Let's Pretend This Never Happened.

Hello, I know I haven't done a book blog in a while but it was because we were reading a book for class and it was hard to keep up with two books. The book that I am going to review is called Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson. I first heard about this book from my friend Marissa, who kept laughing out loud while she was reading it. Marissa is not someone who likes to read at all. So when she told me that she liked this book I knew that I had to read it. 

This is a "mostly true memoir" about the author Jenny Lawson. This book tells about Jenny's rural upbringing in Texas and her extremely awkward adult life. It starts out with this sentence, "This book is totally true, except for the parts that aren't". If you need a laugh or if you think your life is weird than this is the book for you!

This book has readers laughing from the beginning to the end. Just to give you an idea about this book here are some of the chapters (these are a few of my favorites) "I Was a Three Year Old Arsonist", "Jenkins, You Motherfucker" , "If You Need an Arm Condom, It Might Be Time to Reevaluate Some of Your Life Choices" and "Thanks for the Zombies Jesus". As you can tell by the chapter titles this book is very interesting. What I liked about this book is that the way that she wrote it made it sound like she was talking to the reader. You could really hear the voice while you read this book. As weird as it sounds, I feel that know Jenny and her family because of the way that this book was written. 

This is the best book that I have read in a while. Like I said anyone who is looking for a laugh would love this book. Thanks for reading :) 

Its a Snow Day!

Hello, this blog will be a little bit off of my topics that I normally stick to which is entertainment. Today I am going to blog about Christmas time and snow days. Today school got cancelled because we had our first big blizzard of the season. I am hoping for at least a two hour delay tomorrow too but we will see. First of all I am going to give you some ideas for how to spend your snow day and winter break...

 "First we'll make snow angels for two hours, then we'll go ice skating, then we'll eat a whole roll of Toll-house cookie dough as fast as we can, and then well snuggle." -Elf

Just kidding. I am assuming you have some sort of snow on the ground at this point. I know a lot of people don't get any snow on Christmas, so those people can go lay out by your pool, because you probably aren't having a snow day anyway. For everyone else the first thing that should be done on a snow day is sleep in if possible because well, why not? The next thing that you must do on a snow day is to stay in your pajamas all day because who likes to wear normal clothes? NOT ME!! After you have slept in and have stayed in your pajamas the next thing that you should do is go outside and enjoy the snow. My favorite snow related activities are, sledding, making a snowmen and snow angels, and taking pictures.Keep in mind, it doesn't matter how old you are, you are never too old to make a snow man or frolic in the snow. Anyone can go outside and have fun in the snow.  After playing outside the next best thing to do is get some hot cocoa and watch a movie, preferably a Christmas one. The trick to spending your snow day efficiently is to be as lazy as possible. Here is an example, right now I am writing this wearing sweatpants, a sweatshirt and my snuggie. Writing this blog by the way has been the only productive thing that I have done all day and its GREAT! 

One of the best things about Christmas and snow days is watching all of the great movies. I personally like Christmas movies that are funny. Here is a list of must see funny Christmas movies: Elf, Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, Santa Clause and A Christmas Story. ABC family does a really good job with their 25 days of Christmas. I know that have played most of these movies along with many more great Christmas movies. 

So the next time you have a snow day just think about some of the tips that I told you in this blog, I guess I better get back to doing nothing. Thanks for reading :)

Say Cheese!

Hello, This blog was inspired by one of my best friends Emily. She asked me why I haven't blogged about pictures or photography yet because I am kind of obsessed. The majority of the time when we hang out we are taking pictures, so why not blog about it?

First of all I will talk about some of the pictures that are really common. Such as Planking this is where people lay on their stomachs and straighten their whole body. Here is an example of a person planking planking picture , I actually found this picture on a website solely dedicated to planking. So if you are looking for more information check that website out. There are also people who take planking to the extreme and plank in the air.

The next type of picture that people are taking are the owling or perching. This is where you bend down like you are a sitting owl. Like planking the weirder the location the better. Here is a picture if you would like to see what owling looks like. owling picture

The next type of picture is a little bit more difficult because you need two people. It is called Horsemaning. This is where one person lays on a surface like a table and hang their head over the side so you don't see their head. Then the other person shows only their head next to their body. It is kind of hard to explain so here is a website with a bunch of pictures of people horsemaning, horsemaning picture. 

So, I saw this picture on pintrest and I thought that it was awesome. I haven't gotten the chance to try it but I bet its really hard to do. Here is a picture of the picture if that makes sense. camping picture if this link doesn't work it is a picture of people jumping in sleeping bags.

Those are some of the common pictures that a lot of people are taking these days. If these are too difficult you can always go to the jumping pictures. There are endless possibilities when taking a jumping picture. Although you have to have your camera in the right setting or else you will get a lot of blurry pictures. So if you are ever bored those are some pictures that you could take with some friends. A tip for taking pictures is to use your surroundings as an advantage. That concludes my pictures blog so thanks for reading and let me know if you have any other fun ideas for taking pictures. :)

How Far is too Far?

I'm sure you all have heard about schools trying to get their kids to be more healthy. It is good that schools are trying to incourage a healthy life but how far is too far?

