In Search Of. . . Written Words: Miss Peregrine's home for Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
by Ransom Riggs
We cling to our fairy tales until the price of believing them becomes too high.
~Jacob

Jacob Portman grew up devouring the bizarre stories his grandfather told him about growing up with peculiar children and fighting monsters. As a worshiping child, Jacob believed him. Then, finding that his grandfather had created a fairy tale life to explain the horrors of WWII to himself, Jacob stopped believing. Besides, stories about super strong children, floating girls, and invisible boys just couldn't be true, could they?

When his grandfather calls him in a panic, 16 year old Jacob goes to calm him down. He finds Grandpa Portman dying in the woods with a cryptic message. Then he sees it—the monster from his grandfather’s stories.

The trauma triggers night terrors and anxiety that prompts Jacob’s parents to take him to a psychiatrist, Dr. Golan. He urges Jacob to seek out his grandfather’s past, so that he can confront reality. His search leads him to the Welsh island of Cairnholm. Then Jacob must separate the truth from the lies. 

Allow Ransom Riggs to haunt you with his tale of monsters and peculiar children. He intertwines the story with actual photographs from the past, giving it a three dimensional feel of reality. The eerie Tim Burton-esque quality enthralls readers, scintillating them with the answers to the unexplained oddities we find in sepia-toned snapshots.

I rarely read any book more than once and enjoy it. This proved to be an exception. I read it a second time to refresh myself on the story before I dove into the Hollow City. I love this book just as much the second time if not more. This time instead of watching the story unfold, I could pick up on the small details that foreshadowed what was to come.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is definitely worth a read or twenty.

Here's the Book Trailer:

As always,

In Search Of. . . Observation: New Year’s Resolutions

In Search Of. . . Observation: New Year’s Resolutions

It’s a new year. It’s a new blog background. It’s a new me.

See, even the internet knows I’m lying.

It may be a new year, but it’s the same old me. If it were a new me, this blog post would have been done at New Year's and not a month later.

This is why I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions.

A few years ago, I just decided I’d stop lying to myself. I would make resolutions like these:

1. Write every day/ finish editing a novel.
2. Loose Weight
3. blah blah blah.

I would try to do these things for a full 30 seconds and then go right back to be me. Now, years later, I haven't changed.

Whatever.

Nothing really changes just because it's a new year.

Change comes from within. Unless you actually want to make these changes you’ll never make them. Why? Change is hard. Lying to ourselves that we really are going to do those things is easy.

That’s why we will always start working out later. We’ll do everything tomorrow. So, I’m still here, unchanged, telling myself I’ll be different

Oh well. When I get ready to make the active decision, I’ll change.



As always,

In Search Of. . . Written Words: Writing Prompt

In Search Of. . . Written Words: Writing Prompt

Start with a number.

210,380

Two hundred and ten thousand, three hundred and eighty hours.

Plus or Minus.

Two hundred and ten thousand, three hundred and eighty hours, I've been sitting here, waiting. Not with baited breath, not even with apprehension, because I had no earthly idea of what I was waiting for.

No unearthly idea either.

I just sit here waiting.

Glancing down at my watch occasionally, I tick the seconds off. Sometimes, for the sake of my own morbidity, I count to six, gasp, and begin again.

When I was a little girl, someone told me that every six seconds a person died. I remember waiting in grade school counting them out. Sometimes I still do.

Now, I watch the clock, wondering if in another six seconds I will be the one, suddenly finding myself standing in eternity.

Those six seconds have passed, and another six in the time it takes me to write this. It’s a horrible fascination with death—a fixation almost. It is a constant in life.

In my 210,380 plus or minus hours, I've witnessed the death of eras. My life began at the end of one. I've watched millennium change. Every year, I celebrate the life of a new year, forgetting to mourn the death of the old one.

We often forget death. It’s odd though.

It’s everywhere.

We are all dying from the moment we enter the world. The cells break down second by second. We see it. A wrinkle here, a sag there. Maybe even a grey hair. Maybe our ears go, then our eyes until finally—

The heat will leave our bodies at some point. It seems the thing that makes us alive is how warm we are.

To be cold is to be dead.

I’ve felt the heat leave a body before. He’d already gone into the afterlife, but I held his hands as his body caught up to what his soul had already done.

So, I sit here waiting for nothing to happen, ticking off six seconds at a time.

