Photo Hunt

I did the photo hunt with stuff from around my home since I didn't have the ones from school saved. Some of them are out of order, the computer wouldn't let me fix that.

For something square I went with my water bottle. I think it is cool how the company decided to go against the norm of a round bottle. #H2O

Someone who makes me laugh/ smile would be Pickles. He is one of my three adorable hamsters. He always does the funniest and cutest things. #Hammy

Someone who has taught me something would be my girl hamster, Polly. She has taught me to not let challenges get in my way, and to just keep going forward. #hammyinspiration

Audrey Hepburn is someone I want to be more like. I feel like she is one of the those timeless and classic ladies and they are usually the best to be like. #Audrey

This book is an altered book that I made as an assignment for class. It was really fun and I think I would do it again. #books

I chose this happy face mug for my something round because it is just so bright and cheery and of course because its round. And it’s nice to keep on my desk to brighten the place up. #Happyface

I wanted to see what it would look like if a took a picture from the top of the lamp looking down. I think it turned out pretty cool. #Shedsomelight

I recently had to write a list of 101 things about myself and here is a picture of it, ok, part of it, I used this for my picture of something handwritten. #101things

For my picture of something from nature, I actually used a picture that I had on my phone of a plant in the courtyard at school. #Littlebitofnature

I usually think that electrical outlets look like little faces. So I used this picture for something that looks like a face but isn’t really. #hiddenfaces

I took a picture of this jar of candy because I think this is something that a little kid might notice and like. #needmorecandy

I chose this little tin box with a rabbit on it for something that brings back memories. It has been in the family for a long time housing sewing supplies. #SewingstuffNOTcookies

I chose the vacuum as something that irritates me and probably others. Probably just chores in general. #nomorechores

I chose this picture that I already had of flowers for my something beautiful. I always like flowers. I also like the pretty colors they have and how they can help have a happier feel in the air. #prettyflowers

All of the years that I was at KHS I was in FCCLA, Family Career and Community Leaders of America, it’s a great club, I loved it, and seeing anything about it reminds me of my time at KHS. #FCCLA

Creative Writing Final Reflection

1.)  We did a lot of different writing pieces this semester. Including posts to our blogs. Some of which have been things we were asked to write in our journals, like our window poem. A poem where you picture a widow in your head and you imagine that you are looking through it and you look left and right and describe what you see in a short and sweet kind of way. And we originally wrote a couple of them in our journal and then posted one on our blog. We did that with a bunch of our posts. Although not all of them were like that. We were given a topic of what to post and weather we put it in our journal or not was up to us. We did that with our scary story. Sometimes we were asked to go on to our classmates’ blogs and read some of their writings and leave positive comments, and maybe some advice on how they could have written something differently. It was nice reading others comments and seeing what they had to say about my writing. We also had some creative pieces. Like this one time when we were using color as inspiration, we got these paint chips and had to write a haiku using the names of the colors. That was really fun. We also got one of those paint chip strips with seven different shades of the same general color and had to write a poem using the names of the colors.

That one was also fun. We had these journals that we had to write in and we had them checked to make sure we had a certain number of full pages. A majority of the pages came from our different writing activities but not all of them which gave us the opportunity to write whatever we wanted outside of class, which helps inspire creativity.

2.)    I don’t read much out of class and didn’t read too much in class. But it was nice to read the work of my classmates and to see the different writing styles. Like the lists of 101 things that they wrote about themselves. It is really neat to be able read little things about them that they were willing to share.

