Inkling Explorations // May Highlights

As you might have guessed from the cover/intro photo, I'm going to combine two things today, Inkling Explorations (to learn more, click HERE) and May Highlights. 

So, let's go! :D 

Inkling Explorations

This month's selection is: A scene making beautiful use of special effects/CGI in film. 

I was wracking my brains for something that would fit this, to be honest. Usually I just watch the film and don't often think about the special effects, so trying to remember a movie that used special effects was somewhat difficult, weirdly enough :P But I found one, nonetheless. For this month, I chose the coronation scene from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It's so golden and royal and beautiful (and let's be honest,  Georgie Henley (aka Lucy Pevensie) is absolutely adorable here :D) 

Of course, I couldn't use just ONE picture;
 I was soooo happy to find this collage from Google :-)

May Highlights

Life

As most of you know, Mr. BX aka Mr. Kubota aka strange mystery "man" arrived. 

Toblerone, Dare Devil, and I also got to read a lot more together. Their favourite is If You Give A Mouse a Cookie. Dare Devil is starting to read now, and he's able to read through the whole story by himself! And Toblerone loves being read to and will sometimes come up to me or Tiger Lily and say "ea ory! Ookie!" (Translation: Read a story. Cookie (aka If You Give A Mouse a Cookie ;)) 

We also may or may not have goofed off a lot.

Toblerone found this absolutely hilarious for some reason! :D 

And we started a lot of summer activities too!

Like blowing bubbles. 

Did some clothes shopping. And also found out that our favourite consignment store closed down :( 

Dad also opened the pool the beginning of this week. The water cleared up surprisingly fast and three days after opening it, we got to go swimming. It's like jumping into melted ice. It's SO COLD!! Refreshing, but freezing at the same time! I don't quite know how to describe it. Imagine a brain freeze. It's like that, but over your entire body, not just your head :P (Apologies for the quality of the below photos. It's from Mom's iPod that Tiger Lily and I are attempting to learn how to use ;)) 

Ah yes, and driving. I mustered up the courage to drive into town! Might sound kinda silly to the rest of you, but I get nervous driving around other cars. Which is, of course, a major problem ;) So working towards fixing that! Anyway, it's getting better. At least I don't move slightly to the side of the road whenever a car passes by :P 

And ummmm...... I killed a turtle. Not going to say much about this. Suffice it to say it was very loud and very shocking and very sad.

Ohhhhh......and I also got back into writing! I had a long break from writing (too long, actually). But this contest looked like too much fun to pass up, and I had recently had a story idea that I really wanted to use. So I wrote. And wrote. There were times when words flowed from my pen... but of course, more often than not, I got stuck and instead of writing, I scribbled and doodled. Very random things, to be honest. 

You can tell whether I wrote well on that day depending on the number of doodles on the page :P 

And then there was the editing! Goodness, I forgot how long it took to edit. But I had two very good friends that were willing to help me too :D They were a great help, let me just say!!! 

Tiger Lily...well, she's learning to critique. At first, when I asked what she thought, she would say, "Good!" And then I would ask, "But you have to critique it, you can't just say 'good'!" And she would say, "Bad!" :P But ONCE, she said "You should delete that scene. It's really weird and awkward and unreal." See, isn't she getting better? :D 

Results from my fourth-last, third-last, and second-last edits on the story. I would read it on the iPod, find mistakes, and write them down. Then I'd go back to the computer and fix all the mistakes. Over and over and over again! :3 

Special Events 

Somebody had a birthday! Daredevil turned 5 years old; I can't believe how fast he's growing up! 

Following birthday tradition, he chose to go to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. And then later, we went to our grandparents' house for cake. 

Leaving the restaurant, I had to take a picture of this. Taking
pictures in sunrise/sunset light is always soooo pretty. Made me wish I had my camera (instead of an iPod :P),
a model, and lots of time. Although if I did, we would not have left there for awhile :P 

The two birthday boys! Well, Kong Kong's (my grandfather's) birthday
isn't until later in June, but since Tiger Lily and I are going to be missing it, we
celebrated it early :D 

 Have you ever heard of a little boy that didn't like chocolate cake? Well, you're looking at one such little boy right now! For some queer reason, DareDevil does not like chocolate cake. When we asked him what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday, he said, "Mama's (our grandmother's) pandan cake. She makes the bestest cake ever!" 

