cupcakes

Cupcakes. I love them. What else is there to say?

~Starr

bas-ket-ball

Today I thought I'd share some pictures I took at my sister's basketball game last week. I brought my camera to try it out on action photos. [Her team was in white, just so you know. She's the one with the red shoes. XD]

And my favorite picture....

All of these that were edited were edited in Picasa. I've been using it lately, rather than Picnik, simply because Picnik is so slow and tedious and to open Picasa all I have to do is right-click on my photo. It doesn't offer as much as Picnik, but you can do basic things, like change coloring and crop, which is all I really need.

Have a happy Saturday! :D

~Starr

my walk

I generally hate walking, but I love my walks home from the bus stop when the weather is nice like it was today. It's only four blocks and I feel so refreshed and joyous by the time it's done. I feel so connected to nature. I love the trees, I love the wind rushing through the wind chimes, I love the sky and the sun and the fresh air.

Today, I took some pictures on my walk (actually I retraced my steps because I didn't have my camera coming home from school). Here are some of them. Even though some of them probably could do with a little editing, they're all SOOC because soy muy perezosa. ;)

...And my camera battery ran out of battery shortly after that. :D

~Starr

confessions

idea shamelessly taken from carlotta

confession: I've had a headache since I got home from school today. Now, this may shock some of you but I'm going to say it anyway: I hate headaches. >.<

confession: I can't swallow pills. Like, I just can't. I don't like them. Which isn't good when I have a headache, like now.

confession: Instead of working on my Spanish project, I painted my nails. They look really bright and pretty now...but my project isn't any closer to being done. Sadness.

confession: I spend way too much time on the computer. I do. It's bad. And it's a probable cause of the headache.

confession: I think high school was intended to steal your soul.

confession: I stress out over things more than I need to. Too often I need to stop and remind myself that it will be okay. It's not a big deal. It will be fine. All's well ends well. <---That reminds me of Shakespeare and a Midsummer Night's Dream. I like that play because it has fairies and it takes place in the forest. The movie is cool too, but also weird.

confession: My mind does go off on odd tangents like that all the time. Tell me I'm normal. Or not. It doesn't make a difference....

confession: I really want to read my NaNoWriMo story. I haven't looked at it since November 30th, the day I finished it, but I'm planning on reading it January 30th. What day is that? Sunday? Oh, goody. I can't wait. (I just know it's going to be terrible.)

confession: I have a really odd question. What is your favorite number? Mine is 11, though I also love 4 and 19. I used to love 12 but I'm kind of over that now. It changes. But it really annoys me when people say "7" because like 7 is everyone's favorite number so I think that's sort of lame. So, yeah. Favorite numbers, anyone?

~Starr

food photography

Lately I have been interested in food photography, so today I decided to share some of my food photos. These are my less-bad ones: the really bad ones don't even make it off the camera. But food photography, like all areas of photography, is a learning process. It takes lots of practice. So, before I say anything else cheesy I'm just going to show the pictures.

These first ones are of these delicious chocolatey pumpkin bars...or at least, that's what we call them. It's just like pumpkin bread with chocolate chips, in the form of bars. Anyway, they're yummy.

 Aaand here's some grapefruit for ya:

 And not exactly food, but...

It's that time of year again! Girl Scout Cookie time! (Both of my sisters sell, but I've never been a Girl Scout.)

The Pioneer Woman has some pretty helpful tips about food photography, some of which I tried to incorporate in these photos. I used natural light from a window for them all, even though it meant having a limited window (haha no pun intended) of time in which to shoot.

Well, all this food is making me hungry! I'm off to get some lunch.

~Starr

to-do on a saturday

1. Take lots of photos

2. Go to the library

3. Eat cookies with a cup of tea

4. Take a walk

5. Go to a basketball game

6. Talk to my grandparents who are leaving for Australia/New Zealand tomorrow

7. Pet my cats

8. Have delicious meals with my family

9. Go to my sister's Sound of Music production (she is a housekeeper, a goat, a nun and a Nazi XD)

10. Get more music and organize my playlists

11. Just smile :)

~Starr

i'm a cat person

 You really should know this by now.

