Variousness (which is a word)

It's fall. And for me, it's also somewhat of a break week. (For math and choir at least.) Sigh.

[This photo has absolutely nothing to do with the post. Texture by Groundfloor. He's got fabulous stuff, by the way- check it out.]

That means I can spend all day studying to get my driver's permit, or reading Roman history.

(Or just, well you know- hanging around on Twitter.) *blush*

But wait! I don't have a Twitter account any more. I deleted it today. Chances are you didn't notice. It's not exactly the most sensational news- "girl spontaneously decides to delete account on social networking site!"

That said, I am a big fan of Twitter, and it does indeed feel funny not to have one anymore. (All you non-Twitter uses have my permission to stop reading now.)

Anyway, it was just a time waster for me. I'll be honest. I think it made me get ADD. (Just kidding. Sort of.)

I'll be honest- I'm keeping my Facebook because I would hate to loose touch with people. Bad excuse, maybe- but if I cut everything off at once things might go downhill.

Moderation in everything, friends!

But back to the break! I needed this break. Not because I was physically or mentally unfit to continue- simply because I needed to focus on a few particular things.

1. My essay on the Aeneid. Superb book. You must read it immediately.
2. My driving permit. Which involves reading the entire DMV handbook in one week and going downtown to take a test where I will possibly contract swine flu while standing in line.

Essays and people like Virgil are superb things. Driving permits are somewhat superb, but DMV centers and swine flu pandemics are not. But you already knew that, right?

As far as recipes go- I have been making things. My mom and I made an excellent banana cream tart for a church potluck a few weeks ago, but my pictures are really, really crummy. Oh well. It tasted wonderful, despite the fact that I was summoned to the desert table to hack it into pieces. I am ashamed of all of you who could not take on a banana cream tart crust! Wimps!

I am excessively happy because one of my photos made it onto the Pioneer Woman Photography site! I don't have time to explain the details, but here's a link to the post if you haven't seen it already. It was pretty weird waking up that Monday morning and seeing a portrait of my sister up there!

I'm thinking about doing a video blog post. Not exactly sure why.....maybe I should just interview my brothers. What do you think?

Also- what do you think of this video? I was amazed. I'm figuring he really did read it- but I'm not exactly sure. (And don't say I'm just jealous because I could read through the entire Western canon if I had his skills. Savor the words, please!)

Have a lovely week!

Natalie

Autumn!

What? I left you all with some pictures of blue skies and balloons? Shocking- it's the middle of October and not one leaf or pumpkin has appeared on this blog! Shame, Natalie.

I've been really busy. Not exciting-to-hear-about-busy, just busy. But I'm never to busy to manage to take a few pictures.

I became so excited after I took this one. I was outside today enjoying the gorgeous October weather- shooting random stuff. 

I'm expecting some cousins to come visit some sunny day in the near future. We plan to take lots of photos, which I'll be doing a bunch of different things with. Stay tuned!

More randomness.....

I admit I have a poetry deficiency (but not an epic poetry deficiency)....There are so many good ones, though. Like Elizabeth Barrett Browning's The Autumn.

You should read it if you haven't already:)

I've made so many things with apples this past month. Actually I've been baking a lot in general.

I had to make blueberry muffins today because we were out of cinnamon and I flatly refuse to make anything with apples that does not involve cinnamon. It's just wrong.

Here are some apple muffins I made a few weeks ago with cinnamon cream-cheese frosting. I'm sorry I can't give you the recipe....it's somewhere. I'm an expert at loosing recipes.

So go read some poetry and enjoy the nice weather! (If you still have it.)

Natalie-

Balloons

    I took these photos yesterday at an orchard festival we attended. The weather was perfect.

Today is one of those grey, rainy days. I actually don't mind it. I'm happy it's Autumn and I can attend classes, bake "fall stuff," and most importantly, wear winter shoes and coats. (OK, so maybe I got a little carried away this morning when I almost wore a scarf to church.)

    So yes, I like rainy fall days. But I also like those days in early fall when the sky is bright blue and the air is crisp. Yesterday was one of those days.

To me these shots scream summer. But they were actually taken in a pumpkin patch with a bunch of people nearby drinking cider and eating apple crisp.

The clouds were so glorious. If I could control one thing about outdoor photo shoots I'd be the sky.

