wedding dresses and alligators.

my man came to visit me last weekend.
we were having one of the conversations so typical of the two of us, where i admit to liking something really girly and he makes fun of me.


(ps, when you're a girl, being girly is allowed)


this time it was say yes to the dress.

he countered, claiming swamp people to be superior.
wanting to compromise, as well as get him to watch an episode of say yes to the dress, i suggested we watch an episode of each.

first we watched say yes to the dress.  he was set on sleeping through it at first, but by the end was doing over-exaggerated imitations of the brides crying for joy about their perfect wedding dress.  and making up background stories for the brides.  so about the amount of teasing i was expecting.

then we watched swamp people.

you guys, i am fairly certain that nothing is more different from say yes to the dress than swamp people.
at one point there were actual blood splatters on the camera.
my man loved it.
(i didn't completely hate it.  but don't tell him that.)
i told him he should never become an alligator hunter.
though i will admit, we had a rather excellent weekend. even if i did have to watch swamp people.

the girl who was on fire.

once in awhile i stumble across a character in a book that i can picture just perfectly.

denna from the name of the wind.  bellatrix lestrage and merope gaunt from harry potter, too.  (before bellatrix showed up in the movies.)  and it really doesn't matter how well they were described in the book.

then i read the hunger games.  

i'm not a super fan of the hunger games.

i thought the idea was interesting, but it bothers me a bit too much.

however, i could picture katniss very clearly.

upon a bit of doodling i realized that she was also very easy to draw.

so today i made this.

i love watercolors. so much.  expect more.

(ps it's ridiculous how excited i was to find my little crayola watercolor set from walmart.  so happy.  oh my goodness.)

some things.

1: that obsession i have with france?  i have an equally large obsession with egypt.  ever since i was about 9 years old, i have wanted to go to egypt.  the france obsession is fairly recent, starting about my junior year of high school.  these are countries where it will truly be a tragedy if i don't get to see them before i die.  if i don't see norway or greece or peru, it will be sad (i want to go to all those places as well.  and tons more.) but not tragic.  france and egypt are important, guys.

2: pink otter pops are my favorite kind.

3: i could probably be perfectly happy eating only mac and cheese and peanut butter for the rest of my life.

4: i read the entire harry potter series every summer.  remus and dora are my favorite part.

5: to kill a mockingbird is my all time favorite book.

6: my left little toe is named phillippe.

7: i like watercolors better than oils, and oils better than acrylics.  also, i ordered an art history textbook for my class in the fall, but probably i'll just read it for fun.

8: i should blog more. (said blog is in desperate need of a makeover.  but i don't know what to do.  and i don't really want to make another header.  i'm open to suggestions though.) nothing exciting ever happens to me.  i've stayed at my house and read 15 books so far this summer.  i'm keeping track because i want to know if i make it to 100.

9: tunes.

10: this was silly.

11: there's only an 11 since i didn't want to leave my list at an even, normal number.

flowers

because he's the best.

here's to summer

i have not written anything since march.

and i mean anything.

not missionary letters (i wrote 6 yesterday to make up for it) or blog posts or in my journal.

my last semester was pretty crazy, but now summer is here and it's quite the opposite.

i finally found a job, but said job only occupies 20 of my weekly 168 hours. and the town i live in is dead now that school has ended and everyone has left.

so here's to summer.

here's to having plenty of time to read, paint, play my guitar.

here's to finally having a job.

here's to everyone i love being really far away,

here's to skype...

and here's to hoping it goes by quickly.

that awkward blogging moment

when you're at the store and you run into someone who you frequently blog-stalk, and you almost say hi, but then you remember that this person has no idea who you are.  also, you don't actually know who they are outside of the internet.

this is also the reason that i have a secret blogging identity. so that never happens to you.  you're welcome.

learning to play the guitar.

i decided a little while ago i'd like to learn to play the guitar.  santa brought me a guitar for christmas, and i signed up for music 1080.

guitar proved to be easier to play than the piano (at least it has so far...)

and i was getting the hang of it.

one day in class, my teacher told us what our midterm would be.  we would each choose a song that uses only the four chords we've learned (g, c, d, and e minor.)  they're all fairly simple chords, and 8 billion songs use them.  singing along was encouraged but not required.  easy enough.

i chose my song, i worked out a strumming pattern, and i practiced.  i sang along, because without it the song is extremely repetitive.  i had a little trouble singing along to the strumming pattern i had picked during the chorus, but i didn't worry too much.

on the day of the midterm, i sat down in front of the class to play.  i was shaking a little bit, but just a little bit, because i was only a little bit nervous.  i had practiced.  it would be fine.

i made it through the first verse fine, but as i came to the first chorus i stumbled over the lyrics, getting distracted from my strumming, and before i knew it, i was using a strumming pattern that was completely wrong and didn't fit at all.  i got back on track during the second verse, but upon realizing that there was still another chorus left in the song, i got even more nervous and started to shake so much it made it hard to play.  by the end of the song, i was even singing notes that were completely wrong.  i was incredibly thankful at that moment that no one really knew the song, so they wouldn't know just how badly i'd messed it up.

yes, i played badly.

but i played.

i didn't stop singing halfway through when i realized how downhill it had gone.  i finished what i started.

i've only been playing for 2 months.  i am not going to be perfect at this yet.  and while my confidence was shattered for a moment, it isn't anymore.

the beginning is always going to be hardest.

don't give up.