Doing the "macarana" or "macaroni," or something like that. It was probably the longest dance ever, but fun...
Talking...
Laughing...
Posing with another friend...(this one is b&w on account of the blurriness)
More laughing...I really don't remember why. I just break out in laughter right in the middle of nowhere for no reason, apparently.
It was a really fun evening, and it was my very first formal. I hadn't gotten to dress up that fancy since I was about eight for a father-daughter dance. Thanks to my wonderful dad who took all these pictures.
Yesterday, my mother and I embarked on a quest. We were looking for a formal dress. If you've ever done so, you will know well just how the racks and racks of dresses, all too expensive (I was going to pay for it myself), and all too immodest (don't even get me started). The long dresses tend to be long, but slinky, and the short dresses are full...but short. So our last stop was Sears where we found it. This lovely color of red that I had only imagined existed just popped out at us and I tried it on.
My dress is the Rena Rowan Short-Sleeved Taffeta Shirtdress. It's not quite as long as I would have liked, but it's much more versatile than a gown, so I can wear it to semi-formal events as well as formal. It also looks very 1940's (you've probably noticed that if I like something lately, it looks 1940's. Go figure.) Can't wait to wear it!
I've been gone too long...so I'll explain my long absence (at least in part).
1) Though I'm still home-schooled, I have a lot to do. Useless stuff like reading. You know. ;)
2) I've been toiling away at my 1940's suit and falling deeper in love with everything about that time-period every second.
3) I LOVE old movies. I'll just have to make up a list of my favorites. THAT was when they new how to make movies!
4) Listening to The Andrews Sisters: I found them through my infatuation with Narnia (they sang "Oh, Johnny" during the hide-and-seek scene in LWW). So now, the house vibrates with "Straighten Up and Fly Right," Bei Mir Bist Du Schon" and "Is You Is or Is You Aint My Baby." I know. I'm weird. But their neat, too. I'll have to do a post about them.
Well, those are the things that have been holding my up from blogging. Oh, and today, *dumdumdum* my sisters and I started FOLKLORICO!!!! It's fantastically fun. Hard work, though. Yes, that's the Mexican dance with the big skirts...only we don't get big skirts this time...we dress up as little old men...but that's ok. ;)
By the way, if anybody has seen Breakfast at Tiffany's, would you tell me if you would reccomend it, and why or why not? Thanks SO much.
You would, too, if you lived in Texas after this summer (right, Texans???? Of course right.) .
But not to complain.
Today, I got the extraordinary treat of getting to go to the Gil Shaham master class with my violin teacher. It was wonderful. It was like a lesson...only I didn't have to practice for it and be nervous because I wasn't playing! ;)
Oh, and by the way: I got three blog buttons up in the "Link to Me" under my header...check them out!
Update: My mom had a person put one of her photos on an improper webpage, so I am taking all the photos that are recognizably me off the blog. So that explains why all those pictures are gone.
A couple of Fridays ago, I held a Caspian viewing party, partly so that I could have a chance to wear the costume that I worked on for four months, and partly because it’s always more fun to watch a movie with friends.
Sorry, it's blurry.
So, the pizza was in the oven, numerous trips to the grocery store made, lists of plans constructed and subsequently forgotten (I am notorious for wasting time on lists, looking at them and stuffing them in my “drawer of surprises” where things go whose charm I want renewed…namely by losing and rediscovering them—months later).
And at last! We eat!
Don't even ask what went into this delicious chocolate paradise.
And yes, we did watch the movie, but in order to keep the peace, my mom refrained from taking pictures. :)
It all started when I saw Prince Caspian. I had been a huge fan of Narnia when the first one came out, so when I saw Prince Caspian, I fell back in love with it.