And, to be fair, my other cat:

 [Sorry it's so horribly blurry! He moves too fast for me to get a good picture! And I didn't have the sense to change the shutter speed or anything ;P SOMEDAY I will get a good picture of him!]

--

"Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat."
— Mark Twain 

Oh, yes, I am a cat person. (And I think Mark Twain was, too.) What about you?

~Starr

my desk

So today, since I'm bored, I'm going to show you some changes (by which I mean, cleaning) that I made to my desk area. It's actually orderly now! Imagine that!

So, now there is a place for everything. Starting from the top left, and then going down: my Nintendo DS/games/stationary, random cat figurines, camera stuff (this is where I keep my camera, too, but I was kind of using it in this picture...;P), dictionaries/paper. Then I have my calculator and agenda. Now on the other side, at the top: books, all my school stuff (divided into A and B days) and my Odyssey book. Whew.

Oh, and that thing in the middle is my newest project. It's like my own kind of an inspiration board, where I tack up cool photos or things I've made in art. I'll probably switch things out once a month, or whenever I get tired of looking at it. XD

(You can click on the pictures to make them bigger so you can see everything. Sorry they're kind of blurry. :/)

So in other news, I've been taking a lot of food photos so you can be sure that will be a post on here real soon. What can I say? Food photography is just so addicting! And since the sun has finally come out of hiding (at least for now), it's so much easier with the natural light. Anyway. More of my rants on that later.

~Starr

P.S. Thanks for 20 followers. (Yes, I will keep saying this every 5 followers. XD)

my "people" photo

I've decided to enter Carlotta's photo challenge (click to check it out) where the theme this time is "people". I don't usually take a lot of pictures of people because everyone in my family seems to hate having their photo taken, and besides just the same people get old after a while. But I was looking through my folders for something to enter and I remembered this one.

It's of my youngest sister, and it was taken about a year ago in San Francisco. I just love her eyes, how she's looking off into the distance, and her smile, how her teeth were still coming in and she how mischievous she looks. I like the sepia tone, too. It amazes me how much younger she looks here as opposed to now.

~Starr

thoughts of the day

one. What's better than a weekend? A three day weekend, for starters. No school on Monday! This pleases me much. Thanks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr! :)

two. I love Oreos, as exhibited in the picture below. Om nom nom.

three. My internet. It displeases me. Much. Like, this post has already taken so long to write because it keeps on deciding to not work. So frustrating. Anyway. Just had to get that out. (Sorry for all the sentence fragments in this paragraph! I'm working on that ^_^)

four. Wet. That's one way to describe this weather. (Cold is another word.) It rained a lot last night and it's been kind of misting all day. I ventured outside earlier to take some pictures because I think raindrops can look kind of cool.

five. Despite the fact that it is 3:50 PM here, I'm still in my pajamas. Hehehe.

six. But that doesn't mean I haven't accomplished anything! I wrote all my thank you notes from Christmas and sent them in the mail. That counts for something, right? And now my mom is nagging me about doing the dishes and the laundry, so if I decide to heed her words, that will be more time spent being productive. Right?

~Starr

castles in the air

 "There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds."
— G.K. Chesterton

You know where I want to live? A castle. I don't care what you think, I think it would be simply lovely. And I know it won't ever happen, so what's the harm in dreaming?

In autumn, when the leaves are falling and everything is dying, it will look like this:

 

 In the winter, right now, it will look like this, all covered in snow:

 But I can't wait for the spring to come, for the flowers to bloom and the plants to start to turn green again:

None of these photos are mine, and I'm not pretending they are. I found them all off of www.weheartit.com, a neat website that has tons of cool pictures like these. If you are interested in finding the links of where they came from, they are all on my WeHeartIt. You just can't really be sure about those links, though, which is why I haven't included them. Every time I have a post where I show pictures that don't belong to me, it will be under the label "Not Mine". Everything else is mine. :) 

~Starr

one word 2011.

In my readings of blogs, I've come across a challenge called One Word 2011, where you choose one word to be your sort of motto and mantra for this year. It's taken me some time, but I've found my word.

Smile.

My neighbor. {this is old but it was the best I could find}

It's a simple word, really, but it can make all the difference. A smile can brighten someone's day, cheer them up, make them feel like they have a friend. Sharing a smile is easy, but I fear it's something I don't do nearly enough.

