Balance

I feel like this year is an off-blogging sort of year for me. I think I've done about max two posts per month if that. Maybe I feel like there's nothing quite blog worthy to post on here lately. I'm a grown up girl now working about full time. I'm dating someone. I'm taking voice lessons. I'm developing another random hobby of embroidery. (Okay I guess I should blog some pictures of that goodness because it is fantastic.)
But I feel like life has gotten into a rhythm. A rhythm where I am keeping afloat and just riding the wave. A quite rhythm, more to myself and who is around me day-to-day instead of something shouted online. Maybe it's because I want to really experience something, relish deep in it without having to be the person behind the camera making sure every one else can see what fun we're having.
A friend of mine recently returned from her mission and she had a companion that talked about not being able to take all of our photos with us after we die. So she just focused on enjoying the moment while she was there. I think that's a great thing a lot of us need to learn in this new technological world. Sometimes it's hard to be "there", in the moment, because we have something else calling our attention. A text message, email, facebook notification, instagram, snapchat... we get so caught up in everyone else's life. And then it's a war and challenge to make ourselves look so fun, perfect, outgoing and living life online that I sometimes wonder if that's really living. But then again, I love the connection to people. I love reading their blogs, hearing their thoughts, seeing their pictures.
It's the world we live in.
I guess balance is the real answer.

But isn't it to almost everything anyways?

Character Love

If you know of any Matthew Crawleys

 or Levi Savages

... send them my way please.

Batik

Batik. Have you ever heard of it? It's art. And it's basically amazing and kind of blows my mind away. You must start off knowing exactly what you're picture is going to look like. It has to be all planned out.

Essentially you start off with a white cloth, you put hot wax on the areas that you want to stay white for the ending picture. Then you dip the cloth into a bath dye of the lightest color. After it's dried you put wax on the parts that you want to stay that lightest color. Then you dip again in a darker color and repeat until finally you have dipped the cloth in all the colors and you have wax over almost the whole cloth. After that you hot iron the cloth between sheets of absorbent paper to remove the wax, and done, you have your image. I know it sounds slightly simple but check out these images. I'm thoroughly impressed. 

I think this needs to be added to my art projects to try. I did find a place that offers lessons for a mere $400 for 3 months... but alas the class is located in Southeast Asia. 

Day 29

A picture of something you want to do before you die.

Hang Glide 

Learn how to sculpt ice. 

Day 19

A picture of somewhere you'd like to travel.

Well, besides all the countries I went to for my choir tour, here are some others I'd love to see.

Greece

Ireland

Ladakh (I really just want to try living their lifestyle for a month or so.)

Holland

Day 9

My Dream House

I don't have a specific house that I want. I have ideas though. Firstly, I would rather have a small house with a huge yard than the other way around. I want a comfy sized house. I want a library in that house. The walls of the library are going to be glass, or at least just have the ceiling glass. When it rains, snows, whatever the weather, I want to be able to curl up on a comfy couch with my book and be able to hear and see the rain fall on that ceiling. Watch the lightning or snow falling. There'll probably be a fireplace in there too because come on, who doesn't love falling asleep in front of a fire? I want open rooms though, rooms that meld into each other. I want a music room with sound proof walls so I can play the piano at any hour of the day without bothering people.
But that's basically all I've really thought about though for my dream house.

New Ambition

Thanks to Heather and Jake, my new lifetime goal/ambition is to be able to do this: 

Here's another video for you if you enjoyed this as much as I did.

Life As I Want It

I wish life was like this. The world would be a much better place.