Le Sigh...

So we've moved into our new house and everything is going great!

Except...

we're sick.

And...

there's no running water.

Sooo... addressing the first thing. I believe I started this whole thing off. I got sick, went to see the doctor, he gave me penicillin and sent me on my way. I started to get better, took the whole week's worth, and while I was doing that my sister got sick. Now my mom is sick, and I am too... again.

Went back to the doctor. Guess what he did. Any ideas? Whelp, he gave my sister a different kind of antibiotic than he gave me. For me? He checked my ears, took some blood to test for allergies, and sent me on my way. So apparently he thinks my issue is allergies... oh and salivary stones. Coughed one of those babies out right in front of him. But it's "nothing to be concerned about". Uh huh. Suuuure doc. 

The water thing is a bit of a pickle. We had some for about half a day. Then the thing crapped out on us. We've had a guy come out, and he's still not 100% sure what the issue is. Thankfully my family has had to endure worse conditions than this before so we know how to rough it for a bit. It's just... uncomfortable. Our landlord is doing everything in his power to get things worked out, which is nice. Most landlords we've had aren't so good at their job. It's awesome to have one now that cares.

All in all I'm just a little bit miserable right now, but doing my best to cope. Hopefully things look up soon. That's all for now. This is Kimi, signing out.

Peace!

Moving On...

So, in a few days I'll be moving. I've moved several times in my life so I know how it goes. You pack everything up, sifting through it as you go, and whatever you have that no longer works for you you then give away, or get rid of in some way. Usually this process hasn't been too hard for me, but this time around was trickier than the others.

You see, when it comes to holding onto stuff from childhood I'm the one who has kept the most stuff. I have pieces ranging from about five years old and up. Both of my sisters have one, maybe two items from that time (not including things like pictures, school awards, and whatnot). I had somewhere in between seven and twelve.

Don't get me wrong, I've downsized my collection of things before, however it was usually by one or two things. This time around I got rid of several. Some were easy; they were items I received later on in childhood, and while I had fond memories of them I wasn't as attached.

There were, however, two in particular that I did have a special bond with, that I had a hard time letting go of. So I decided to compromise with myself and take pictures of them with the intent of posting about each one here. All right, here goes!

First is the Furby! This is not your newer version, but one of the old ones. She's just a little bit creepy isn't she? As she is a Statue of Liberty version she was dubbed "The Statue of Furby". Yes, creative I know. I got her at my sisters' birthday party. This was one of the years my parents decided to not only have their birthdays together, but they also decided to invite a ton of people.

I admit, whenever they had birthdays together I would get jealous. It always seemed so much more spectacular than any of my birthdays. However, I tried to take it like a champ and not get too melancholy. So it came as a huge surprise to me when the last gifts also had one for me! I was super excited. It made me feel included, which was really all I ever wanted. So we all opened them up at the same time and found we had Furbies. My older sister got a graduation one, my younger sister got a sort of speckled one, and I got the one above.

We got right to annoyed our parents with them. It was a lot of fun. Of course after the novelty wore off, my older sister got tired of hers. So then my younger sis and I annoyed her as well. We'd feed them (not real food, obviously), get them to say things, and swing them around really fast. All in all it was great fun. However, then their batteries started to die, and well... that's when they started to seem a little creepy. At least to me anyway. We realized that sometimes they wouldn't go to sleep, that their eyes would just stay open... staring at us.

So like I said, great times! We never really put batteries in them again. I did once, but then my Furby needed to be washed (which I took the batteries out for). She never worked after that. You'll notice she's missing her eyelashes. That's due to them falling out. But then she is over ten years old.

This next one is a little more complicated for me. He is much newer than my Furby was, but he represents a stuffed animal far older. This is the story:

When I was young I had a bear. I took him with me on many of my grand adventures, getting him muddy, wet, you know the drill. I even took him to a hospital event where he got a cast. His name was Teddy. Now there is a great mystery surrounding that bear. For one evening I had set him down on my bed and went to dinner. However, when I came back afterwards he was gone. I looked for him everywhere. So did my mom, but there was no sign of him. Days turned to weeks, weeks to months, and eventually I knew that wherever he was he was not coming back.

It broke my heart. He was my bestest most favorite of bears. To this day I still don't know what happened to him. This brings me to the bear above. His name is Teddy the Second. We found him one day while shopping. It was amazing. There he was, just as we were passing by. I stopped, stared, then showed him to my mom. Sure, he had clothes on, but I knew... this bear was an exact duplicate of my bear. So she got him for me, and I started a friendship with him.

He and I haven't had as many adventures, but I did perform surgery on him. He was very brave to let me do that. However, I realized that I wasn't doing him any justice by holding onto him. I knew some other child would play with him, have adventures, and love him dearly, and all without having thoughts of another bear at the same time.

