winter wonderland

I promised you all that I would start posting some more of my own pictures, so I guess here you are. All the pictures of my dog were taken on Wednesday, and the picture of these random bikes I saw was taken this morning.The two pictures below were taken yesterday. This is also kind of awkward, since so far, I'm realizing that this is the first time that I've written something composed entirely of my own work. EEEK.
The two pictures below are really terrible, I realize, but the lighting wasn't good and so I was forced to make do with my now creamy-brown-looking walls that are actually pure white. This is a really cool project I'm working on that involves a sort of moodboard. I'll elaborate at the end of the year; I promise!

flashback to when I visited the moon

SO HI.

I have an opinion on everything, but it isn't like you didn't know that already.

And in my opinion, the movie "Smoke Signals" is fantabulous.

In fact, I devised my own traffic report:

7:00A.M: There was a gust of wind!.... And it's gone.

9:00A.M: Exciting news! A car was just seen on the street.... It just drove away.

Now imagine that with a guy sitting on top of a minivan in a chair with an umbrella attached to it. He is looking at this enormous country road and trying to make some news for his radio station. You also see a welcome sign for the town with Population: 59 written on it.

Smoke Signals is HILARIOUS.

I think this is the best quote ever! (The fact that I made it up probably has lots to do with why I love it so much.) I know- it's a little bit on the cheesy side.



















How are things? I'm thinking that I'll start posting a lot more of my own photography. Wbu? (haha- I just learned that one!)

this is the scariest thing I've ever heard

The New York Times published an  article on Sunday that told about a recent research experiment that led to, quite frankly, disaster:

"America much more likely to believe that there are sign that aliens have visited earth (77% of test subjects) than that humans are causing climate change (44% of test subjects)."

Yep. I call that a disaster. 60% of California is experiencing a severe drought right now, and most Americans are still not believing that humans are causing this climate change, but rather that ALIENS HAVE VISITED THE EARTH?! It's a little hard on the mind, if you know what I mean.

Anyhow, today I just felt like writing about all sorts of things, and nothing in particular. Actually, that's what I do every single day, but today just feels special for some reason. Maybe it's the fact that it's Martin Luther King Day and I get a day of from school (shame. I was looking forward to history today), or maybe it's the fact that those pictures from MLK's (let's call him MLK for the sake of not sitting in front of the computer all day) time were so upsetting. Reality, in the end, is probably always the saddest. The harshest of the pictures was definitely the one of a fancy, large, clean water fountain marked "white" and a tiny, grimy, ancient water fountain marked "black". It was definitely the quietest of the pictures, yet so powerfully moving.

I'm glad that those days are over- if they weren't, many of the friends I have today would be very different people.

I went on a walk with Bubby and she started mountain climbing. I was really proud of her, because when you look at my dog the first time, she looks extremely cute but otherwise average. When you get to know her a little, she is so not athletic (no offense cookie!), but I'm going to blame that on a giant diet of treats every day.

Do you have a pet that you really love? Tell me about him or her!

TeenVogue had Selena Gomez on their cover two months ago, I think. Now, I shouldn't complain to much, since I actually look at the pictures in TeenVogue myself (I don't bother to read fashion magazines), but what sort of gave me a little "oomph" was when I heard someone say, "TeenVogue is more a dream magazine than a reality magazine." Intrigued, I Googled it. I was extremely surprised when I learned what Photoshop can help you do. (Search it up yourself: you'll probably be surprised as well!)

I'm rereading what I wrote today, and it actually does all go in for one theme: scary things that are happening recently. I'm pretty sure that this is the first time that has ever happened!

What do you guys think about all these?

Note: This was  pare-scheduled post again, and I did actually write this on Monday, January 20, Martin Luther King Day.

rainbow confetti

Ahhhh….. I think everyone loves confetti, no?

Have you ever noticed that all the bad guys in movies have either French, Russian, or German accents? Well, not literally   all, but most. I could sit here all day making a list of movies in which the bad guys have accents. 