3.)    At first I was kind of scared about setting up a blog. I didn’t really know how it worked and didn’t really know where to go with it. But getting this far and having as many posts as I do has been a really cool experience. I feel like it is a cool and easy way to share my writings with my family and they love it. I think I have gotten a little bit more confidence about my writing abilities after seeing the wonderful comments from fellow classmates and my teacher. I came up with the name for my blog because I love my name and I love things that have my name in them so “quoth the RAVEN nevermore” (and my name being Raven) came to mind and I just loved it. I also like how it’s the title of this poem by Edgar Allen Poe and his stuff tends to be a little bit on the dark side, and I think that it’s a little ironic that I like it because I feel like I’m this sweet little thing, all sunshine and rainbows over here and then there is my like of Edgar Allen Poe. I know that others in my class have read it and my teacher, as well as my mom, and my aunt. I’m not sure if anybody else has read it. I think it would be cool to have somebody from another country like London, read it, and comment on it.  I think it would be cool to get an opinion from someone from far away. I haven’t decided if I want to continue to use my blog. I think it would be cool if I did, I think I might get busy and forget about it but it would be cool. I would probably post more short stories and more poems. I might use it as a way of journaling, but I’m not sure.

4.)    Journaling was sometimes hard for me, especially if I had to come up with stuff to write to fill the pages. But at other times it was kind of surprising how quickly I filled up pages, and how it was fun to do so. The type of stuff that is in my journal… hmm… I feel like it is mostly things that I was asked to put in there, like the different writing activities we had. Like a couple of times when we had this weird little line and then we had to finish the picture and then write a short story about it. But some of what is in my journal I came up with on my own. Like a poem I came up with after getting a list of big events that have happened in my lifetime. I don’t know if I would want anyone to read my journal. Most of the things in my journal that I would be ok with others reading are already on my blog for everyone to see. And my journal is kind of like the spot where I tried out different stories and stuff and they aren’t very well written and I don’t really want others reading it.  I don’t think I will continue my journal. If I did it would continue to just be a place to try stories and see how they are on paper.

5.)      An entry from my journal:

    

In the world around me,

I see,

I see the girl next to me with phone in hand,

I see the notebook that I’m writing in.

I see the pen in my hand.

I see my phone resting on my backpack on the table.

I see another girl, not sure what she’s doing

With her back turned towards me.

In the world around me,

I see,

Love,

Hate,

Racism,

Judgment,

Sexism,

Criticism,

I see,

Pride,

I see,

Fancy houses fancy car.

And very occasionally,

I see,

The humble.

For some like me it is hard to see these kind of things.

I see them and I wonder why, why there has to be such a harsh difference, why can’t there be more love and equality?

Why does someone always have to outdo the other?

I see,

Things I don’t want to see,

Like war,

And heartache.

Every now and then I see,

Love,

Peace,

Inclusion,

Why can’t it always be like that? That is what I will never understand.

6.)    A passage I find notable from my blog would be the following:

A Link in Time

As I dug, my small hand shovel hit something hard.  I thought it was just a rock, as it is very rocky out here. I decided to just dig around it, but I kept hitting whatever it was.  I finally decided to try to uncover it and see what it was so I could try to move it. As I brushed away the dirt on top, what I thought was a rock was actually, much to my surprise, a wooden box.  As I tried to uncover it more and retrieve this newly found treasure I thought about how it got here and why it was here.  Why was it a few feet from the big tall tree that I loved to escape to? Why was it out here a few acres from the farm house we moved into a few years ago? What could be inside? Did the person who buried it want it to be found?

As I tried to unbury and gather up the box I thought about the history of this area. I thought about how soldiers, young men from small families, lived in this area. One had even lived in my house back then. I wondered if he was the one who buried the box.

I finally got a hold of the box. I flipped the lid open to see what was inside. There was an old lock, heavy and a little dirty. There was also two interlocking chain links. One of the last two things was a small, pressed, white flower. And lastly a note written in almost perfect cursive. Written to a young man from the girl he loved.

The note talked about how she told him to look for this box, buried a few feet from the tree they would always meet at, when he got home from the war. It also talked about how the small, pressed flower represented the small, white flowers he would always give her when they met by the tree. The lock, that she had randomly found, represented that he had the key to her heart. And at last the two chain links represented that they would always be connected especially in heart.

I thought about what I had just seen and read. I thought about it seemed like he never came back, never looked for the box. This was the part of me that knew the reality that not very man made it back. But the romantic side of me thought that he did make it back and was fine and was so in love with her and happy to be back that he went straight to her forgetting about the box.  I decided to go with the latter idea. I also decided to rebury the box. Knowing that by now they would both have been dead for many years.  I reburied it so just in case their spirits wanted to visit it they could.

