My #JanPlan Goals

I have been inspired by the #JanPlan, which I first spotted via Lydia Sharp's Blog Post.  Basically you pick an unfinished project to work on and try to complete it by February 1st 2013.  Usually I make New Year's Resolutions to try something new, but these last few years I've been setting the same unaccomplished New Year's Resolutions intending to actually do them this year.  And most often by the time February comes along, they've been forgotten about and failed miserably. 

So I really liked the idea of actually finishing an unfinished project.  I have heaps of unfinished projects!  Now which to choose where I think I stand a chance of completing them by February 1st?  Well I have lots of New Year's Resolutions this year, so I am going to pick some of them here to accomplish part of them by the 1st of February.

 

• Lose 3lbs in weight
• Practice my Maths without a calculator 
  (I will learn to be a Mathematician!)
• Stop Reckless Spending
  - do not buy myself any luxuries while I try to declutter my junk!
• Declutter my scary wardrobe 
  (literally I open the door and stuff falls out!  Dinosaurs recently... )
• Finish my Dolls House Miniature Room Box
• Keep a Sketchbook page to doodle in daily
• Create 3 new complete pieces of Art
• Write 3 new pieces of Flash Fiction / Drabbles
• Start planning my novel (I will plan and write a complete novel this year!)
• Have FUN every single day - treat myself to an hour of non-goal driven fun! 

This is my #JanPlan, what's yours?

I will post my progress with images of my art work here, so watch this space!

Never Be Afraid To Live

Last night I watched the movie Into the Wild for the second time.  It still has strong emotional resonance for me.  Without wanting to give too much away, you hurt for his loss, you hurt for his family's loss, and yet you feel his joy, enthusiasm and excitement too.  This movie is inspiring and uplifting as well as a cautionary tale.  Many of the things he did could have ended in disaster (hitch-hiking, sleeping rough, kayaking down the rapids without a helmet or any experience).  Yet he experienced so much, saw so much beauty, and learned so much about life, in such a short space of time.  During his journey, he said something like: "the spirit of the human heart is discovery."  Meaning the path to happiness lies in discovering new things.  

He tried many new things, discovered new hobbies, adventure sports and skills, met new people and explored exciting new places.  Yet in the end, he discovered that "Happiness is sharing."  I think his journey, which has now been made into a film, is a great lesson to us.  The happiness and joy in his adventure, of being in the wild and discovering new things, was equally exciting as meeting new people, making friends and sharing experiences along the way.

So how can this adventure be applied to my own life?  I think life is an adventure, or a series of adventures, but you don't have to travel far and wide in dangerous situations to discover them.    You can have an adventure at home, discovering new knowledge, music, books, trying new hobbies, skills, walking and discovering new places to explore around your own home.  Perhaps get on a bus and go for a day trip, it isn't too expensive to do.  Just choose somewhere to go.  "Go out there and experience life!"  Don't just stay hiding away in your house, which is so easy to do when you're afraid to live.  Never be afraid to live.

• Discover new words (books, novels, music, art, food, drink, exercise, games)
• Explore new places (where you've never been before - take photos, walk around, discover the unseen)
• Learn new skills (crafts, techniques, hobbies, art, writing)
• Meet new people
• Make friends
• Share experiences (joy, emotions)

Then you will have discovered happiness along the way.

Never be afraid to live...

I am Happy and Grateful Today!

Inspired by a forum thread on the Nanowrimo website, to post every day something that you are grateful for today, and something that has made you happy today.  So here is what has made me happy and grateful for today...

What I'm grateful for today:

For some reason I woke up bouncing happy today, wide awake, full of energy, and happy to accomplish many things. This has not happened to me for a really long time!

