Writing Prompt | Taking The Leap

Hello!

Okay, I am doing something a little different today, but I’m pretty sure that everyone will like some part of it.

Back in late August, I went through the free Kindle books for story and general writing prompts. There was one book that I thought would help me generate a whole slew of ideas for the holidays. It is called Four Seasons Of Creative Writing by Bryan Cohen. I had plans to use one of the prompts about summer in September but I didn’t have enough time to get anything down so once I found this one I immediately got everything planned out in my head from the moment I read it and now that I’ve literally caught myself watching the leaves fall down our trees in our backyard, the more I have wanted to write about this prompt.

I based this story on Bill and Will from the film Happy Feet 2 and if you haven’t seen this one before, Bill and Will are krill living in the same area as Mumble and the rest of the colony of penguins. They go on an adventure to find themselves, out of their meaningless life as food for the whales, seals, etc in the ocean.

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Create a conversation between two leaves that are about to fall from a tree. One is scared and the other is excited about the long trip to the ground. What do they talk about and why?

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Ohhhh… I can’t do it. There’s just no way I can get through it. I’ll die, I just know it. Why doesn’t Leaf or the rest of the family understand my genuine fears of breaking ground? That’s it! I’m not going! I’m putting my wings down on this one.

Leaf can hear his brother Vere mutter to himself again. This has become a reoccurring issue the longer we stay up here among the tallest tree in the neighborhood. I’m pretty sure he’s the one who chased away all of the pretty girls who blossomed earlier this season. They couldn’t handle him having a panic attack at all hours about making the journey downward before the snow makes its first landfall.

Funny enough, he didn’t use to be this way. When we were first budding, he looked down at the ground below us and expressed his thoughts of what goes on down there. According to our grandfather Oak, it is essential for all of us to make it down at the end of autumn, but he forgot to mention that we need to be careful on which day we decide to let loose, because there are dangers when you finally make it down, and you are reminded by it almost every other day, thanks to the loud noise that radiates across the block.

“VERE! You’re waking up the rest of the crew! Shut up and let us sleep!” Aubrey yelled across the other side of the tree. Despite the rest of her family caving and disembark on their way a little earlier than planned because Vere had become even more annoying to any one who could hear him.

“You know Auburn, why don’t you go ahead and go down there, maybe you’ll find pieces of your family after the ugly statue ran over them a few weeks ago!” Vere snapped, knowing what he had hit a nerve on his childhood friend, but still went on his ranting anyway.

*groans*

“Nice going you jerk!” someone shouted opposite of them. “What is wrong with him Leaf? You know how sensitive Auburn is about what happened to her family!” Another person said and to make matters worse, twisted around enough to face Leaf and became unattached to his post at the same time. At least there wasn’t any wind around, so at least the landing will smooth for them.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know!” Leaf shouted at his neighbors and friends. “Aubs, you know what he’s saying shouldn’t believed with a grain of seedling.” as Leaf said in his sweetest voice before turning back to his brother with the prospect of just pushing his brother overboard so everyone could go in peace, but he knew he couldn’t do it. As much as he hated apologizing over and over because of his brother’s mouth, he also was a little afraid to make the jump too, he just wasn’t willing to let it show to anyone, including Verdant.

Unfortunately, I had a whole month to come up with this story but never quite made it through this scene in my head, so this is all of it. So, I’m really sorry this is so short, but I like it as a cliffhanger.

If you were a leaf on top of the tallest tree in your park, would you be frightened like Vere or be super annoyed like Leaf and Aubrey? I’d like to see your answers below!

Life Lately | Hello Spring!

Howdy!

Since this is the last full week of April, I thought it was only right to blog about life.

Last week I mentioned that it’s been a whole month since I had blogged at all, and I don’t really know why I decided to do take such a long break but it happened. This year I manged to come up with three separate series, two of them are on here and the other on my blog’s Facebook page. I did a lot of work to get everything organized that I think I started to expect a lot of myself that the pressure mounted so much that I began to feel overwhelmed by everything, but once I stopped blogging for a couple of days, I just all of a sudden felt better about things and I didn’t look back.

I’d like to say I got a lot of other things done while I was on my hiatus, but I didn’t. I think the only real thing I worked on the whole time was my “name pairings” Pinterest board! I didn’t take advantage of the time off to read or anything so that’s one thing that makes me angry, because that would have been a perfect hobby to do! I didn’t even watch that very many movies or TV shows either. I was pretty much consumed by Pinterest! It’s so sad to say out loud and of course read it on here too!

