October Highlights

     Have you ever thought about how fast time passes? 'Cause it really passes fast! It was just summer, and now we are going to be seeing Christmas stuff everywhere. Prematurely, I know, but that's how ahead-of-time people these days start celebrating holidays. Last Christmas, (I think it was Christmas Eve?) I was at Dollar General, and there was ALREADY valentines day things out! Like, seriously! :P

   OK, OK, back to business. To the highlights of October. :)


HAPPENINGS OF OCTOBER|| 

Weeellllll... er, what did we do? *looks back on my blog posts, since they're kind of like a public diary* OK.

\\ I started my photography site. I know you know that, if you're on of my "regular readers", but it happened this month, so I might as well say it. ;)

\\ Me and my sister re-did our room. (yep, you know that too! :P)

\\ I went garage saling and found lots of cool stuff! (and that...)

\\ We HAD a garge sale... which didn't turn out super great.

\\ I GOT MY PERMIT!! :D As you know. And I've been driving. I learned that driving is scary. :P Anyhow, in October, I got 2 hours and 40 minutes of driving time logged. That's a start. ;)

\\ I finished blogging about my trip to the West Coast! :)

\\ Our home-school group co-op classes ended. It was fun. :) 

\\ I went to a youth event put on by people from our home-school group. They called it "redneck Olympics", and we had to do things such as pounding a nail into a stump, shooting cans, and a watermelon eating contest. I was basically forced to do the watermelon eating contest (since only one person on my team wanted to do it, and there had to be two), and I DID NOT want to do it! Didn't want to get messy, didn't want to look like a pig. :P So I took little bites and ate off the top peak. Pathetic, but I didn't even want to do the thing. ;P
  Anyhow, I DID have fun at that event. After there was a campfire where we roasted marshmallows and hot-dogs, and then we played a game in the dark. My favorite part was probably when I actually got to talk to people. :) That's better than games.

\\ Didn't end up getting a harvest party done. :\ We could still do something, at least a fall get-together, but I don't know if we will. We just don't know how to get stuff planned! Maybe I'll plan a Christmas party instead... however far-off that is. Might as well start planning now, so it'll actually happen! ;)


READ IN OCTOBER||

  Wow, I actually read a lot this month (for me)! Well, two of these are books I started before, but finished this month. ;)

Sweet Dreams by Robin Jones Gunn

    I bought this because it was the next book I needed... and it was pretty cheap, too. :) So now I think I only have one more book to read in The Christy Miller series! :)

The Captive Maiden by Melanie Dickerson

    Yea, I was reading this in September... but I finished it this month. Twas good! :)

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

   One of my classes in co-op (just a "fun" one) was going to be having trivia questions of this book, so I started reading it. I've watched the movies, but of the books, I had only read The Horse and His Boy. What better time to start finishing the series? :) I enjoyed this one.

The River by Beverly Lewis

    I started this WAY back when I was still on vacation. :P But it wasn't that interesting, so I put it aside for other books. I just recently picked it back up and finished it. All-in-all, it was an enjoyable read. :)

WATCHED IN OCTOBER||

God's Not Dead 2

    This was a good movie. :) I think I might have liked the first one better, though. 

   I also watched some of these movies called Revelation Road. They're about the end times, and I don't really recommend them. I watched maybe most of the second one, and was watching the third- and that's when I stopped, because there was some disturbing things. Not my type of movie. They're not exactly bad. They're just not what I like to watch, and the disturbing part seemed unnecessarily dramatized.

October Baby

  I re-watched this with my sister, who had never watched it. I really like it. :) For those of you who haven't seen it, it's a good movie. It's about a girl who's mom tried to abort her, and she finally finds out years later from her adopted parents. It's an inspirational movie, both funny and touching. :) Oh, and there's a smidgen of romance, which I found sweet. ;)

It's a Wonderful Life

   I also re-watched this, just last night, with my 14 and 9 year-old sisters. :) My brother watched some of it, but he must've thought it was kind of boring (or a combination of that and not liking the romance. ;P) But he did laugh at some parts, I think. The end (where he's "rejoicing" over his cut and crashed car and all) is so funny! ;P

POSTS OF OCTOBER||

 Guys, I have already broken my record of posts from 2015... 81 in 2015, and 88 so far in 2016. :D This month I did 12.

