New Years Resolutions

Ah, the dreaded resolutions that last for a couple weeks and then go waltzing out the door.  And yet most people still come up with a few every year.  I'm no exception, though like many others I tend to fail pretty quickly.  But this year I'm rather determined to actually succeed at a few.  So I'm going to mention my overall resolutions for the new year and then I think I'm going to start doing what a friend of mine does on her blog and have monthly resolutions.  I like the idea of doing that because it makes the things you want to do more achievable because you're planning for a month, not the whole year.  If you have some free time, I'd encourage you to check out her blog because its awesome:  Press On To Know/Christ-Like Life.

So, overall resolutions for this year:

A Year in Review: 2013

Here we are again at the end of another year.  Does it seem to have gone by really fast to anyone else?  I have to admit this has been a fairly uneventful year, which is kind of nice.  Still, I feel I have been very blessed this year so I thought I would share a few events from the year with pictures for some and others just mentioning them.  So off we go down memory lane.

Last year I had the opportunity to act in A Christmas Carol with a group of very talented people.  There were a number of people there that I didn't know, but I ended up getting to be good friends with two of them and at the beginning of the year the three of us got together and went to a double feature of The Hobbit:  An Unexpected Journey and Les Miserable.  Needless to say we had a lot of fun with each other.  Following that, we got together because the guy in the picture (I'll avoid using names just to be safe) had never seen Lord of the Rings, so we had a Lord of the Rings marathon.  During one of the nights we were watching, the girl's sister joined us.  We'd already met her during the play and she quickly became a part of our little group.  Our Lord of the Rings marathon turned into a weekly get together that has been going on nearly every week since.

Twelve Songs of Christmas

With it being just a few days before Christmas, just about everyone is listening to Christmas music. I love Christmas music and I'll admit that I will occasionally listen to it before Christmas, you know in like June.  But, I generally try to stick with listening to Christmas songs around this time of year and listen to them as much as possible.  Also, today was just a long, stressful day at work and I think I'm starting to get an ear infection (again), all of which did not put me in the greatest mood and I needed some cheering up.  Que Christmas music blasting through my speakers.  And so with all that in mind, I've decided to share my twelve favorite Christmas songs with you.  So, hope you enjoy!

#1 The Christmas Shoes
I have always loved this song and thought it was such a beautiful song and story.  You might want to have some tissues nearby watching the video, I know it always makes me cry!

How To Create An Awesome Action Scene 3

Here it is, Ladies and Gentlemen!
The short movie that I acted in back in November is finally completed and available for viewing in all its awesomeness.  It is really good and, as I stated before, was a lot of fun to film.  I'm so blessed to know such talented people.  There's no blood/gore or profanity, just several gunfight scenes which are pretty epic.  So grab the family, gather round and enjoy!

Chicken and Veggies

Since I like to cook, as has already been established, I've decided that I'm going to broaden my post topics to that of food as well.  I really enjoyed sharing my experience of baking my cake for Thanksgiving and I gotta figure that someone out there will probably appreciate similar posts.  Also, I recently watched Julie & Julia.  Fantastic movie, if you haven't seen it, you should.  Anyway, moving on, I recently got a Pinterest account, one of those things that I'd heard about for ages and actively avoided because it was so popular.  Well, I caved and I have discovered a whole new fantastic world.  Not even kidding, I love it.  One of my friends has been griping at me because I've been pinning so much and blowing up her Pinterest board.  Whoops!

Probably the most exciting thing I've found for me is all the recipes.  There are so many!  I'm trying not to collect too many so I don't overwhelm myself with all the possibilities.  Since I had yesterday off of work because I was up until 4 am watching the midnight premiere of The Desolation of Smaug, more on that in my next post, I decided to cook dinner.  And since I was cooking dinner, I figured it would be fun to try one of the recipes I'd found on Pinterest.  And so was born the idea that whenever I tried a new recipe, I could blog about it and let other people know if it was really good or bad or if I'd done something differently, etc.  So if you like to cook, I hope this is helpful and fun and if you don't like to cook then maybe it'll inspire you to bust out the pots and pans and make something yummy.