One thing that I’ve been really enjoying lately is our weather. Well, technically we had a few strange days where it was producing late spring weather, where the temperatures were like in the 60-70’s and unfortunately, our new house does not have an air conditioner yet. So, for a large number of days we had to rely on opening our windows and leaving our fans on all day long just to cool down. For 4 days alone, my room’s temperature was around 78-80 degrees! At night, it was miserable because when I have my fan pointed one way, but if I wanted to lay on the other side I was hot as hell! I actually spent one day completely in a short sleeve shirt with a pair of very tight shorts. On the day I wrote this post, the temperature had calmed down so much that it was 39 degrees outside! It was also very comfortable in my room too!

A feature about our house that I am starting to really enjoy is I get to see the morning sun. I’m such a nature girl at heart, so the morning sun makes me extremely happy! Now there is one bad thing about my room. Since it’s placed so far back, I am around a lot of trees so whenever it storms, I am in a constant state of paranoia because we have some very tall trees in our backyard and we have had some limbs crash down in various places in the past. One large branch was responsible for tearing a hole in our trampoline! So, being surrounded by trees has its bad notes too.

I have been spending a lot of my time hanging out with my nephew Nolan. He’s grown so much since my last update. I have thought about creating another one, but it’ll be his birthday in about two months so I have decided to hold off until then, but I doesn’t mean I can’t share anything with you though.

Do you remember when he was like three or four months old and he was obsessed with my hands? Well, now he’s starting to fall in love with my feet! When he was around two months and he used to sit in this seat, and he would watch me get a drink and put on my blanket – I literally told him once that I would treat him how I do that. At seven months old, the little goofball learned how to put on his own blanket with his feet! He’s such a smart cookie. He loves grabbing things with his feet, and I’m surprised with myself because I figured I would be offended by the fact he was using his feet to do stuff, but I’m not. I’m just proud to see him paying that much attention to what I do because I think it’s just part of my daily life, I don’t like to think of it as a special thing, but he’s made me think about it differently now.

Whenever he was really little though, I was often upset that I wasn’t able to hold my cutie pie (my nickname for him!) the only way I was allowed to be up close with him was when mom or Blondie would bring him into my room, to take a nap on my bed. We would wrap up in fleece blankets and while he got to sleep next to me, I was making mental images of my little buddy. Now he’s somewhat mobile, since he can army crawl around I haven’t had that one-on-one time with him. Well, he recently exchanged that with giving Auntie Meggie many, many hugs! Yes, he is a big hugger! I love it. In a way, I think that makes up for the fact that I couldn’t physically hold him as a itty-bitty baby too.

Well I think I’m done for now. What is your favorite thing about spring? What is your favorite activity out of your normal routine that you like to do?

Blogmas | Holiday Dorm Tour!

Howdy!

So this might seem a bit strange since I’m not clearly in college and living in a dorm, and neither is my sister these days, but our nana is in a way. Well, we don’t know what to actually call it, a “dorm” or an “apartment” because even though it does come with her own little microwave and refrigerator, she doesn’t have a stove or anything, so the term “dorm” seems to fit better I think. I had mentioned in my last minute blogmas ideas that I might do a similar post of the holiday house tour I did last year. So there will be things you’ve definitely seen before, but she has some newer stuff too. Everything has basically been compact into a small area just for her.

My nana’s room is located at the far side of the long hallway (of course!) and the first thing you are greeted with when you get up to her door is this very sparkly green, with red baubles wreath. It is perfect for her personality let me tell you!

She has a few things in her bathroom, but I felt it’s not enough to show you everything, even though she took multiple pictures in case I wanted to share more of the beach theme she is going for in there. She has a green “Merry” rags over by the wall, while she found an interesting place for her giant multicolored jingle bells. I don’t know who put them there, but it is a clever place. They are located right by her shower. It adds a nice festive look to her bathroom!

Now when you come out of there, the first thing you will see is her little “kitchen” area. Her entire mini fridge is covered with different Christmas festive magnets and her counter top has little figurines, like the infamous Christmas tree that she keeps on day and night. She has a random red ornament and IU doll that kind of goes with the theme too. She even has a lone Santa Claus that is just sitting in the corner by her radio and sink.

Next we have is her table. It’s smaller than the kitchen table she had at the house, but at any given time she has over a hundred different things on it. When we were there a couple of weeks ago, she had a nice round red and white blanket placed on the actual table, and on top of that is this large nativity scene. She went out with my aunt and uncle for Thanksgiving weekend and picked it out at the flea market. However, she took the pictures below before she got it I think.

In this picture, she has two large objects, one is glass purple Christmas tree and I don’t know what in the world this other thing, on the left side is. All I know is that it has little people on the different levels. She has a basket full of fake greens and cherries, plus random ornaments that she must like but can’t find a good place to put them. She has angels and crosses on here too. What is really cute though is the subtle sonogram picture of the little “nugget” on the right side on the table. It’s okay if you didn’t notice it the first time, because neither did I!

