But Wait There's More...

Hey, I know its been an age...

I had my first Irish debate last week, and we are through to the next round - yay go us toot toot - and I also had a concert performance with my choir, so all in all it's been a pretty busy time.

I'm beginning to feel like maybe I don't really want to do as much diary blogging any more, I think I want to focus on reviews and suggestions for the moment. SOOOoooo, I have created a new blog! It's called The Joy Planner, and it's all about giving the list of equipment and tools everyone needs to have a blissfully happy time, whatever the occasion. I still plan on keeping up Lazy Daisy, but I will update The Joy Planner more regularly. You should check it out anyway, I hope you like it!

My Top 5 Cooliest Picture Books :)

Just a quick post for the moment - my top five books with pictures, for a change. Enjoy!

In no particular order:

• Peter Pan and Wendy, by J. M. Barrie - illustrated by Robert Ingpen.
  I won a story competition back when I was ten, and this was the prize. I'll admit I was disappointed at first, but I grew to love the book and its pictures - small greyscale ones interspersed with the text, and truly magnificent full colour spreads.
  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Snow Queen, by Hans Christian Anderson - illustrated by P. J. Lynch
  These warm sunny pictures at the beginning of this contrast eerily with the frosty beauty of the Snow Queen and her palace - a hauntingly magical book.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Misty Annual 1986: I found this in my Grandmother's attic, it must have belonged to one of my aunts at some stage. I adore the comic strip stories and the familiarly comfortable creepiness - kind of like those Babysitter's Club Mystery books, only with pictures.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Tokyo Look Book: I absolutely adore the quirkiness of the Japanese "street style" pictures in this book, I love flipping through it for inspiration.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Adventures of Little Mouk, by Wilhelm Hauff - illustrated by Monika Laimgruber: The illustrations in this are done in a strange, dotted style, giving them a fleeting and exquisitely embellished appearance. I remember begging my parents to read it so I could find out if the story was as good as the pictures, but they very rarely did as it was too long to constitute a bedtime story.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

MindMaps and Bookishness

Hi, once again,

I promised myself I would do some work this mid-term, but with Halloween, my birthday and a trip to England to visit relatives, my time has unfortunately been minimal. I had to do my history essay on the plane, so it has loads of splodges where my hand jerked because of the turbulence.

Anyway, today being the last day off, I figured I'd better go back the grindstone. So I've been practising piano for like two hours, sorting out notes and flashcards for my school subjects, and making this fab-yoo-luss collage/MindMap of the American Presidents (in History we have to learn from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan). I'm quite proud of it, in case you couldn't tell:

Click for bigger picture

I was researching all these study websites for tips and I came across both MindMaps and the Cornell Note-taking Method many times, so I figured there had to be something good about them. Sure enough, they do seem like very effective ways of studying. So yeah, I'm feeling pretty cool right about now :)

I got a new book - Paper Towns by John Green. I thought his novel An Abundance of Katherines was really original, so I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into this one. I also came across a book on amazon called Steering the Craft by Ursula le Guin - it sounds like my Writing Magic book, so I think I might get it. Has anyone read it before?

Well that is my life in a nutshell en ce moment, I'll leave you to your own entertainment now.

Byeee!

Final Blooms

Hi peeps, how's it hangin'?

Sorry about the lack of proper postage recently - I will be fully back to normal by this weekend!

Just as a general note: I finished the book Room that I had down as a Challenge - it was morbidly fascinating, I have to say.

Anyway, I really ought to go now, so catch ya later, friends!

Heroes Needed

Heroes Needed by lazyd featuring gothic necklaces

Hello again to all my friends, I'm glad you came to play - the fun and learning never ends... here's what I did today! :)

I guess people probably thought I was dead at this stage... sorry to disappoint guys, but I've been so busy with stuff going on that I just haven't been able to find time to post - a lame excuse I know, but a truthful one.

Luckily for me, the tap shoes are off, the musical is finished, so I can blog away, and I no longer have to look like this every night:

Grim, I know.

Unluckily, I don't think the greasepaint was good for my skin, I've started to break out all down one side of my face. I just hope it isn't a return of my acne - I noticed some spots on my back as well, which is a worrying sign. I used to have absolutely, miserably awful skin, from about eleven to fourteen. I used roaccutane, and that seemed to clear it up, though the dermatologist said there was some chance of a relapse. Anyway, I'm basically praying that this is not the case at the moment.

I used to be so depressed about the state of my skin, and I just adore having a clear face now. I never really knew how to cover my acne back then, and I was very self conscious about it at the time. I was perusing youtube recently though, and I came across this amazing video on how to cover up breakouts.

"Be prepared", as the scouts in the movies say (I wouldn't know, I was never involved in scouts). Hopefully it won't come to this though.

It's actually my birthday today - November1, and I am 17, which means I can officially learn how to drive now. I think I'm more apprehensive than enthusiastic about this at the moment, but oh well. I guess I had to learn at some point. I had a great birthday, my friends came over and we did the usual -  consume massive quantities of junk food and watch a hilariously stupid movie - in this case, Bad Teacher. It was actually funny in spots, plus it had Jason Segel in it, and I have a nerdish, giggly love for him since I watched Freaks and Geeks this summer. So yeah, life is good.

A tribute to Writing Magic

I've been interested in books about how to write for a good while now, and this is one of my favourites:

I've been in love with Ella Enchanted and other books by Gail Carson Levine since I was really small and my mother was still reading book extracts out to me before bed, so when I saw this on Amazon, I thought: why not? And I wasn't disappointed, I can tell you that much.

The book is a concise but inspiring guide to improving your writing skills, from coming up with ideas, to learning the tricks an author uses to tell a good story, to ploughing through: figuring out ways to stay writing your story even though you might want to give up. I found loads of great hints and lessons in this book, and it is written in an informal, chatty manner that makes me want to pick it up again and again.

The only flaw that the book has is that it is geared towards younger people - I would say age ten to early teens. But while I had some reservations when I first started reading it, I found that the Writing Magic has something for everyone, and any tips in the book are important for writers of all ages to learn. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I constantly reread sections from the book to keep the information clear in my head, and because of the informal colloquial language used, it doesn't feel strange to do so, it feels almost (cheesy moment here) like greeting an old friend.