Intense feelings for a stuffed animal, I know, but when you really get down to it there are lots of people who develop real attachments to their things, especially those from childhood. People also have a range for when they can let go of said things. I'm just one of those people who has taken a bit longer.

You should have seen my room when I first became an adult. I still had most of my stuffed animals throughout the years. Now I have only a few, small ones with which I have great sentimental attachment to. (I also have some anime plushies, but they're a tad different in my opinion.)

But yeah... moving on is hard. It feels like you're leaving everything you've ever known or loved behind. It doesn't have to be that way though. You don't need to keep the items to keep the memories. And you can always take a picture like I have. Speaking of pictures, I need to find that one of Tigger Tiger (he was a very special beanie animal that was much bigger than me for a good long time). I'll have to show him to you all another day.

Ta!

^-^

The Wonderful World of Cat Videos

You haven't really been officiated into the cybernetic world of the interwebs until you've seen a cat video. It's  hard to get anywhere in this cyberspace without somehow tripping over a video of a kitten whining for food, a grumpy-looking cat seemingly judging you, or any other variety you can think of. Cats are as diverse as humans, and we all love us a good cat vid (unless you don't like cats, which in that case I say to you GET OUT).

Anyway, today I finally broke into the world of cat videos for the first time. No, not as a viewer, but as a creator. It was a simple video, only a little less than forty seconds long, but it was still an adorable little introduction to one of our furbabies. His name is October.

This is a recent photo of said furbaby.

October is our oldest, and crankiest of furbabies. As you can see he is a lovely, little, black kitty with pretty yellow eyes. I am his favorite (much to his owner's annoyance), and he spends most of his time hanging out in my room.

So, back to the video. I decided to test the waters by taping him with my new camera I got for Christmas. I'd taken a few with him deeply entrenched in my blankets, but finally on the third try he emerged just enough so I could get more than just his eyeing me or biting my fingers (which is his way of saying "Back off! This is my cave!). It took me all of a half hour to complete, and that's with dinking around. So if any of you would like to take a look then here's the link:

A Kitty Short

I hope you enjoy it.

^-^

Projects

Okay, so today I'm going today I'm going to talk about some projects I am working on. A little back story is first needed. So...

I have 13 different projects listed that I need to get done. Some are small and can be finished in one sitting while others are much larger and will take months, or even years to finish. Of these 13 projects I have 7 of them already in some stage of work. There's a lot to be done, and relocating (a 14th project coming up) doesn't make it any easier.

However, some of my projects can be streamlined a little so that I can continue working on them, and working on said projects will actually help with the moving process. The first of the projects is consolidating writing articles from a rather large stack of magazines into a writing binder. I've already gotten through a few of them, and once I finish this I will no longer have a tower of paper threatening to topple over every time I move my feet wrong.

The second project is one I've been working on for years. I say years because I've been saving up old/holey pieces of clothing that I liked and am making them all into patches for a quilt. I have wanted to make a quilt out of my (and some of my sister's) things since I was a child. We're talking 7 years old. However, when I was young my mom accidentally gave my bag of old clothes away. I was... rather distraught about that, and for a long time didn't try collecting any more for fear of the same thing happening. Around the time I was 18 or so I decided to start anew. Since that time I have amassed a fair amount of clothing which has periodically been made into patches. I'm hoping that soon enough I will have enough to make my quilt.

The patches won't all be similar. They are various colors, cloth type, and whatnot. They are all, however, roughly the same size (7 1/2" x 7 1/2"). Once I have enough I'll sew them all together, after learning how to use a sewing machine mind you, and then I'll have a nice quilt! It will look kind of like the below only waaaaay cooler.

The third project I've only started recently. It is similar to my quilt idea only it won't take as long. I have plans to also make a patchwork scarf. Those squares are 3 x 3  and unlike the quilt will have some repeating square types. I imagine it will look something like this:

Again, only way cooler. Not sure if I'll have fringe on the ends or not, but we'll see. I'm almost done with the bag of old clothes/stuff I have. I only have 5 or 6 more pieces to go through. So in 2 days I should no longer have a big, bulky bag and instead have a neat, little box ready to move to the next place.

I won't worry about sewing until after the move. I probably will need some more pieces of fabric anyway. On that note I need to remember to take another look at my sister's fabric stash. She might have something I'd like to use. Hmm...

Well until next time!

^-^

It Isn't Nice

It isn't nice to belittle people.

It isn't nice to make someone feel like crap.

It isn't nice to dismiss someone.

It isn't nice to make people feel stupid.