New Things

October Garage-Saling

Autumn Pictures

My Bedroom Tour

Foggy Dawn

 Currently in October

 Two Retro Ladies

 

 Train Ride

 The Oregon Coast

 A Peak Inside My Sketchbook

Fall: Action and Stillness

As for future posts... OK, maybe I just won't name them off. :P Why is it that I NEVER seem to run out of things to post? Maybe that's a good thing, but it also has me spending a lot of time on here. Anyhow, be looking for more posts. As if you have to LOOK. ;D

LOOKING FORWARD TO IN LAST 2 MONTHS OF THE YEAR!||

\\Thanksgiving! =D

\\Christmas! =D

\\ New Year! =D ... 2017... O.O ONLY TWO MONTHS LEFT OF THIS YEAR! WHAT?! I TOLD YOU. TIME FLIES!

   OK, there's more than that, but these are the big things (obvious as they are...).

Anyhow, I hope you had a good October! And have a WONDERFUL November!! =D

Fall: Action and Stillness

       Oops, I almost broke my promise. I'm supposed to put a link on here to each new post on my photography site... I did one a couple days ago, and NOW I'm telling you. ;)

    So, here's the link: Fall: Action and Stillness. 

    It's just a collection of random pictures I took one day, of the action of fall.... and the stillness. :) Hope you enjoy!

And since I JUST did a post on here yesterday, I'll put a link to that as well, in case you missed it... A Peak Inside My Art- Class Sketchbook

A Peak Inside My Art-Class Sketchbook

    So yesterday was the last day of our home school co-op classes, which we did every Friday for the last eight weeks. One of my classes was Art, taught by a professional artist! ;) On the Friday before last, our teacher brought our sketchbooks home with her to grade them. I got an A (though she almost wanted to give me a B for not doing enough... oops). :D AND she said that my portraits were amazing, and that I had amazing talent! Can you believe that a professional artist would think that about my drawings? =D

   Ahem! Anyhow, here are some drawings... some good.... some not-so-good, but it gives you an idea of what my sketchbook looks like. :) ... if you even care, that is. :P  

   This was from the very first class. Our teacher set up a still- life on the table and we had to draw it. I like the cloth folds, but the fruit was hard... I couldn't find much value, so it's almost all one shade of gray. :P

     Just drawing... for homework. We were supposed to have four pages front and back filled in our sketchbooks each week............... a goal I almost reached once. :P I should've tried harder to get enough! 

    Oh, the drawing about is a geode rock (my sister's) by the way.

    The next week we did another still-life. It's the drawing on the right page. The cup's shape is pretty... bad. The other page is a bunch of random stuff. And a value scale.

   On the third week, we learned about positive and negative space. Basically, your subject is positive space, and the background is negative space. So we did another still life, except this time we drew the outline, then filled in the space inside with black. Like a silhouette drawing. :) This one above is the one I did for homework. It's my candlestick and holder perched on some books. :)

    More at-home drawings. Hands are the perfect thing to draw when you don't have any subjects. Just draw your hand. ;)

    Sort of a quicker drawing that's supposed to be Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon... I need to do a better one of him sometime, because I like Hiccup. ;)

    I like this one. :) I sat on the couch and drew my dad's buck, which had pretty recently come from the taxidermist. :)

    Painting week. :) Here are some I did at home. The fun, colorful flower one...

...and a tree. :)

Candle! :)

   And, er, this just shows you what happens sometimes when I'm drawing random things. So I drew an apple, a leaf, an eyeball... then decide to draw another eyeball and finish the face, and the girl ends up with an apple sitting above her eyebrow, and a leaf on her forehead. :P

    This week was... um, something to do with rulers and straight lines, and everything matching up on houses and city-scapes. Not really my favorite, but yea. I like more messy, not precise drawing. Like people. ;) But anyhow, the picture above is my city-scape, half-finished as it looks. ;P

    Then, the best one of all: Portraits! =D My favorite thing to draw has always been people. So we learned some things about how to divide the face and where to put the eyes, nose, and mouth. Then we had to draw a lady from a picture. My result is above. Didn't exactly look like her, but that's what I got. ;)

     Here's one of my homework projects from that week. It's supposed to be my self-portrait, but it isn't quite right. I do think the nose looks fairly accurate. :) What do you guys think isn't right about it?

    And here's Anna. :) I really enjoy drawing animated characters like this! :)

    The week we turned in our sketchbooks, we all went outside and drew from what was around us.

