The Surprise Going Away Halloween Party

For the past week I have been planning something very special for my best friend. It's been so hard to avoid posting about it! I put together a surprise Halloween themed Going Away party for Michaela with the help of our friends.

When I first asked her if she was available for "dinner" on Saturday, it turned out that she was also planning something that night. She had already invited people to a bonfire at her house, and was just getting ready to invite me. Instead of throwing my plans out the window, I figured we could still make it work. I told her she could still have dinner with my family beforehand, and then we'd both go back to her house together for the bonfire. 

I painted some Halloween lanterns,

Dipped some chocolate strawberries,

And decorated our living room.

I also pulled together a few presents for Michaela.

The "Memories" binder is full of 17 photo collages that I made online in 4 hours on Thursday night. The camera is a bank I found at a craft store. 

Katie came over about two hours before everyone else to help finish setting up and planning the surprise. We got everyone to park their cars reasonable distances from my house so she didn't suspect anything, and once everyone had arrived and my dad came back with the pizza, I left to get Michaela. I was so nervous and excited the whole way there and back. When I came to the closest stop sign to my house in the neighborhood, I told Michaela someone kept texting me, so I stopped and sent Katie a pre-written text to let her know that we were close. 

Once we got to my house, I told Michaela that the keypad for the garage door was broken, so we walked to the front door and knocked. Katie opened the door, hiding behind it, and Michaela stepped in to see the decorations and our friends.

Then Katie snuck up behind her and put the Halloween feather boa on her.

Once everyone gave Michaela hugs, we had our dinner and snacks and gave her presents. I love this picture of everyone gathered around the memory book and Klifton recording it.

After presents, we all played truth or dare, which turned into a dance party when Michaela was dared to dance with somebody (which turned out to be me). I was also dared at one point to sit in someone's lap while holding their leg, so this happened:

Before we left for the bonfire, we got a group picture and a hug picture:

The surprise party was a big success, and she never expected a thing. She was clueless about it until the last moment. The bonfire was also a lot of fun, as always. 

We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows and talked about life and memories. 

I'm so happy that this all went so wonderfully. Everyone was so helpful with the surprise party and I'm glad we were able to give Michaela such a great last Saturday in Alabama to remember. She's going to have a wonderful time in California. I'll hopefully get to see her before she leaves on Monday, which will probably prompt another blog post, possibly entitled "I'm Even More Emotional." 

Wordy Wednesday: I'm Emotional

I was debating on not doing a Wordy Wednesday post today because this week is being kind of mean to me, but I figured I'd do it anyway. The bad part is, it's going to be sappy. So, I apologize for that.

"How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."

I really didn't think I would get so emotional about this, but I've cried about 6 times in the past 3 days because it's hitting me really hard that Michaela is leaving for college on Monday. The last time I see her before she leaves will be Saturday night at her bonfire, and I probably won't see her again until Christmas time. 

I've known Michaela for 5 years. Ever since that day in science class when we were assigned to be lab partners. I knew of Michaela before then because Katie introduced us the year before, so I was happy to have a partner that I had at least spoken to once. As we sat at our lab table and waited for the teacher, Michaela put a tiny marble on the desk between us. When I say tiny, I mean literally the smallest marble I had ever seen. I was very excited about it. That marble broke the awkwardness barrier between us and our friendship instantly began to bloom. 

Soon after we became friends, we both started to take an interest in photography. After a while, however, my interest slowly dulled. Michaela continued to enjoy taking pictures and has improved so much, especially just in the past summer. She's decided to major in photography and some day set up her own business. In order to accomplish that, she's going to college all the way in California. She won scholarships that will pay for her tuition and already has a job as a local photographer's assistant secured. I'm so proud of her for pursuing her dreams, even though it means she'll be so far away from me. 

I'll be sure to blog about dinner and the bonfire and how she likes her gifts. I'm going to miss being her model and going on adventures at the creek. I hope she has a wonderful time in California and enjoys her classes and her school. 