Anyway, I suddenly became very interested in making one of Susan's costumes. My original plan was to make her green LLW dress...but then I saw this picture:
Don't ask why, I couldn't tell you, but I really loved it. So I started looking around on The Wardrobe Door ( a great site if you want to make a Narnia costume). I checked out the page on Susan's purple dress, where I read about a lot of things that probably went into the real costume--on Isis Mussenden's budget, with her weavers, crew and experience--not mine. So...I started looking for a pattern that would work well and make the costume just perfectly, but I couldn't find one. So, being a perfectionist (strike that: a selective perfectionist) I decided to make my own. That equaled: "oops! I am tired! I just want to be done! I have this big mess to clean up now! Those pieces are uneven!"
Anyway, I made my own pattern. I started with just some newspaper, a tape measure and two and two makes four. If you do try this, however, try to make yourself a dress form, it would have really helped with measuring and fitting...trying to measure your own shoulders accurately is such a pain!
I gave in after a rather poor attempt of making a pattern for the skirt. I decided to use this pattern:
(sorry, it's a little big) I used petticoat D, which is the one without the ruffle.
Creating the split was really rather easy...after I had given it some calm, cool and collected thought. What I did was this: measure the front of the skirt and find the middle. Then, I sewed a seam with a very small seam allowance (to try to keep the skirt at the size I wanted it). One tip about that, though: don't be over-zealous about "small seam allowances"...make it large enough to serge, otherwise you'll get fraying. After ironing down the finished seam, I just cut very carefully through the little "loop" that was made by the seam and then seam ripped it. It worked very nicely.
For the bodice and bodice lining, I sewed the princess seams of the bodice up, but left it in two pieces (front and back). Then, I laid out the lining, cut it and sewed the boning too it. I sewed the lining to bodice right sides together and then turned them out like a bag, joining the front and back together.
For the sleeves, I made a pattern ( again, look at the write- up on this costume on the wardrobe door), sewed them together, and then sewed them to the armholes.
That was pretty much it, and the rest is very self explanatory. If you have any questions, please ask them in the comment form.
And here are some photos of the finished product:
I'm afraid that I need to stop smiling...my "beam" isn't very Narnian queen-ish :). It's not as perfect as the picture I had in my mind was, but I am pleased with how well it turned out, considering that it was my first real try.
So, yesterday, my dad and I went to the Nutcracker ballet given by a local company. You see, he often gets free tickets from work to the touring attractions in our town, so he got some last week for Sunday. I couldn't go then because of an orchestra rehearsal, so I was disappointed. I had really wanted to see a friend of mine who was dancing in it.
So, I hoped and prayed all week long. I really wanted to go and this weekend was my last chance. So, yesterday afternoon (which, by the way, was a l...o...n...g day in itself) he got tickets!
YAY!!!
So last night, we drove downtown, at last found a parking place, and started walking. I had mentioned seeing one of those tricycle taxis to my dad, just because I was talking about whatever came into my head. To my great surprise, when we had parked, we walked over to one and got a ride. It was SO much fun!
The ballet was really great to see my friend do her part with such relish and even more fun to see her get a moment of stardom. Great job, G. !
Well, the ballet went over well, and I loved it. Afterward, we stopped at a Starbucks and got a nice cappucino--decaf, of course. :)
All in all it was a wonderful night, and I had a great deal of fun with Daddy. I think that I'll always want to remeber it.
Now, these gibbons were a story. The small black one is a little baby about one and a half years old. It was so funny how he would fight with his dad. The blond one is the mother, to keep an eye on them. :)
The calmed down to love each other.
This-- this is the fattest squirrel on record. The zookeeper said that people often mistake them for otters. (The zoo used to have the fattest sparrows on record, but they had to thin out in order to fit between the fence mesh.)
Here it is on September 13th. Day before yesterday was September 11th. Seven years ago today, the country was still staggering under the blow of the attacks on 9/11.