I think photographs are essentially like food and drink. There are dark, sophisticated pictures that could be compared to a glass of red wine or a gourmet meal, and then there are simple photos that evoke things like orange juice and bubble gum. Both are good in their own ways, though extremely different. (Although is bubble gum even considered a food? Never mind...)

Anyway, I like both kinds of pictures. I could never be one of those people who only takes happy pictures or one who produces only serious images.

Oregon Coast

Those of you who live near or have visited this usually blustery, grey, and rainy coast will know that the sky and water are usually not this blue. Actually probably never.....

BUT- we can imagine, right?

Please? Because I'm in love with editing. It makes me happy.

I like our beach. Never in my life have I ever seen the shores crowded with people. It's big, clean and cool. Cool as in- well, usually cold. But if you go in August or September chances are you'll get good weather.  We went last Sunday and it was gorgeous.

My dad was kind enough to think the dog might like to come. Usually she gets left behind due to various reasons. But we brought her:) She was happy.

(All pictures depicting me were taken by my mom;)

Saturday Night

I went out with a few of my friends last Saturday night....I'm going to show you a few photos I took. I'm usually not pleased with my night shots, but I liked how these turned out.

I've had a crazy weekend. My family and I went to the beach Sunday afternoon- I have lots of pretty photos to show! 

I'm going to wait to post them though- I'm awash in homework since my classes started last week. I'm really happy with my math class, and choir is simply a riot. I love it and am having a great time. My Great Books Class is, as usual- very inspiring.

Carpools have been figured out- public transportation is out of the question due to route problems;)

Mondays for me are now pretty chaotic. Everything just sort of stacked up:)

Anyway, I hope you all have a good week!

Natalie

A Not-So-Wordless Wednesday

    

  

 It's Indian Summer where I live. A somewhat nearby Oregon wildfire is sending smoke and ashes into our valley- which makes for some pretty interesting "weather." 

      Yesterday we all felt like we were living in a photoshopped image- the light was so strange. I was down at the track this morning running like I've been doing every other day the past few weeks (hi mom!), and I happened to catch an amazing sunrise. The sun was actually pink- from all the weird stuff in the air, I'm guessing. (If I'm wrong feel free to correct me.) The picture I'm sharing with you is not of this amazing sight (it was taken a bit later- I had to run home to get my camera.)

    The football team was practicing under this glorious sphere, the sprinklers were doing their job, and it was altogether a lovely (though polluted) start to a good day.

    I guess people in typically smoggy cities get to enjoy prettier sunsets and sunrises. The air is usually clear around here, which I appreciate- but I kind of hate to lose this real life "effect."

Honest Scrap Award

Eeek! It's almost fall!

(Not my apple tree!)

On another topic......

I was award the Honest Scrap Award by Sarah.

So I have to tell 10 things about myself. 

Here are the rules:
1. Say thanks and link to the person who gave you the award. Thanks Sarah!
2. Share ten "honest" things about yourself.
3. Award this to seven people who's blog design/content I admire or who have encouraged me, and inform them of their win and of the rules of this award.

Okay....here goes.

• I despise cottage cheese. Never liked the texture.

• I'm obsessed with quotes by Chesterton, Churchill, and C.S. Lewis. It's become of hobby....collecting quotes and stuff. Odd, I know.

• NFL practically puts me into a coma.

• Rarely do I like contemporary piano music.....unless it's in a good movie soundtrack.

• I REFUSE TO MISUSE THE WORD "AWESOME." Sorry, no can do.

• I love thrift store shopping. Most of my favorite clothes are from used places. (Though I've found many things that still have the tags on them.) I love hunting for things and the satisfation of being economical. I've found stuff at used stores that I've never seen anywhere else. Plus there's part of me that says "Ha! See, it is possible to defy the materialistic trend of buying tons of new stuff we don't need!"  

• I've been singing for a little over 2 1/2 years. Every year I participate in a recital where I do silly things like dress up like a maid, screech Italian, and pick up bananna peels. Strange, I know.

• If I could learn only three languages.....I'd pick Arabic, Spanish and German. Or maybe French instead of German. I love the idea of writing all those fascinating Arabic characters. Spanish would be the most practical. And German and French just sound great:) BUT- I forgot! The glories of Greek and Latin! Oh never mind, I'll never narrow this list down......

• Only two authors have made me cry or almost cry. Dickens and Homer. And I'm not kidding about that last one. Seriously. The Iliad is so sad....And Dickens? Yeah, that kind of figures. How could you not love his characters?

