Time flies

Well I was doing good there for a while with that whole, blog post a week thing. Then I discovered that I had a life, or my life found me or something. The ranch got really busy because of round up and getting pastures and corrals ready for the cows to come home. I think this is actually my first real day off in about a month.


Round up is mostly fun unless the cows decide to be ignorant and obstinant. But we only lost track of one calf during the drive so that's good. And we managed to get all the cows home and all the calves vaccinated. Well except for the ones that are MIA, which means they got into some neighbor's feild... Also we also sent all the stray cows, calves, and bulls to their respective homes. So now we have all the cows off in a pasture where they are out of our hair and I'm giving the plowed feilds another couple of coats with a cultivator while everyone else does their thing.

It has come to me all of the sudden that I'm going back to Turkey in a little more than two weeks. The time has flown by. I must admit that its pretty daunting to think that in two weeks I'll be flying alone to Germany. But I've done it so many times that I'm not too nervous.

Saw a coyote yesterday on the field and had my ipod with me so I took a photo

We have two small apple trees in our yard at my family's house and this year they were the best I've ever seen so I couldn't resist making things out of them. Thankfully there was frozen pie crust I was allowed to use. And as you can see there are lots of apples I didn't make into sauce and there is no way I picked those trees clean.

So now I have finally blog posted again proving that I haven't actually forgotten about this blog :P

September 22- 28th

Well, almost finished the plowing. All that's left is the edges and corners. We also salted cows and I learned how to run the rake and how to rerake a feild. We also tried to seed a low spot in one feild that got missed this spring because it was too wet but then it rained really hard.
We also started to install a new scale system on the head gate but we haven't finished that yet because other things took precidence.

And unfortunately I do not have a vlog this week. I kept thinking about making one and then deciding not to.

September 15-21

Well, this is a bit late.... I thought I had posted this but the vlog wouldn's upload so I must have given up on it.... but, without further ado;
So, I successfully completed my first ever solo grocery shop on Monday. The only thing I didn't get that I maybe should have was bread, but I made biscuits so that's all fine. On the work end of things I finished cultivating and started plowing. And I hadn't hardly plowed much at all before I got a rake tooth in one of the plow tires, so that had to be fixed. But we got it fixed and all that so that's the main thing.

This weekend I went to a birthday party and a cast party, and made it back to my other house for some odd jobs and church. Which was nice, but it kind of made me miss my family more, being places that we are usually together at...

Anyway. I did make a vlog. And I did it while cultivating. And I didn't break anything. Hahahaha.

Some people are having trouble viewing it. So here's a link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaWDfszb8M0&list=UUjRLShVaYsCdkdTzNMfNMQQ

Snow. In September. Sept 8th -14th

Why. Just why. I mean, sure this is Alberta but snow in SEPTEMBER? Really?
Okay, well I have to admit I kind of enjoyed it, which just goes to show what three years with hardly any snow does to a person. On the upside we got a lot of repairs done in the (heated) shop. And put up a rack for various peices of angle iron, flat iron, pipe and such. Also, I made two vlogs this week, I think I enjoy vloging. Who knew?

August and September Report Cards

So, I'm super late on these so I'm doubling them up. Firstly August;

Find Something Fun to Do with this Blog; Well. I'm enjoying the weekly work updates so far.

Drama Caaaaamp; Was pretty fun. The play was great the people were fun, then it was over and I had to go to work two days later.

Continue to use the techniques I learned at art lessons; Yeah pretty much, although I haven't been drawing much, still kind of adjusting to this whole work thing.

So my August goals were accomplished! Ta-da.



Anyway. September;

Draw More. Because drawing

Take more videos; So I can make some sort of montage or something.

Go out to the Sundre Choir. I probably won't be here when the performances happen but we'll see if I can hang out and sing while I'm here.

And since the month is already half over I'll leave it at that :)

September 1st to September 7th

Did a lot of repairs this week. I forgot how fast repairing tractors get's old. However, by Wednesday we got that all done and Thursday I started Dirt Work. Which is basically dragging a harrow and a disc around in circles in a feild. On Friday I helped haul furniture and boxes around for some friends of my boss who had redone their office.

