Looking In the Rear View Mirror

I'm moving on to greener pastures my friends. Image from Falsompastor.

As all of you may have noticed. This year is coming to a close, and fast. Not only am I required by my grade to write this post, but I feel like it's good way to close up this blog. I could make promises to keep writing, and to stay updated, but I feel like after this post, the magic will be lost. And let's all be honest, my readers and page views will go with it soon after. While I am definitely go to miss it, all things must end. Good things don't last forever, and they shouldn't, for that matter. The fact that they end is what makes them special and precious. I'm sure you will all forgive for getting all mushy right there, as it is the last time it will happen.

Looking back on my earlier post it's like I can feel myself holding back a little. I was afraid to share the personal little pieces of me that I give to you in my writing. Of course I was excited to write about things I thought could help people, but I was scared of making a fool of myself. In contrast, I am now a proud "goof up". This is because of you guys, my readers. I saw and heard my friends' interest in my posts and topics,  I realized I had slowly started accomplishing what I first set out to do. To have something so personal be the cause of someone else's joy created more fuzzy feelings than I can describe. And slowly over this year, I felt like I have opened up to you.

I keep talking about how personal this blog was to me, but how can that be? I am literally posting on the world wide web. Emphasis on world wide. Despite all that, my writing style is unique to me, and although I had not explored it very much at the beginning of this blog adventure, I was sure nobody was going to like it. Slowly as I gained more confidence, so did my writing. If you look back, you can start to see me bursting out of my bubble, and using more pop culture references, along with the always important figurative language.

I know I couldn't have done this without the inspiration provided from some other bloggers. Specifically Alexa, and my brother Charlie. I love all the blogs I read, but I always felt more creative, and determined after reading each and everyone of their posts. Speaking of creativity, I might have let mine run a little too free when it came to keeping to the theme of this blog. Originally, the majority of the posts I wanted to make were going to be about school, and balancing the different aspects of life as a teenager. Well, I did some of that, but I also spent a lot more time than I originally planned on the things I do to relax. In a way, I still accomplished my original goal. Through this blog I was able to relieve a lot of stress, and anxiety. So in the end, this blog helped at least one person balance their life.

For the last time, I wanted to say thank you, and good bye.

I've kept it PG all year, but just his once I thought it was okay. Image from QuotesBlog.

Throwing it All the Way Back

Recently I have been looking at old pictures from when I was younger. I'm going to say this in the most modest way possible, I was adorable. I honestly don't know what happened. Life was so simple and magical back then. I honestly believed in the mythical, spoiler alert, Santa, tooth fairy, and Easter bunny. Not only that, but it seems like I had no concept of embarrassment. Now I'm grown up, and am constantly feeling the reddening of my cheeks that occurs with an awkward moment. In this time of great stress and worry, I've decided to throw it back a little to some of my favorite memories of a simpler time. Besides, Thursday, as in throwback Thursday, is the fourth day of the week, and hey, it's fourth quarter!

Me running from a bear... probably

The first memory I'm going to share is of my family's so called "bear hunts." I have no idea how our parents thought of the idea, whether it was a tradition passed down from their childhoods, or we just had too much energy one night, but every once in a while all five of us would grab a flashlight, and head into our large yard at night to look for bears. We sing a stupid song that was both short and repetitive until we made it all the way around the house. Some nights we would even do multiple laps. Despite the lightness of it all, I was always certain that we were going to catch a bear. Even after an abundance of bear hunts where we came back empty handed, I felt there was no doubt that we would run into a bear in the middle of our yard. Looking back, a couple of questions come to mind. Specifically, Why did we want to catch a bear? When we were to encounter said bear, we would be empty handed, save for a flashlight. How were we going to capture/protect ourselves from this bear? Not once did we find a bear (thankfully), but I will always have fond memories my determination, and feeling of invincibility that came with hunting dangerous beasts with my family.