This. is the shortest post I have ever. written, but on the other hand, you are probably thankful to not be hearing me blabber on and on about the weirdest of things.
 
I just watched the movie "Frozen". It was excellent!
My favorite quote of the day:
"Where to, miss?"
"To the stars."
Titanic

originality and pop-up colors and life

Huh. OKAY then... That absolutely makes ZERO sense. I'm talking about the title here.
I usually don't make sense.
Is it very obvious?
Probably.
Alright. I changed the title just now. It used to be "Originality Comes on the Side of a Milk Carton". You're allowed to laugh, no hard feelings.

People try very hard to be their ideal of perfect. It's like, "Hey! This person looks SO cool! Lemme be that person version 2.0!" I've gotten that feeling before. Everyone probably has. Usually, though, it never works out. You can look like someone all you want, but your personality will never really change. There is this quote that I really like: "You're SO pretty, but your personality ruined it." I stole that from my friend, so don't quote me on this one.

The reason I'm talking about this is because of Tavi Gevinson's talk in the Melbourne Writer's Festival. Okay. It's REALLY late for that, since the speech was last year (it sounds so much farther away than saying "one month ago"). And, everyone has heard of Tavi Gevinson by now, I'm pretty sure. Well, in any case, I just got around to watching her speech on Vimeo. What I really admire about it is that every single word was so true... but so funny, and so easy to listen to. Maybe one of these days I'll be just as good and calm about public speaking as Tavi, but until then, I think I have quite a long way to go.



Someone once told me that almost every smile you see from someone is fake. There are so many reasons to fake a smile, it seems: you're upset but you don't want anyone to know, you don't like a person but you feel like you have to make an effort to be nice, or you might just not feel like smiling on a particular day but circumstances are forcing you to. But then again, some people feel like they can never truly smile. Some people don't smile because they never want to. I don't know. When you think about it, it's the saddest thing ever.

Let's move on to the cheerful things. Hmmm... Let's start with collages and that sort of thing.
I CAN'T make collages. Believe me, I've tried everything. "Copying" collages in NylonMag, trying to use examples from all of your blogs (those of you that do collages, I mean), and much more. Until now, my collages looked um.... like, well.... pictures? But now I FINALLY made a collage that sort of actually looks like a collage and I am so proud of it. I've also started a kind of cool project for my room that will go on through the entire 2014 that I'm planning to share with you all tomorrow. I still have to scan the collage and share it, too!

Chewing gum is kind of gross, in my opinion. What seems even more disgusting is the fact that bubble gum makes VERY good art (as you can see with the Tumblr animation). Ugh. Wow! Eeek. SO COOL! SO PRETTY! *repulse* I have extremely mixed feelings about bubble gum.

Sparkles and lambs make very good art, too.

EDIT:

I was scrolling through my pictures and I came across this. HOW COOL IS IT? I have no idea how this happened, but I know that I took a picture of the glass bubbles. Huh.

all funny stories minus one + featuring the "does Mars have pizza?" story

SO much that I have to tell you about, starting with funny things. Well, I actually don't have any funny things, because by the time I got around to moving my couch-potato-self over to the computer, I  COMPLETELY forgot everything funny that I desperately wanted to tell the world. In my defense, it isn't like I'm unfit. In fact, after running intensely and haphazardly up and down the steepest stairs you've ever seen for three minutes, my average heart beat is only 68 (per minute). That, dear stranger, means that I am quite fit. I was really shocked. (Info credits: a science experiment I did on myself after feeling bad for being too lazy to do ANYTHING. I decided to resolve my worries and obey my mother's pleads that I go outside for a bit by doing something educational.)
So, how is your world going? Does Mars have pizza? I feel like everyone lives on a different planet these days. (I'm actually expecting you to answer that by saying "Life is good!" or something equally mainstream.) My best friend hasn't spoken to me in *counts* four months, but that is probably because we live two hours apart now and she NEVER uses her from-the-age-of-Egyptian-pyramids Nokia phone unless there is a real, ENORMOUS emergency. Plus, this is the modern age, and in the modern age, calling someone with your phone is overrated. Says every teen I can think of. So I guess that in the end, it's kind of obvious that I won't keep my last strands of communication wiht my old best friend. *Adds weeping in the background for full effects.*