 

What makes me happy today:

Sitting down this afternoon with the warm sunny weather, and starting to create a colour pencil landscape art piece that I really enjoyed doing. (I don't usually enjoy landscapes, but this one is fun).  Now all I have to do is plan my novel for CampNanowrimo and I'll be all set with my Art and Writing Goals! :)

New Sketch - Car Battery Charger

I am currently studying an Open University course in Design, called U101 Design Thinking: Creativity for the 21st Century. This is my latest piece of work on the course, where I have to produce a detailed sketch of an old work tool. I chose an old car battery charger my Dad has, Dad's are great for keeping old bits of junk! I think I may have stumbled across a minefield of old and unusual bits of junk to draw! Here is a photo of the item for comparison:


After this initial drawing, my next task is to do two more drawings of this object, but to make them less detailed and more abstract each time, so as to create my own design from this object. This will be an interesting challenge for me! In the next few weeks I will be practicing this technique further, by designing my own T-Shirt for this module!

Remember Me

I just watched Remember Me, the beautiful movie starring Robert Pattinson and Pierce Brosnan. There is a line in this movie, a quote from Ghandi, it says: "Whatever you do in this life will be insignificant, but it is important that you do it. For you leave fingerprints on the people you touch in your life." And I think this is very true of the characters in this movie. Especially Robert Pattinson's character, Tyler Hawkins, who teaches his father to show his feelings and do right by his family. He brings his family closer together. This is ironic seen as another character in his life tells him he is going nowhere, with no career prospects, nothing big going for him. His own father tells him he has nothing, he pedalled on a bicycle to his office. He owns nothing, and not making anything of himself. Tyler sums it up when he says he is "Undecided... about everything!" He doesn't know where he is going or what he is doing.

I'm sure all of us have felt lost like this at some point in our lives. Having watched this film it has reminded me of how all the people I have met at some point in my life have left an impression, or a fingerprint, on my life. Some people are in your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. But they all leave an impression on your life, and manage to enrich it in some way, often teaching us lessons in the process. I used to think the only way to make a difference in the world, and to leave an impression, would be to leave behind art, writing, or even a movie, as those are the people who are recognised and remembered. But we also remember if someone has been especially kind to us, a smile, a pleasant comment, these things we remember. So perhaps if we are all a bit nicer to one another, passing on a pleasantry, then perhaps we can leave a pleasant impression, and be remembered in other people's memories.

Living with the Amish

I've just finished watching the first episode of the new Channel 4 series, Living with the Amish. I loved it. I expected it to be an interesting insight to how the Amish live, with perhaps a little amusement at how the teenagers manage to live without their mobile phones and personal music players (MP3's and iPods). It had all this and more, and I was so surprised by how emotional and moving it became.


On first sight, when meeting James, one of the British teenagers trying living with the Amish for six weeks, I found out he was 17, unemployed and a college dropout. I thought lazy bum, can't be bothered to work or study. But then I got a surprise. I learnt about how his mum was arrested for arson when he was 14, his younger sibling went to live with his nan, and he went into foster care. After that, he went into a hostel. He now misses living in foster care because it was nice living with people, now he lives on his own in a tiny, dingy looking hostel, with nothing but a tv and video games console for company. He actually appears lonely. And after he got to know Jonathan, the kind young Amish man he was staying with, he actually seemed to wish he was his father.


All the teenagers were moved by the people they met, even Urma, an older Amish woman who had been brought up in the Amish community, and later spent 18 years living "in the world" (away from the Amish community), got married and had children. She now lives back with the Amish community after realising she missed the community and the feeling that if anything happened to her, the Amish community as a group would all come to help her.


Urma was speaking with Siana, the young girl originally born in Sierra Leone and moved to England when she was 2, and runs a Fashion Blog, amongst many others. Siana seemed to find the Amish clothing to be the hardest lifestyle changes so far, as she felt she was losing her identity. And this made me think, I often believe the clothes I wear express my personality, almost without different and striking clothes, I wouldn't be me. Now I think the Amish lesson here is that clothes do not make who you are inside. Change your clothes, you are still the same person. The Amish accept you for who you are, and Charlotte said to Jonathan's wife (Maryetta I think her name was), that she wished her own community was more accepting like that.


