12-21-12-24 Blog#3

Probably one of the greatest movies ever made is, How to Train your Dragon. It is so cute and funny and it really makes your imagination run wild. Not even kidding you, I watched this movie about 20 times within the week I bought it.

This movie takes place in a little town called Burk. This place has always been invaded by dragons. Their leader, Stoick the Vast, has been trying to find the dragons' nest so they can destroy it and make the dragons leave. Unfortunately, Stoick is always distracted by his son, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III. All Hiccup wants is to be one of the other vikings, but he gets into trouble with dragons and his clumsy being. He is very small and he is looked down upon by all the other vikings. So he gets the chance to kill one of the fiercest dragons the vikings know about; a Night Fury. This dragon has not been seen by anyone. It never stole, kept hidden by the night sky and never missed its fire shots. Hiccup made a machine that took down this dragon, but no one saw it go down. After Hiccup got in trouble for trying too hard and messing up, he went out to look for the dragon. He finally finds it tied up in the forest. At first he takes out his knife and is ready to kill the dragon, but then he and the dragon had a long stare with him and Hiccup knew he couldn't kill that dragon. He ended up untying the dragon only to get forced against a rock. It seemed like the dragon was going to kill Hiccup, but it just left after scaring Hiccup. The rest of the movie gets very funny and interesting about why the dragons really steal food from Burk. I love this movie because of its originality and the fact that it has such a cute storyline.

12-20-12-24 Blog#2

Today, December 22Nd, was probably one of the most fun days so far this school year. So in 3B lunch, I was sitting at my table with 7 other of my friends, Melissa, Julie, Emma, Emily, Daria, Makiah, and Madeline, and we were just talking a couple days before the 22Nd of December. I believe we were talking about Christmas and how we didn't know my friend Emma was Jewish. She was explaining her heritage and how her family did only one day were they get all their Hanukkah presents rather than everyday for a week. They do this because their family from out of town usually only come for a couple of days and not a week. Obviously, my other friends and I were amazed by her explanation of the Jewish heritage. Then my friend Julie decided to say that she wished she knew how to play the dreidel game, and Emma said that she actually had a dreidel from her family. Melissa then said super loudly that we should have a Christmas Feast like on the Grinch. So of course we decided to plan a party. We all offered suggestions for food, and I made little notes to each person as a reminder to bring the food. Melissa was going to bring brushetta, Julie was supposed to bring Whoo Hash (like on the Grinch) but ended up bringing strawberries with chocolate dip. Emma brought her dreidel for us to play with and ornaments for a miniature tree that Madeline brought along with salsa dip and chips. Emily brought a delicious icing covered cream cheese treat. Daria then brought a German treat that she brought here when she left Germany. Makiah forgot to bring her pasta stuff unfortunately, but we still let her sit and eat our food because its that kind of season. Then I brought pulled pork and cookies. The pulled pork was courtesy of my mom, Liz. Anyways we had a fantastic time and we played with the dreidel and basically everyone in that lunch was jealous!

12-20-12-24 Blog#1

When asked to blog about anything I want, I completely blanked out. Unfortunately, I'm not the type of creative person that just writes about whatever they think about. I need some sort of idea of what to write about. Apparently, Mr. Currin didn't realize that the comments some people had about the blogs meant simply that we didn't want to write about people we don't know or about art; not that we wanted to make up our own ideas. The most difficult thing about this week's blogs are probably the fact of not knowing what to write about. I could think of a couple things to write about, but these things are very simple and don't take 300 words to write. By the way, I looked at the first week of blogs we had to do and we only had to write 150 words. How do we go from 150 words to 250 words to 300 words? I'm just saying, maybe we should minimize the word length because I feel like when I'm writing, I just repeat a bunch of things to fill up room and to fulfill the requirement of 300 words. Kind of like right now, I feel like I'm repeating myself about repeating myself. Obviously I'm going a little crazy because I'm talking about myself repeating myself for the third time. This is what this week's blogs do to me! I'm slowly going insane thinking about what to write about for the week of December 20th to December 24th! O.K. I'm done now, but still it is pretty hard to just think of something to write about all on your own. Even though some of the blogs we write about are different and a little odd, they still make me think more about my creative side. I just think some students, like myself, need some type of guidance when it comes to blog writing ideas.