Maybe I’ll have counted down to the death of someone I know.

I pray not.

But, who knows. . .

210,380

Two hundred and ten thousand, three hundred and eighty hours.

Plus or Minus.

And still counting.

As Always, 

In Search Of. . . A Good DIY: Cross Stitch Key Hook

I have this thing about doing everything myself, this way everything always matches exactly. A while back I saw this big wall mural. It was paint, but it had the same effect as a cross stitch. I’d always thought it was pretty, but I never knew exactly where I’d paint one since I live in an apartment.

Then, the other day I was looking for a creative way to make a key hook, and I came across a picture with hooks drilled into the bottom.
Then it hit me. I could make a cross stitch painting key hook.
Here's how I did it.


All right, so to do this you need supplies, obviously.

You’ll need

•  A canvas
•  A ruler
•  Tracing paper
•  A pencil
•  Tape
•  Paint brushes/plate/rinsing cup
•  Paint
•  Lacquer
•  Hooks
•  A drill
•  Nails

Wow, that’s a lot of stuff.

The first step is come up with a design. If you don’t want to, you can also just get a real cross stitch and follow that pattern. I have these teapot dish rags that I wanted to carry over. That you can just draw out on a piece of regular paper, or tracing paper.

Next, make a grid on the tracing paper.
To do this, you measure the actual paint area, not the canvas size. If you go by actual canvas size, your grid will be wrong and you’ll have to adjust.
Unless you want to perfect your grid making techniques, tape this one down to your surface and use it every time.

Then, you want to a color study, to see how your colors and your design will fit together. I did two, one in colored pencils, and the other in paint. You don’t have to do two, but it helps your mind be prepared for the actual thing.

Tape a second piece of tracing paper over your grid paper. I will tell you this now; you can sketch it on there, but follow the rules of cross stitch. If you don’t, it won’t look exactly right, unless you don’t care. I wanted mine to look like an actual cross stitch.
So remember, your “stitches” need to look like this.

All right, so now that you've driven yourself insane with painting your grid, you get to draw yet another one, but this time on the canvas.

If you do a color wash on your canvas, do it before rather than after you draw the grid. Be sure to draw the lines lightly, because they don’t exactly erase very well. You won’t see them unless you know what you’re looking for or have really light colors.

Now, you begin painting. It takes a while unless you've got an easy design and a small canvas. It took me a few days to get it to where I wanted it to be. That’s because I accepted some terms and agreements that obligated me to do everything the long way. I shaded mine.

Once you’re done painting it, spray some lacquer on it to make it shiny and protect the paint. Do this part outside. Your painting will smell for a while.

You’re perfectly all right to stop here if you just want a painting. It will look really pretty.

If you want the key hook, you go a little further.

On the bottom, mark out where you’d like the key hooks to go. You want the kind that has the screw on one end, if there are any other kinds. You also want the sturdy kind to hold the wait of your keys. I got mine from Walmart for a whopping $0.97.

Take your drill and start a hole where you marked. It will take a little bit to get through the canvas.

Once you do that, take the screws and twist them into the start holes. Hold them straight because they will turn and you’ll have to do the drilling bit over at least three times.

And Finito!

Hang your practical work of art and enjoy.

As Always,

In Search Of. . . Written Words: Worthless

Worthless

Worthless.
It's such an insignificant word for such a poignant feeling,
For such a terrible, inevitable fate.
Worthless.
We all feel it at some point or another.
Or maybe feel it constantly.
Worthless.
It's a feeling of nothingness.
Of a talentless, uselessness.
Worthless.
An oppression crushing down on you.
Down on your soul and spirit.
Worthless.
It's such an insignificant word for such a poignant feeling.
For such a terrible, inevitable fate.
Worthless.



Some days, I feel like this amazing avant garde, haute couture gown that's been put in the Goodwill bin.

That's all.

In Search Of. . . Written Words: Writing Prompt

In Search Of. . . Words: Writing Prompt

Your villain sneaks into your hero’s bedroom one night.

She lay there, full lips parted slightly, blonde curls covering her face. I lifted the sash to the window, wincing as it shrieked in protest. I stared at her, watching her stir. She must be exhausted; normally any sound would wake her instantly; that or she was completely at ease. She gave a snorting breath, but didn't wake.