Families were still holding out hope thatmaybe, maybe their loved one had survived the catastrophe. Victims were in the midst of the harsh reality of the fact that the co-worker at the next cubicle, had died, but they had lived. All across the nation, people were in a state of shock, the footage of a destroyed tower burning and then a the sudden terror of the sight of a second plane nosediving into its twin. And back in New York, the unbelievable horror of the people who had seen the planes crash, had told their stories, and had subsequently had to flee for their lives from the massive cloud of smoke that billowed through the streets. An employee from one of the towers had watched the plane heading directly for the tower, and had realized that he could not do anything to help himself, he was in the palm of God's hand. A wife across the bay had been watching the TV while the havoc was wreaked just a few miles away-- her husband was in one of those towers-- and talking to his friend whom he had just contacted. As he tried to reassure the distraught wife, she screamed, a horrible ear- shattering scream of utter grief, as she watched the tower that her husband was in crumble. Her husband was dead. Firemen rushed down the stairs as they realized that there was nothing more that they could do, but on meeting a bookkeeper on one of the landings, they decide to throw aside all selfishness and help her escape. Soon, a tower imploded, contracting floor by crushing floor like an accordion, killing people who still lived.
All this was in New York.
In the middle east, however, was a different story. They celebrated in their streets, rejoicing that they had devastated their enemy, America.
Recently, my parents heard a news anchor practically apologizing for airing footage of 9/11 during one of the conventions. He would like to forget as much as possible. He would like to only think of " change" and "hope for America". Well, I'm sorry, but we cannot afford to forget. Not only to honor the memory of the souls who died in the attacks, but because the enemy has not forgotten. The terrorists are just more patient than we are, and if we let their patience pay off, we will pay dearly for it. They are full of religious zeal and we have to hold strong. We have to remember that although we may want to forget-- it is a tear-wrenching memory--they won't. It was victory for them, and it will help motivate them for years to come. We must not let them gain another one. I don't know where we should be in the war, and I am not going to try to explain the reasons or the "should be" behind every current event, but I am going to assert that we cannot forget. We cannot afford to forget.
These are just some of the quotes that I remember from watching the RNC the last couple of nights.
"If I were [Joe] Biden, I'd want that V.P thing in writing."
-Rudy Giuliani
I thought that was funny. I wish I could remember the rest of his quotes, but at that point, I wasn't writing them down.
"My fellow citizens, the American Presidency is not supposed to be a journey of personal discovery."
-Sarah Palin
I'm not sure where she got "the journey of personal discovery" thing but it sure sounds like something Obama would say.
And here is what I think was the best comment that Palin used,
"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."
-Sarah Palin
Wow! I think that this was a retort to Obama and his campaign not thinking that she had enough experience, having just been a small-town mayor. She points out that he was just an organizer without any real accountability.
I had heard mention of Obama's not being able to make up his mind about what to vote in the senate. I remember someone (maybe Palin) saying something like "he can't decide whether to vote 'yes' or 'no', so he votes 'here.'"
Sadly, the McCain comments that I took down last night were virtually indecipherable to me in the morning, so I'm not sure what the exact words were. He made a great speech, though.
There was one comment that Fred Thompson made which I can't remember exactly, but it went something along the lines of " being a POW doesn't mean you can be president, but it sure shows character."
For some of the commentary after the speeches during the balloon drop, we watched MSNBC. The news anchors went down to the reporter on the convention floor (it was Andrea Mitchell). She was, for some reason, directly below the balloons. She proceeded to give what was, I'm sure, an excellent report on McCain's speech, but we heard not a word of it. Why? Laughter. Yes, we were laughing at her. You see, as she was giving her educated and serious analysis, she was batting away at balloons that continued to fall in between her and the camera. What made it really funny though, was that she remained so unruffled. You really have to see it to understand, so here it is...
The anchors apparently thought this very funny, so they would cut to her and then to one of the cameramen, who also was being buried by balloons. The next time we saw him, only his head was visible.
As this was happening, my daddy was talking about how the Republicans really don't like MSNBC and how somebody was shaking their fist at their booth. I wonder if it was choreographed so that they got hit hardest? Hmmmmm...
By the way, I remember that at the Democratic convention, they were trying to make a big deal of how many homes McCain has. Nobody mentions how many Obama has.
Laughing...
More laughing...I really don't remember why. I just break out in laughter right in the middle of nowhere for no reason, apparently. 