• My perfectionistic attitude often causes me problems. Unfortunately.

Hmmm.....seven people:

Ellie

Autumn

Jessica

Cait

Elizabeth

Meg

Hannah

Have a wonderful weekend!

Natalie

Plans!

I expect my life will be getting pretty busy here in the next few weeks. I'm a homeschooled sophomore this year. It took me half a lifetime to figure out the whole grade system, but now I've got it down. I think.

(Remember when you were little and you'd meet one of your mom's friends in the grocery store who wanted to know what grade you're in?)

Yeah. Those kind of grades. Not the "A,B,C" business. I got my first report ever last year when I started going to a private Christian resource center for a class. (And yes, I did gets A's that year. They were generous, and I was paranoid about becoming a flunking delinquent with no knowledge of algorithms. Those two factors combined essentially meant that things turned out OK for me.)

The "school" is located in a church. The bands and choirs practice in the sanctuary, the math, science, and biology classes meet upstairs in different "classrooms." And the P.E. students? Well the P.E. students go on what you might call forced marches. (Runs, I should say.)

I guess you could call it a private school. But it's more like a place where various homeschooling families in my city (there aren't many of us) pick and choose what classes we want to attend. Some people do everything- I just took math last year. It was quite the experience, and though I had some really bad days, I'd go back in a heartbeat. (Actually I am. Next Wednesday, in fact.)

Not only will I be doing math, chances are I'll be in the gospel choir, too. (I found out about this last week.)

I love Southern Gospel. We listen to it somewhat frequently at home, and I enjoy listening to the rich, harmonizing voices.

I have yet to figure out how ten white Northwestern homeschoolers will ever be able to copy authentic Southern gospel and soul music- but I'll keep you updated on our progress. (Not that I will ever be able to sound like Mahalia Jackson. No way. Sorry. Not even if I sing baroque opera songs so many times I yell the words in my sleep.)

My fourteen-year-old brother will be taking I few other lit/current events classes that I won't need to attend, thanks to my Great Books tutorial service that makes me read sordid history books that I actually end up liking. I mean that with all my heart. (Actually more like 85% percent of my heart. Verdict's still out on Herodotus and Tacitus;)

I feel so blessed to be able to be part of this online class. No matter how many times I balked at reading assignments, or complained about how gory CERTAIN historians were, it was always a pleasure to log into class at 8:00 AM every Monday, hear about people's week, discuss dead folks, and altogether have a profitable morning.

This year we'll be studying Romans instead of Greeks. (And I get to read the City Of God! Someone please keep me from saying "woot!")

Three reasons why I'm looking forward to reading a book written by an early Church Father:

1. First off- how could you not want to read The City Of God? 

2. Hopefully Augustine won't describe as many homicides and suicides as Tacitus did in his Annals Of Imperial Rome. (And I thought the French Revolution was bad....)

3. It's large. Large is good. Mostly good.

I'm going to tell you my schedule, though you might find it boring. 

-On Mondays I'll attend my nearly-2 1/2 hour GB class, then dash off to math. Twelve o'clock is lunch break, followed by choir practice. Currently I cannot tell you anything about what that will be like.

-Tuesdays I have voice lessons. My teacher's annual winter recital this year will be full of acting and singing students dressed in various articles of period clothing. It will probably look like some bizarre musical seance- Hamlet will be hallucinating, Salieri shouting. I'll be a character from the early 1900's singing a song from My Fair Lady. (If anyone knows anything about hats from that period I'd love any information.) Anyway, I have to start practicing. In addition to the aforementioned song, I'll need to memorize some Italian for another piece I'll be performing. It sounds very glamorous and scholarly indeed, but it's not. You just sort of go to a lesson one day and discover that you remember what kind of strange sounds to make. As much as I wish I knew Italian- I honestly don't want to know the meaning of the words I'm singing. I know it sounds bad, but as long as I stay away from The Boot- I'm basically singing gibberish. Turns out that the words to the Italian song I'm working on now are actually quite decent! 

-Wednesday I'll be attending my last math class for the week- as well as another choir practice. 

-Until Saturday It'll just be more class homework, and science study.

Simple, eh?

Maybe, maybe not.

I'll keep you updated on the choir. And the costume. And hopefully everything else that might interest you.

So what are you all doing this fall? I'd love to hear.

Ciao. (I'm almost certain that means go eat something;)

Mountains

Mountains are so peaceful. I told you in my last post that a few of my siblings, my grandpa and I went hiking on Labor Day.