In British society, we make so many judgments of other people based on what they wear. So we feel we have to dress a certain way, either to meet expectations, or to stand out from the crowd. We cannot accept ourselves and have peace with ourselves in plainer clothes.


Charlotte freely admitted that back home in England, she would sit outside sunning herself, while her mother painted her nails and brought her cups of tea and coffee. She had never done washing up in her life, her parents never nagged her, and it seems she doesn't do any housework at all. So it was quite a shock to her to learn to tidy her room, do the laundry and washing up. Yet surprisingly, she loved it! She got on very well with Jonathan's wife, and in the short space of a week, they grew very close. As did James with Jonathan. It became a very emotional farewell at the end of the week, with a eat-out, and the British teenagers tearfully giving heartfelt thanks to Jonathan and his wife, with not a dry eye amogst them. It was beautiful.

I think the Amish have a lot to teach us, and I am looking forward to the next three episodes of this series.

Can't Wait to Put Your 20's Behind You?

I just discovered an article on Sienna Miller, saying she Can't wait to put her 20's behind her. Sienna Miller is a 29 year old English actress, model and fashion designer, who turns 30 in December later this year. She says she can't wait to put her 20's behind her and embrace her 30's.

"I think, if you put a camera in anyone's life and document it daily from the age of 21 to 27, there are going to be things that aren't always pretty. I feel as though I experienced my 20's in all their glory and all their disastrousness. Now, I'm much more calm. It feels like a new, more serious decade." Sienna said, then added, "I can't wait to be seen as a woman. But I know I probably have to contribute to that with behaviour."

I find this really interesting as I am also 29 at the moment, but don't turn 30 myself until next year. And now I wonder, will my 30's be better than my 20's? Perhaps the decade you spend living in your 20's is really an experimental decade, when you are still discovering who you are and who you want to be.

When I was younger, in my late teens, I thought when you were in your 20's, you had reached adulthood, and were a proper adult then. But now I'm not so sure. A lot of people in their early-mid 20's go to university or college, still learning their trade and profession, and figuring out who they want to be, and what they want to do with their life. Personally, I finished my education in my late teens, and started working then, in an office. Since then, on and off through different companies, I have pretty much done the same line of work, with one minor blip in cooking when I worked in the kitchen of a small cafe. But generally, it's been office work for me. I find myself at the end of my 20's decade, unemployed, unable so far to get an office job, and still harbouring what feels like distant dreams to be an artist and writer.

This decade hasn't been easy for me, being a teen in my previous decade seems a doddle in comparison. It was fairly straight forward what you do - you go to school because you have to, then it was a fairly easy decision to go to sixth form and study, because I didn't know what I wanted to do. But in this decade, there has been no straightforward plan, I have moved from company to company, and perhaps found it a little difficult adjusting to working life, student life seemed so much easier and familiar, which it would do after 12 years of education as a child. If I could go back and relive my 20's, I would probably do things differently, I've had some tough times then, so no I wouldn't want to relive it. But I hope that the next decade will be easier, with less difficulty. But who knows what the future holds?

I would like my next decade to be much more productive for me, doing the things I want to do. I want to become a respected lady, like Sienna Miller begins to describe. (I am very inspired by ElegantWoman.org website for that). I want to be ladylike and shed any bad habits I've accumulated over the last few years. I want to practice my art and become a skilled artist. If I had worked hard on my art in the few years I have been unemployed in my life, I am sure my skills would be much farther on my now. I also want to work on my fiction writing skills. Why can't I be a writer and get a novel published? Hard work and perseverance should improve my skills. And I'd like to improve my Maths skills without a calculator too.

Perhaps this next decade will be a self-improvement and accomplishment decade? One where I turn myself into a lady, improve my art, fiction and maths skills; get a part time job, and finally get my art and writing published. Then perhaps come the end of my 30's, I can look back with satisfaction and joy, thinking By Golly I've done a good job!