12-14-12-17 Blog#3

I really like the poem A Dandelion for my Mother by Jean Nordhaus. It basically describes the dandelion, how stubborn it is to get, and how beautiful it is compared to this author's mother. I like this poem a lot mostly because it shows the love one can have for a mother. It also makes me think about my sisters because we always talk about dandelions because Andi, my oldest sister, wants to add on to her tattoo that says, "I watched the beauties watch the fire, and the fire burned beauty in their eyes." This lyric is about me and my other sister, Alli. But it's mostly about me. Anyways, she wants to add a dandelion to her tattoo because Alli drew a picture of a dandelion and Andi really liked it. Unfortunately, Alli lost the picture (big shock) and forgot how to draw it. Andi is still determined to remind Alli about her drawing. Besides the fact that this poem reminds me about my sisters, it obviously reminds me of my mom. She is thebest mom I could ever have. She always supports me in everything I want to do. She is at every chorus concert, volleyball game and school occasion. I can't remember a time when she ever skipped one of my volleyball games or if she every missed a concert, which can get boring sometimes. She never grounds me because she doesn't think it works at all. She even helped my volleyball team make our tie-die shirts for warm-ups and she even made pink tie-die shirts for our game that was dedicated to breast cancer awareness. Without her, we wouldn't even have half of the apparel we have for volleyball! She also had spaghetti made for one of our spaghetti dinners. She's pretty much a big deal in Alden, so I'd say she definitely reminds me of this poem. When I read this poem, I pretty much think about my mama, Liz Breyer!

12-13-12-17 Blog#2

My definition of beauty to me is a little odd. I think beauty is symmetry. Think about it. Most species of animals and bugs prefer the animals with the most symmetrical wings or eyes. It may not seem like a common way to describe beauty, but it is logical to say that a person prefers another with even eyes rather than their mouth being where their eyes are supposed to be. Beauty isn't only being symmetrical, but I think it is also being tan, skinny, and other features that make someone look smaller and more like a model. Beauty definitions differ and everyone has different opinions, but I think people have to have personality rather than just be pretty on the outside. I think that someone is truly beautiful if they are nice-looking and have a funny, and kind personality. I also think that beauty is taken too literally sometimes, like when girls think that being super skinny is the only way to make themselves look good and be happy. I understand that they are disorders, like anorexia or bulimia, but I would never ever think about doing that to myself. I love food way too much to give it up just for the sake of just looking good. I understand if someone wants to eat healthier, but the point of starvation is a little more serious. I think beauty is sometimes a blessing and other times a curse to reach what you think is beauty. Unfortunately, not everyone thinks they are pretty when they really are, so they starve themselves and make them think that they aren't good enough or they need to do more becasue they aren't beautiful. However, they are mostly just thinking too much about each little detail about their body.

12-13-12-17 Blog#1

During this year in Online Publishing, I've learned that writing articles isn't completely horrible, if you're writing something interesting to you. Even though I wouldn't start out writing about things I want, it's still a great experience. I've learned a lot more about myself as a writer in this class than in English 9! My writing process involves my making an organizational, messy web of all my ideas that relate to my thesis. This is for a regular essay though. For articles, I usually just start writing and then modify them as I go along. I myself read it over to make sure there aren't any misspellings or sentence errors. Then I have to have someone else look it over because I might have missed something. I personally love writing creative responses that force me to get my creative juices flowing. I love writing stories and using different types of themes. For example, I really liked when we wrote letters from Santa's elves. That made me think more about my inner child and it was really fun to write about. I don't really like writing research papers just because they are really time consuming and they take longer that a week. Well, they could take a week, but you'd have to have all your sources ready. I don't mind some of the topics to write about, but it still can be a little boring. This class has had a huge impact because I really like writing the blogs and some articles. Even though some of the writing material was really general, like "what is art?" or if they were about someone in the class we didn't know, it was still really fun to give opinions, responses, and write stories. This class was such a good environment too. The random jokes that are said in between the class made it more interesting and a lot less serious than just writing on a computer all class. This class was sincerely one of the more fun classes I've taken in High School.