Keep going straight and you see her entertainment center. She doesn’t have much on it, but the two large angels sitting on top of it. If they were any bigger, I doubt that they would’ve fit up there. She must have found those when things were coming down from being upstairs in September, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen them before.

On the right, is her window display and I’m not joking! When I was there in October, it had all of the angels and crosses standing on the ledge of the windowsill. Now she has a lot of Christmas things, like her Noel sign she got last year, snowmen and Santa Clauses everywhere. If you were wondering what happened to those beautiful ornaments that reminded me of India, she has them hanging on by string or something like that along the blinds. She also has the bigger stuffed Christmas critters on the floor, like the fairly large and jolly Santa Claus and a pillow made out of one of papaw’s shirts.

Alex is standing on the opposite side of the Santa Claus, she either has a red blanket around her or a shirt. I don’t think she could find the normal dressing gown she normally puts her in for Christmas so she had to improvise. Nana recently got this beautiful picture of a white cat with a violin, which I happen to love! I don’t know where she got it, but she now has it hanging up by the second nightstand.

Now she doesn’t really use her bed, because she can’t get in and out of it on her own, plus it is really uncomfortable for her back and bottom. So she actually sleeps in her lounge chair that she has decorated with her family (with Adam Lambert) blanket that she got a few Christmases ago, but she does like to keep the bed looking pretty. So she got a new blanket, and it fits the red and white theme she has going on, but it has a nice photo of a Cardinal on it. Our family looks for Cardinals as a sign that papaw is around us, so there are a few of them throughout the room itself. She also put out all of the classic creatures by the pillow too!

And that’s it!

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For an added bonus, I had her take more pictures around the nursing home so you guys could see what they’ve done to the place!

They have like seven or eight Christmas trees, I think that’s what my nana told me! They have a really nice one over by their outside area. When I was there, I used to spend some free time before going down for lunch over by the green sofa on her hall. Now there’s a fairly large tree there, with some very nice wrapped packages underneath it. Nana said, she helped wrap some of them in activities and decorate several of the trees too!  They have their own nativity scene in the larger dinning room, plus an interesting blown-up elf in a corner by the nurses station. We didn’t see that when we went to visit her a couple of weeks ago for some odd reason!

What do you think of the holiday dorm tour? What is your favorite decorations to use?

A Very Festive Day!

Sorry for the inconvenience, but there’s been some breaking news! It’s only been December for two weeks and I’ve spend more time on Twitter and YouTube making sure I don’t miss a single Vlogmas. Now that’s dedication right there! And now we get back to our regular scheduled post!

Hey guys! 😀

On Tuesday, I decided to get up earlier than anyone in our house and stay sitting up for about four hours just keeping to myself aka watching YouTube videos and listening to music on the lowest volume ever! I went over to my nana’s at 3pm, which in a way isn’t so strange but since the skies get dark so fast that it feels later than it is. My nana had been telling me a little bit of what she wanted to do while I was over, one of which was trim the tree. Normally we have family from up north put it up, but since things were cut short this Thanksgiving, she was going to have Blondie and Brandon put it up, but she basically gave up on them and asked me instead.

In our house, my parents do basically all of the trimming. Dad unfolds the branches of the topper and my mom, Blondie and I unfold the smaller ones. I always manage to prick my toes with the pines every single time. I don’t know why, but helping nana put up her tree and I mean, I did a lot of it with her I didn’t get as hurt as I usually do. We put the top branches up first because I thought we were going to be too short in our wheelchairs to put up the tinsel and lights so we did everything kind of backwards. My poor nana had to put the stand together, which thankfully wasn’t that hard and plug the two sections together and at one point we did have the angel up. I got to put her up. It’s been YEARS since I’ve put the angel up on a Christmas tree. When we were kids, we had to remember who put it up the year before, now dad just does and it saves us a lot of time and arguing. Just before we were to put the small branches into the little holes in the stand, she looked like she was going to fall off so nana just removed it. Once everything was shoved in, like literally! The tree was up but with no angel!

The next thing on our list were the lights of course! She had extra lights out on her front porch and somebody had brought them in and she decided to see if those would work, she knew one side lit up but the other didn’t so imagine this for a second. We had this long strand of lights dragging across the floor, I’ve got one end and she’s got the other to be plugged into the socket right? I don’t know why I continued to hold it in my toes but I did. She had to go into the kitchen to find an empty socket and I was trailing behind her on my end. I felt like the caboose of a freaking train! In the end, both sets of lights that she had only worked halfway. After that, we didn’t think it was best to do anything else since it’s always best to do lights, tinsel, ornaments, rug, and nativity scene around it at last. At least that’s how we’ve always done it!

