Photo Essay

Photo Essay: These pictures are from Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery. This has quickly become my favorite cemetery to photography. There is something there that just takes hold of your soul and makes you fall in love with the people buried there, the land, the river that runs by, and every other aspect of this place. A feeling runs over you-- one of absolute peace and serenity.

Life Recently

Hello lovely readers, I feel like I should update you guys on what's up with me and the blog since my last few postings have been so sporadic.

Blog: I've been trying to get this blog to the point that I'm posting three times a week but it is taking a surprising amount of time and planning.  I will be posting twice a week for the time being. Future posts planned are: the history of Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, May in my rearview, tour of my blogging station, and many more exciting posts.

The Road Of Recovery: There are no real new updates here other than I started going to lots of support groups.

What I'm Reading: I'm currently reading The Office of Mercy, I am honestly not far enough into this book to know what I think of it yet.  Animal Farm, I am nearly done with this book and I honestly haven't wanted to put it down! Every aspect of Animal Farm is enjoyable; I love books with political undertones like this book and the other two books I am currently reading.  Mockingjay has been just as amazing as the other two books in the Hunger Games trilogy.

What I'm Watching: Season 7 of Supernatural, this has been a very enjoyable season far and away better than last season.

What I'm Listening To: Stuff You Should Know (How PTSD Works, How Foot Binding worked, and many more of these epic podcasts), and lots of Classic Rock :).

Things Making Me Smile: painted nails, my kitten, and organizing.

Funny Animal Stuff

Pictures of my animals with captions of what I think they were thinking.

"Can I enter the Bat cave?" -Spice

 "What are you doing, can I help?"

"What, you said no?"

"Why can't I?"

"Oh yeah,  I don't have hands." - Spice

"What do you think you are doing photographing me from my bad side?" -Whinnie 

 "MOM!" "Stop embarrassing me in front of the Doctor!" -River Song

"What is actually happening?" -Porter

Helpful Coping Techniques

In honor of May being Mental Illness Awareness Month, I decided to post my list of coping techniques:

Butterflies Wondering

1. Meditation – yoga, the make repetitive noise type of meditation, mindfulness.

2. Exercise –running, walking, jogging, weight lifting, swimming, etc, are great healthy way to release stress, anxiety, and anger.

3. Reading – is a great (safe and healthy) way to escape from reality or a good way to better cope with and understand reality.

4. Art - music, crafting, drawing, painting, looking at art, playing guitar, etc. 

5. Challenging my intellect – reading, listening to podcasts, writing, watching Doctor Who, listening to books on tape, researching, etc.

6. Games – board games, sports, cards, etc.

7. Photography.

8. Going out – to the gym, the library, the movies, the park, a museum, etc, somewhere cheap or free is best.

9. Talk it out – talk to someone you trust.

10. Writing –be it a crazy weird fiction story about an odd object or a blog post,writing is always relaxing for me and is a positive way to release emotions.

11. Pamper yourself – for me this looks like doing my makeup, painting my nails, and such as that.

12. Focus – hyper focus on a random object. Write out a step by step guide to what you need to do.  Focus on one thing at a time. 

So that is the list of my top 12 favorite alternatives. 

How to: Hair Edition

Give Your Hair a Coppery Tint/Lighten Your Hair.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup of c vitamins
2 Tbsps olive oil
2 tsps lemon juice
1 cup of tea tree oil shampoo

Instructions:
Grind C vitamins, then mix with olive oil and lemon juice.  Then then add the shampoo and mix together until at a frosting like consistency.  Then shampoo in the mixture and leave in for one hour or longer, then rinse, and blow dry hair. this should have lightened your hair  I usually do this 3 to 4 times.  If  your hair has a tendency to turn red  you should have a coppery tenant to your hair ,this can be a great alternative to having to dye your hair.


Add shine and Soften Hair
wash and halfway dry hair, then put about half a tablespoon of baby oil in hair.  Leave overnight.  Wash out with strong shampoo such as tea tree oil.

Funny Farm Story of the Week

Tonight after dinner,  Mom and I went out to check on the kittens. When we came back inside, one of our dogs ran into the house, up the stairs, jumped over the baby gate, ran into my bathroom. Then jumped into the bathtub and proceeded to lay down. It's now an hour and a half later, and the dog hasn't moved. I decided that I definitely needed to take some pictures of her for a post.  Do you have any funny animal stories?