Royal Wedding Spoof Video

This is amazing! I loved watching the real Royal Wedding on April 29th, but today I just discovered the Royal Wedding Spoof Video, which I believe may be the same video the tabloids alledged Prince Harry actually liked and posted on his Facebook page just before the wedding, and suggested it would give people an idea of what to expect! Brilliant!

Royal Wedding Spoof Video

The following video is a behind-the-scenes video apparently by OK Magazine! It gives a humourous behind-the-scenes look, and you get to talk to some of the Royal lookalikes. This is such a fun video, I don't even think the Royal family could be offended by it. Such fun, I love it!

Behind-the-scenes

Discovering Something New - Inside A Laptop!

I finally got rid of my old laptop that's been hanging around for ages. And I had lots of fun doing it! I wanted to take the hard drive out because you're supposed to smash that for security. I know you can use software to write itself over your hard drive to permanently erase any passwords and online banking information you may have left on it, but the only ones I could find would take about 24 hours to complete! And as my laptop is old and overheats to the point of switching itself off, that wasn't going to happen! So I decided to take it apart. After all, how hard could it be?

Much to my surprise, I took the battery out, both my DVD drive and Floppy Disk drive, then proceeded to take all the tiny screws out and separate my motherboard, Processor, fan, keyboard, touchpad and screen; in pieces all over my bed! But I still couldn't find my hard drive! How important an item in a computer, and it wasn't there! How could I have missed it. After some rummaging around through the parts, and some advice from my Dad, I took a closer look at my two drives (DVD & Floppy). I couldn't believe it, my hard drive was attached to my Floppy Disk Drive! What a crazy place to hide it?

I did have much fun though taking my laptop apart, lots and lots of tiny screws, a motherboard full of lots of cool little things I have no idea what they do! LOL! I had a lot of fun! And am still finding the odd screw left on my bedroom floor when I walk across it barefoot this morning! I had a lot of fun!

My Dad suggested that I check out Maplins.co.uk, as they have books with projects for building your own electronic things, and they sell all the electrical components you need to put it all together. It could be fun, and something I've never thought about trying before! I just might have discovered a new hobby to try!

New Music - My Darkest Days

This new year I seem determined to try new things: new art, new writing, new goals, a new me - and now, new music too! I have a feeling this is going to be an exciting new year! Whilst browsing around the web looking for new music, I stumbled across Mercury Records website, and found an exciting new band, My Darkest Days.


Their website has a cool layout, imitating the entrance to a cool night club, no doubt linking to the name of their debut album, and their debut single Porn Star Dancing Rock, which is absolutely brilliant. They're fresh, fun and exciting!

So who are My Darkest Days? According to Wikipedia, they're a Canadian post-grunge band based in Toronto, consisting of lead singer Matt Walst, Doug Oliver, Brendan McMillan, Sal Costa, and Reid Henry. They were discovered by Chad Kroeger of Nickelback, who signed them up for his production company, 604 Records. And I can see the link, if you like Nickelback, you're gonna love My Darkest Days. They have the same umph in their music, the feelgood foot pounding beat we love so much. As the same time they sound fresh, new and instantly likeable. No need to wait for their songs to grow on you, you love them as soon as you hear them - an instant hit.

The fact the lead singer, Matt Walst, looks pretty cute here doesn't hurt either...


Here's their brand-new video of their first single, Porn Star Dancing Rock...

Feeling Festive

Last night I watched the last Hornblower TV series episode, Duty. I had forgotten it was set at Christmas and New Year, with Horatio Hornblower getting married, getting coated in snow in the middle of the ocean, and finally toasting the New Year with his new family back in England. I loved it, and the perfect time of year to watch it in the end.

I loved the new song by Hurts, called All I Want for Christmas is New Year's Day, it's starts out strange with the video set in a graveyard seemingly at a funeral, then oddly a Christmas Tree, complete with lit candles, comes rising out of the grave! Suddenly everyone is happy and feeling the Christmas cheer, as we see their little faces all aglow with the warm candlight. It really captures the spirit of Christmas. I love it.