 Then, this weekend I got to help KnightHaven out with a Kids With Cancer Day Camp. Which was amazingly fun. The kids were great and I got to borrow a viking helm and one little girl thought I looked like Astrid :D I had been a little unsure of how it would go but it was fantastic. Of course, since I was helping to run the thing and cameras aren't really medieval I don't have any pictures. 

Sunday I went to Maker Faire in Calgary. Which was AWESOME.

My Maker 'swag' I seriously picked up so many business cards, and stuff, it's hilarious.

There were some photographers there, doing light painting. you can check out their website: http://jeffmcdonaldphotography.smugmug.com/ Some of the pictures are really neat.

There were also these people whom, unfortunately I never got an opportunity to talk to. They mostly had jewelty and such but they also had a display of cat and mouse armour.

Then there's this lady who was making metal jewelry hats and cloths, she had wrapped the wire of a couple of things with LEDs so they glowed.

Like this lovely hat.

This is a picture of a guy's 2 (and one corner over on the Right) 3d printers. He bought the wooden one and used it to print the green peices for the next one and used the green one to print the silver peices for the one that is barely in the picture. Kind of neat.

This is one of the glass beads made by one of the hobbiest makers. He was letting people come in and make their own beads. His stuff was beautiful.

Then there were the steam punk people who had a ton of masks made out of leather that had been stamped and painted. This was one of the prettiest.

And of course there was the Lego artist. This guy had a pretty cool display. You can find his website here

 

And of course a vlog I made Sunday evening

First Week of Work

So here is a breif rundown of what I did my first week of work, there were breakdowns of the mechanical nature but we still got the silage in and the silage pit covered. So it was a good week.

August 25th Vlog;

Monday, I got a crash course in driving a tractor and trailer for silaging. It was rather easier than I expected but then again the silage pit was also high enough that I didn't have to drive my tractor over it...

Monday evening I made biscuits look how pretty they are!

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were more of the same, although I also had to figure out how to back up a trailer full of silage into a specific space. But I'm happy to report that I got that done without breaking anything. Also, Tuesday morning we sent a bunch of steers to auction, which was not as difficult as it could have been although there were a few iffy moments. And of course Wednesday evening was Knighthaven. Which was okay, but not spectacular, I'm just excited I drove an hour and a half both ways without incident.

This morning we covered the silage pit (A rather large job that involves tossing a lot of tires around, a few pitch forks and three loads of bad silage.) and this afternoon was sorting steers and getting off early. I have to admit I'm glad Silaging is over and done with, although driving a tractor and trailer is not as scary as I thought it would be.

Also mom gave me a book of sayings called Never Ask a Man the Size of His Spread: A Cowgirl's Guide to Life

The saying of the week is;

Even if it takes more than one throw to land a steer and tie him, he's still roped and tied. 

 And just for those of you who need either a laugh or some decent relationship advice;

Before you get serious with a cowboy, be sure he values you more than his truck.

August Report Card 2014

It's a good thing I'm doing these boring report cards, otherwise I would completely forget about this blog. Which brings me to the first item on this list.

Find something fun to do with this blog; like a monthly posting of pictures gifs or memes or something... I feel like there should be something thought stimulating going on here but I am sadly short on consistant inspiration...

DRAMA CAAAAAMP; I wish I was as excited for this as I should be but I'm really a bit overwhelmed at the moment

Continue to use the techniques I learned at my art lessons; becasue it kind of defeats the purpose to foget about them

And since I'm already two weeks late on this I won't add anything else to the list.

How To Train Your Dragon 2 Review

Saw How To Train Your Dragon 2 in theaters in July and I am now finally happy with my review. There are minor spoilers in here, mostly dealing with information revealed in the trailers.

