O For a Muse of Fire

I've spent most of today so far in fire-related activities.  Chopping wood, coaxing flames, piling on sticks, groaning about how my back and hands hurt... fireplaces are a lot of work, as some of you may know. 

This morning we woke up freezing cold and rather miserable (Virginia having finally realized that it's January, not October), so my mom and I decided to make a fire ourselves.  Usually it's my dad's job, but since he was at work it was up to us.  We had it nicely built up, but then we ran out of wood.  At first we sent out the little 'uns to gather sticks, but then they brought in a huge log....and I had a bright idea.  I would chop it.  My dad has a little hatchet which I've always wanted to try out, and now I got my chance.  (I'm certain there''s a bigger one somewhere in the garage, but I'm scared of the garage - too many spiders - so I didn't hunt too far.  So I grabbed my brother Joe and went out chopping. 

Chopping wood is glorious fun.  You get to whack an inanimate object with a sharp tool.  What's not to love?  I think I shall keep a supply of sticks to chop when I get angry from now on.  Really.  I think it would be quite beneficial.

So, to give this post a reason for existing, I shall explain some basics of stick-gathering and fire-making to you poor city slickers.  (You have no idea how hypocritical it is for me to say that.  I am by no means a country girl.) 

So, stick-gathering.  The sticks should be dry, but not rotted.  If they're rotten, they'll burn up like twigs, which is okay for a quick blaze, but isn't really worth it.  The lighter they are, the drier they are.  The drier they are, the better (and quicker) they'll burn.  Obviously the bigger they are, the longer they'll burn.  I don't know much about types of wood...I know some burn better than others, but I have no idea which.

Once you've got the sticks, you can make the fire. (By-the-by, unless you have a strong man, a saw, and big tree limbs, I recommend that you buy logs from a grocery store or something to supplement your sticks.)  If you have a huge fireplace or are making a bonfire, the best method is to lay your logs in a square shape with sticks and kindling (pinecones work well) in between.  If you've only got a regular fireplace, you can lay the logs in a triangle or x-shape.  I've been laying my sticks vertically against a log in the back and stuffing the middle with twigs, but it's not working terribly well.

So yeah, that's what I've learned about fires.  They're great fun, even though it's a ridiculous amount of work.

If you've got anything to add to my fire-making-knowledge, tell me in the comments.  And if I've got anything wrong, pleasepleaseplease tell me.  And if you made it to the end of my chattering...congratulations.

via google images

All Buttoned Up

**Notice: this post was begun on July 26.  What happened was, I couldn't think of any subject-matter for buttons after the North & South one.  I just now finished with the last two buttons.  So yeah.  I'm basically the queen of procrastinators**

 Ladies and gentlemen, this is a very special day.  Why is it a special day, you ask?  Because, my dear, thanks to Miss Rosamund Gregory, I HAVE LEARNED HOW TO MAKE BLOG BUTTONS.  Now you may rejoice. 

I didn't put the code box because this isn't an official R&M button.  But I think it is rather cute. :)

Are you done rejoicing?  Good.  I must tell you, if you've never made a blog button, get thee to Rosamund's tutorial and learn how.  You needn't be scared.  It's actually very easy.

Now, I probably won't have an official button for my blog for a while yet, because, you see, it has to be just so.  But in the meantime, I've made a couple fun little things, just to get the hang of it.

<a href="http://raindropsandmoonlight.blogspot.com/"><img border="0" src="http://i1110.photobucket.com/albums/h456/poetgirlJMJ/thorntonappreciationclub-1.jpg?t=1343496983

<a href="http://raindropsandmoonlight.blogspot.com/"><img border="0" src="http://i1110.photobucket.com/albums/h456/poetgirlJMJ/tolkienquote1.jpg"/></a>

<a href="http://raindropsandmoonlight.blogspot.com/"><img border="0" src="http://i1110.photobucket.com/albums/h456/poetgirlJMJ/bowtiesarecool-1.jpg"/></a>

 So, there you go!  My first attempts at buttonmaking.  By-the-by, I really do have no idea what's going on with the alignment there.  My code boxes are randomly off to the side and I'm not sure why...

Oh, and if by some chance you wanted to use any of these, I'd be delighted.  :)

Wuv, Twoo Wuv

About the title - I just couldn't resist.  But I promise, I will try to make this a serious post.

True Love.  It's a common phrase.  "True love" is everywhere - music, films, stories, and especially daydreams.  But what is true love?  What makes the difference between true love and false love?  Perhaps you already know.  But do you?  Here's an example.  We tend to think that love and like are synonyms.  "Oh my gosh, I love your dress," or "I just love pizza."  Really?  You do?  You are willing to sacrifice your life for the dress or the pizza?  Hm.  I should hope not.  No, darling, you like pizza and you like your friend's dress.  "Love" is so overused nowadays, it's not going to add any extra conviction to your sentence anyway.  (Note: I myself am not always innocent of this transgression.  Just thought I'd make that clear.) 