I melted into the shadows of the room. Zariel Harcos slept soundly, unaware that I was in her room. It wasn't the first time, either. I’d been slipping into her room here by the ocean since she’d left the Haven. She’d come to visit her cousins on their holiday, or rather, guard her young cousin.

I kept my distance.

If I got to close, I’d find the end of her blade under her pillow lodged which ever fleshy part of my body was closest to her. I turned towards her vanity, trailing my fingers over the perfume bottle, brush, and little hand mirror. There was even a puff with powder to drain the color out of her face, in case she spent too long in the sun. It was too feminine for her, even if she was my Littlest Lion Princess.

They must have wanted her to blend in with the local color. Her taught muscles always made her stand out. She wasn't soft. Well, maybe except her lips. Those were soft and sometimes her eyes reminded me of a frightened doe. Normally, she hid it all behind a diamond exterior. I picked up her brush and inhaled the scent. It took me back to those early days. She’d stand in front of me waiting for me to teach her a lesson. Her hair had brushed the small of her back then. It almost did now, but it looked different somehow. Maybe it was the moon light that streamed into the room.

I wanted to touch that hair again. Hold it in my fingers, as I did when she was young and pliable to my plans. Now, she steeled herself against my most earnest entries. I stood at the foot of the bed, watching her chest drift up and down, almost not moving. I sauntered next to her face. I hovered over it.

I leaned down, careful not to touch the bed. My left hand rested above the one that would grab her blade nestled under her pillow. She had the other pinned under her face. My right hand brushed the curve of her neck.
I pressed my lips to hers.

She jerked awake; her hand immediately grasped for the blade. I dropped my weight on her hand that went for the blade. She struggled. I squeezed.

In Search Of. . . A Good DIY: Tissue Paper Flowers

In Search Of. . . A Good DIY: Tissue Paper Flowers

All right, so after I finished Jane Eyre, I promised myself I would take a brain break from reading and work on writing. 400 words a day or something ridiculous like that.

To kick off my thing writing extravaganza... I will give you a how-to. In this case, how to make tissue paper flowers. It's not overly difficult thankfully which is probably why I can actually do this, but they really make a present pop, like this one.

  

First, you have to get all your junk together.

You will need:

• ·         Tissue Paper
• ·         A ruler (I used measuring tape and a triangle because I have no ruler and can't cut strait lines.)
• ·         Scissors
• ·         A stick of some kind (I have my mom's old panda chopstick.)
• ·         Super glue
• ·         Either ribbon or a pipe cleaner. (Basically something to wrap around the center)

  

All right so take the tissue paper and measure out ten inch squares for a large flower. If you're making a poppy, like I am you will need six squares of paper. As far as colors, you can get actually flower colors, or use the paper that matches whatever you're decorating like I did.

 Once you've got your square organize them how you want the flower to fold. The top layer will fold into the center and the each layer after that. Here you can see I put the decorative part for the center.

Ok, so then you will need to accordion fold the paper. For the poppy you do bigger folds. If you’re doing a smaller flower like a dahlia, do a smaller fold. 

 Once you’ve got your paper folded, take your ribbon/pipe cleaner and tie it around the center, but not tightly. Just enough to hold it together.

 You need to cut the edges now. Again flower depends on shape. Poppies have round edges so I used the ribbon bobbin to make my lines neater. I suck at free handing.

Now pull the string a little tighter if you want, but not too tight or you’ll have a big hole in the center of your flower. Then take one end and spread the accordion out so that it makes a fan shape.

Pull the sheets apart towards the center very carefully—and I mean carefully because this stuff rips like—well tissue paper. After, do the other side until you have a flower shape. You can fluff all you like. I also glued the last sheets together at the edge to make it stay better.

And your flower is done. 

For the stick, I used a chop stick so the flower would stand on its own. To decorate it I took a sheet of paper cut a long strip, folded it in half, and piñata cut the edges. I wrapped it around the stick, gluing it in place at both ends.

 After you’re done decorating your stick find a crevice in the bottom of your flower and glue it there.

And finito! All done. 


Here are my dahlia's and the main reason you shouldn't tie your ribbon/pipe cleaner too tight. You'll have to put random stuff in the middle, but it will still look good though.

<b><a href="http://www.rustandsunshine.com/2012/05/tissue-paper-flowers.html/">Original Tutorial Here as well </a></b>

As Always,