Learn Something New Day 2

So far I'm two for two! Here's the page:


And here's the picture for the day:


Background: I was trying to create my favorite Close To My Heart color (Garden Green) on my computer because somewhere along the way I received a file with the RGB color combinations for creating them on the computer. Thing was, I had the values, and my computer wanted percentages. I asked a designer friend of mine if she knew how to translate them from value to percentage, and she told me that they are out of 255. I had no idea! But, knowing that, I was able to use my mad algebra skills (sarcasm intended) to translate them into percentages, and you can see the result of my beautiful Garden Green font color above! I used the color to create the journaling blocks that I'm using throughout my book. A very exciting thing to learn!

'Til tomorrow...

Learn Something New Day 1

Okay, according to my clock, I have 18 minutes left in day 2, which means I have 18 minutes left to finish day 1's page. Good thing I'm done. :-)

First things first. I finished my cover today, too.

I'm quite pleased with it, for now. I may add some detail to it as the month progresses. But I do want to keep it simple. I have a hard time adding 3D elements to covers, they seem to get bent out of shape - literally.

Here's page 1:


It's very simple, too. My theory is that if I keep things simple, I'll have an easier time doing this each day. Just get the paper and a place for the picture down. (I'm taking pictures as the month goes along and will probably print them all off together at the end of the month, since I don't really have a way to print as I go without finding myself at the Wal-Mart Photo Department every day.) I've established a possible pattern with this first page. My book is 7x7.5, and with this page I've got a 6x6 square, 2.5x6 piece of patterned paper, the picture, and the journaling, plus the day and date. I may keep with this format, or I may not. I wanted to start with something easily reproducible yet flexible in case I need to come back to the ease of simplicity. But I may go crazy tomorrow!

Here's the picture that will go on today's page:


It's of me studying for my Shakespeare class. I really enjoyed reading, and even enjoyed the sense of excitement/fear if I was going to be able to keep up in class. I had nothing to worry about, at least that day!

Working in 3D

Yesterday I mentioned that things have been and are getting pretty crazy around here. It is very exciting, because it's all good stuff, with the exception of the ear infection I've been battling for four days.

So, what's been going on?

Classes started last week. I'm taking one course this semester, a class on Shakespeare. It's been a lot of fun so far, and I'm learning (again) that I really can read Shakespeare. I kind of have to get into the grove, but for the most part I'm understanding it. Mark's started classes, too, he's teaching 6 classes this fall, including 2 choirs. All this is well and good, except that for pretty much the entire summer we were both home. Now that we're both gone a lot more, our poor dog thinks he's been abandoned.

We also started rehearsals for the fall production of The Tempest. I'm playing Miranda (so freakin' excited!!!) I was just simply excited about theatre in general, not horribly thrilled about this particular play or part, but after blocking Act One, I am really looking forward to this production. The people are awesome (getting reacquainted with many old friends), and I'm going to have a lot of fun with this part.

I blogged yesterday about the start of my online class, Learn Something New Everyday. I've been working on my cover, and today will begin designing page one (to scrap what I learned yesterday). I'm not stressing about this project... yet. Okay, maybe I'm stressing a little. :-)

Something that's been rolling around in the back of my mind for about a week is the possibility of taking private voice lessons. I've never really thought about doing this much, as other instruments have always been higher on my priority list (violin, guitar, piano), but after the fiasco that was me singing at last year's Talent Show (we just don't talk about that, it really was bad), I think I need help. I've always taken my voice for granted, but I've also always been singing in some sort of group, be it church choir, school choir, or community group. I'm singing with a group again, but I really think I need the extra support private lessons would give me. So I'm considering this. Haven't done anything about it yet.

Finally, the thing I'm probably most excited about, I was asked to design the set for The Tempest! I could do a whole post just on set design (and maybe I will...), but I'll be brief (ha!) since I've already been so verbose. Basically, I'm designing the set for the interior stage, and it will only be used/seen if we get rained out of our outdoor space. But I don't care. I'm just excited to get to flex my creativity muscles in the set world. It's been awhile since I've done any set work, so I'm looking forward to this a lot! I've started drawing my ideas, only to learn that I really can't draw. So, I believe a scale model will be in my future. I've always worked better in 3D.