As always we'll start with the downsides. First off, this movie seemed a little confused; while Hiccup and Toothless are still the indubitable stars there seemed to be a lot of half developed side shows going on with people who can't decide which side they're on, and a ridiculous love triangle. Secondly, while Astrid was pretty important in the first movie she spends a lot of time being dramatically useless. I mean, she's there but she says little of importance and does even less. Also, while there were a few giggle worthy moments there was very little of the sarcastic and ironic humour that made the first movie so fantastic. And while the movie starts out at a good pace, with plenty of time for characters, dragons, landscapes et cetera, the last third just feels rushed, and the speed seemed to ruin what had the potential to be the most important moment of the entire film.

On the upside, oh my word the animation! The textures! The colours! The new variety's of dragons! There is so much to fangirl about when we're talking visual stuff. One of my main complaints about the first movie was the limited varieties of dragons with Hiccup having the only unique one. That got resolved, and fast. Another, rather unexpected upside was Valka, Hiccup's mother. She was simply amazing, and the chemistry between her and Stoick was absolutely adorable. Over on the evil side the villain was pretty intimidating and managed not to get too overshadowed. Unfortunately like so many other parts of this film, all the ingredients for epic "bad guyness" were there, but not fully developed.

Altogether this film was not the almost impeccable, epic, touching movie that the first film was. Through half finished character development, weak plot, and inconsistent timing, it just failed to compare. Which, to be honest was a complete disappointment. How To Train Your Dragon 2 has all the right ideas, characters, designs, actors; it was just one movie that I want to hand back to the producers and say 'I think you sent the wrong film to the box office, this one isn't done yet!' 

July 2014

Well, I didn't do as badly as I thought I would after all that.

Organize/go to two more events; Yes, I went to the Passion Play in Drumheller (which was really cool) and organized a filming day for a short film me and Nicole have been planning for months. (Though we did the actual filming on the 1st...)

Memorize my lines and song; I got this guys, totally got this.

Work on my Sword and Sheild skills; Well I survived two bouts of Capture the flag without 'dying' so what does that tell you?

Read more than Ten books: Accomplished!

So yeah, not as bad as I thought it would be.

Monthly report card July 2014

Okay, so, goals for July. 

Organize/Go to two activity things; I already organized a trip to HTTYD 2 so we'll see if I can continue to be outgoing.

Memorize my lines and my song; The sooner this is accomplished the more fun I can have with my part right?

Continue to work on my Sword and Sheild skills; Let's just say that if I were dropped into a real battle right now, I'd die. Swiftly.

Read more than Ten books; After being almost completely without new reading material for nine months the library is my best friend.

Nicole's report card is here.

June 2014

So here I am, only a week and a half late....
In my defence, things do pile up when you've been gone for nine months.

So, how I did;

Drawing; I did get some done, not a whole lot but some.

Diploma; Got that done, though I haven't got my grade yet.

Blog post once; This one I totally failed at. I basically forgot about this blog.

Go To Canada; Mission accomplished

Add Grommits to my Leg Wraps; Yes actually I did get that finished.

Nicole was more on top of things and already has her's up, if you haven't seen it yet you can check it out here.

June Report Card

So, June is upon us, fellow internet users. I am thinking that this is going to be an interesting month in many ways.
So here's my list of things to do this month;

1. Continue to draw and maybe get some real life sketches in there. I know I'm going to be insanely busy but drawing is important too!

2. Get that Diploma done! My first diploma exam ever. Should be cool.

3. Blog post once that isn't a report card or other type of list. Since I pretty much neglected this blog last month I should at least try to get another post up.

4. Go to Canada. YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH, nuf said.

5. Add Gromits to my Viking leg warmers so they lace up. I cut these out quite a while ago and then discovered that I didn't have enough grommits to lace them up. >:(

And I'd better stop now before I get too ambitious...

Nicole's to-do list is here.

May 2014 End of the Month

Hey would you look at that... the month ended.
So I kind of forgot about what I was supposed to be doing this month, but I got some stuff done anyway.