The same goes for love and romance.  Romance itself has been degraded to mean something much worse, but never mind that right now.   Love doesn't just mean walking on air and chocolates and roses, people.  You can be "in love" without truly loving the person at all, because true love is not an emotion, not a feeling.  It's an act of the will - something that you choose to do.  This is why, as a certain rather brilliant acquaintance of mine once pointed out, the arranged marriages so common in the past actually worked out when the couple sincerely made an effort.  They made the choice to love each other. (Note: I am not advocating arranged marriages.  I would freak if someone arranged a marriage for me.)


If I have true love for someone, my greatest aim is not to be with them forever.  My greatest aim is to do whatever is best for them, even if it means being with someone else, because my love isn't selfish.  All that matters is their welfare.  I am unimportant except where I can be of use, and I will do whatever it takes to for that person's true happiness.

Also, true love is not reserved for just a man and a woman.  One can truly love anyone - parents, friends, siblings, students, whatever.

True love is not a feeling.  It's not destiny.  It's not a chemical reaction.  It's a conscious choice by which a person puts someone else above himself or herself in all things.  It's what Our Lord has for each one of us.  And it's very beautiful.

Made with Pixlr and Picmonkey.  I quoted from memory, so I apologize if I got the wording wrong somehow.

The Wonders of Picnik

I am obsessed with Picnik.  I really am.  All that time I spend "hiding" in my room?  I'm consoling myself for the deficiencies of January scenery by beatifying photos.

functions used: polaroid & cross process

I take a lot of pictures of the sun... (functions used: winterize & cross process)

I really love making things "perfect", and Picnik lets me do that.  I can take my bits of real life and transform them into fairy tales.

It's a princess!  (In real life, my sister.)  Functions used: orton-ish, crown sticker,  and I forget what else.  This was a while ago.

Of course, once it's edited, it's no longer real life.  (That's why you always should save a copy of the original!)  Sometimes I do feel a little guilty about that, especially when I edit a picture of myself and then people who've never seen me in real life tell me how pretty I am.

Now that I have the premium membership (THANK YOU MOMMY), I can really make people look different.  For instance, take this one:

That's me.  But I don't have auburn hair (though I'd love that), my skin is a different shade, and I don't wear blue eyeshadow. 

See?  I changed the haircolor, airbrushed the skin, added blush & eyeshadow, darkened the eyelashes, added a texture, and I don't know what else. Talk about unrealistic. :p

An eye... my camera doesn't like artificial lighting, so the coloring and quality of this is terrible.  I took it to Picnik and...

....totally fixed it.  Made my eyes green, too.  I'm rather proud of this one, I must say.

It just goes to show that you can't trust pictures, I guess.  And if I can do this much, just imagine what big corporations can do to their models.  Once my mom showed me a video of how they change a person's looks for a billboard...ah, here.  I highly suggest that you watch it -  it's very short, and quite worth it.

Anyway.  Picnik.  I wish I was the sort of person who could give methodical, practical information on stuff....but I'm not.  So you get the whatever-comes-into-my-head-first post instead.  I'm sorry.

Christmas lights on slow exposure.  Also, a rather accurate representation of my brain. (Functions: vignette, clarity, slight desaturation.)

I recently read a post about how one ought not to "overedit" one's pictures.  I must confess that, in my Picniking zeal, I hadn't ever thought about the possibility of overediting.    After much internal struggle, I have brought myself to make some rules about how much editing I can do to a given image.

  - When using the functions under "camera", never fade out less than 60%.

 - Lomo-ish looks good on very few photos.

 - Use Matte with light-colored photos, Vignette with dark ones.  Use Vignette sparingly, and fade out both, to some degree.

 - Be VERY CAREFUL if using the touch-up functions.  Too much will look totally fake.  This goes especially for teeth whitening, highlights, and wrinkle remover.  (Tip: Wrinkle Remover is quite useful, in moderation, for harsh smile lines.  Also, if you don't have Premium, very carefully-applied Soften can work like airbrush.)

 -  Not every photo needs text.  (To my dismay.)

Text, cross process, frame, slight posterize, basic edits.

-  Clarity is EXTREMELY helpful in making point-and-shoot pictures more professional-looking.  Again, don't overdo!

 - Some photos really don't need any fancy editing at all.

Minimal exposure and clarity (basic edits), text.

One more thing.  My favorite thing to do is take pictures of things like pretty notebooks, illustrations, etc., edit them, and make collages.  It's not the most original thing ever, but it's fun and it looks pretty.

