"Whatever you are, be the best you can be."

Monday 26 April 2010

Every Little Girl's Dream...

Pretty in Pink
I've discovered Polyvore, a great site where you can play with fashion from various stores across the world, and make a pretty collage like this. I made this one to enter in their Pretty in Pastel contest. You pretty much had to make pretty clothes in pastel shades, and I got inspired to do this one. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out! :)

Tuesday 13 April 2010

Scripts, Art, and Miniature Dreams!

For some reason I've been feeling down in the dumps lately. I don't know what it is but I've been letting things get on top of me, stuck on page 13 of ScriptFrenzy, seeing lots of things I need to do at once, and not really knowing where to start. After some pushing, I finally managed to make a start and get some odd jobs done and start to make a hole in my To Do List. A Big Thank You to Wendy Lu for her enthusiasm and encouragement to cheer me on with my own script, and to follow my own art and writing dreams!

First Ever Dolls House!
I've also been getting together my first ever dolls house together today! I nearly have completed an MDF kit, of a gorgeous little town house. It's starting to look like a proper house! I will post pictures soon when I manage to take them (the batteries have gone flat in my camera - charging them is another little job for me to do!). I've already started planning what I'm going to do in what room. The attic is going to be converted into a sci-fi spaceship, the ground floor will feature a wizard's flat, and the basement (which will be arriving soon), will be a place for The Borrowers! All the furniture will be made from normal size items you could find around the home. I love The Borrowers stories and TV series starring Ian Holm, Penelope Wilton and Rebecca Carlton. Just brilliant for sparking off the imagination!

Monday 12 April 2010

Welcome - 3 new followers!

Hello and Welcome to my new follower! Thank you for entering my woods and following my blog! I hope you like what you see and stay for a while!
  • Ally-Chan
    becomingyoungadult
    A blog about Ally-Chan's last year as a teenager and becoming a young adult. I particularly like her 13 points as to how her life will be different in her 20's - wish I'd been blogging when I was 19! Would have been fun. Now I'm heading into my 30's (EEK!)

  • Fallible Fella
    Welcome to Fallible Fella, who appears to be a fellow ScriptFrenzy participant by the ScriptFrenzy icon! Apologies I couldn't find a link to your profile or blog to post on here, feel free to send me the link if you'd like me to post it! Good Luck with your script too!

  • Wendy Luane Barber
    World of Wendy Lu
    Wendy says "I'm an Artist. I'm a Writer. And I Like It!" I love her enthusiasm, and her blog showing her enthusisasm for all her projects, which somehow she is managing to keep up with! As well as being a writer and illustrator chasing her dreams, she appears to be an amazing dollmaker too! Brilliant!

Many Thanks for following my blog!

Wednesday 7 April 2010

Things to do before I'm 30!

I was reading Ally-Chan's 13 points as to how her life will be different in her 20's. I'll be turning 30 in a couple of years time, and it's made me wonder how my life might change in my 30's!

EEK, Scary! I don't wanna be old! Here's how I think my life should by the time I hit my 30's:
  1. I plan to still live at home with my parents. I like the company, it's fun, safe and secure.




  2. I would like to learn a little bit more independence. I do some baking, cleaning, etc. I'd like to learn more basic cooking of meals, get more familiar with operating the washing machine, and finally learn the ironing.

  3. I would like to gain more control of my finances, pay off the last of my bills, and stop reckless spending altogether!





  4. I dabble with my art and writing, I would like to practice both enough, and do enough completed works, to build up an online portfolio of both my art and my writing.

  5. I'd love be a novelist and movie/tv script writer, I'd love to get both my art and writing published. In my 30's, I'd like to be a published artist and writer. So I'll be practicing and improving my art and writing skills - learning on my own, through books and the internet.




  6. I currently work part time, I'm happy working part time as I can afford to pay my way whilst living with my parents and having low outgoings, and it gives me the time to work on my art and writing.


  7. I will lose friends and make new ones. I think this statement is true no matter what stage of your life you are in. It is a comfort to learn that as you lose some friends, you will meet new friends along the way.