12-8-12-10 Blog#3

I was relaxing with my friend in my living room one snowy December evening. My friend went in the kitchen to make more hot chocolate for us to drink, and I stayed back and waited. As I was waiting, I began to hear whispers or someone saying, "Psst!" I was really confused so I stood up out off the couch and started walking towards the noise.It was coming from outside so I quickly got my hat and gloves on with a coat and walked outside to see who was calling me. When I got outside, all I saw was my neighbor's garden gnome sitting on my porch. I got really creeped out and picked it up to return it to my neighbors, the Gnominskis. They really like garden gnomes. They liked them so much that they would keep them out all year and dress them up in different seasonal outfits. Anyways, I walked over to the neighbors, and I felt something speak again. This time it said, "Hey, do you want to know what's going on?" I screamed and threw the gnome at the closest tree. It got up and continued to say that it was sent from the ISGP or the Intel Security of the Gnome Population. to help the gnomes next door escape their dredid lives outside during the winter. I told them I would try to help, but how. Then the gnome told me something so drastic and completely overwhelming that I just couldn't do it. He told me that I had to sneek into their house, steal their seasonal outfits for gnomes and burn them on their oven while I tie them up in two chairs and force them to watch. After that I had to find seasonal clothes and dress them up in them and throw them outside where the gnomes would throw them in the snow and do whatever else they wanted to them. I was so confused at the gnome and I don't know if I had a spasm or an impulse, but I just kicked the gnome into the road where he rolled onto the other side ofthe road. He couldn't get back over becasue gnomes can't walk or move. He got on my porch because he was dropped of in that spot. I just went back inside with my friend. She asked me what I was doing outside, and I just told her not to worry about it and that I hope that never happens to her!

12-8-12-10 Blog#2

My favorite childhood game to play when I was at home with the kids my mom babysat would have to be the Lego wars we held. It wasn't an everyday type of thing, but we always played whenever one of my friends would come over. It was me and my friend against the rest of the kids my mom had that day which were about four seven year olds when my friend and I were ten. Anyways, we would start off by building forts on the two sides of my living room. Unfortunately we weren't very fair in separating the property of fort area. The younger kids usually got the smaller section, but it wasn't smaller by much. Their fort wouldn't be that intricate, but It worked for them. My friend and I would always make the biggest fort and most intricate planning. We had three rooms where we could hide from the aerial Lego attacks. The point was just to throw Legos at each other's fort. We would divide the Legos in half for each side to have. Basically we just threw Legos to try and pelt each other with a Lego, and dodge the rest of the Legos coming at you. I don't know why we had so much throwing Legos at each other, but it just made us all laugh at the end of the day. Eventually my mom thought the Legos were a little dangerous to throw at each other, so we modified it to soft sock wars (SSW for short). This wasn't as good as the Legos, but it still let us get our childhood angst out.

12-7-12-10 Blog #1

My favorite childhood television show was definitely Zaboomafoo. This show was about two men who lived in Animal Junction and they always called for a lemur named Zoboomafoo. Zoboomafoo would leap from tree to tree to get to the clubhouse where the two brothers would offer him a treat that lemurs eat like mangos or garbanzo beans. Then a little cartoon would come on to show that a mystery animal is coming on to the show. Then there would be another skit by Zoboo, a character from another cartoon. They would talk about the animal on that day. Then the two brothers would go on an adventure too. They would go to Africa or India, or to whatever place the mystery animal is from. I loved this show mostly because I loved animals when I was younger. I still love animals, but unfortunately Zoboomafoo is never on anymore so I have to watch other shows. When I watched Zoboomafoo, I would get so in to the show. I would dance around with my mom as we watched it with the rest of the kids she babysat. I remember that the kids and I would have Zoboomafoo parties where we'd pretend we had our own little Zoboomafoo lemur that played with us. I know we were a little creepy, but we were young and just having fun (p.s. I know I just rhymed there). Anyways, despite the creepy pretend games I used to play, Zoboomafoo was probably my most favorite childhood T.V. show.

12-3-12-3 Blog #3

Art to me is a form of expression. Artists today are really different in the way they draw or even their ideas of what to draw. For example, artists like Leonardo Da'Vinci were mostly about people and old time concepts. However, today's artists like in school and around cities are bolder about their work. They use a lot of abstract work and more specific concepts. To these artists, drawing, painting, and molding is their way to express themselves. There aren't just artists that pertain to legitimate artistic things, but there are also musical artists and makeup artists or even performance artists. Musical artists find that playing an instrument or singing releases their expressive feelings through song. Makeup artists think as though a person's face is a canvas (as said by a friend of my sister, Ashley). Doing makeup is a very relaxing, but stressful at the same time. They do what helps them express themselves, but they also don't want to mess up, because the makeup they are doing decides if the client will pay them money or not. Makeup artists have a little more ease because if they do mess up, they can always wash it off the persons face. Artists that paint, however, have to blend their mistakes rather than just erase them completely. Artists that draw would be able to erase with pencil, but would have more problems if their project involved markers or sometimes paint. Finally, performance artists mostly show their expression through dance and song. These artists are more emotional in their acts. Some of them can do theatre to express their feelings and emotions. These people are more interesting in the way they act and feel.

Despite the fact that each of these types of artists are very different and special, they all are related to art by one form; expression.