A Merry Christmas to All!!

Well, the long-anticipated and stressed-over time of the month is upon us. We'll be traveling quite a bit between Christmas and New Years, so I wanted to write a blog post of seasonal cheer before the madness starts. Sadly, I have no pictures of art to post, due to holiday preparations and such. Since my last post, I have managed do some of the things on my Christmas checklist. Jon and I have been busy watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas, making batches of Christmas cookies and playing Skyrim and Skyward Sword. (Ok, so the last two aren't actually Christmas-related, but still, a good bit of festiveness going on.) It took me up till this point to get all my presents and most of my projects in order, but I think I should be set to kick back and spend time with my family. I really do love this time of year; its a good chance to be thankful for the things you have, the people you love and, of course, to remember that God was born as a tiny human so that He could eventual save us all.

In writing news, I did manage to finish a second draft of my story. It still needs lots of work, but I promised my mom she could read it over Christmas break, so hopefully it's a little more presentable now. I'm looking forward to having another test-reader; up to this point it's just been Jon and my friend Lauren. I'll be curious to see what Mom thinks of what I have so far.

And so, I bring this post to a close: A wondrous Holiday season to you all, whatever you happen to be celebrating, and may the New Year bring you much joy and contentment.

My lethargic Christmas Spirit

 I finally managed to post on a sunny day!!! Here is my newly finished creation.

I'm calling it "What are you look'n at?"

As far as the rest of my life, I'm getting by. I made Christmas ninjas earlier this month! (The one that looks black is really green, I just have a bad camera.) I think they turned out super cute!! ^_^

Other than that though, I've been procrastinating on my usual Christmas rituals. For some reason, I haven't really been in the mood. Here are some of the things I still need to do:

1. Read A Christmas Carol. I try and read A Christmas Carol every year in December. There are a billion movie versions of this story, but nothing beats the original. Dickens' descriptions of London at Christmas time are always so much fun to read. If you've never actually read this book, I highly recommend you give it a try. It's a bit hard to follow, but well worth the effort in the end.

2. Watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas (The animated one, just for clarification). This is probably my favorite Christmas movie ever; I have to make sure I watch this at least once, or it won't feel like Christmas. While I out grew most of the other kid's Christmas movies, I'll never be too old for the Grinch. I'll probably still be watching this when I'm 82.

3. Make Christmas cookies. My mom didn't make cookies too often when I was growing up, but she always had a few recipes she'd make at Christmas time. My favorites are Spritz, a butter almond cookie with a cinnamon red hot in the middle; Jolly Jelly Thumbprints, another butter cookie with jelly in the center and Gingerbread cookies. She also had this family recipe called Von Sprecken Specials (named after my great-grandma), which are a spice cookie with bits of orange zest in them.

4. Listen to Trans Siberian Orchestra. I actually have been doing this one. I have an entire Pandora radio station devoted to this group and other things like it. Occasionally I get some non-Christmas soundtrack stuff. Things like selections from Halo or Tron Legacy, but they're usually super epic sounding, so I don't mind.

5. Watch White Christmas. This is another favorite of mine. (I'm pretty sure all the Christmas movies I like were made at least 20 years before I was born.) It's not as well-known as It's a Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th St, which are also good movies, but I still love it. 

Add to that list all the Christmas present projects I need to finish, which is like, 6 or 7, and you can see I have a lot to get done before December 25th. In fact, I should probably get off the computer and start working on them right now!

sincerely,

me

It's finished!! (Sort of)

As you might recall, I've mentioned a few times that I've been working on a story for the past few months. Well, I am pleased to announce that on Friday the 3rd of December, I finished the first draft. This is actually a bigger deal than you'd think because, as I've also probably mentioned, I've never gotten to the end of anything this big before. After giving myself a day or two to take a step back from what I'd written (which only kind of worked), I read it all the way through for the first time. Fortunately, my worst fears were not confirmed and I didn't absolutely hate everything I'd written, another problem that has plagued me for years. Reading through 28 pages was exhausting and there's plenty of work that needs to be done, but I fairly confident I'm off to a good start. Unfortunately, blogging about the writing process is not quite as interesting as looking at pictures, so I included a sketch that expresses my current state of mind.

I know, it's not a very good sketch. The sad thing is that I had a hard time getting even that to look acceptable. Anyhow, my art production has slowed way down do to this other preoccupation, but don't worry, I'll have some more stuff up soonish. (I hope.)

Seeing as how I'm starting to seriously pursue writing, I'm going to look into some ways to share some of the stuff I'm working on in this blog. I have a few other novel ideas I want to start on, plus the editing work I'm doing for this story and some other pieces of short prose. Who knows, I might even chuck in a bit of poetry for good measure, if I ever come up with anything good. Poetry is one area I'm interested in playing with, but know nothing about. 

sincerely,

me