  8. LOL, I don't have a boyfriend at the moment, so definitely no arguing with one! Bliss! But who knows what the future will hold?

  9. I will have to balance work, studying, fun time and writing. This is true for me. I often struggle to balance my time to do all of what I need to do, and do what I need to do. Like right now, I'm typing this for my blog, when I should be catching up on the 6.66 pages I need to do today for ScriptFrenzy!
  10. I'd like to practice my Maths without a calculator, I do struggle with it. I would love to have the confidence to do sums without the fear of not being able to do it without a calculator.


  11. I'd like to live a healthy lifestyle. I am not grossly overweight, only about half a stone over what I should be. I'd like to eat more fruit as healthy snacks, and take some exercise on days I am not working. I wouldn't mind having a slimmer tummy and losing my double chin that's currently growing! (Please note the irony, I am writing this on a day I have just eaten a whole Easter egg, Chocolate Cake and some Chocolate Easter Nests!)


  12. I'd also like to spend less time mindlessly surfing the internet, limiting that to evenings only when I'm not doing anything else. It isn't healthy to spend too great a length of time online every single day.


  13. Most of all, I want to be happy and relaxed. Content with myself and content with my life.


And this should be my perfect life. Thankfully, not all that different from the one I have now - it's easily within reach!

Tuesday 6 April 2010

My Script - Ghosts of Time

I'm doing a time travel screenplay for ScriptFrenzy this year, I'm not doing too badly with keeping up, though I seem to be writing once every couple of days now - instead of writing 3.33 pages each day to stay on target, I've been writing 6.66 pages every two days. At least I'm getting it done!

I don't have an outline or anything to really work from as yet, I have a female Time Agent from the future, whose been sent on a mission back in time, she has to build a team from people she picks out of time. But in order to prevent the time space continnuum from being altered any more than it already has, she has to pick people out of the timestream just a moment before they actually die!


Characters
So far I have her back in 1842, during the Massacre of Elphinstone's Army, in the city of Kabul in Afghanistan. She's going to pick one of the English soldiers to join her team. I also have the idea to travel to the 1960's and pick up a young girl, a hippie. I'm not sure what use she will be to the team, possibly she could have trained as a nurse or something useful like that? I'd like to pick someone out further in the future, maybe someone who's been genetically experimented on, escaped, caused major destruction while the authorities tracked him down and killed him. My Time Agent will rip him out of time from a building seconds before a missile hits it, there will be no trace of his body, whether she takes him or leaves him - so no harm to the time space continnuum!


Plot
The main idea for the plot of my script is that Aliens have access to time travel technology, and we may have even got the technology from them. The Aliens want to conquer and take over our planet, but we fight back. They scan our computers for our history, and see we are pretty good at destroying ourselves! So they go back in time, and bring Hitler to the future. Together they plan ways of bringing the human race down. Knowing Hitler's interest in dark arts and any way he can gain advantage to win a war, they use this to tamper with time and try to bring about humanity's downfall - sometimes unleashing viruses ahead of time, monsters back in time, genetic experimentation to enhance human's abilities, making them a very difficult adversary for the time agents to come up against when trying to protect the human timeline.


I tend to think of my script as The Terminator meets The Matrix. I hope it turns out somewhere near as good, and I'll be very happy!

Welcome - 2 new followers!

Hello and Welcome to my two new followers! Thank you for entering my woods and joining me! I hope you like what you see and stay for a while!

  • Linda
    Mes Crazy Experiences
    A blog about all the outstanding and crazy things she does, including ScriptFrenzy and many other writing challenges.

  • My Realitty
    My Realitty (Blog)
    A blog of My Realitty's miniature loves, with gorgeous photos of miniatures and houses, and a great list of many other miniatures blogs you might want to check out.


Many Thanks for following my blog!

Monday 5 April 2010

Re-Discovering Rooster - They're Good!