7.)    I don’t really plan on doing much creative writing in the future. If I do it would be short stories, or poetry. Which is pretty much the same kind of stuff I write now.

8.)    All of my classmates have been so great to work with this semester, and so has our wonderful teacher. Thanks to those who left the nice comments on my blog. You are all talented and gifted writers. Don’t give up on writing if it is what you love. Same for any other goals, don’t give up, don’t let others get you down, you can do whatever you want even if your circumstances don’t seem very favorable.

101 Things

The following is a list of random things about me, and it is in no certain order.
1.) I like ice cream even when it is cold outside.
2.) I am a picky eater.
3.) I find it hard to think of 101 things about myself.
4.) I love orange cinnamon rolls, and cinnamon rolls in general.
5.) If I had to have a favorite spice it would be cinnamon. My second would be cloves because I love the way it smells, especially with oranges.
6.) I love having my nails painted (especially by somebody else).
7.) I love movies and I especially love watching them with my mom.
8.) My mom and I are very close.
9.) My favorite TV. shows are Psych and Boy Meets World and Switched at Birth.
10.) I love my 3 hamsters, Pickles, Chips, and Polly. They are part of the family. And they are adorable. Pickles and Chips are robo (short for Roborovski) dwarf hamsters. And Polly is an albino polar bear hamster, I think she is inspiration for me, because even though she is blind and can't hear too well she doesn't let that stop her, and I feel like I shouldn't let anything stop me.
11.) My favorite kind of dog is golden retrievers. They are quite possibly the sweetest dogs on earth. Which is probably why they are most common for therapy dogs.
12.) My favorite kind of cat would be Persian, exotic short hair, or rag doll cat.
13.) I love baking. It is probably one of my favorite things.
14.) Glitter and I, have a love/hate relationship. I love glitter, it can help make things a lot more fun and cheery but I hate having a big mess of it.
15.) I love all things colorful. 
16.) I have dabbled in different types of art. And have liked some of them every now and then.
17.) Although I do love photography. I love what it can do. I like how it freezes a moment in time.
18.) I don’t like using stand mixers for cooking as much as I thought that I would. It takes away the fun of mixing stuff the good old fashioned way.
19.) I love stained glass. And I love making it. If I could afford it I would do a lot more of it but it is pretty expensive craft.
20.) I kind of like sewing. But not long sewing projects.
21.) I like mad libs. I like how if u put in a few words that don’t really go can change the whole story and potentially make it funnier than it was going to be.

22.) I like henna and I like that you can get really beautiful designs with it.

23.) I would love to go to Greece.

24.) I like that there are so many different fonts. I also like how if you simply change the font that you can change the tone of something.

25.) I love crafts.

26.) I am not ashamed of my love of unhealthy foods.

27.) I hate doing chores like laundry and dishes.

28.) I like sign language and would love to be fluent in it. I know a little bit which I think is cool but I think it would be even cooler if I knew more.

29.)  I love all things chocolate. Chocolate by its self, chocolate milk, chocolate cake, brownies etc.

30.) My favorite perfumes are White Diamonds by Elizabeth Taylor, and The Red Door by Elizabeth Arden.

31.) Just recently I learned what netball is and what pakoras are.

32.) My first and only car, so far, is a white Saturn sedan. And I love it.

33.) Being frugal is my thing. I hate spending more than $5. Not that I haven’t or can I just don’t like to.

34.) Math was my worst subject. Next worse would be science.

35.) I broke my arm but never got a cast for it.

36.) I’ve had 13 teeth pulled.

37.) I wish I was better at singing and dancing.

38.) I also wish that I wasn’t so shy.

39.) Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day.

40.) I am ambidextrous. Something I find very cool.

41.) I am most comfortable at home in my pajamas.

42.) I might have a slight addiction to Pinterest.

43.) I am terrible with doorknobs and trying to open doors. Especially when I am at someone else’s house and I am trying to leave and I can’t open the door and they usually have to help me. It’s kind of like not knowing how the shower works at a friend’s house.