Three pictures on the side (& background of main pic) from a notebook I found at JoAnn.  Functions used: text, collage, stickers, polaroid, gritty, orton-ish.

Pictures from a "real life" herb poster. Collage, orton-ish, clarity, saturation, velvia (in the "advanced" section.)

Pictures from a science book.  Texture, vibrance, collage, some basic edits.

Pictures from the same science book as the above.  Same functions.

Well, hopefully you got something out of all that. Congratulations on making it to the end of this post.  If you have any questions, comment and ask me!  I'm always happy to answer them.

She Who Loves Required Reading.

Yes, I am odd.  I get so excited when I get to read new things for school!  As weird as it may sound, I am truly grateful to Seton for providing me with such awesome literature, such as:

 
The Scarlet Pimpernel.  This is now one of my all-time favorite novels.  My mom read it immediately (and I mean immediately) after I finished it, and she loved it as much as I did.  Now I'm reading Petticoat Rule by the same author - only, I'm using Project Gutenberg, because it's out of print.  *insert guilty glance at the Pledge to Read the Printed Word  button in sidebar*  But anyway, this is a really awesome book.  Please don't just see the movie instead: it's rather different from the book, and it has some quite inappropriate parts.





Lay Siege to Heaven. The story of St. Catherine of Siena, this was very inspiring for me.  I actually wrote the book analysis for this one (as opposed to my BA for The Scarlet Pimpernel, which I never did....) and though I didn't grade too well on it, it made me think about the story more deeply.  It's beautifully written - much more like a novel than a biography.  I can't wait to read Louis de Wohl's other novels, like The Quiet Light and The Living Wood.  Definitely try this one!





The Screwtape Letters.  Okay, so what if this is for eleventh-grade English and I'm still stuck with tenth-grade English?  I couldn't help but "preview" it, and it's so very good - amusing and scary and lesson-teaching, all rolled into one unusual story, which takes the form of letters from a devil to an under-devil.  Weird, right?  I was skeptical too, but now I'm converted. (No pun intended.)  Hopefully I'll get to read Lewis' other works soon...I'm especially interested in Till We Have Faces.  If I ever get to read this, it may mean another literature feature for my lovely (and long-suffering) readers!





A Tale of Two Cities.  Charles Dicken's famous, well-beloved, and well-hated novel.  (HOW COULD YOU HATE THIS BOOK, PEOPLE?)  I don't believe I can write very coherently about it, especially without giving Important Things away.  Suffice it to say that it's a beautiful tale of love, injustice, and sacrifice.  And it'll probably make you cry, unless you are one of the above-mentioned haters.


 Well, that's all for now.  Now tell me:  have you read any of these books?  Did you like them?  Got any suggestions for the bibliomaniac?  Tell me everything!  I'd love to hear from you.


PS - Would you happen to have anything that you'd like me to post about?  Let me know, if you do!

Homeschooler

I've been homeschooled my entire life.  I have never set foot in a public school, and, truth to be told, when I see them I shudder.  They look like gaudily-painted prisons.

When I was stubborn or uncooperative about my schoolwork, my mom used to threaten to send me to public school.  Luckily for me, I have only one year of school left, so I think I'm fairly safe.

My mom has many reasons for homeschooling me, and I have many reasons to appreciate it!


First, there is the matter of religion.  Of course I want to preserve my faith, and I feel that I can do that much better at home.  I have significantly less temptations, and very little peer pressure.  I study out of predominately Catholic books, and since my parents and I are in control of what I learn, I get to explore alternative views of things like history and science.  Instead of being taught evolution, I was presented with the hypothesis and the refutations of it and allowed to draw my own conclusions.  (Obviously my book - Exploring Creation With Biology - is against evolution, but it was not dogmatic about it.  That book is really good.  My biology-major dad loved it.)
I mentioned peer pressure.  Obviously that has a large bearing on religion as well - being homeschooled, it's easier for me to choose who I want to be around, and of course I choose people who are like me.  My friends don't put pressure on me to wear tight jeans or dye my hair pink or act impurely or anything like that, because they themselves would never do those things.  I'm not saying that I refuse to be friends with somebody who doesn't share my views, but as it stands now, most of my friends do.

Another reason I like being homeschooled is that I feel that I'm getting a better education this way.  I'm not trying to brag, but there are statistics showing that homeschooled children do consistently better on tests like the ACT.  (If you don't believe me, look it up.  You can start here.)  Really, I'm not trying to be a snoot.  I'm only sharing my personal experience (and the test results).  I know that there are public-schooled people who are eons ahead of people like me in intelligence.  Only....I haven't met too many of them. 