Life Recently

I was reading blogs this morning and thinking about what to post and decided that I would update you about my life of late. 

The Road Of Recovery:  I have started seeing an art therapist, as well as a new psychiatrist, both things are going really well!  I discovered two new helpful websites Scar Tissue and Bipolar Burble both are great and as always twloha is encouraging me. I found two awesome mood charts I'm trying to decide which one I like better chart one , chart two.

What I'm Reading:  I just finished Frankenstein.  I'm currently reading  Mockingjay, this has been just as good as the other books in the "Hunger Games" trilogy.  The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, this book contains the most accurate descriptions of how depression feels and what it is, I have ever read. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to know more about depression.

What I'm watching:  Season 6 of Supernatural, this honestly hasn't been my favorite season so far, but with that said, it's still amazing and a must watch for any fan of horror/drama because special effects are amazing .  BBC's Robin Hood series 1, we just finished the second episode and are hooked!

What I'm Listening To:  Anything Mumford and Sons, Jake Bugg's Lightning Bolt, and La Santa Cecilia's Monedita .

Things Making Me Smile: Cats that don't understand why i cant scratch their ears 24/7.  

 Wet & Wild's disturbia, nail polish.   Baby Animals.  And mostly nice weather.               

Waterloo Cemetery

I took these toward the end of February at the Waterloo Cemetery in Waterloo, IL.

I'm not sure if you can read it, but it says "Our Home."

 Loved the broken off headstone.

I thought that this and the last one were really cool because of how far inland we are .

Etsy shop

I now have my Etsy shop open I'm still listing items though so only a few things are up. http://www.etsy.com/shop/ButterfliesWondering?ref=si_shop

Email List

I'm thinking about starting  a email list to let y'all know what's going on with the blog and when I post. would y'all be interested?

Tips for new Bloggers

Tips for new Bloggers

By no means am I an “expert” blogger, whatever that looks like, but I do consider myself successful because I am reaching my goals for this particular adventure. Because of this I thought I would share my personal list of blogging do’s and do not's.

1.  Do not worry about the number of followers you have. Try your best and work your butt off, but worrying will get you nowhere fast, if anything, it will slow you down.

2.  Do use social media to your advantage; self advertising can be effective. I recommend this blog community , the people on here are pretty helpful.

3. Do not write about things you don’t want to write about. It is YOUR blog no one else’s. Do what you want with it and what makes you happy.

4.  Do plan, I recommend that you have your posts planned, and if possible, written at least a week in advance.

5.  Do not do what I do, and write at the last minute.

6.  Do set aside time for blogging, 1-2 hours a day, less on days you aren’t writing and 3 plus hours on planning days.

7. Do not spend so much time on your blog that you don’t have anything to blog about.

8. Do start a blogging notebook. I use a composition size notebook; I make and sell these for $7.

April In My Rear-view

                  April In My Rearview 

Wow, it's hard to believe that April is nearly over! This month has been so good, but crazy busy. I have accomplished many things from my Spring Goals post, but I still have a lot left to do from my list. (I love lists!)

The three events in April that stand out to me are:
My Birthday was in April so that was a pretty big deal for me.
I got my license!
The tragic Boston bombing occurred.

My favorite posts from April.
Homemade: Potpourri
Spring has Finally Arrived

Blog news from April.
I made a google plus account,
and a facebook account,
and a twitter account.

Photo an Hour 

8:30 a.m. Playing with Winnie and watching the news.

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 9:00a.m. Writing the day's blog post and doing some blog planning...

  while enjoying the view from my work station!

10:30 a.m. Doing some (more like a lot of) blog planning.

11:40 a.m. Hanging clothes out on the line after Math.

12:00p.m. Eating leftover pizza, while doing science.

1:40p.m. ready to go to some appointments and the library.

2:30p.m The books I got from the library.

3-5p.m.  I was in appointments or driving the entire time. 

6:00 p.m. Some awesome things I got in the mail.  I then made dinner.

7:00 p.m.  I then watched tv and read until I went to bed.