• Get more artwork done with actual people in it. Actually yes, you can see proof of this here and here. Also I got deviant art.
• Pick up my Heraldry artwork again. Well... Not exactly, I did draw a couple of heraldic beasts but not with any proper reference.
• Finish my social studies 'peace' unit study. Done. So, so done.
• Start prepping for English Diploma. Eh, yeah, did that. 

So, not too shabby for the month of busy-ness that it's been.

Also, Nicole's end of the month thing is here.

May 2014

Well, here we are in May already! Time does fly.

This month I'm hoping to;

• Get more artwork done with actual people in it.
  I don't draw people much, practice practice.
• Pick up my Heraldry artwork again.
  It's fun on occasion and I'd kind of like to refresh my memory on the symbolysim
• Finish my social studies 'peace' unit study.
  I would like to start Summer vacation sooner rather than later.
• Start prepping for English Diploma.
  I couldn't take the diploma when I finished the course so I'm doing it in June.

Nicole's Report card is here.

April 2014 End of the Month

Wow, April was SO busy!

This is how I did:

I should do something musical, play piano or sing or something: I didn't record anything but yes, I sang and played the piano more than usual and jammed with my friends :)

Blog post two things that aren't report cards. Done and Done, posted about drawing Malekith and a Review of The Winter Soldier.

Finish Math. Shouldn't take me more than 5 school days including tests. So done. I finished about 2 days before my friends arrived.

Work on my artwork. The project that never ends: Yup. got that done. I actually did a fair amount of solely digital art this month along with my traditional stuff.

Crochet some stuff, I've got a hat to finish and yarn to use: not as much as I was thinking I could do, but hey I was otherwise occupied with my buddies for two whole weeks :P

Have fun with my friends who are coming to TURKEY!!!!!!!! Nailed this one. So totaly nailed this one.

Nicole's is here.

Cheerio!

Captain America The Winter Soldier Review

Stopped by in Tekirdag on Friday and caught Captain America the Winter Soldier in the theatre. Thought I'd get the review done quickly this time so I don't forget about it :P.

So, negatives first. The movie starts off pretty calmly but the action hardly takes a pause from about halfway through until the end. And it isn't all bloodless pummelling from afar. Various characters die, are shot, and take a number of truly brutal poundings with equally brutal close-ups. There are also a couple of disturbing moments, one of which being when we find out that a man has basically put his brain in a machine and is much more of a creepster than originally assumed. And you remember Loki's theory about making mankind free of freedom? Yeah that's basically the new bad guy's philosophy. The bad guys also discuss the murder of several million people and display a disturbing lack of empathy or even concern for events taking place. There are a couple of decidedly awkward scenes when various characters allude to their less than pristine morals, there is also a kiss, to avoid detection by an enemy, and the dialogue is interspersed with a couple of assorted swears.  Also there is lamentably little humour to lighten the oppressive negativity of this film. There are a few laughs, but not nearly enough to make it a film I'd watch a lot. And to make me care even less for this film it ends in a cliff hanger, not even a good cliff hanger like Thor 2, just enough of a cliff hanger to make you wonder what happens next. (By the way, the after credits scene was also creepy.)

On the upside, turns out Captain America is working for Sheild and having well founded authority issues, while Nick Fury is starting to wonder if there's something going on within Sheild that even he doesn't know about. Black Widow also gets her fair share of character development which I appreciated. The twists and turns and various reveals of this movie keep you at least interested throughout the film. The visual effects were stunning, if rather over done in some instances. And the metal wings on the Falcon? Wow, so cool. Few as they were there are some truly funny parts and a couple of "Aww" moments. Also, the Winter Soldier was about everything you could want for an arch minion of a big evil guy. He matches Cap punch for punch and it's quite impressive. There are some other plusses I'd like to mention but I shan't give you any spoilers.

To conclude, I really liked several aspects of this film one in particular regarding the Winter Soldier, but the intense action, severe lack of humour, and decided creepiness of some of the scenes makes this a movie I wouldn't necessarily recommend. And as far as the cliff hanger goes, yes I want to know what happens next, but sorry Marvel. I'll be borrowing it from the library or renting from the movie store. I don't care that much. 