Photoshop Experiments

Recently I've become somewhat obsessed with Photoshop. I downloaded a bunch of new brushes and had some fun with them. These are what I've made so far:

The flower was a stock photo, so the quality isn't all that great. I was playing with my paint splatter brushes, which I've had for a while. The last two were mostly for experimenting with my new brushes. The hand and the leaves were outlines, and I colored them in. The green in the hand picture is all brushes. They're not super great because I'm just starting, but practice makes perfect, and I'm sure I'll be doing a lot of practice.

It turns out that Photoshop is really calming to me and it helps me when I'm feeling anxious and stressed. I made the leaves when I was having some anxiety, and it took a couple hours but it really helped a lot and turned out better than I had expected it to. I've been hoping to find a good outlet for my anxiety, and I'm pretty sure this is it. I'm so happy that I've finally figured it out. I don't know why drawing and hand lettering never helped and this does. I assume it's because this requires a little more thought and focus which helps me to think about something other than my worries. 

When I realized how much fun I have in Photoshop, both with editing pictures and making graphic art like the pictures above, I texted Michaela and told her that I'll happily be her personal photo editor since she's majoring in photography. I'm still going to major in English and edit for newspapers and magazines and such, but I'll need something fun to do as well. English is really boring me at the moment. 

On another note, I started doing some tech work yesterday morning! I'm so excited to be back in a scene shop working on a set. Katie and I finished painting a wall and a ceiling. The first thing we heard when we walked in was the sound of a saw, and I think we both got excited because it had been a while since we had heard that. It had also been a long time since we got sawdust in our eyes, but that's kind of inevitable in a scene shop. After we finished the set piece, we went to Panera for lunch because we realized how hungry we were. After we ate, we went to Oktoberfest! We were there for the rest of the day, riding rides and playing stupid games and eating funnel cakes. We waited in the hour-long line for the ferris wheel, and we were pretty disappointed that we were the last ones to get on and the first ones to get off. Other than that, the whole day was awesome and fun and exhausting. I don't know if I'll go back today or not, but I'm hoping I do so I can take Tessa and introduce her to it.

So that was my little update. I'll be back on Wednesday with the weekly quote!

Wordy Wednesday: Silly Power

This week's quote is something I've lived by for the past couple years. 

There's power in looking silly and not caring that you do.

Ever since I got into theatre, my perspective has changed a lot. As I'm sure I've said in a previous post, I used to be a lot less confident than I am now. In theatre, you can't be super self conscious. It's impossible to succeed in theatre if you're constantly worried about what other people think of you. There might come a time where you have to put on a giant wig and act like you're still the fairest maiden in the land. There might come a time when you have to dress up like an animal and move the awkward way that the animal does. Theatre is unpredictable, and so is life. You can't be afraid to look silly. 

The picture above is from a photoshoot I did with Michaela a couple months ago. They were playing music and she got so many pictures of me dancing around the field and having fun (I think it's important to note here that I am not a good dancer). I knew she was taking pictures the whole time, but having fun was more important to me than how I looked on camera at that moment. Some of them actually came out looking pretty good.

If you're having fun and you don't care what you look like, chances are you'll look confident. People who don't care that they might look silly have so much confidence. People who dress up as clowns for a living must be pretty darn confident. If you worry too much about what you look like, just remember that the people around you are probably only worrying about how they look. Humans are just like that, especially in a society that tries to tell everyone that they need to look a certain way to be considered beautiful. You know what's really beautiful? Confidence. 

How to Start a Blog

I feel like it's silly of me to be making this post since I've only been blogging for a few months, but I've been asked this question by a few people: How do you start a blog?
Well, I could respond to this question in a sassy manner and say "Find a blogging website, set up an account, and start blogging," but it does feel like it's a bit more than that when you get there.

First, obviously, you're going to need to get set up with Blogger, Wordpress, or another blogging site that you know of. Those are just the two I'm familiar with. Blogger is linked to your Google account and Gmail, and that's what this blog is hosted on. Wordpress, I believe, is a software that you download from their website or onto your Apple devices as an app. Blogger also has an app in iTunes (which is what I use to write 99% of my posts).
*TUMBLR IS NOT A BLOGGING SITE* It's more of a REblogging site. If you want to make an actual, legitimate blog, use Blogger or Wordpress, not Tumblr.