Birthday

Sharing the positive bits of my birthday is something I am pretty excited about, even though it should be a happy thing, for me, it hasn't been for a while.  My mentor/trainer/friend had a brain aneurysm on my thirteenth birthday, so the last few years, my birthday has been overshadowed by grief.  I've just tried to make it through the days leading up to and through my birthday, but this year I put a lot of effort into at least somewhat enjoying my birthday.  And it worked pretty well.  My family has been very important in helping me this year (and past years), I have just actually accepted the help this year. I don't think that I could ever really make them understand that the things they do can have such a positive effect on me; but it has, and I'm grateful for that.

So let's move past the heavy stuff and talk about the fun stuff! On Saturday night, my parents took me out to dinner at a "Sushi Ai." They have all you can eat made to order sushi. Considering that I'm Ovo-Pescetarian, you might think that I would eat a lot of fish, but I really don't have it often, so having sushi was pretty awesome. This is probably why for the first time in my life I over ate, by more than one or two bites! I don't recommend this at all; it wasn't pleasant. HA HA.  We had a lot of fun though.

Sunday we baked my cake, cooked out over a fire and just talked for several hours.  Monday we decorated my cake. And lastly, on Tuesday, I went and got my licence, since in Illinois the DMV is closed on Monday. These are the pictures we took on Monday:

 The T.A.R.D.I.S cake pre-candles.

My Mother lighting the candles (because no one wanted me to just go play with the lit candles)   :-)

The T.A.R.D.I.S cake all lit up.

Me blowing out the candles.

Me "licking" the cake.

Our tongues were so blue by the time we all had a slice!

For anyone that doesn't know what a T.A.R.D.I.S is, here is the wikipedia page for an explanation that isn't as long as mine would be. Hopefully it's accurate; I only read the first section and this is a great video from the show to explain why she's bigger on the inside.

Friday reveiw

Woo! It's finally Friday, this week has seemed more like a month than a week.  I've had a lot going on this week, so I'm excited for the weekend.  Monday is my 16th birthday; I have off of school, and my dad is taking off of work!  On Saturday my mom and I are going to make a TARDIS cake, on Sunday I get my favorite meals along with a bonfire, Monday  I plan to go see Oblivion , and Tuesday (because the DMV is closed on Monday) I'm taking my test to get my license (I'm so scared that I'm not gonna pass). Without further ado, I'm gonna share some awesome stuff with you.

Epic Websites  

 My top 3 websites of the week

1. Beauty schools directory is amazing for anyone considering cosmetology school. 

2. Listography is an awesome website that is dedicated to lists, lists and more lists. It is social media for lists. I just found this website yesterday, so i don't have many lists; but you can check out my profile  here .

3. Graveyards this is a website for finding  graveyards in Illinois. As someone that loves photographing graveyards, I'm pretty much in love with this website.

Other cool stuff from the Internet 

Stuff You Should Know is a podcast that can be found on Itunes.  As a person that loves knowing/learning stuff, this is a pretty epic podcast. I listened to "How Lying Works" and "The Great Chicago Fire" this week and learned some cool stuff.

I hope you guys have an awesome weekend and enjoyed this post . (:

'Chorizo' Pasta

Today I'll be sharing with you guys one of my favorite meals to cook for my family, It's chorizo pasta.

Ingredients 

1 package seitan chorizo 

desired amount of white mushrooms,  I usually add at least 6 but it's good without them too.

1-2 cloves of garlic

1 small onion 

\1 quart tomatoes 

2 Tbs tomato past 

3 dashes of black pepper'

1/4 tsp ancho chili powder

1/8 tsp thyme 

1 1/2 tsp oregano

1 tsp parsley(if you add too much cumin just add extra parsley) 

1/2 tsp cumin

1 bay leaf

1/2 tsp garlic powder

cilantro as desired , dried or fresh(best)  

Instructions 

saute'  "chorizo", mushrooms,onion, and garlic, until browned.  Add tomatoes and tomato paste, stir until well mixed.  Add spices,stir, and let simmer for at least 15 minutes.  Serve and enjoy. 

serving suggestion

Put sauce over whole wheat linguine and sprinkle nutritional yeast over the top , with a large side salad.