Malekith

So, I drew Malikith from Thor The Dark World, and I decided to show you how I did it.

I drew it in pencil first, photographed it with Nicole's camera and cropped it: 

Then I used the Lighten/Darken and Brightness/Contrast features in Photoshop elements to make the colouring more dramatic:

Then I decided that I'd try some colour and added his blue eye:

 Then I added a new layer and set it to "Soft Light" and added some yellow and dark blue to the highlights and shadows respectively:

I adjusted a couple of the shadows and adjusted where the light hit and voila!

April 2014 Report Card

Welcome to April guys!

This month:

I should do something musical, play piano or sing or something...

Blog post two things that aren't report cards.

Finish Math. Shouldn't take me more than 5 school days including tests.

Work on my artwork. The project that never ends...

Crochet some stuff, I've got a hat to finish and yarn to use!

Have fun with my friends who are coming to TURKEY!!!!!!!!

Nicole's Goals are here.

Questions Again

This was fun last time, so Nicole and I are doing this again. She gave me twenty questions and I gave her twenty one. Which you may read here.

So without further ado here are the questions from Nicole:

1     Favourite character from the hobbit: I guess I have to say.... Oh I don't know. Fili, Bofur, Bard, Beorn, Bilbo.(notice how most of these names start with 'B'? Yeah, I have no idea why that is.) I could go on but I shall restrain myself. 

2.   Rain is ­­­_Wet_

3    If you could have either a walrus or a shark which would you have? A Walrus. 

4.   Sweaters or hoodies: Hoodies

5.   Popcorn or M&Ms? Ummmm Popcorn I guess, buttery, salty, mmmmm. 

6.   If you could, what book would you go into? Oh uh... I don't know

7    Soup or sandwich? Sandviches for me!

8.    Black or very very dark grey? Very Very Very Dark Grey.

9.   TMNT or Transformers Prime? Transformers.

10.   Rain or shine? Shine, 

11.    Movies or TV? Um. I guess Movies, Although T.V. is good too...

12.   Favourite food: Um. at the moment, waffles

13.   Would you try surfing? oooooh Sure why not.

14.   I _have hair_ so yeah

15.   GIFs or Pics? Gifs because this happens:  but pictures are good too. 

16.   Cows or Cats: I guess I'll have to say cows. They tend to be less devious.

17.   Dinosaurs or porcupines: Dinosaurs all the way

18.   Card or board game? Cards are fun

19.   Sword or battle ax? At the moment, battle ax

20.   You can travel anywhere in the world, where will you go? hmmmm, Germany I think.

March Report Card

So. March is looking busy...

To Do:

Finish Math. Or at least get within a weeks worth of finishing. I need to get this done already.

Finish my beef production course; This shouldn't be a problem.

Rest my wrists; Turns out that writing about 2,000 words a day for a week doesn't make your wrists love you...

Draw something: Actually more than one something would be better. Finishing a couple of those 2D digital drawings I've been working on would also be good.

Work on one of my other stories: I'm ready to move on for a while. I'll come back to the NaNoWriMo one next month. Or halfway through this one... or something.

So yeah... That's the plan.
Nicole's is here

February Report Card End of the Month

What I wanted to do:

• Finish a Movie Review: I did! The Desolation of Smaug...
• Draw some Orcs: No, but I did draw the bunker in our village and the portrait of noone in particular in Krita.
• Write between 30,000 and 60,000 words on my NaNoWrMo Story: Almost not but I cleared the goal with 30,548 (fistpump) and there are still a few hours in the day... Maybe a couple hundred more? (*laughes* maybe not...)
• Finish Sketch of Norwegien Buildings: No... But did I mention I drew other things?
• Progress through School: Yup pretty much.
• Do at least on Construction Project with Dad: Built shelves. Fun fun!

What I also did:

• Recorded Radioactive by Imagine Dragons with Nicole (You can give it a listen here: https://soundcloud.com/nicolem-4/radioactive-cover )
• I did a couple of other things this month... I'm sure I did... But story writing took up most of my creative time. 