In case you were wondering what pandan cake is, it's a chiffon cake with pandan flavouring.
Not sure how to describe the taste of pandan....but it's good! 

Nature

The trees have fully bloomed. We're surrounded in a foliage of varying light and dark greens. The forget me nots have come out, as well as the columbines and other white and purple and pink flowers. And the birds chirp cheerfully every single morning. One sparrow even laid the tiniest two blue eggs in our front garden.

Isn't God a wonderful Creator?

School

IS OVER!!! For the most part, anyway. I still have an essay and Algebra II to finish, but other than that, it's done. Perk to taking US courses in a Canadian school setting, I guess ;) We finish school almost a whole month before everyone else here :D 

Baking

Well, let's see. I made cupcakes. Twice. 

I just love swirling whipped cream onto a cupcake! :D 

Wal-Mart croissant boxes are very handy. They hold 15 cupcakes quite comfortably. Big improvement from cramming them into plastic containers! 

This is not baking. At all. But it looked nice :D Made it for DareDevil's birthday breakfast.

Ohhhh, and Kong Kong taught Tiger Lily and I how to make apple pie! Lots of fun! (and very messy :P)

Before the oven

After the oven.
Despite the rather depressed look (anyone get it?! *crickets chirping* No? Okay, pretend I didn't say anything) it tasted very yummy! 

Music

As usual, I listened to a ton of music this month, but the two newly found favourites are: 

Hope in Front of Me - Danny Gokey

Trust in You - Lauren Daigle

Books

The Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff 

Julie - Jean Craighead George 

The Bronze Bow - Elisabeth George Speare 

The Forgotten Garden - Kate Morton

In My Father's House - Corrie ten Boom

Rose in Bloom - Louisa May Alcott 

The Princess Bride - William Goldman 

Hebrews (second half)

James

Revelation (first five chapters)

And to end the post is a very random photo of Toblerone. Tiger Lily had just combed his hair back in the adorable-est way. He also just woke up from a nap :P But there it is, chubby cheeks, rosy lips with a faint pout, neatly combed-back hair, and THOSE ARCHED EYEBROWS :D 

And that's the end of this month! If you managed to reach the end of this post, congratulations!! I did not mean for this to get so long... you don't realize how much you did in a month until you put it all down :-) 

But I hope you enjoyed the post! 

How was your month? Did you accomplish lots of things? Create memories? 

Let me know in the comments below! I'd love to hear how your month went :D 

Counting Our Blessings // Rebekah Eddy

Today's special guest blogger is Rebekah Eddy! I love her blessings, and I'm sure you will too! So let's get onto the post! :) 

When Blessing Counter asked me if I would be willing to do a guest post on her blog, I had two reactions. The first one was excited; this would be my first time as a guest on a different blog than my own. The second one was hesitant; I knew my life was going to be busy during May, and I wasn’t sure I could commit to something like that. Thankfully, Blessing has been very flexible and allowed me to take way longer on this post than I think she thought I would. ;) 

But now, onto the post:

I am supposed to give you a few of the things that God has blessed me with. She didn’t tell me whether to pick blessings from the past or present, but I’ll give you a few of both. 

1: Trials

This blessing probably took you by surprise. BLESSED by TRIALS?!?!? Who is this crazy person? But think about it. Jesus and Paul and Peter and all sorts of other people in the New Testament tell us that being a Christian isn’t easy. Our lives are never going to consist of Bible lessons and cupcakes while walking on a paved sidewalk through beautiful flowers and butterflies by the wounded side of Christ. We walk on the narrow path: a path that goes against the world’s way, a path that is both difficult and dangerous. We’re going to be despised and rejected. 

We American’s have it easy right now, and it’s made us a little lazy in our spiritual walk, but that could change at any point. Have you noticed that it’s where people are getting beaten, tortured, and killed for their faith that Christianity is the strongest? No lukewarm Christians are willing to put up with those things if they can help it. 