Dear poofy slippers,
I am very mad at you.
Especially the right one of you.
Because you, dear poofy slipper,
Let yourself get eaten up by my dog.
That certainly wasn't very smart of you.
Next time, I expect you to be more careful.
All the best,
Amelie.
(May 17, 2007)

I really hope you guys have a great weekend and a fantastic remainder of today!
I would love if you guys told me your favorite of these photo filters:
-vintage
-clean
-morning
-dusty
-dark
-other
Thanks everyone!

Love, Amelie

i was playing dress up and now i think i'm wearing lipstick as concealer or something but i'm not sure because there's nothing written on the tube.

*cough. cough* HI! Before I go on, this is a pre-scheduled post meaning I wrote this about five days ago (wait. no. today? I wrote this today. But you're reading this in five days... bah. way too confusing.). That being said, I currently have no idea about what happened yesterday, the day before that, no- tomorrow, the day... I give up. This is really confusing.
Okay. Today is Sunday, and I was playing dress-up even though I totally know that I am WAY too old to do this and by the time Thursday actually rolls around, I'm going to regret writing this. I found some sort of lip-gloss-looking tube, but I remember seeing it posted on Poylvore as a concealer. I have basically never worn makeup in my life, so I experimented. It was DISGUSTING. Or maybe I'm just saying that because I'm not used to have weird globs of paste smeared all over me. And before you say that I probably had no clue what I was doing (I didn't), I used Michelle Phan's videos. Okay then. My point is made for everyone to see and for me to get ridiculed, but so far, I'm not regretting it as predicted. Oh! And I'm never wearing makeup again for at least another five years. That's final.
On the happy note... I still feel really bad for writing a post about such a heart breaking movie earlier today (Sunday). So I guess I feel in-need to post something happy.

Here's what's new. Basically pretty daisies and vintage-y things that I really like. I especially love the way a night sky looks with a vintage filter- same thing with the drawings of the balloons. I always wonder where these trends come up from.
Right now it's Wednesday and I'm editing this. And, nope, so far I'm still not regretting this entry. So FAR.

Have a lovely Friday!

Amelie

blackfish

Okay. Here is the shock of the morning: how much do you know about killer whales, aka. orcas? I think they're adorable (well, now i think they're adorable). Before I didn't think they were adorable. But that was before I watched this movie. I know the website looks really scary and creepy and all of that, so you can just go around the long way and watch the movie on Netflix or something.
My shock after watching this movie started when I really, really wanted to go to SeaWorld in California. My mom read some sort of article on this movie, and suggested we watch it to learn more about SeaWorld and to see if I would still want to visit afterwards. (I was basically thinking, "Of course I'll still want to go to SeaWorld! Everyone I know has gone and everyone says it's the coolest place ever!")
Okay. Let's put a stop sign up in the road for a moment. Blackfish is a movie about orcas (in particular a giant male named Tilikum) who were illegally captured young in the wild and grew up in the harsh reality of- can you guess? Famous amusement parks. Orcas, contrary to popular belief, are extremely docile and gentle creatures, especially in the wild. They have a part of the brain that even humans don't have. It allows them to process emotions. (Imagine being able to look at someone and knowing what emotion they were feeling!) In the wild, orcas live a very close-knit family life, with lots of emotions. Females will live 100 or more years, and males will live 50-60 years. When they are captured, however, they lose their family. They are kept in tiny tubs and forced to do things in order to get fed. They also live usually no more than 25 years. And Tilikum, who is currently being kept in Orlando, Florida, is living a pretty horrible life- so horrible, in fact, that he was driven enough to kill multiple trainers. In the wild, this would never happen.
People are saying that Tilikum is dangerous and should be stopped from having interactions with people. Not only is Tilikum's aggression SeaWorld's fault, but it they also refuse to give him a better life because he is simply too valuable. That, dear readers, is something that I count as multiple offenses. It simply ISN'T humane. At all.
Knowing that whales like Tilikum are still being illegally captured and wrongly treated breaks my heart. It isn't okay. Not only is it dangerous and awful for the whale, but it is also dangerous for humans in the long run.
I know that this was a really serious and potentially boring post, but I feel like this is something people should really care about. (Well, many do care already. Court cases have been done against SeaWorld and all that, but so far, nothing is helping.)