No desserts until friday, baked chips, no pop, and madatory fruit are some of the things that you will find at my school's cafeteria. Lunches cost more if you don't get a fruit or vegetable. The options of chips include various brands of baked chips (everyone knows they aren't the same). In all of the vending machines the only thing available is vitamin water although one of the teachers is known to sell pop. It is understandable with the growing number of obese children.

It doesn't stop at the cafeteria, students are required to take a form of gym all year with other options available. In gym class students are required to wear heart moniters. Students have to keep their heart rate above 140 and below 210 to have the watch start counting minutes. Everyday it is required to have 30 minutes on the clock to get the full number of points for that day. The idea of a way to insure exersize is a good idea but the heart moniter is worn on the skin where a girls bra would end. Not to mention the moniters have to be extremely tight to the body for it to read the correct number. A lot of the time the moniters will not have the correct numbers, it can be hard to get the thirty minutes everyday.

 Making students wear a moniter during gym class for a grade is pretty extreme. What happened to the teacher looking around at who is working out and who isn't? It should be required for kids that aren't doing what they should be during gym. So that it encourages kids to work hard. Anyway, thanks for reading :)

Take It All

Hello, So the other night I saw this show and I thought that I should tell you all about it because it is really interesting to watch.

There is a new game show that I saw the other night and it was called Take It All with Howie Mandel as a host. It starts out with five people who compete to get prizes. To stay in the competition they have to choose what prize is not of the lowest cost. So, if the costs of  the prizes were $10,000, $9,000 and $8,000 the contestants  are trying to pick what prize is not the $8,000. Each round if they don't have the lowest cost they get to keep their prize and move on. If they had the lowest prize then they go home with nothing, until it comes down to the last two people. Keep in mind the prizes are things that no one has an idea of the cost.

The last two people each have the prizes that they have already won, in addition to that they both get to pick a card with a large amount of money on them. At this point the contestants can keep what they have or they can take it all. If they both pick keep what I have then they both get to go home with all of their prizes. If one of the players chooses to take it all then that player gets all of their prizes along with all of their opponents (the opponent goes home with nothing). If they both decide to take it all they both go home empty handed. The players are allowed to talk about what they want to do before they choose what they want to do. They are basically trying to get each other to trust each other. In the episode that I saw both of the contestants seemed like they were going to both keep what they had but they ended up both taking it all and going home with nothing.

As you can tell this game gets a little intense. I would not want to play this game because I have no idea what I would do. I thought that this game was really different because it kind of tests the players character and morality. It shows how greedy people can be and that is really interesting to watch. I also thought that it was kind of outrageous because of the costs of the prizes, they were crazy expensive and rare.

All in all it is a pretty good show because it deals with a lot of strategic thinking. My family and I found it really interesting. If you have any other shows that I should watch let me know! Thanks for reading :)

Scary Movies That You Haven't Heard Of

Hello,  Recently I have been in the mood for scary movies, this blog will be about scary movies that you probably haven't heard about. (all of these movies can be found on Netflix). I will give you a quick summary about each movie and then do a review of what I thought about the movies.

The first movie is called Nine Dead. I first saw this movie with my friends and later showed it to my brother. It is about nine people that find themselves chained up in the same room with a man threatening to kill one of them every 10 minutes. All that the masked person told them is that they need to find out why each one of them is here. All of the people seem to have nothing in common except for one very important thing that they need to find out before 10 minutes are up. All nine people are related in one way and that thing got them where they are now: chained up in a room. 

First of all this movie is really gory. Watching this movie was weird to me because I liked the ending but I also kind of hated it at the same time. I liked how you got to find out why this guy was doing this to these people but I hated how it left you hanging. This movie makes you think about the way that you treat other people because that is how the nine people got into that predicament to begin with. 

The next movie is called Elevator. This movie is about a group of people that are going to a dinner party, only the elevator gets stuck. If that isn't bad enough, one of the passengers has a bomb. One of the other passengers also happens to be the host of the party and the owner of the company having the party. With all of the stress and anxiety one of the passengers has a heart attack and dies. Only this is the same person who has the bomb. So the rest of the people have to find a way to get out of the elevator before the bomb goes off. 

This movie is also really gory. The characters in this movie made me like it a lot. One of the characters is a comedian and he was really funny because he was claustrophobic. I however found my self yelling at one of the characters (the little girl) because it was her fault that the elevator stopped in the first place. Anyway I thought that this movie war pretty good, some people might say that it is a bit unrealistic though.

The next movie that I am going to talk about is called Identity. This movie was under the psychological thrillers section of Netflix. It is about ten strangers that find themselves stuck at a motel, they end up finding out that they are dying one by one.
This movie is hard to understand unless I tell you how it ends so, SPOILER ALERT!!
Okay so these people end up discovering that they are dying one by one. All the while we are getting flashbacks to a man being tried the day before his execution for numerous murders. We find out that the murderer has multiple identity disorder. Meaning that he has created all of the people in his mind. The reason that they all are dying is because in the real world a psychiatrist is helping him in order to convince the judge that he is insane.