Horse Pasture Mountain is situated in the Cascade Mountain range. If you climb to the top you can look at Mt. Washington, the Three Sisters, and various other snow covered peaks. Meadow flowers and grasses cover a good part of it, and the top is bare except for some low-lying vegetation and a few craggy rocks.

I don't know what I like better: being up high or down low. I've never had any outdoor experience more amazing than the Alvord Desert in the eastern part of Oregon- but I have to admit climbing up to the top of something is pretty exhilarating.

Almost to the top!

I really wish I could have a piano transported up here. I couldn't think of a more fitting place to play Bach or Chopin. Or I could just sing "Climb Every Mountain" from The Sound Of Music. That would be pretty amazing, too.

If you look over the edge of these rocks, you notice how everything- just disappears. It's a drop-off, all right. Makes you feel slightly giddy. But then you get distracted by the awesome view:

Some of us have plans to climb this mountain next year.

I think one of the best things about being at the top of the peak is knowing that you did nothing to create the gorgeous scenery around you. (Neither did an evolutionary process.)

I'm definitely a city girl. I love concrete, noise, movement and all that stuff. Forests and mountains do not have iPods, laptops, skyscrapers, books, art museums, etc. (Which are all very good.) Instead rugged terrain reminds us of the God who created it all. The land is powerful and harsh, yet delicately beautiful.

Not that there aren't signs of humanity:

There are very few places where I will drink lukewarm blue Gatorade. Not on plane, not on a train....But maybe after a long hike.

It was a good ending to a summer. In the days afterward, we occupied ourselves with getting read for school. (Classes start next week!)

There are still things I need to accomplish, such as finishing a summer reading assignment. But I wanted to take the time to share these with you because I was so pleased with how they turned out.

Blessings,

Natalie

Things

Last Saturday, Ellie and Autumn's brother Silas married our lovely friend Elisabeth.(Wow, that's a lot of links!) We were all sad to see them leave after the wedding. But that didn't stop the party. (Some of us have bruises to prove we were rocking out in a dark field after the bride and groom left.)

Anyway, I'd like to post at least one picture, because it is impossible to let hundreds of shots of amazing people sit around on your computer. (But don't worry-I'm in the process of burning a disk for the bride, and uploading bunches to Flickr.)

They all looked so glamorous....from left to right: Ellie, Margaret, Elisabeth, Christa, and Kate. Pardon their "headlessness." Guys never understand shoe shots. But I've never met a girl who didn't like this genre of photography.

Hope you all have a wonderful start to your week!

Natalie

Cookies

Every August for three years I've made a gift basket for the county fair that takes place close to where I live. The rules are simple:

4 kinds of cookies

6 cookies of each kind

None of the contents of the baskets are tasted. The whole gift-basket thing is basically an exercise in packaging. (And making durable cookies. Or at least learning how to glue and tape broken pieces of food together.)

I won't tell you all the rules for cakes, essays, beer, spices, paper-mache sculptures, fudge, quilts, bread, woodcarving, scarecrow-making, gourd growing, blackberry arranging- and goodness gracious, photography! 

(Don't get me started on that- I'll discuss it later. The photography part of the fair is my absolute favorite place. Seriously. I think I'll just camp out there for a week until the fair is over.)

Anyway.

The baskets are usually themed.

My theme for this year is "flower garden." Not terribly original, but I'm pleased with the results:

I got these amazing plastic bag gift bags a few years ago. I finally used the last of them to wrap up my cookie pops. (And yes, they ARE cookie pops. I stuck the "stems" into florists' foam hidden in the bottom of the basket.)

 

OK, so the frosting on the mushrooms got a little squashed. But I still love the color combination. (Plus they taste wonderful with all the cinnamon and chocolate...)

The chocolate biscotti look kind of unappetizing, and I'm still wincing at that squished polka-dot...but I'm done! Which makes me happy.

The fair starts next week, so sometime later I'll get to go and see if my stuff is still in one piece!

The drop-off date is Saturday, and since I'll be gone until Sunday night, my helpful grandpa is going to deliver the basket and my photos.

Speaking of photos....

Never mind.

I need to finish packing. Louis and I had a contest today to see who could pack the lightest. He won, of course. 

This is the only bag I'm taking. With a few things on the side;) I love my Pindar bag.

All for now,

Natalie