Learn Something New Every Day

I'm hastily beginning to realize that this is going to be a very busy month. It will be such a nice change, as I think I've been feeling things getting fairly mundane lately. I just hope I won't have over-extended myself by the time the month is out!

There's so much going on, and I want to tell you about it all, but for now I'm going to start with one thing, because I'm excited about working out the tech details of how to tell it.


I'm taking my first online class! It's through Shimelle.com. Shimelle is a scrapbooker in the UK who's blog I follow. I've watched this class go by for several years now, and this year I decided was the year to join. I'm so excited about this class. The concept to keep a record of what you learn every day for a month. We all know how drastically poor my last "do something every day for x time period" worked out (see here and here if you're masochistic and just want to relive the fail... I did actually make it through the week, and took pictures every day, but before I scrapbooked them, or even printed them off, my HD crashed, and I lost them all.)

But this time I have no expectations whatsoever. I do have an album, an old stapled book I got at Barnes and Noble or something of the sort that's a bunch of pages stapled together. And I'm using a pack of paper that had no original reason for being bought other than that I liked it. I'm compiling from my current stash, with the plan to not buy anything (which has reason more in the financial side of things rather than the not needing more stuff, but more about that later). But no expectations. I'm going to take each day as it comes and see what happens. And I just may learn that I don't really have time to do any of it! But I hope I learn that life, my life in particular, really does have exciting things going for it.

So, go check out the class! I'd recommend it for anyone, even non-scrapbookers. Shimelle's instructions are so simple you can do it with just a pen and a journal, and, as she says, "this project can be considered complete and valuable without a single scrapbooking supply."

Here's to learning something new!

Choices

I did a lot of church musicals growing up. I can remember asking the choir director if I could be in the children's musical when I was only in the 1st grade (it being the 3-6 grade choir that did the musical). I had "borrowed" the tape from my sister (who was in the musical) and listened to the music over and over again until I learned it for myself, and on the night they staged it, I asked, and got to be a part.

Even after we left that church, I was involved in musicals at other churches. It seems every church does at least one. In the fifth grade, I remember being at lunch with the choir director and my family, and he asked me if I would be one of the leads in the upcoming children's musical, Shortstops, a baseball musical. I was elated, and had so much fun.

(By the way, this post isn't about children's musicals.)

There was this one song in Shortstops called Choices. Interestingly enough, of all the musicals I've been in, with all the songs, this song has stuck in my head over the years.

"Choices are waiting just around the corner,
choices that have to be made.
Some are polite, some are out of order,
none of them want to wait.
So what do I do at times like these,
what is my action plan?
Shut out the world, say an honest prayer,
open the Book and take a look at what's there.
Choices, voices, little everyday things that everyday brings.
I will listen to the Spirit, and then make the choice
from the voice that is Jesus in me."

I've been thinking a lot about choices lately. I made the choice in college to study Christian Education, and now have a job in that field. But I am drawn to theatre, desiring to be involved in it in any way I can. And I find myself asking, what is it that I'm supposed to be doing? What did God create me to do? What is God calling me to do?

The thought crossed my mind the other day that God doesn't care. No, God cares about me, but God doesn't care whether I choose CE or Theatre. God just wants me to be happy, to be who I am, whatever my field.

And while that may be a comforting thought, it's actually quite terrifying. Because it means that the choice hasn't been made for me. I'm not supposed to be doing Christian Education, I'm not supposed to be doing Theatre. I'm not supposed to be doing either, because I have the choice. And I have to choose, because I've been trying to do both, and I feel pulled apart at the seams. I've never really had to choose in my life. I mean, yeah, I had to choose a college, and I chose a mate, but in those and other choices I've made, I claimed more than I had before. I gained something wonderful, without really giving up anything. This time, it feels like I finally have to give up something, something that I do want to do, whichever it may be. Something that flows in and out of me like breathing.

I could be wrong. Maybe I can keep on doing both, and I'm going to for as long as I can. But something inside feels like my choice is waiting, just around the corner.

Right Now

Right now, I'm sitting at my desk at home, working and listening to Pandora.

Right now, my dog is at my feet, sleeping peacefully.

Right now, my desk is cluttered and it'd driving me crazy.

Right now, my scrapbooking and art supplies are still packed in boxes in my closet.