These were all scenes from the movie. There are simply too many good ones to really pick, so i just randomly selected a bunch.
My new dream is to save them and Tilikum. Even though they can't go back to the wild due to their potential inability to care for themselves, people are contemplating building HUGE half-pens near the coast for them. They would probably be able to swim free, but be able to come back to a certain place each day to get the food they need.

I love you, whalsies! 

-Amelie.

in which amelie talks all about how fabulous she thinks writing is.

Okay. Let's admit, we all get those moments where we're suddenly inspired to start a journal or write a book or SOMETHING. (I feel like I'm pointing to myself right now.) Heh... I've probably started, what? Umm... *counts on fingers* one, two, three, twenty, about twenty-seven journals that I've only written one page in. Wbu? (I love love love those three letters- I recently learned this was an abbreviation for "what about you".)

Long story short, I am NOT patient.

Long story short, I've always been a perfectionist. This means that (let's pretend) I create an instagram, and one of the pictures ruins the vibe of the other pictures, I have to restart the whole entire thing. Let's just say that the case is similar with diaries, journals, projects, tumblr blogs, and whatever else I've started in my short lifetime but not finished. As you can tell, my case is quite dramatic.

So I made another New Year's Resolution. Two, actually. The first is that I won't quit doing anything this year, and the second is that I will create a notebook titled "2014" that I will keep even if I have to half-kill myself in the process of doing it. (Let's see how long this lasts, shall we? hee, hee...)

But seriously. I think writing is the best thing on this planet. Because, of course, without writing, there would be no blogging *gasp*. Without writing, there would be no books and stories *GASP*. Without writing, there would be no social media *yowl*. Well, actually, the only one of these three prospect tragedies I actually care about is the books one. And blogging is also kind of fun. Social media usually is overrated after using it for a couple of months (in all honesty). 

Let's take a moment and reflect on the history of writing.

3200 BCE: Mesopotamia creates a writing system. Thank you, my dear chummies for making sure my life was complete!

3400 BCE: (By now, it's already not going in order anymore.) Egypt invented hieroglyphs. Uh... useful? Pictures? (Well, thanks anyway Tut or whoever was reigning at the time!)

The rest remains to be history (hardy har har... aren't I funny? Just kidding.)

Okay. Back to the main point, which I feel like I left in the very first sentence. Oh well. I'm planning to write a book. I have NO idea about what. However, I just really want to. It would feel like such a great achievement, and it would make me incredibly happy and proud to have actually completed (and not ditched) a project that takes more than one day. 

In the meantime, I have a question for all of you: 

 

London, Paris, or New York? TELL ME WHY! (I choose Paris. I live in New York, so there is zero point in choosing that. Also, New York is so not as fabulous as people make it out to be. Also, London has way too much rain. Sorry Londoners! Paris, though, is not only where I basically come from, but it's also pretty and romantic and has good food, which you can't say for that many places.)

seaweed, spaetzle, and bacon (and re-do's, or however you spell it)

I am not kidding when I say that one of my favorite foods is seaweed. Of course, it has to be roasted until it's as crunchy as a potato chip, salted until it tastes like a potato chip, and then I'll eat it. It also took me a really long time to learn to like seaweed.
Spaetzle are a German noodle-type food that feels like a cross between Gnocchi (if you don't know what that is, there is always Mrs. Google to ask) and pasta. I liked those right away.
Bacon is...well... bacon. Not much to say about it. I think everyone in who can speak the English language also knows what THAT is.