New Drawing Program

At the Oslo Maker Faire last month I met a digital artist name Christina, (You can check out her website here ) In the course of our conversation I happened to ask what software she was useing. Turns out it's a free program that works a lot like Photoshop except it's more artist oriented. It's called Krita (Check it out on the main website) 

So over the course of the past week I've downloaded the program and started checking it out. 

Cool features that are immediately apparent:

It's free: Hard to believe once you start looking at the program but true.

Mirror canvas feature. Handy for mapping out a face, or anything else you want to be the same on either side of the middle line. You can turn it on and off at will and the program only mirrors what you are currently painting. Really nice.

A variety of brushes and a handy dandy colour selector. The brushes are SO COOL! It's like a cross between Corel Painter with realistic brushes and Photoshop with easy to use colour selector.

Can save to a variety of formats: Handy because I can just save my files as Photoshop files and touch them up until I know how to do that in Krita.

Shortcuts to resizeing brushes and colour pallete: Saves some time, pretty handy.

Layers: these are just like in Photoshop and just as handy

Less handy features: 

There is no dedicated blur tool. I love pencils so I also love blur and smudging but I haven't found a computer program that does it really nicely yet. But you can set up some brushes to blur, how exactly I'm not sure but just like in photoshop the blurring causes some laggyness.

The program is prone to lag a bit more than Photoshop even when all you're doing is some simple painting.

When you first get in and you click on say, the eyedropper tool it can be confusing to find out how to get back into brush mode. (turns out it's the squiggly icon in the toolbar) I spent my first hour or so saving my file, closing and reopening the program to get back into brush mode before I figured that little tidbit out.

So anyway, that's my program review and here is the first painting I did: 

So, over all, I'm pretty impressed with Krita. I think I'll still be using Photoshop a bit, but Krita is setting itself up to be my new favourite thing to do on the computer.

The Desolation of Smaug: Review

Well, to start off with I did only see this movie once so my opinion isn’t quite fully formed yet. Also I went in prepared for the worst. And lastly, I saw it about two months ago.

 But that said, here we go.

I guess I’m falling into the habit of bad things first, so that’s where we’ll start.

First off, as I’m sure the avid Tolkien fans already noticed from the trailer, The Desolation of Smaug isn’t exactly sticking to the book. There are a lot of glaring changes to the story that, while providing some nice screen time for certain dwarves, really don’t fit with the story Tolkien told. And you know open barrels that are repeatedly dunked underwater? Yeah, they usually fill with water and sink. Apparently this rule is invalid when dwarves are riding in said barrels.
Smaug,while he is a pretty awesome dragon, makes some decidedly odd decisions for an angry dragon, I’ll spare you the spoilers, but those of you who are into motivations and such will have some trouble with this one. Another slightly more technical flaw is the fact that by the end of the film we are following 3 or 4 different story lines depending on how you count. Needless to say the constant jumping back and forth takes a lot of the wind out of the proverbial sails. 
The biggest problem though, is once you’re starting to recover from the sheer awesomeness of the film you start to wonder what the point was. While a tonne of stuff happened and a lot of distance was covered there wasn’t a whole lot that actually had to do with the main plot (That whole ‘reclaim the homeland slay a dragon’ thing?). And while you could argue that this is the same as the Two Towers I must point out that in the Two Towers at least contains the saving of a country.

However, the bad stuff dealt with, I loved this movie. The fun characters seen in the first film are most definitely carried through with the better developed dwarves all getting a chance to flaunt their style. And on the subject of characters, while I was highly skeptical of Legolas having a love interest, Tauriel ended up being one of my favourite characters. Another object of my skepticism was Beorn; I just couldn’t picture how they would get that right. But may I just say; they got it right, even the transformation was cool. 
The overall CGI in this film seemed better than the first, with a couple of elements being downright well done. Smaug looked fantastic and was overall a pretty well written dragon except for what I already mentioned. While the story is pretty segmented with a good deal of time spent where it doesn't need to be the pace of the action was much improved from the first movie; I hardly noticed three hours go by in the Desolation, unlike the Unexpected Journey, which had me tapping my foot twenty minutes into it even the first time around.