44.) I have a way of being really organized. Well, ok when I put my mind to it that is.

45.) I like looking at short stories of people doing nice things, like the “faith in humanity restored” type things. It makes me happy to see that kind of stuff and helps me want to do nice things to others.

46.) My favorite color is pink.

47.) I like walking 5ks. I don’t run. Not that I can’t or won’t, I just don’t.

48.) I have done about 5 5ks.

49.) 3 out of those 5 were for charity, which is something I like to do, you know help the less fortunate.

50.) My family helps out Project Linus. Which is an organization that makes blankets for kids who are underprivileged or in the hospital.

51.) I like making haikus and some other poetry. My mom says that I’m so good that I make it look easy.

52.) I like wearing mismatched socks.

53.) I like to separate my candy,  like M&Ms and Skittles, in to groups based on their colors.

54.)I love having my picture taken. Except for when I don’t know that it happened. In pretty much all of my pictures from when little you can see that, I would always pose for the camera. My mom says that I was, and still am, a ham.

55.) I have lived in 3 states.

56.) I like Dr. Seuss quotes, like “Today you are you and that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you.

57.) When I was little I loved Lilo and Stitch and Rugrats.

58.) I love Disney movies.

59.) When I was little one of my teachers put shaving cream on our desks and we just got to play with it. It was so much fun.

60.) I liked the Junie B. Jones books when I was younger.

61.) I hate camping.

62.) I hate bugs.

63.) I like taking personality quizzes and other just for fun quizzes.

64.) I broke my I-phone screen a month after I could’ve used my 1-year warranty.

65.) I really liked my altered book project.

66.) I love listening to music.

67.) I love doodling (especially on things that should not be doodled on, like class notes and assignments).

68.) I love tearing up magazines and getting pictures and words that I like.

69.) I hate finals.

70.) I hate tests.

71.) I got Servsafe certified.

72.) I can’t believe that I’m halfway done with my senior year.

73.) I don’t like reading.

74.) I really hope that I haven’t repeated anything.

75.) I love Christmas.

76.) I love the food at Thanksgiving.

77.) I get excited about my birthday about a month before.

78.) I love polka dots.

79.) I hope to be a stay-at-home mom when I am older.

80.) I’ve had braces for the past 2 almost 3 years.

81.) I do not like having braces.

82.) I love 1950’s styled dresses.

83.) I wish I could go on a shopping spree where I could get anything and everything I wanted for free.

84.) I like wearing jewelry, but I forget to wear it.

85.) I like dressing up, but not for long periods of time.

86.) I used to like Hello Kitty stuff.

87.) I want to go to Hollywood and meet celebs.

88.) Disney World is one of the places I want to go to.

89.) I like going to Barnes & Noble looking for books to try. I also like the atmosphere there.

90.) I like learning how things are made by watching videos.

91.) I like learning weird things like the history of graham crackers and Velcro.

92.) I’m happy that I can read and write.

93.) I’m glad I can use all of my 5 senses.

94.) I like wearing black. I’m told it’s a good color on me.

95.) I go on Pinterest every day.

96.) I want to travel to faraway places, but I am scared to fly.

97.) I like scrapbooking, but it’s so expensive.

98.) I get annoyed by hot glue strings.

99.) I can’t believe I got all the way to 99 things about me.

100.) I like fall weather.

101.) I like painting abstract. 