If every person had one chance to redo their entire life, I'm guessing 99% of the average population would happily take up that chance. (Including, I'll confess, me.) Because, obviously, we've all had at least one moment that we'd like to think of as "successful" but that in truth was "a down-right shame". There is this wonderful aspect of redoing a part of your life that simply seems incredibly wonderful, to me at least. If I could redo something in my life, it would be that one time in which I chose to play cello as my school instrument. My parents kept warning me that it was a lot of, well... instrument, and that it was heavy, and that I would probably end up regretting switching from violin to an instrument like cello? I only said, "Oh, plech! Don't worry! I'll love it!" hmmm.....

What would you redo?

Love, Amelie

obsession: ballet (which i quit a long time ago, and it's a thing i think i regret.)

 

Picture One

Picture Two

Picture Three

Ballet, in my opinion, is the most equally beautiful and stressful sport there is. I know that technically, it isn't a sport but rather an art form, but still. Ballet is much more work, let's admit it, than art usually is.

I think the prettiest part of ballet is the way the dancer's body moves. If you watch a video of it on YouTube, lets say, you will probably notice how the dancer is always in this fluid motion, never stopping, but never looking clumsy or out of breath either (unless it's intended). 

You know how I told you that I really just don't do flexibility? Maybe I didn't. Bah. I have a set of unflexible genes from my dear daddy to thank for that. I can't even touch my toes (and here is the enormous secret: on my school's flexibility test, I got a negative score). *groan* It was kind of obvious that ballet wouldn't work out for me from the start, judging at my failure to perform the "touch your toes" and the "butterfly" stretches. On the other hand, my mom is always complaining about how intensely I ride, because riding apparently stubs up and thickens your thighs and thigh muscles. She says ballet would loosen and stretch them out a little more. Plus, ballet makes you not slouch (heh... heh...) and makes you look a bit prettier when you walk. 

Okay. I shouldn't be saying anything anymore, because ballet didn't work out for me. Period.

Well then. Other things on the menu:

  

The Source

Please meet my new pet unicorn, straight off my Tumblr feed. :) :) :) *wuv you*

 

The Source

Cara Delevigne has the coolest nerd glasses. They make me so jealous. Who would have though giant glasses would make it into my mind someday? (For the record, my eyesight so far is impeccable. Which means that glasses make me dizzy. So if i got these nerd glasses, I would probably need to get the actual glass part removed. *sigh*)

  

Finally, I wanted to show you a picture THAT I TOOK (which makes me really proud) of my little heaven, where I always walk my dog. They have this giant cobblestone promenade, with a lake and wild fields on one side, and the rocky beach on the other. It is wonderful. 

See you tomorrow!

the raven boys

• Author: Maggie Stiefvater
• Series: Raven Cycle
• Pages: 400

Here is the source.

The Raven Boys is (so far) a two book series that simply gets more and more astonishing.

Here is my summary: 

It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.

Blue Sargent goes to the graveyard every year to meet and welcome the newly dead. Then she meets a boy who says his name is Gansey. He goes to Aglionby, the school for the rich boys. Also known as the Raven Boys, they're only trouble- to Blue.
         
Blue, however, is attracted to Gansey in a way that she can't explain on her own. She's always been     warned that she would cause her true love to die. Being in love is a dangerous thing.

In enter the other boys that are part of Gansey's life: Adam, the uptight, always-polished, and high-grade scholarship-fund guy, Ronan, who keeps all his emotions quenched inside, and their siblings. Along with Blue, they're in for an adventure.