It isn't nice to say "come to me with things" 

only to later on turn away and scoff.

It isn't nice; not at all.

It's things like this that make people averse to telling you things.

It's things like this that make people think you care only about your own stuff.

It's things like this that separate you, and close you off from others.

And then you wonder why nobody lets you in.

You hurt people.

You say your sorry (sometimes), 

but then you go back and do it again.

And again.

And again.

You want people to like you?

You want people to care?

The first step to getting those things

is to first be willing to change.

Then you must actively try to change,

to seek out ways to be good to others.

Because if you keep up this behavior

you'll wind up very lonesome,

and have no one else to blame

but yourself.

Residence Relocation

I've got big news from London! Big news!

Okay, not really from London, but I do have news. Can anyone name that quote by the way? *cough* Anyway, we had an interview the other day about a house.

not an accurate picture

It's a very nice house, with a lot more room than our current one. It has a ginormous backyard, around 4 1/2 acres, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and f course the other standard rooms you usually get plus 2 more. It's really nice and so we decided to try our luck at being the next tenants. It took a lot of time, and paperwork, but we secured an interview with the landlord. It went really well, and it looks like we've got ourselves a new house! Hurry! Doot do do dooo! That's a triumph noise for those of you who don't know.

So yeah, we'll be moving. It'll be interesting as the house is in an area we've never lived in before. We'll (my sister and I) be in upstairs rooms again, though they're a tad different as this time our walls are slanted. Hopefully that won't hinder us too much, though I know it means I won't be able to hang up my artwork anymore. Hopefully I'll be allowed to display it in other areas of the house.

So yeah, some lifestyle changes will have to happen, but I believe it'll be for the best in the long run. We're hoping to make the switch from old house to new come March 1st, but we'll have to see whether or not that's feasible. In any case I need to start taking a look at the things I have and getting rid of any of it that I don't want to haul to the next place. Eh... I'll do that later.

Well that's all for now. Wish me luck!

Common Mistakes with Painting

Today I'm going to talk a little about common mistakes while painting. These aren't some top five I found in some article or anything, but are ones that I find myself on the wrong end of. Maybe you do some of these too. Who knows? Let's find out together shall we?

1. Impatience

This one is pretty obvious. When you get impatient about wanting something to be finished then you don't produce your best work. You end up pushing the paint around instead of actually finishing, and that my friend leads to mistakes.

2. No Clear Vision

Now this one isn't always a bad thing. Some of my neatest paintings have come from just rolling up my sleeves and diving in without any idea of what I want. However this way of working can easily backfire, and you end up with more of a mess than anything else. 

It's especially dangerous if you have an idea of what you want to do, but no idea how you want to go about doing it. I had this problem recently. I wanted to do one particular type of landscape, but dove in first without an idea of how to proceed. It was only after I'd started that I looked at reference pictures and as a result had to redo some of my work. It was a downward spiral from there, and I ended up scraping the project instead of wasting more paint on something I couldn't save.

3. Over Correcting

This one I know is common among most artists. It's when you see something you don't like, and so you correct it. Only then you see another thing. And another. And another. Soon your painting has changed so much you no longer like it. You can also correct so much that in your correcting you make a blunder.

I did the latter of the scenarios once while doing an intuitive painting. It was really gorgeous, but had a couple of white spots. In trying to correct the white spots I completely messed up the flow of the painting to the point where it couldn't be salvaged.

4. Not Letting Things Be

There comes a point in painting where you need to walk away. It could be you've spent too much time looking at the darn thing and you're starting to go cross-eyed, it could be you don't know where to go from where you are and are feeling hopeless, or perhaps it feels like it might be finished, but you aren't sure.

When you become unsure it's best to take a breather and walk away. Sometimes that's all you need. Sometimes you need more time. What you're hoping to achieve is a different state of mind. A fresh outlook. If you don't do this and just stare at the canvas you won't get anything done, or worse you make a mistake that messes it up. The same thing is the case for something that's finished, but you're unsure about it. If you don't sit on it you can end up having to redo the whole thing.

5. Not Trusting Yourself

This is a big one. Ultimately, with anything in life, you must trust yourself. If you aren't able to listen to that part of you that tells you it's enough, to do something this way instead of another, or to not put the paintbrush in your mouth then you end up with a lot of problems. You must have confidence, at least a little, or you'll never get anything done. What's more, when you have finished you'll be easily swayed by the comments and criticisms of others.

So these are my top five issues I have while painting. They don't always come out, but when they do it's super annoying! However, if I just chill a bit, relax, breathe, and then re-access the situation usually I can get through whatever the problem is. So if any of you suffer from these issues make sure you try to do the same.

I wish you luck in all of your creative endeavors.

^-^