Hurts - All I Want For Christmas Is New Year's Day

So now I'm feeling festive. Thank you Hurts and Hornblower. :)

Girls Are Like Apples...

I saw this and loved it, so wanted to post it here:

Girls
are like
apples on trees.
The best ones are
at the top of the tree.The
boys don't want to reach
for the good ones because they
are afraid of falling and getting hurt.
Instead, they just get the rotten apples
from the ground that aren't as good,
but easy. So the apples at the top think
something is wrong with them, when in
reality, they're amazing. They just
have to wait for the right boy to
come along, the one who's
brave enough to
climb all
the way
to the top
of the tree.

Just A Little Gratitude...

Today I am grateful for...

• reaching my Nanowrimo word count goals today,
• the sunshine,
• having a relaxing day,
• having loving and supportive people around me

Thank you.

Happy Halloween!

I love Halloween! It's bright, colourful, welcoming Autumn with cheer and fun, lots of chocolate, treacle and decadent treats, spooky things, and supernatural movies which I love! I have to say, I loved Strictly Come Dancing's Halloween specials, Brendan Cole amazed me with his Time Warp Jive, so much fun, and how amazing were the pro dances? The male professionals stripping off for a sexy and scary paso doble, (always good men stripping off!) and a fantastic Ghostbusters number tonight! I loved it!

I'm also really excited it's Nanowrimo kickoff tomorrow! Time to start my fantastic new novel Small Survivors! It's gonna be brilliant!

Happy Halloween everyone!

Falling for Firefly

I have a confession to make... I'm falling in love with Nathan Fillion! I have just started watching Firefly, and I LOVE it! I am so glad I chose to buy the complete series! I watched a trailer for it on YouTube and it looked good, now I am completely hooked! I am itching to search the net for more info and fansites of Firefly, but at the same time I don't want to find out what is going to happen next! Catch 22!

So I am now trying to resolve myself saving just some pictures and enjoying watching the series! I just don't want to risk seeing what will happen, but Nathan is just so gorgeous! I just have to have a gorgeous picture of him on my desktop wallpaper... sigh. I think I'm in Firefly Heaven!

In the Garden

Here are some photos from my garden! I love taking photos in the garden, especially when the sun is shining. I am most attracted by the flowers, insects and funnily enough, spiders too. Anything that captures my imagination and inspires me. So I wanted to share some of them with you on here!

Click any of the images below for a larger view!

This bee was fantastic, going in and out of the Foxglove petals!

Hungry Caterpillars!

This mouse was funny, I couldn't get a decent picture of him through the window, the sun was shining brightly and everything was reflecting in the glass. So I crept outside, and knowing how keenly they can hear things, I was very careful, and sneaked halfway down the garden to take the photos...

...then a bee buzzed past my ear, I duck suddenly, and the mouse runs off the bird feeder table, along the beam of wood on the fence, and freezes as if to hide against the wood of the fence - perfect photo of mouse doing trapeze acts for me! LOL!

This is all that's left of my nasturtium hanging basket!

I know it's hard to see, but this is the beginning of my French beans - where one of the flowers used to be. Makes for a beautiful picture even if you can't see it!

I love lilies, especially these yellow ones, whose seeds dry out and explode across the garden!

This bumblebee was fantastic, pausing on the French beans leaf to post for me - even moving his antenna in different poses for me!

I hope you enjoyed my photos! I have lots more to post if you do! :)

What did I do last month?

Today I find myself wondering what did I do last month. I know I didn't accomplish all my goals, though I found some new goals to try, and managed to do some things, and hope I've learned a better way to do some things. I have a bad habit of latching onto something, whatever goal it is, and doing nothing but that until I exhaust that particular goal, and then I move on to another, and do that until I exhaust that too. Maybe this month I should look to doing things in moderation, so I can learn to hold back on doing things to the point of exhaustion and never doing it again. I guess like my starsign, Taurus, I can tend to go at things like a bull at a gate!