This movie was really good. I watched it with my Brother and Mom and they both really liked it. It had a good mystery and surprise element to it. I would recommend it to anyone that likes thrillers but especially someone who is interested in psychology.

This concludes my "scary-movies-that-you-haven't-heard-of-before-blog". Let me know if you have already seen these movies or if you end up watching them. Thanks for reading! :)

Distractions

Hello, last night I found myself watching the ending of Elf and right after that,  the begining of Home Alone, all while painting my nails. This is all happening while my homework is sitting in my room waiting for me to come and finish it. It is like right now, instead of blogging I could be on Pintrest or some other social network. We had a half day yesterday and I endend up getting all of my homework done but there is always something school related that I could be doing.

I think that distractions like these are why alot of kids don't end up getting their homework done. I am not saying that people shouldn't do their homework. The most important task that kids need to learn before going in to High School is time management. They need to understand that they have to do their homework and then they can do whatever they want. The most successful kids know that they need to work hard at it. I guess my point is that everyone has things that they would rather be doing instead of math homework but don't be a procrastinator.

So get off of your computer and do your homework! Thanks for reading:)

What I Did Over Thanksgiving Break

Hello Everyone, What did I do over thanksgiving break? I went to movies of course! This blog will be about some of the movies that  I saw during Thanksgiving break. The first movie that  I saw was The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

This movie is about a high school kid that is a loner in that he stays at home every weekend and doesn't have any friends. When the movie starts the main character is entering high school and as we all know that can be pretty scary. Eventually two seniors end up becoming his first real friends. They introduce him to everything that he has been missing in life. All through out the movie the main character is having flash backs and there is numerous references to an "incident" that happened when he was younger. I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone so that is all that  I am going to tell you about what happens.

I thought that this movie was very good. I am a huge Emma Watson fan and I love the role that she plays in this movie. I went to see this movie with my friend Emily who is also a junior in high school, we both thought that this movie was very relate able. At one point we were both in tears while we watched this movie and you know what they say "a good movie will make ya cry". Surprisingly, this movie has a lot of psychology in it, last year my in psych class we got to watch a movie and do a project on it and this movie would be perfect for something like that.

The next movie that I saw over break was Trouble With the Curve. This movie is about a baseball scout who is getting to the retirement age but he refuses to admit it to himself. Everyone tells him that he is too old for doing this anymore. We then meet his successful daughter who has a troubled relationship with her Dad. He ends up taking his daughter along with him on one of the recruits even though he really didn't want to. Again, I don't to tell you too much so that is it for my summary.

I'm going to be honest, I didn't want to see this movie when it came out because I thought that it would be too sad. My brother and I went to it on Thanksgiving day because we both like baseball. On that subject, this movie has a lot of baseball references in it. I liked all of the actors in this movie and I liked how it had a good story. However it was sad and I think that people that are older would relate to this movie more than we could. Overall I liked this movie and would recommend it to people who are a little bit older than myself.

I think that sums up what I was doing over Thanksgiving break.As always, let me know what your opinions are about these movies. Thank you for reading :)

Kids These Days

Hello Everyone, I hope you all had a good weekend. I actually had a really good time this weekend because if you remember in one of my other blogs, I told you about the kids that I babysit. Well this weekend I brought the kids over to my house and we watched polar express with my parents. During the movie we had hot cocoa and cookies the best part was that after the movie when the kids put on their coats they found bells in their pockets. Just like in the movie. It was really fun to see their faces and to enjoy being young again with them. By the way if you haven't seen Polar Express, it is a really good movie with a great message. We told them that it must have been Santa that put the bells in their pockets and when we got back to their house they took turns writing thank-you letters to Santa.

It is really fun to do things like that with young kids because it has been along time since my brother and I were that age. Kids today grow up so fast, with all of this technology that we never had growing up. I know that even my generation is really advanced compared to my parents but kids these days are crazy. By crazy I  am referring to their dependence on technology. Here is an example: (this is a 100% true story) This Thanksgiving my cousins came in to town with their 6 year old son to visit. The big talk was about how my 6 year old cousin recently got an iPhone from his parents! HE IS ONLY 6!! Who is he going to be calling? His parents said that he could only keep the phone at home and the only people that he could call are his parents.   Does anyone else see the irony in this? If he is at home why would he be needing to call his parents and why wouldn't he use a house phone? He should be outside playing with friends not playing with his iPhone. While they were in town I noticed how differently he is growing up compared to my brother and I.

When my Brother and I were growing up we were outside all of the time, we loved running around and playing sports. Now kids are staying inside watching T.V, playing video games or playing on their i Phones. Kids need to be out playing with other kids without technology. This idea is one of the messages in the movie Grown Ups. In the movie Adam Sandler discovers how their kids depend on their nanny to do things for them and how they spend most of their time on their phones or video games. So when they go on a trip with Adam's friends from school, he forces the kids to get outside to enjoy nature. I can really relate to this movie because I find that I like to get away from everything once in a while and just be a kid again.

Anyway, I guess my point is that we need to force ourselves to remember what is important in life. If you haven't seen Polar Express or Grown Ups, I would highly recommend them to you. Thanks for reading :)