Movie Night!

Tonight I watch The Shawshank Redemption, starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. This movie is about Andy Dufresne, a young and successful banker whose life changes drastically when he is convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his wife and her lover. Set in the 1940's, the film shows how Andy, with the help of his friend Red, the prison entrepreneur, turns out to be a most unconventional prisoner. 

I've seen this movie many times before, but it's on the movie list that I'm trying to finish, so today I watched it again.  It's such a great movie, it was fun watching it again!!

Movie Night!

 

Tonight I watched The Best Years of Our Lives. The story concentrates on the social re-adjustment of three World War II servicemen, each from a different station of society. Al Stephenson returns to an influential banking position, but finds it hard to reconcile his loyalties to ex-servicemen with new commercial realities. Fred Derry is an ordinary working man who finds it difficult to hold down a job or pick up the threads of his marriage. Having had both hands burnt off during the war, Homer Parrish is unsure that his fiancée's feelings are still those of love and not those of pity. Each of the veterans faces a crisis upon his arrival, and each crisis is a microcosm of the experiences of many American warriors who found an alien world awaiting them when they came marching home. 

I thought this movie was very good! I've seen several movies about WWII, but I've never seen one about the solders after the war. The movie even featured a real WWII veteran, a man who lost both of his hands during the war. This movie was a tab bit long, almost 3 hours, but still a great movie. I highly recommend it!

Calligraphy Class!

Tonight I finished a 5 week calligraphy class at Millsaps College. I had so much fun! We spent the first 4 weeks learning Copperplate Calligraphy and one week on the Chancery Cursive Italic. I really enjoyed the Copperplate Calligraphy. It much prettier then the other we learned. It's going to take lots and lots of practice to get any good. I'm not very good yet, but I'm hoping with time, I will get better. My goal it to try and do my Christmas cards using my new talent. We'll see how it goes!! Anyways, here are a few pictures from my practicing.

 

 Calligraphy Pen and Ink

Practice

 More Practice

Calligraphy Pen

 

 Chancery Cursive Italic

 

Attempt at my name

Aquarium!

This weekend John took me to the Houston Aquarium! It was pretty small, but we still had some fun. Here are a few pictures from our day.

  

Aquarium: An Underwater Adventure

 

Turtles!

 

Pretty Fish

 

This fish was Huge!

 

Spotted Stingrays

 

  

 

Python

 

Seahorses

 

My favorite part of the Aquarium was getting to touch the sharks and stingrays! There were shallow tanks set up with the sharks and stingrays that you could touch. It was so interesting, the stingrays almost acted like puppies wanting attention, they really wanted to be petted! It was so neat!

 

 Shark Egg

 

White Tigers

The last thing we did was take a train ride around the aquarium. The main part of the tour was through the shark tank tunnel.

 

Movie Night!

Tonight I watched The Philadelphia Story, starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and Jimmy Stewart. I love all of these actors so I figured this was going to be a great movie, and I was not disappointed! If you like old romantic movies, this is one to watch!!

This movie is about a rich lady who is getting remarried, only to have her ex-husband and a reporter show up at her house the day before the wedding. Over a couple of days she is faced with choosing from her past love, her present love, and her a possible new love.

 

Book Review

Today I finished The BFG by Roald Dahl. I got a box set of his book when Border's was going out of business.

Description: When orphan Sophie is snatched from her bed by a Giant, she fears that he's going to eat her. But although he carries her far away to Giant Country, the Giant has no intention of harming her. As he explains, in his unique way of talking, "I is the only nice and jumbly Giant in Giant Country! I is THE BIG FRIENDLY GIANT! I is the BFG." The BFG tells Sophie how he mixes up dreams to blow through a trumpet into the rooms of sleeping children. But soon, all the BFG's powers are put to the test as he and Sophie battle to stop the other Giants from tucking into the children of the world. The RAF and even the Queen become involved in the mission.

I thought this book was very cute. Not my favorite Roald Dahl book, but still very good. I love that even though his book are full of make-believe characters and stories, the stories always have a good moral to them.



Book Review

While in the woods I read The Great Gatsby. I don't remember reading this book in school, but I had aquired a copy at a used book sale and deciede to read it.

The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published on April 10, 1925, it is set in Long Island's North Shore and New York City during the summer of 1922. The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "Jazz Age." Following the shock and chaos of World War I, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity during the "roaring" 1920s as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol as mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers and led to an increase in organized crime.

I really enjoyed this book, it gave you a vivid picture of the glitz and glamore in the 1920's. It had a pretty depressing ending, but still a great read!

Weekend in the Woods!!

For the long holiday weekend, I headed to Houston to go camping with John! We had so much fun and  quite a few adventures in the woods...

Adventure #1 Getting the car stuck in the woods...

I didn't get any pictures of this, but John and I got his car stuck. We were going down a hill leading to a corn feeder. We got to a little bump in the hill and decided we probably shouldn't go any further. But, it was too late. The front left tire slipped and went on the other side of the hill. The left frame was sitting on the ground. So John put the parking break on. He went into the woods, got a big limb and a bag of the corn feed out of the car, and put it at the tire to try to get some traction. I got in the drivers seat to try and back us out. I started the car, took the parking break off, and the right side rolled. Now the whole front frame of the car was on the hill. We were stuck, big time. We did get unstuck a little bit later, thanks to a friendly man with a tractor. We didn't do any off-roading after that.