It took us maybe an hour to get everything up. The next time I go over there I’m taking pictures of the empty tree and some of the ornaments that she has, as I can create another blog post out of them too! We figured out that we are indeed doing Christmas cookies again. This time not as many, but I’m slightly worried because last year the sugar cookies were so hard, like rocks to chew. Is there something we can do about this? We just get the premade cookies from the store, is there a better alternative then to making them by scratch? I also have an idea for our last DIY of the year, but like always I can’t tell you much about it! Because you know, I have family reading this post. I can’t spill the goods! My grandparent’s entire house is so festive, I think it’s as decorated at Zoella’s house, I mean that’s how good it looks!

When my parents came back after two hours, not only was it super dark but I forgot to tell you that my mom told me just before we went over that since it’ll be dark when they get back that she’ll take me out to see the Christmas lights in the park. I am almost in my mid-20s and I got a little too excited about it. When we dropped dad and the food off at the house, I was so excited that I was seriously flapping my feet together like a seal! Driving up to the park was even cool! Some of the houses had little displays and then there was one that had its entire yard covered with lights and aired up Santa Clause and snowmen. When we got into the grounds, I was happy but a bit shocked. There wasn’t a lot as much as a couple of years ago. There were bigger ones which made me awesome! This was like the Christmas markets I’ve been hearing and seeing on Facebook for the past two years! This was as close as I’m going to get to ever seeing one of those I think! I’m pretty my mom’s favorite was the Santa riding a Harley, the lights on the tires moving like it was moving really fast! Mine was the big arches over by the lake. While she was busy trying to take pictures (and not driving off the road!) we kept hearing the ducks outside the window.

Just before it ended, we came over a hill and there was an electrical tower but a tree was blocking it as you were coming over the hill and we both swear up and down that the bell on that tower looked like a bikini! As we got closer, it definitely looked like a festive bell but far away it looked like a high waist 50-60’s style bikini! When it was over and we were at the main road to go home, we got stopped at the longest light ever! So my mom thought she would see how her pictures turned out, most of them were bury but she got quite a few good ones that I had to edit a little, but I was keeping an eye out on the light and once I said “green” she looked over and grabbed the wheel and realized there was a cop on my side of the car. Oops! We didn’t get a ticket or anything, I don’t think he even noticed us!

Do you put up your Christmas tree? Do you go by what we do or do you do something different? 

Autumn Is Here.

Howdy!

This past weekend, we finally turned on our furnace. At first I was really sad, because that literally meant the summer was over and here comes the cold weather! I was actually dreading that smell that you first get when you first turn on the heater but I guess I had missed than I thought because it made me remember what’s coming up. Halloween, Thanksgiving, basically every holiday that happens in the fall! Including my birthday! All throughout the summer, my mom was really upset that she didn’t get any flowers this year. She even has a rose bush, we only got one rose this time. So in a way to redeem herself she has started decorating our front porch a little. At the start of September, she told me she got us some pumpkins and I was instantly excited about that because I really want to glitter up some pumpkins. Well, my mom got a big arrangement of purple flowers a couple of weeks afterwards and she put it out on the porch with the pumpkins and loved it so much that we can’t paint those anymore! She’ll have to find some more and deliver them to nana’s house right away so she doesn’t figure out something else to do with them.

I went over to my nana’s a couple of weeks ago, while my parents were out and my mom got some more flowers. She even got my nana a light yellow banquet of flowers to put outside the door and my mom got a more bolder shade of yellow for us. Not only did she get that, but since the cats have destroyed her other Scarecrow, she found another one while doing my nana’s errands that afternoon. Her name is Abbie as I was told in the car! Our front porch is looking very beautiful and our family embraces the season of fall very well I think! As the new month continues though, we’ll add some more things… whether dad likes it or not!

That night or maybe it was the night before I went outside to sit out on our BACK porch. Too many porches I know! It was a lot later than I normally go out, but I hadn’t seen the babies and I needed an escape with my camera. The lighting outside wasn’t really darker, but it was somewhat cloudy so we had to use the flash a bit. I say “we” because my mom came and sat out with me a little. The cats all just kind of flocked to her. They know she gives them food that’s why! She took majority of the pictures that afternoon which was fine by me because I didn’t have the strength or inspiration to take any. It takes a lot out of me to scoot from one end of the house to the other, especially now that I carry my camera out with me now! We actually got pictures of Bootsie, Midget, and Felix this time around too!

Here are some of the pictures we’ve taken recently! Hope you enjoy!

Stormy and his long paw…

Midget and Ozzy photobombing on the side!

Bear Bear looking so pretty and fluffly!

Otis and Nelly.

Ozzy.

Bootsie.

Stormy giving us the “what?” face lol

The older cats really do love the babies. Gru wanted to help clean Grumpy.

Gru, Stormy, and Grumpy with Felix in the background and the toes at the bottom!

Nelly sitting on his throne!

These two proceed to fight for this chair after this picture was taken.