Personally, I don’t want to ever have to go through torture for my belief in God. I’m an imperfect human just like you. The thought of pain and death are still scary to me. I realize I’m weak, and part of me fears that I’ll be too weak to suffer for my Savior. But after thinking about it…I would be willing to die for Him. After all: “To live is Christ; but to die is gain”. I think Paul, of all people, knew what he was talking about. 

Ok, now you’re wondering “So why are trials a blessing?” Glad you asked. :P Here are my reasons:

a) They bring you closer to God

b) They make your faith in Him stronger and

c) They give you a greater appreciation of what Jesus went through when He died for our sins

2: Freedom

This appears to be fast disappearing in our nation today…not to mention all over the world. We need to remember to thank God for every moment of it that we have. 

So far, we can still come together with other believers on Sunday without the fear of imprisonment or even death. We have the choice to have as many children as we want. We are still able to keep and educate them at home. That may or may not last through our lifetime. 

With the string of bad decisions our nation has made, I’m noticing how frighteningly thin the thread that holds our freedom together has become. 

People have twisted the word until its almost unrecognizable. They’ve changed “freedom” into what they think are well-deserved “rights”. It’s absolutely sickening. No wonder our nation has gone down hill. To be completely honest, we deserve the wrath of God. I’m a little surprised that we haven’t been destroyed yet. We’re acting all the world like Sodom and Gomorra, like the people in Noah’s day before God sent the global flood, like those who built the Tower of Babel. 

Our God has been merciful. He’s given us freedom when we deserve His wrath. Don’t take it for granted. Freedom is a blessing. 

3: Jesse Divakar

No, I’m not getting to know anybody. ;) This young man is actually my older sister’s future spouse and my future brother-in-law. God brought him into our life a long time ago, and he was just a friend. But later, when he began getting to know my older sister, he became a lot more than that. He became a brother…and a blessing.

4: Online friends

I’ve given you a couple spiritual blessings and a family blessing, now its time for a fun blessing. :) 

When I first started my blog, my parents gave me a lot of warnings about the dangers of everything online. Internet access can be a blessing, but it’s also a scary place, and a place that can get you into a lot of trouble. Anyone who has any experience in online things knows what I’m talking about.  Let’s just say you can’t Google anything and everything. 

God so far has spared me from creepy stalkers…creepy online people period, actually. He even helped the details come together for me to be able to meet two of my blogging friends in person! Each person I’ve found on here have been godly, homeschooling, like-minded writers who hope to glorify our mutual Savior with everything they do. It’s seriously awesome.

You all who I’ve gotten to know through my blog over the last three years have been a huge blessing. ^_^ Not only have a lot of you helped me polish my story writing, but you’ve patiently encouraged my helpless attempts at poetry, put up with my endless supply of tags, and survived through my crazily unpredictable schedule. Y’all are awesome. And, like I can’t say enough, such a blessing. Thank you. :)

So there are the blessings. Obviously, there could have been a lot more, but I’d have to have all of eternity to tell you about them…so I’ll save it for heaven. ;) I hope you enjoyed this post, and those of you who don’t know about me or my blog, feel free to visit me at: 

My main blog: 4rmeddy.blogspot.com 

My story blog: simplystories4.blogspot.com

And if you have any questions e-mail me at: 4rmeddy@excite.com

Three Day Quote Tag // Day #3

Endings are not always 

a bad thing,

it just means that 

something new can begin.  

Last day of the quote tag! As usual, more than just one quote to throw at ya! ;) 

I tag: 
Hamlette from Hamlette's Soliloquy
Emily McConnell from The Imaginary World of Emily McConnell
Lea from God and Miracles

Three Day Quote Tag // Day #2

Okie doke, Day 2 of the Three Day Quote Tag (Or QuoteSSSS as Faith says ;))

I tag: 
Rishona R. from  r a u b l o g

Rebekah Morris from Rebekah's Reading Room and Read Another Page

Victoria N. Blessed Beyond Measure