
•Sir Thomas More

Well, those were all from memory, so I'd say I have them pretty well memorized. Have a wonderful and blessed day!

Yikes!!!!

This is one of the grossest things I think I've seen in quite a while. It is very interesting, but it seriously made my skin crawl. See. what happened was for a piano competition I got an honorable mention and so I got a bouquet of flowers. I put them in this green jar that I have in my window. They stayed fresh for quite awhile and when most of them were rotten a few really pretty purple ones dried instead of rotting. Of course then I did the logical lazy-man thing to do and threw away the rotten ones leaving the dried ones in the jar with the water. I don't know if any of you see any problem with my plan, but I was just going to throw out the water when I got around to it. (*Never a good plan.)

I completely forgot about them for awhile, maybe a month, then came back and this is what I found. Can you see in the bottom there? Those are the two stalks, but can you see how it's kind of milky around the stems? That is slime. The picture bellow is the stem pulled out of the water and the slime hanging from it. I don't know the scientific term for the slime, its probably some kind of algae colony, or something. 

This, however, seemed very cool to me, so I decided that I would really like to see what actually made up this slime. So I pulled out my handy-dandy microscope and, using a scalpel, cut some of the slime off onto a slide. I have since disinfected everything in the surrounding area. Why? Watch my lovely video. It was taken through the eyepiece of my microscope. I had to put it on Facebook in order to not completely overwhelm my computer, so I'll put a link at the bottom. :) But if the videos don't work here are some pictures of one of my new-found "friends". 

Isn't he lovely? :/  Yikes. I now have this entire jar of slime sitting out on the back porch; I thought I'd try to see how resilient these things are. Can you take the freeze? We'll see. 

I have absolutely no idea what this is. I looked up microscopic insects on google, and all it came up with was dust mites, and these do look similar, but I can't quite see why I would have dust mites living in my slime. ??? I really don't know though. I'm going to ask the biology teacher at my school and see if he has any insight. I will update this if I find out what they are. 

I do know, however, what paramecia are, and I found a ton of them living in my slime. They are so cute! I love single-celled organisms.

Here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=1449444478611105&set=vb.100006366993936&type=2&theater

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=1449440335278186&set=vb.100006366993936&type=2&theater

 

The first video is my creepy insects, the second are my cute paramecia. Check them out and tell me if they don't work... Oh, sorry, its the other way around...

 

 

GCA Christmas Party

When my friend Kaylen is at a party something creative is bound to happen. This story got passed around the entire room and pretty much everyone added a sentence. I just happened to be the one with the notebook, so I thought I would put it on here for everyone to enjoy. :) (Because it totally makes sense.)

Once upon a time there was a maniacal shoe named Alfred. He despised the fact that he was a left show, but he was still alone with no way of changing. This is because in Shoeland left shoes were despised. They were despised to the utmost being left to live out their entire lives on the outskirts of the town, all alone. But Alfred was sick and tired of being alone, so he set out on a wonderful journey. He was setting out to prove that left shoes were worth something; that they were of great value.

Alfred packed his best shoestring, said goodbye to his pet pill bug and set out towards the smell of excitement. This led him to a cool boot camp where the motto was "Arbeit Macht Wij." (Work leads to freedom.) He was very enthusiastic about freedom after being enslaved to a stereotype his whole life, but would this really lead to freedom?

However he then realized that he was not a left shoe or a right shoe, but a middle shoe. This left him reeling in confusion; lost in reality. It was something akin to being drunk, (or at least as drunk as a shoe can get) and attempting to leech an ill patient. However after a short time he came to realize that being a middle shoe freed him from all stereotypes because middle shoes were too rare to be stereotypes. And yet he still felt the need to prove himself, so he continued on to the boot camp where he discovered that left shoes were rewarded and right shoes were looked down upon. Alfred soon discovered that purple shoes were honored (he was purple). What was this sudden twist of fate? How would he adjust? Alfred was overcome with a wave of bitter-sweet emotion; although he was glad to receive the praise that he did for being such an admirable hug he now found himself in yet another minority. Even more discouraged Alfred set out once more to find his place in this crazy world. He decided to visit a llama farm, thinking that he would discover a new place to be successful. He worked very hard mastering the art of llama wrestling, llama rodeoing and other llama stuff. (Insert a sentence of elvish runes here.) Everything changed. She made him realize that what he really wanted to be be in life was a pineapple tree. He wanted to be a pineapple tree, but seeing no way to accomplish this he went and committed shoe suicide by offering himself to Hercules the bull-dog. 

The end. 

I'm Thinking...

Sometimes its nice to just sit and think. However, sometimes its really awful to just sit and think. It really depends what you're thinking about. There are my thoughts for today. : )

Just a taste...

I am working on a novel at this point. I thought that I would just share the prologue with you and see what you all think. (You all being my one follower. So, te, and not los for spanish, Tu, not vous for french. Pour mon seul lecteur cher. Enjoy!) 

Numbness. A simple word on a page. Numbness. It’s easily spoken, too, but do you ever really know what it is? I’m not speaking of numbness in a physical sense though, and if that’s the first thing that came to your mind then you probably won't understand what I am talking about.

  Have you ever felt pain, and so much of it, that you just don't feel anything anymore? Have you ever cried so much that you just seemed to have run out of tears? Have you ever been so angry that you stopped feeling emotions at all? Has anyone that you loved ever hurt you so deeply that you just couldn't seem to love at all anymore? If any of these applies to you then you know the definition of numbness. I know more than I want to know about numbness. At this moment I’ve experienced more than most anyone I know. Hate. Love. Anger. Turmoil. Chaos. Fighting. Divorce. Murder. Death. Altogether more than anyone wants to know. I know more about death than is good for anyone. I, Aria Grace Bryant, have died.

This story is how I was saved and this is what numbness is. 

So there's the beginning of my book. What did you think? It's not too silly...