Food for Thought

Hmm… Food. Just lovely food. I like food. Food, food is good. I love almost all things food. I even like cooking food. I love to bake, but cooking can be fun too. Baking is apparently a gift of mine, or so I’m told. I can bake almost anything. I don’t think there is something that I have tried to bake that hasn’t worked. I like to think of my ability to bake more as a gift to share with others. But I won’t talk about that. Like I said earlier I like to cook. So much so that I took two out of three of the cooking classes offered at my school and I am currently going to the local community college in the culinary arts program. It is a lot of fun. I love to learn how to make foods I didn’t know how to make before. The one thing I don’t like is trying all of it. Now you may be thinking “But I thought she said she loved all things food and cooking?” Yes that is correct, I am a picky eater. A very picky eater. Is that so wrong? Maybe, hmm, maybe I should work on that. That probably won’t happen. Anyways back to me not liking to try all of the food, yes, I just can’t bring myself to do it. I like learning how to cook things but I don’t like trying all of them. Every now and then I will try something new but I usually don’t like it so that discourages me from trying new things. I feel like I should clarify that if it is dessert I will almost always try it. But there aren’t many desserts that I haven’t had. I can’t really say that about actually making the desserts. But I can say that I have made many pies. I think one of my only memories about food would be about pie. In my one of my culinary classes we made these small apple pies, and we got to take them home. I toke mine home to my mom and she loved. And she loved my pie crust she said it was the best she had ever seen. That’s about it though, so I think I will stop there. I feel like I could talk about food for a very long time.

Poem Inspired by Collins

Growing up means:
Saying goodbye,
Goodbye to the naptime,
so taken for granted.
Goodbye to nothing big,
or important, or serious to keep track of.
And saying goodbye as you are taken,
taken from what you didn't know you had.
Growing up also means:
Saying hello to jobs and
not enough time in the day.
As well as a lot bigger expectations.
And a longing for the past.

Childrens book

Title: The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs
Author: Jon Scieszka

The author bio is in the back of the book. It says that the author lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife and their 2 children. He is a writer and a teacher.
The cover of the book is styled like a newspaper. The title of the book is the big bold headline of the newspaper. It has a picture of a wolf, that is wearing a suit and glasses, that is seeming to huff and puff in the direction of three little pigs.
There are about 28 pages.
The characters are:
-The "Big Bad" wolf
-The three little pigs
The setting of this story starts out in the wolf's house, then the three little pigs houses, as well as the road from his house to theirs, and at the end is the prison.
A short summary of this book is that the wolf, usually know as the bad guy, tells his side of the story of the three little pigs. He was just going to the pigs houses to ask for a simple cup of sugar for a cake for his granny. The first two houses only came down because they weren't built very well and came falling down from his huffing and puffing from sneezing from his cold.
This book has the following:
-animals as characters 
-use humor, some people might not find parts of it humorous, like where the wolf eats the pigs, but it is told in what is supposed to be a light hearted way.
-uses illustrations
-uses color
-it seems to use a little bit of actual photographs
-at the beginning it has kind of a nice tone
-a good amount of words per page, not too many, not too few
-a few words/phrases were repeated:

• "huffed and puffed"
• "dear old granny's birthday cake..." 

I think one of my favorite lines from this book would probably be:
  "What a pig!"
There is another one but I don't know the exact wording, but its talking about having the reader of the book think of it as a cheeseburger.
I feel like you would have to be reading the books to be able to see why these are funny.
I think this book would probably be best for a little bit older child, closer to 10 years and up. Because parts of it might upset young children, like when he eats the pigs,and an older child would be able to better to understand some of the jokes in it better.
My teacher read this book to us when I was younger and I liked it then, so I would say "yes, I would've liked it as a kid".

Milennium writing

Hurricane Katrina… Hmm… I don’t really remember too much about it. I remember that it was a big deal. I remember that it was all over the news. Let’s see what else… hmm… I know that I am glad that I wasn’t there. I also know that had such damage that the affected area of New Orleans is still recovering from the damage. The damage that a storm caused. I always thought that part of natural disasters/ storms was interesting. That something that we can’t control can create so much damage. Take people from families. Take homes away. I find that with most natural disasters, in the pictures of the after math I feel like I either see a lost teddy bear of someone, or an American flag. A teddy bear that could have brought someone comfort in this hard time. That always makes me sad to think about. I think the American flag is interesting. That even though they are going through a hard time, people can still be patriotic. I thought that I would try a poem about it.

I don’t know, I don’t know why,

Why the storms have to come,

Why it has to be this way,

Why our homes had to be destroyed,

Why they had to lose a family member.

Why?

I don’t know why.

And I don’t think I want to know why.

I don’t even like to think about it.

I don’t like to think about what happens

I don’t like to think about why it happens.