       
       Then the last week we did another still-life, and some exercises to help us loosen up and draw faster. :) This drawing above is (if you can't tell. ;P) some animal skull in the still life. Lovely, right? :P  

     Anyhow, I hope you enjoyed looking at some of my drawings from my art class! I'm glad I took it! :)

WHICH DRAWING DO YOU THINK I DID THE BEST?

My Trip to the West Coast, part 5: THE OREGON COAST

     At last, I am to the end of my posts on My Trip to the West Coast! 

     So, we decided to go to the Oregon coast a few days before we'd leave. So we piled into... two vehicles? Probably. ;) It took a LONG time to get there, but it was worth it, obviously! It had been eight-ish years since I'd been to the beach! A couple years ago I saw the ocean from an airplane, but I didn't actually go to the beach. :P

     Anyhow, we got to one beach, but there was like, nowhere to park, so we went in search of a more secluded beach that someone had heard about a couple miles away. We found it, and my was it a great beach! =D Here's the pictures. 

    A few of us went down to the beach for a little while, then came back up to have chocolate cupcakes with mint chocolate frosting- it was my one older brother's 21st birthday. ;)

    Then we all went back down. We had to walk down a bank (there was steps) to get to the beach. 

I didn't take this picture, by the way. :)

   It was fun to walk out when the water from a wave receded, and then race back as another wave sent more water rushing at you! :D I LOVE THE OCEAN! 

  We didn't swim, of course- it was much too cold for swimming! But we were blessed with a sunny day! :) 

Awesome, crashing waves!

Little crab! :)

   Some of us crossed to the other side of this big rocky bank- you had to go when the water went out. ;)

It was so beautiful on that side! :D Loved it.

  You may notice that I used this picture for my photography website. ;)

   Panorama! Maybe I should've taken more.

  

   We had to go back to the other side after a little while, because the tide was coming in. Then me and my older sister went walking down the beach... looking at dead crabs...

Isn't the design and color pretty? :)

      And I had to take pictures of the birds. :) They can be fun to watch, especially when the tide comes in on them... ;D

     We found all kind of interesting things. :)

   Even a jellyfish! My sister brought it to the water with a stick or something to wash off the sand, I think. And a wave almost washed the dead creature into me! :P I'd rather not be stung!

     We found pieces of sand dollars too. I never found a whole one.

  Isn't it just gorgeous?

  

    After we spent a while on this beach, we went to a beach town and had some more fun. :)

   We rented these AWESOME bike-carts and drove around town! Me and three siblings and two cousins went on one- two people peddling in front, two in back- and a person squished in between each pair! ;) In this picture, I was in the middle. Taking pictures (and a video ;) ) while we "zoomed" down the road! ;D It was the greatest fun ever! I steered once, and in the more town part of town. ;) Was fun. I think I "daydreamed" a little too much, though, and had to break quickly a couple times! :P

   When our time with the bike-carts (just what I call them BTW ;P) was up, we walked around. 

   People took pedal boats out in this... what is it, anyhow? Is this a river or something, or just a skinny strip of the ocean cutting through the land? Whatever, anyhow, what if there's sharks in there? It's very possible! I might be kind of scared going out on those little boats in there! ;P

We checked out a couple candy stores too. 

     Just look at this amazing Hershey bar! <3 It was 50 percent off because it was ripped... a couple of my cousins bought it together! ;D

All the taffy!

And a giant chocolate quarter. ;)

   Then we went to another beach. It was getting late, and it was windy and SOOO cold! 

A wrecked ship washed up onto this beach once. Isn't it cool? :)

      It was a lovely beach, but also just really cold! We didn't stay too long.

     Well, there you have it! :) Doesn't it sound fun? 'Cause it was!

     Keep in mind, I haven't told you about everything we did... just the "big" events. Other than the things I've posted about, we did a lot of hanging out... me and my cousins walked to our grandparent's multiple times, eating blackberries from the ditches on the way. ;)   One time we just walked along the road for that sole purpose- and we got a lot! And thus had blackberry pie. ;) That was very fun. 

   The day after our reunion ended, me, cousin, and siblings went with our uncle and his girlfriend to some cool caves. :) I didn't bring my camera- just my mom's phone- so I didn't take much for pictures. 

   I also got together with a friend a few times, which was nice! :)

   We swam at my mom's aunt's house a couple times, too. 

   Yep! It was just the most amazing trip ever, and I want to go back soon! =D 
   I made memories with awesome cousins and family that I'll treasure for a LONG time! <3



WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE OREGON COAST? ..AND WHAT DO YOU THINK OF MY AWESOME TRIP?!