Second is another story from my backyard. After all,  backyards are places of infinite wonder and possibilities to younger kids. So in my backyard, we have a sand box. I'm almost debating putting that last statement into the past, because slowly it has become nothing more than a litter box for the neighborhood cats. Despite that, back in the glory days my siblings and I spent a lot of time there. And out favorite sand box activity? Flooding it. My brothers and I would build an elaborate kingdom, and then starting with just one small lake or river, we would start adding water features until it looked like the set from Water World. If you haven't purposely flooded, and in turn ruined, a small sandbox, I am tempted to say you haven't lived.

Lastly, I remember the nights I pretended to fall asleep at random locations in the house just so my mom or dad would carry me to my room. For example, one night I couldn't fall asleep and I heard my mom in the kitchen. I decided to get out of bed and lay on the kitchen floor with my eyes closed until someone carried me back to my room. All was going as planned, I was about to be picked up by my mom when Charlie (my twin brother with a most excellent blog) sleep walked his way to where we were standing. We asked him what he was doing, unaware that he was unconscious. He then turned around and walked right into our kitchen counter. Being young and short at the time, he hit his head pretty badly. I faintly remember him crying as my mom carried him back to bed, but by that time most of my surroundings were blacked out by my rage. I didn't care if my brother had hurt his head! I just wanted to be carried back to bed. Me being the ridiculous child I was, I stood there waiting for about another five minutes until I realized that my mom wasn't coming back for me. I still hold a grudge to this day. I'll never forget.

You think we are sleeping? Nope. Acting.

Sorry for the long post. I hope you make it through the large amount of stress these coming weeks. Just take deep breaths and try to remember a time when your biggest problem was getting the wrong flavor of popsicle.

The Key to Craftastic Chords

We all remember my snazzy friendship bracelet style headphones I shared with you guys right? Well, I thought you might want something similar to that. Especially now that summer is coming along, its time to break out the hot pink nail polish, and open toed shoes (boys included). And by that, I mean it time to let the light and bright things back into your life. How we are going to do this today is decorate some charger chords. Some of its pros are: makes you a positive and optimistic person by just looking at it, protects your chords, works on headphones too, and it makes the chord undeniably yours (in cases of sibling theft). Another added bonus, this DIY is even easier than the aforementioned headphones project! With a little time, and a very small supply list, no one will be able to deny your arts and crafts swag (it's a real thing, I promise)!

No Charlie, these are not your chargers. Yours are not nearly as fabulous.

The things you will need are very few: a chord of any kind, perler beads (bringing back those childhood memories), and small scissors (I used my mom's sewing scissors). Now that you have all you supplies it's time to start designing! Pick the colors you want, and decide on a pattern (like alternating, or just random). Remember, the more colors you pick, the less sorting out you will have to do to get enough of them. Speaking of sorting the beads out, I got efficient by using the self designed technique I like to call "insert creative name here." It just consists of grabbing a handful of beads out of the bucket, take the ones I want out of my palm and into the bucket lid, and placing the unwanted colors into a separate bowl.

A picture showing many of the techniques
described. Ten points to me for that photography
 skill! And five points to Gryffindor.

Now that you have the beads you want, it's time to put them on you chord. Use your small scissors to cut an opening in the bead, and then use the same scissors to hold the opening wide enough to push your chord into it the bead. Repeat these steps until your chord is covered. It may seem slow at first, but as you work out a process, you will soon get to a speed worthy of the Flash. I was able to finish mine in, give or take, an hour and twenty minutes. Try to beat that! Despite the blisters, it was a fun thing to do with my free time. Added bonus, binging on some Netflix is a perfect way too multitask while doing this DIY.

I hope you enjoyed what will probably be my last DIY as this year comes to a close. Just a reminder, there is still time to stalk, I mean follow, me and this blog. I still have at least one more post coming, and I would love to see your comments and suggestions. I hope you all live through the stress of the coming weeks, and let's be honest, the coming lifetime. Don't stop being incredible, and yes, that is an order.