British TV Shows In Quotes

Sometimes I wonder, as I'm sobbing over the death of yet another character in one of the British tv shows I watch, if this is healthy.  Is it good for me to watch shows that draw me in so easily, that captivate me, get me attached to the characters to the point where when they're in pain I hurt for them or if they die I'm left crying my eyes out?  And yet that's what makes them so fantastic, because they can do that.  Because they make you feel something, look at the world in a different light.  Because some of the things the characters say make you really think, make you look at your life differently.  They let you dream, let you believe even a little bit that maybe those amazing things you see episode after episode could be real.  There's something special about that.

The Journey Begins

As many people know, last month was National Novel Writing Month.  I'd heard about for a couple years but never participated mostly because I was a bit daunted by the idea of having to write 50,000 words in one month.  On top of that, I usually didn't have the time to just sit down and write or when I did have some free time, writing was not what I wanted to do.  This year, however, I decided to give it a go.  Years ago, back when I was still in high school, my two best friends at the time and I decided that we should each write a book.  In some ways they were similar because we were really into dragons and fairies and Japan at that time so they had those elements in it and then they also all revolved around three girls we based off of ourselves and our friendship.  I never got far with mine.  I would get a couple chapters in, give it to my friends to critique and then re-write parts of it with their suggestions.  I think the whole concept of the story changed at least three times.  It had been years since I'd even glanced at the manuscripts I had so I honestly didn't remember a whole lot other than the very general idea, which I still liked.  I had just never been able to find a way to go with it and write what I wanted to.

Caramel Apple Cake

For Thanksgiving this year, I decided to go ahead and bake the dessert and try something new.  A month or two back I had picked up an issue of Food Network magazine.  It had some really good recipes in it, but the recipe I really wanted to try was this cake that had been made to look like a caramel apple.  It was absolutely amazing and it was rated as easy, so I figured it would be something fun to make for Thanksgiving to kind of shake up our normal menu.  Since I had to work Thanksgiving, I made the cake the night before.  The recipe said that it would take about two hours, but with it being my first time, I figured it might take more like two and a half to three.  It took five.  For all that the recipe said it was easy, it was not.  I'm guessing it was rated easy because you made the cake using box mix instead of from scratch and there weren't all that many ingredients.  Actually building the cake though was far from easy.

Back To School?

Okay you see that picture.  That could be me in a couple years.  Well, not the food, but you know, the hand garnishing that amazing looking dish.  Okay, I'll give you some context so you can stop looking confused, or if you're not looking confused, well, then, I don't know.  Anyway, since moving back home, there are times when I'll flip on the tv, not very often, but on occasion when I'm eating or doing something in the kitchen.  Most of the time there's nothing good or appropriate on so I've taken to watching Food Network, because, hey, I like to cook and bake and its always interesting to see what other people are fixing and get some good ideas.  My parents noticed this since I fix dinner a couple days a week and usually when they get home that's what I have on.  As we were watching one of the shows while having dinner a week or so ago, my dad made a comment that I should consider going to culinary school since I like to cook so much.  I was a bit surprised, because, well, culinary isn't exactly one of the "practical" college degrees that my parents used to always suggest I go for.  Now don't get me wrong, I know my parents have always had my best intentions at heart when they suggested those practical degrees, but I know I could never do something like business or accounting or even something like being a teacher.  No, no, no.  I would die of boredom or in the case of being a teacher, I think I would lose my mind trying to deal with kids.  I like kids, I think they're cute and all, but I only like them from a distance if I don't know them.  The only kids I actually like dealing with are ones that I know and even then I don't think I could do that everyday unless they were my own.  But that is in the far distant future and not something I'm going to worry about right now.