Tent (without the rain flap) 

Adventure #2. Rain...

It wasn't supposed to rain. 0% chance. Went John and I put the tent up, we did not put the rain flap on. We wanted to be able to look at the stars. We got our camp site all set up, John went hunting, and I was reading a book. It was so nice, just be able to sit and read and do nothing else. John and I were texting back and forth (no toilet or shower, but we had cell phone service) John texted, Big scary cloud coming. I texted, I see it. About a minute later, it started raining. Hard. So here I was trying to put the rain flap on the tent by myself. I'm sure I looked funny. I made circles around the tent trying to get the top on, only for it to slide off again. I finally got it on, but not before everything in the tent got wet. And of course, about a minute after I got the cover on, the rain stopped. It did start up again, and it rained Sunday night too. So the top stayed on the tent the rest of the weekend.

 

Kitchen

 

Coffee! Just for me!

 

Breakfast Bacon

 

Eggs

 

John made a Great Breakfast!!

Adventure #3 Wild Hogs...

There was another corn feeder John wanted to go check out. There was a camera set up near it and he wanted to get the SD card. We walked down this long path through goat grass that was above our knees. There was a little bit of tire tracks where the grass wasn't so high for us to walk through. We get about 100 yards from the feeder and we hear a noise. We both stood very still and we see a hog. It's about 40 yards away from us. It turns and looks right at us, I'm so excited to see some animals, John not so much. I talked him into taking a shot, and the hog runs into the woods. We stand very still for a minute, and it sounds as if it's cutting back and trying to cut us off from behind. Just about that time we hear about a half dozen more coming from the left. We didn't see the hog behind us, so John told me to start backing up very slowly. We did go back down a little bit to make sure John didn't shoot the hog, but we made sure to make lots of noise, so we didn't see any more hogs.

I'm not sure when we will able to go back again, but we sure had a great time in the woods!!

Movie Night!

Tonight I watch King Kong, the 1933 version. This movie is about a film crew goes to a tropical island for an exotic location shoot and discovers a colossal giant gorilla who takes a shine to their female blonde star.

 

This movie has been redone several times, but it was very neat to see the 1933 version, just to see how far special effects have come along. Here is a clip from the movie!

Book Review

 

Today I finished Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne. When I was little I had a few little book about Pooh but had never read the first book. I found this book at Border's when they were having there going out of business sale and because one of the book on the BBC Book list.  I thought this book was a very cute. It's a must addition for any child's library! It's crazy to think, this book was written almost 100 years ago and still charming audiences.

At lunch today...

we saw this truck in the parking lot.

On my way home...

I saw a Google Street View car!

PHOTO 365!!!

Today marks the end of the 365 Photography Project. Yay!

Photo 364

40 Bags in 40 Days Challenge

I'm a bit of a pack rat. To help minimize my clutter, I've decided to do a 40 Bags in 40 Days Challenge. Pick 40 areas to purge and try to fill a bag, either to throw away or donate.  I got the idea on Pinterest (I'm addicted to this site!). My list is below, to accomplish in no certain order. 
Here's to clean spaces!!!

Kitchen

1. “Junk Drawer” in kitchen

2. Other kitchen drawers

3. Medicine cabinet

4. Cabinet over microwave

5. Other kitchen cabinets

6. Refrigerator

7. Freezer

8. Under kitchen sink

Living Room

9. Tops of furniture

10. Tidy bookshelves

11. Tidy bookshelves

12. Downstairs closet

13. Downstairs closet

14. Office desk drawers

15. Office desk drawers

16. Laundry closet

Bathroom (downstairs)

17. Under bathroom sink

Bathroom (Upstairs)

18. Bathroom drawers

19. Bathroom cabinets

20. Bathroom bens

21. Under bathroom sink

Bedroom

22. Bedroom drawers

23. Bedroom drawers

24. Bedroom closet (Clothes) 1

25. Bedroom closet (Bottom) 1

26. Bedroom closet (Top) 1

27. Bedroom closet (Clothes) 1

28. Bedroom closet (Bottom) 1

29. Bedroom closet (Top) 1

30. Bedroom night stand

31. Top of furniture

Guest Bedroom

32. Bens under guest bed 1

33. Bens under guest bed 2

34. Bedroom closet (Bottom) 1

35. Bedroom closet (Top) 1

36. Bedroom closet (Bottom) 2

37. Bedroom closet (Top) 2

38. Guest bedroom drawers 1

39. Guest bedroom drawers 2

Misc

40. Car

Book Review and Movie Trailer!

Tonight I finished The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. The Hunger Games takes place in an unidentified future time period after the destruction of North America, in a nation known as Panem. Panem consists of a wealthy Capitol and twelve surrounding, poorer districts. District 12, where the book begins, is located in the coal-rich region that was formerly Appalachia. As punishment for a previous rebellion against the Capitol, every year, one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 from each district are selected at random and forced to participate in the Hunger Games, a televised event in which the participants, or "tributes," must fight to the death in a dangerous, outdoor arena, controlled by the Capitol, until only one remains. The story follows fatherless 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, a girl from District 12.

  This book came highly recommended by a friend, so I decided to give it a try. Plus I love reading books that are being made into movies. It's an easy read and  had such great flow,  it was hard to put it down! There is some romance to it, but it's actually a pretty violent book. This book was very entertaining. If you like si-fi/adventure type books, I would recommend this one! Also, here is the movie trailer. Enjoy!