Things I achieved last month:

• Learnt to crochet - Basics, but it's a start!
• Watched a ton of DVD's, and managed to make a dent in my collection, I will get them all tested!
• Managed to get up early with the help of Tools to Life site, and arrive at work on time! A miracle for me!
• Took part in a Carnival, first ever for me!

I think I have learned this month that I need to schedule things more loosely for me to do them, like Art, Crafts and Writing. I need to do things spontaneously if I am to enjoy them and not think of them as chores. In a way, I maybe need a checklist of tasks to do, just choose randomly at the time which I feel like doing - be it writing, art, crochet, scrapbooking, dolls house miniatures, DVD watching, Video Game playing. But when I've done it in the week, I must tick off that item, not to do it again that week, unless I've done everything else on the checklist. This might stop me from sticking to one thing, doing lots of that and ignoring everything else!

I'd like to progress with my art every week, and it's sad that I haven't done any drawing or art at all last month, and I want to have something to post. I want to create checklist, of Art, Writing, Crafts, and then sub-checklists within each section, so I can see what within those sections I can choose to do, i.e. the Art section would have various Art Challenges listed, along with study suggestions, and reference images to try, maybe even lessons from some of my books to try. I must have ideas and things to do in each section to try - or I won't have anything I can do when I have the time to do them! Then I can share with you what I do!

Marvel Ultimate Alliance on PS2 - I love it!

Today I played Marvel Ultimate Alliance on PS2, I loved it! I originally loved the X-Men Legends games on PS2, I loved being able to swap and choose which X-Men to have on your team, but with Marvel Ultimate Alliance, you get to choose from all of Marvel's heroes! I am a huge fan of comics, especially Marvel Comics, so this makes me feel very much like a kid in a toy shop!

The cool thing is, I can swap and change between all four active characters during gameplay, and I never know which one to stick with 'cos I love them all! They all appear strong and worthy opponents, albeit with differing abilities, and some characters are better at some things than others, so it does help to have a balanced group of strengths and abilities in each team, but it's just so much fun! I wonder now why I haven't played it before, 'cos I'm gonna be playing it so much now!

Marvel Ultimate Alliance

Polyvore Fun - A Makeover!

I had a little fun on Polyvore today, I decided to do a pretty much average wardrobe for what I usually where every day...

And then created a fun one the complete opposite of what I wear! Do you think Gok would be proud? ;)

Star Wars Legacy & Firefly

I've just finished reading Star Wars Legacy - Vol 7 "Storms". I've not read any of the other books in the Star Wars Legacy series, but I really enjoyed this one. I find Cade Skywalker and his crew endearing, I like both Jariah Syn and Deliah Blue. Deliah's a fun kind of girl who seems to care about her crew deeply, especially Cade, whom she seems to have had a past relationship with, she seems very self-assured and able to take care of herself, as well as being someone the crew could turn to for help. I love this portrait of her, I think it shows her personality well:

Deliah Blue

Jariah Syn

I also love the style they've done Jariah Syn in, he reminds me very much of some of the characters in The Matrix, their pilots were similar, and I just love the desperation and craziness in their daredevil antics that they just about pull off. I think together they are very reminiscent of Han Solo and Chewbacca travelling across the galaxy trying to make a buck whilst avoiding Imperial entanglements!

A small crew, rather like a small family, trying to make money any means they can, and having adventure along the way, that makes for entertaining reading, and very believable storylines that you can relate to even though we don't live in the Star Wars universe. Good fun, old fashioned adventures, I love them!

Firefly


I seem to be craving things sci-fi now, as I've just bought the complete first series of Firefly on ebay now, along with the follow up film of Serenity. I've never seen this series, but saw this trailer on YouTube, and now I really wanna see it! It's kind of like cowboys in space, a crew living together and trying to survive, having adventures along the way. Here's hoping it's as good as it looks on here.