Homeschooling, if done right, increases one's self-discipline.  This is very important, because in today's world, self-discipline is the last thing on most people's minds.  It's all about gratifying ME, and instantly, too.  We can't restrain ourselves - we're not taught to!  And so we're morally weak - lots of times, physically weak as well.  With homeschooling, most of the time you have to do it yourself.   You're not herded from class to class, your mom isn't going to walk you through every lesson and every subject, and it's oh-so-easy to stop taking that Religion test and start blog-hopping instead....
Now, I am by no means perfect in this.  Far from it.  I've struggled many times (including now) to keep up with everything.  I may be way ahead in some subjects, but I'm still doing a couple subjects from last year, too.  But nevertheless, I'm working on it, and learning from all my responsibility.  I'm very much involved in my schoolwork.  I feel like this way I'll be much better prepared for the responsibility of an adult than if I were public-schooled, being spoon-fed my information and having everything tidily taught to me.

I know that one of the most common objections to homeschooling is that homeschoolers are "anti-social".  You hear it all the time: "Homeschoolers have no social life!  Those parents are depriving their children of normal interaction and therefore forcing them to become shy, socially-unskilled recluses!" *insert glare of righteous horror at homeschooling parents*

I could go on and on and on about this.  As a matter of fact, there was much more that I wanted to cover in this post - but I'm kind of running out of steam now.  Perhaps I'll do a "Part II" sometime, if I remember what else I wanted to say.  Anyway, this post is getting rather long and seeming to get more confused the longer I go, so I shall end presently. 

If you have any questions about homeschooling, comment and ask me!  I'll be happy to answer them - perhaps with another post.  Homeschooling is rather misunderstood, on the whole, and I'd be glad to help clear up the confusion.

What do you think of homeschooling?  I'd love to hear your opinion.

Picture not mine - unfortunately I don't remember where it came from.

A Shortcut to Mushrooms

I love mushrooms.  It's one of two characteristics that I share with hobbits, and therefore I'm quite proud of it.  (The other characteristic is my height.  I'm very short. :p)  But mushrooms are more than just pizza toppings and casserole fillers!  They're one of my favorite things in nature, because a) they're cute b) they're fascinating to study, and c) they make awesome pictures.  So today I'm going to share with you, my dear readers, some pictures of mushrooms that I took yesterday, along with any mushroom-ish thoughts that come into my head. 

Before I show you the pictures, let me just say that I am by no means a talented photographer.  The only camera I own is the dreaded point-and-shoot - This one.  (Mine's blue, though. And really, it's a good camera.  Just...not professional.)

Aren't they cuuuuute?

This is the same clump, only viewed from the top.  Notice the reddish splotches that weren't in the other picture.  Kinda weird, no?

I know, I know.  "What?  That's not a mushroom!"  Yes...but it is a sprig of orange leaves.  That's very important, you see, because orange leaves = autumn.  I'm quite ready for autumn, and even though it's only August, I was super excited when I found this bunch.  It's strange...I've always loved summer.  This year though, I wasn't interested.  It's been "ohhhhh, I wish it were fall!"  since June.
Anyway.  Mushrooms.

The cap of this one is a little bit out of focus.  You do know which part is the cap...right?
Just in case, here's a diagram of a mushroom.  I wish the ones in textbooks looked like this!

There we go.  Now you know all about mushroom structure.  End of science lesson.

Speaking of science lessons, I'd like to point out that children love learning about fungi.  If your children/siblings/small neighbors/cousins are ever bored and you're supposed to entertain them, take them on a mushroom hunt.  Show them all the different parts and admire the pretty colors and textures.  (Just don't let them touch the mushrooms.  Some parents - like my dad - tend to freak out over their children touching mushrooms.  It's understandable because they're potentially poisonous, but personally I don't think it's a problem.  Just make sure the little ones don't put them in their mouths.)  If the children are a bit older, "pick" a couple mushrooms, take them home, and have the children sketch them.

The above mushroom is my mom's favorite.  She majored in photography, so I'm very flattered when she likes my pictures.

I took that one and uploaded it to Picknik, where I had a blast editing it up in different ways.  Editing tools are fun.  So  I will proceed to bombard you with some of my edits.

I love that one.  It's so fairytale-ish!

My mother didn't like this one much.  She said it wasn't happy looking. It isn't, really, but I think it sort of fit the "earthiness" of mushrooms.  And it looks cool.

I made one hot pink, just because.

And I finish with a happy one - literally!  The credit for this goes to my 5-year-old brother, who told me to put a mustache on the mushroom.  I didn't put the mustache, but I did put the rest of the face!

One last thing.  I do not mind if you use my pictures, as long as you credit me!  Please do not try to pass my photographs or edits off as your own.  Also, I'd appreciate it if you told me that you're using one of my pictures, but that's not obligatory.  I'd be happy to know that people like my things.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my shortcut to mushrooms!  

Not my picture - Google Images