 I apologize. It is not a very good summary- but I'll get better at them, I promise.
I am totally, completely, entirely in love with Maggie Stiefvater, but The Raven Boys made sure of it that she is now my favorite author. The book has a bit of a magical touch to it: Blue Sargent's mother is a psychic, Blue knows that Gansey is about to die but befriends him anyway, and most of all, Gansey (who is rich and popular and seems to have every sort of good quality imaginable) is looking for a Welsh king who existed in the 1500's. You'd think that a boy like Gansey would rather not do the work himself, especially considering that Blue's first encounter with the living Gansey results in her calling him the "Cell-Phone President".

Maggie mixes real magic with the seemingly-impossible reality, too. Ronan can bring back things from dreams. Maura, Blue's mother, can see people's secrets. Most of all, the group's adventures rely mostly on finding the depths and hidden parts of the magical ley lines (even though as of now, their purpose is admittedly not entirely clear; but we have yet to wait for the next book).

I also find the characters to be fantastically developed. Blue remains to be a sort of mystery- we get some of her personality, but when we think we're about to find something else about her, the story veers off. Gansey has a mouth that often gets him into trouble, almost the way Blue has a mouth that can easily be angered. Gansey always hides his emotions, is great at persuading people, and is quick to give up money to help his friends. Adam is proud, and refuses to get anyone's help against his abusive father, financial troubles, and worries. Ronan, on the other hand, is also darkly proud. However, he prefers to use physical strength over words and emotions. I often feel like Ronan is the hardest character to truly understand, mostly because of how he acts- but once you get farther into the story, Ronan seems like he has the best heart of all at times.

Finally, I can't stop expressing my wonderment for the plot. Ghosts, but then a normal world? A normal world, but then a world from a dream? I never stopped getting surprised- but in a good way. The story unfolds deliciously, and I felt like it was the end of the world when I finished both of the currently-published books. It's agonizing to think that there is no release date yet for the upcoming third book.

That's how in love I am.

I also hope you enjoyed my first-ever proper book review! I really enjoyed writing it, so there are certainly going to be many to come.

i don't even believe myself when i say that i've never even made a resolution list, even though I actually haven't.

HI again. It is officially next year. Well, it is officially 2014. Despite what I said yesterday in 2013, it still feels like last year. Now I confused myself. Time is so weird.

In Australia, it was 3:00pm when it was midnight over here. In other words, when we were in the countdown, still in 2013, Australia had already spent a jolly night and were in 2014. Like I said before, time is so weird.

Okay. I have officially never made a set of resolutions. All of my friends have been doing it for ages, except I haven't. So in other words, I think it's high time.

  

This is my dog. We spent New Year's in the Hamptons together.

I'm calling it my scrunchy list, after my dear American Apparel scrunchy hair tie. I love that you can stretch and poke it all you want, but it's never going to stop working perfectly. 

1. Read Romeo and Juliet in its original form. I think that it is probably worth it, even though Shaplespeare was admittedly a little too fond about murdering his characters in the most tragic of ways.

2. Think before saying anything. I decided that before sayontgg anything, I'll count to two and rethink what I'm about to say. My mouth and impatience usually get me into unpleasant situations- or maybe it's just that I am way too blunt. Come to think of it, that is probably a very good explanation.

3. Clean my room. Redecorate the second floor of my room. While we're at it, I'll also redecorate the first floor of my room. (If you're confused: my room has a door with a flight of stairs in the corner, and it leads up to an extra room.) I haven't cleaned up or redesigned anything in the last.... 3 years? 4 years? (Hopefully not.)

4. Practice piano and cello more. Or flute. I still haven't really decided between cello and flute, and it is certainly time that I did. I need to also get more patient when I'm playing instruments. Not being perfect right away drives me nuts. It's not exactly a strength when you talk about music.

5. Improve my photography. I am really inspired by tumblr and all the vintage pictures that people are into these days. Alas, so far, my pictures have always turned out... Slightly... Off?

6. Travel the world and go zip lining at every destination possible. Ooh! And go white water rafting while I'm at it, too.