Just a side note; since I watched the Desolation in Turkish I have no idea what was said in the subtitles. All those moments in elvish or black speech, yeah I can guess, but I can’t quote it…

So, in conclusion, this was a good movie and I would recommend it as definitely better than the first one. And I'd like to see it again, what are those elvses and orcses saying anyway?

ON THE SECOND WATCH:
So I watched it again and I just want to say that Kili is tall for a dwarf but no less ugly.
And there is also a bad CGI Legolas. A 'really' bad CGI Legolas on horseback. It would be impressive on a video game, but this is a blockbuster film we're talking about here. 

February Report Card

So here I am, three days late. Ahem,To do this Month:

Finish a movie review. Seriously, this is getting ridiculous.

Draw some orcs. Because orcs are fun to draw.

Write between 30 and 60 thousand words on my NaNoWriMo story. Because I want to get this done.

Finish the sketch of Norweigian buildings. Started this last month and then abandoned it.

Progress through school. Because I'm not aiming to finish anything until the end of March...

EDIT:

Do at least on Construction project with Dad. Fun!

Yup. 

Nicole's list is here.

Have a nice month.

Monthly Report Card. How I Did

Okay so it's not quite the end of the month (A few more hours any way)
But I thought I'd post this now so I can post what I want to get done next month :)

This is the list of what I wanted to do:

• Make a drawing tutorial, and post it. Well, I did get a speed drawing done, and I called that good. 
• Write at least one movie review. Kind of forgot about this one... I still need to get it done, there are a couple of reviews in the works at the moment
• Draw two portraits. Unfortunately no, I did get a drawing of one of the Dolmabace palace gates finished though. 
• Complete the first half of the Na No Wri Mo handbook. Yes! Well almost, I'm trying to finish up today...
• Read two new books. Completely failed this one. I had the chance to do this and everything but my kindle money is still sitting in the account...

List of extra things I did:

• I wrote a poem and posted it.
• I went to Maker Faire (the post is here)
• I completed the English 30 course I was working on. (Diplomas to follow once I get back to Canada)

An "Ode" to Literature

So I found out on Friday that there were assignments for English that I was supposed to do over Christmas break and didn't.... Ooops. Thankfully it's only two small assignments but while trying to get the poetry assignment done this morning I wrote this poem;

To Literature

By Johanna Murray

O Poem how I hate your guts

I detest your subtleties

You fool the fools and tease the wise

With meanings well-disguised

And Film! Your entertainment bared

Is a simple, tasteless thing

A story stripped of all it’s worth

Yet still your money rings!

A Book is truly a scourge indeed

If I ever saw one or two

Complex characters crowd around

And I’m still muddled when you’re through

You Play; I care not for you at all

Your exaggerations bore me

All revenge and suicide and

Asking ‘to be or not to be?’

In short I think literature’s a bust

It’s all a waste of time

But ironically to tell you this

I use literature that’s mine!

I'm thinking I should not submit this as a suitable English 30-1 assignment.... But it was fun to write!

January Report Card

So Nicole and I decided that doing monthly report cards would be fun, I'll put a link to her's at the bottom of this post. 

So this month I want to:

• Make a drawing tutorial, and post it.
• I've been meaning to do this for a while...
• Write at least one movie review
• Draw two portraits 
• My portrait drawing needs work, practice, practice! 
• Complete the first half of the Na No Wri Mo handbook
• The idea here is that I'll complete the second half next month and I'll have most of a novel by March. Notice I say the idea....
• Read two new books
• I might be pushing it with this one seeing as I've been hard pressed to find the ambition to pick up any books at all lately.

Here's the link to Nicole's report card http://nicolesnittygrittypixiedust.blogspot.com/2014/01/monthly-report-card-january-2014.html