Right now, my bed is not made.

Right now, I'm missing lots of people that I haven't seen in too long.

Right now, I'm struggling with things like calling and friendship and purpose and truth.

Right now, I'm trying to not beat myself up for the things I have/have not done, and trying to not worry about the things I have yet to do.

Right now, I am not at peace. However, I am striving to be content. I am striving to just be.

Harry Potter Countdown

Okay, the countdown has already begun for many people, but for me, I've just been getting in the mood over the past few weeks or so. I think it's because we had decided not to go to the midnight showing, because we're going to be out of town. But, we've changed our mind and have decided to go on our vacation, now, and have our tickets, so it's starting to seem more real to me!

In honor of the 6th movie, I wanted to re-read the series. I started with The Sorcerer's Stone back in April when I had plenty of time to read them all. However, life got in the way, and I just finished Chamber of Secrets last week. (I had a really hard time getting motivated to finish CoS, I think because it's my least favorite. I understand its importance in the whole series, but it still seems the most unnecessary to me. That, and I can't stand Lockhart. Not in an I love to hate him way, I just flat out hate him.) I started Prisoner of Azkaban over the weekend, but have decided to skip ahead, thinking a re-read of Half-Blood Prince is more important. So, I read the Ministry of Magic battle to the end of Order of the Phoenix and began HBP last night. I feel sure I can finish it before the movie, but think I'll wait until after the movie to read Deathly Hallows again. I'm most excited about Deathly Hallows. I've only read it once, and I zoomed through it that one time in the 24 hours after it was first released. 

I want to talk about movie vs. book for a second in regard to the 3rd (Prisoner of Azkaban) and 5th (Order of the Phoenix) because I'm intrigued by some choices that were made. I understand the different medium of movie vs. book, and how each calls for something different, and overall I've been pleased with how the franchise has honored the story of each book in film, rather than trying to make a movie that follows the book exactly. But there are two thing I wish they would have done differently. For a long time after the Prisoner of Azkaban movie, I was frustrated with the amount of information left out of the movie about Harry's father and 3 friends. Though, I think I'm going to wait and say more about this after I've re-watched the third movie. For now, I want to move on to my second beef, with Order of the Phoenix. 

Spoiler warning: If you haven't read the fifth book or seen the movie or learned what happened, you deserve for the ending to be spoiled. I will do so below. 

In the book, when Harry returns to Dumbledore's office after the battle at the Ministry, he is outraged. He has been ignored for an entire year by one of the few adults that he has learned to trust, has been manipulated by his mortal enemy, has spent the last 10 months being surrounded by governmental authority figures who deny everything he knows about himself and Voldemort, and now has lost the one adult that he's truly begun to see as a parental figure. On top of that, he's 15. He deserves a breakdown. That scene in Dumbledore's office where Dumbledore sits patiently while Harry destroys his possessions is... beautiful. Harry's emotions are so pure and unbridled. And we learn so much about Dumbledore, about how old men make mistakes, too, and the deep love he has grown to have for Harry. I was really looking forward to that scene in the movie. But what we got was a subdued, 2 minute conversation that barely brushed the surface of the information that needed to be conveyed, much less the emotions of these characters after such a difficult experience. Again, I understand the needs of film are different from the needs and abilities of a book, but I really think we missed Harry and Dumbledore's characters when we lost that scene. It's probably one of my favorites in the whole series. 

Well, instead of re-reading the whole series, we've decided to watch the movies in preparation for the 6th one. We started with Sorcerer's Stone last night. It was... long. It was good, for the most part, but they were all young. I was watching the opening scene with Dumbledore and McGonagall and thinking, man, did they have any idea how big this was going to be when they first started? They did have a long way to go - I noticed the editing was choppy, and the characters didn't always react they way they needed to, or even have continuity in their reactions. Like, at the end when Dumbledore is awarding extra points for Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville's acts, one second Hermione is blissfully applauding with the table of Griffindors, and the next she's excitedly whispering that they're tied with Slytherin. And a lot of Hagrid's reactions are delayed, like when the goblin at Gringotts asks for Harry's key. I know, nit-picky. But I did notice it. What I noticed more is that they got better (of course), and I'm hoping to be more aware of that as we watch the next four (five!) movies.