Second,  make your blog visually appealing. Make sure the design of your blog reflects your personal style and fits with your theme. Also, make sure it's easy to navigate and read. That's what people are going to be doing on your blog; READING. So don't go crazy and choose a fancy cursive font (yes, they do offer those). It's always nice to have a picture of yourself on the sidebar so people can put a face to the words. I always like to see the blogger's face. This goes along the lines of "easy to navigate," but your sidebar should give your readers options to subscribe to your blog.
*Sidenote: I've had that "Subscribe by email" option on my sidebar the whole time I've been using this blog, and just today I figured out that I needed to turn it on to make it work. Hopefully this post will show up in some inboxes! I also made comments open to everyone, so even if you don't have a Google account, you should be able to comment now! Yay!

Finally, you can start blogging! This is really the hardest part. A lot of people will want to find a specific theme to stick to. Obviously, my blog doesn't have a theme. I kind of jump all over the place. So it's perfectly fine if you don't have a theme in mind, but I have read that themed blogs get more traffic. If you follow me on Pinterest, my "Blogging" board has lots of tips, more than I can give you in this one little post. A couple specific tips from me:

• Blog as frequently as you can. I started writing a blog post every day, but now I do it every other day or so because of school.
• Try to come up with a theme day. You can have "Food Friday" or "Throwback Thursday," whatever you want. And it doesn't have to be an alliteration, I just really like alliteration. Theme days give you at least a little bit of a prompt on weeks when you might have writers block or a bunch of other work on your plate. If you get nothing else from me during the week, you will always get a Wordy Wednesday post!
• Share your posts to as many social media sites as possible. Facebook is especially great for getting lots of views on your posts. People on Facebook are really nosey. Not to mention a lot of your Facebook friends are probably relatives who love to know what you're up to.
• Don't be scared! Be confident in your writing and don't worry about whether people will like it or not. Blogging is a form of self-expression. Yes, it does get seen by the entire internet, but so do your tweets and Facebook statuses and YouTube videos and Instagram posts. The difference with a blog is that it's a lot more words and a lot less pictures and/or videos. 

Most importantly, have fun! For those of you who have been thinking about writing a blog, I hope this inspired you even more to get started and gave you some helpful tips. Happy blogging!

EDIT: My mom and I were messing with the comment options and we found out that to comment without signing in with an account, you can click the "Comment as:" box and choose "Name/URL," then type in your name and click "continue." Then the comment will post with your name without needing an account of any type. 

Wordy Wednesday: Unfair

I struggled with finding a quote this week. When I found this, I thought, it's kind of like a more intelligent version of the lemons thing. You know, "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade"? I feel like this quote is saying that the people who make lemonade out of their life-lemons are those who really succeed. 

Everyone goes through rough patches in their life that make them confused, angry, and generally upset. Life isn't fair, or reasonable, or in any way easy. We all face situations where we wonder how the heck we ended up there, and search for a way out. We sometimes want to give up something we love just to make things easier on ourselves, but the truth is, you're just going to run into another sticky situation in the long run. Running from your problems will only give you more problems. 

One way to look at it is to remember that it will pass. You will push your way through the dark tunnel and arrive where there's sunshine and warmth and happiness! But then you'll see another tunnel that you're going to HAVE to go through, but on the other side of that tunnel is even more sunshine. Making it through those tunnels is important, but how will you get through them? Will you tiptoe timidly, carefully, slowly, worried that you'll make a wrong step? Or will you fearlessly skip, dance, maybe even play hopscotch to get to the other end? Dark tunnels are scary and confusing, but hopscotch is fun. It's those that hopscotch through an unfair situation that enjoy life the most. 

Another thing to remember is that not everything that looks like a tunnel really is a tunnel. It might actually turn out to be a beautiful cave lit by fireflies to guide you along as you pass pretty rock formations and stalagmites and stalactites (I really like rocks and caves). And once you get through the cave you think, "That wasn't so bad, can I go through another one of those?" 

So don't step into your tunnels with fear, start out skipping, dancing, or playing hopscotch, and whether it turns out to be a dark tunnel or a firefly-lit cave, you'll emerge triumphantly. 

Basically, approach the unfairness in life with hope and positivity and turn your life-lemons into a sweet lemonade.