This morning I re-discovered a Rooster album I'd forgotten I'd bought a while back. I remember liking Staring at the Sun and Come Get Some, but don't really know any more of their music. It's their self-titled debut album and it's actually really good. In trying to find out more about them and searching for their official website, I find their Wikipedia page and their MySpace Page, only to discover the band split in January 2007! Why do I discover I really like a band 3 years after they split? So not fair!

Still this song, Staring at the Sun, is still one of my favourite songs, and somehow reminds me of lazing away the afternoon, in a cosy pub lolling your head gently to the music, and not having a care in the world. I really like that memory. :)

Sunday 4 April 2010

Catching Up - 11 Pages Now!

Having missed my 3.33 pages for ScriptFrenzy yesterday, I managed to catch up and reach 11 pages today! I am struggling with this script, as I decided to to a time travel story, I'm having to research the events I'm basing my script on, I can't just type anything and make it up, or it could be completely wrong! I am finding it fun discovering more and more about my own country's history though. I know England is at war with Afghanistan right now, but I didn't know we were at war with them back in the 1800's, why was I never taught this at school? It suddenly seems very relevant now!


I found some great images and plenty of details from this website: http://www.britishbattles.com/, it especially helps picture what it would look like, and how the soldiers were dressed, and the Afghans. I just wish I could see more what the city of Kabul looked like back then, I've read that it was simple wooden houses, but what shape they took, what would be inside, and whether they had glass or open windows, I've no idea!

If anyone can shed some light, I'd be very grateful!

Saturday 3 April 2010

Chocolate Easter Nests

After shopping this morning I found I still had time to make the Easter treats for tomorrow. I love to make Easter Nests, they epitomise what Easter is all about - eggs and chocolate! ;)
Here's what you'll need:

8 x Shredded Wheat Bisks
2 x 200g Milk Chocolate Bars
2 x Cadbury's Mini Eggs Tubes

(Makes approximately 32 Nests)

Break the chocolate up into cubes and put in one microwave proof bowl.
Break up the Shredded Wheat Bisks and put them in another bowl.
Melt the chocolate in the microwave until you get a thick runny consistency.
Add the broken shredded wheat a couple of handfuls at a time and stir in until all the shredded wheat has an even coating.
Spoon the mixture into paper cake cases, placing 2 mini eggs in the centre of each one.
Leave to cool and set completely, before storing in an airtight container.



And that's all there is to it! They're easy to make and taste delicious!


Happy Easter Everyone!

Shiny New Alarm Clock!


Today I finally got a shiny new alarm clock! My old one I have had, well, forever! It's the only one I can ever remember having! Now the it keeps stopping as the battery has a habit of slipping out the back. Today Aldi had a sale on, so I managed to get this gorgeous little clock for just £2.49 with a 3 year guarantee! Have you ever heard of alarm clock having a 3 year guarantee? They must trust it to work for a long time, and I'm really happy with it - especially as it has a cute little teddy bear in the centre! I do love cute little cuddly toys!

Thursday 1 April 2010

ScriptFrenzy - 3 Pages and Counting!

ScriptFrenzy has started! Woohoo, I'm 3 pages in and counting! Perhaps not the most amazing start, I have practically no plot, and only the most basic idea.

For those of you who don't know what ScriptFrenzy is, it's a challenge to write 100 pages of script in the 30 days of April. I love these challenges, as they get you to do the most difficult part of writing - they get you to actually sit down and write! It's very easy to say you want to write, and spend lots of time reading up on how to write, but to actually push yourself to sit down and actually have a go? Very difficult.

So here I am starting my third scriptfrenzy. I've given my script the working title of Time Ghosts. My script is kind of like Timecop meets The Matrix, with heroes picked from various points in time. I'm currently using a character called Raven, an agent of time from the future, who has travelled back in time to 1842, ready to save the life of one of the many soldiers who dies in Elphinstone's Army in Afghanistan.


To find out more about the history, see the Wikipedia article, the Massacre of Elphinstone's Army. I'm hoping it's going to be really good, and most of all, I'm hoping I get to finish my 100 pages before midnight on the 30th April!