So, this year, I resolve to smile. I will smile even if I'm upset, because I know my sufferings aren't as bad as other people's and I know there is always something good to look forward to. I will smile to reach out to others and to make friends. I will smile so other people will know that I am a friendly and kind and blessed person. I will smile because I am happy. 

 So, that is my word for this year, people. Do you have one? 

~Starr

outside of a dog

 "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
--Groucho Marx

Oh, Mr. Marx, you make me laugh. But what you say is so true, for what is one of the best things to do in the winter, when the cold, harsh weather resigns you to staying inside? Read, of course! I went to the library on Saturday and got some books. I usually like to mix it up in terms of genres: something historical fiction, something like fantasy/sci-fi, something romantic, something I haven't read in a long time. This time, though, I seemed to go for the fairy tale type, the kind of books that tell of princesses and castles and love in a time long ago and faraway. I guess it goes to show what sort of mood I was in. ^_^

But I also got an old favorite of mine, Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. She was like my favorite author in the third and fourth grades. My favorite book of hers, thought, has to be Chasing Redbird. It's so lonely and beautiful and funny, all at once. The library didn't have it, though. I also got a volume of poetry by Pablo Neruda. At first I couldn't find any poetry but then I found it in the Spanish section. Thankfully there is a side-by-side English translation. I like to read them in Spanish, though. There's something there so lovely about reading literature in its original language, even if you can only understand every third word or so.

I've been toying with the idea of including a quote at the beginning of every post, like I have in this one and the previous one. It would be kind of hard to always find something relevant, but it would be fun, too. I have myriad quotes saved up on my Goodreads account (which unfortunately I cannot share since it has my real name and real friends on it)

So, what are your favorite books?

~Starr

signs of life

 "Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light."
--Albus Dumbledore (okay, J.K. Rowling)

It was this quote that was in my mind as I set out to find bits of life in the stark winter landscape that is my front yard. As it turns out, no matter how barren, ugly, or dark something seems, there is always a bit of beauty, a bit of life, a bit of light. You just have to look. :)

All SOOC, shot on aperture priority, f/5.6, which is the biggest aperture it can get, which gives them a large depth-of-field. :) I went to the library today and I wanted to get some books on photography but I couldn't really find any that were what I wanted. But I got some good fantasy books. :D

~Starr

it's friday, i'm in love

 Rainbow edition, or so it seems. ^_^

Yes! It is Friday, finally. My favorite day of the week, except for Saturday and Sunday. Haha. I'm so tired and I'm glad all I have to do is veg out on the computer, sleep and whatever I want. AKA not homework.

I think Mother Nature loves Fridays, too, because this is what she showed us today:

Gorgeous sunset! When I saw it, I grabbed my camera and ran down the street to get a good view without bothering to put shoes on. The colors were so brilliant; really that yellow and orange. It's unedited; I could probably make it even brighter but again, I'm lazy. :P

I'm sorry my posts have been a bit random and all over the place, but I guess that's just how I am. Hopefully I can think of ideas for posts with just one topic. I don't know about you but that's something I would like. Maybe since it's the weekend I'll have time for a little photo shoot where everything actually relates to each other? Maybe?

Well, I hope you all have a splendid weekend! Thanks for 15 followers; I like those nice, clean numbers that end in 5 or 0. ^_^

~Starr

thoughts of the day

one. I've decided to call all my posts that don't have a specific topic "thoughts of the day" and to separate each "thought" in a numbered list, because I like order. :) if you have a better idea for a name, let me know.

two. I just organized my favorite blogs into a list which can be seen by clicking here or just clicking on the page name conveniently titled "My Favorite Blogs". They're all really interesting and inspiring so you should be sure to check them out! They're mostly photography/art-centered sites. If you have any suggestions of blogs I should read be sure and tell me, because I love finding new blogs! :D

three. My sister got Taylor Swift's new (okay, two month old) album, Speak Now, for Christmas, so of course all of those songs are now stuck in my head. I'm not really complaining, though, because I honestly think this is my favorite of all her CD's. Innocent and Never Grow Up are probably my favorite songs, because they are so bittersweet and because I find them easy to relate to and not just about love like so many other songs are. I also like Long Live and Enchanted because I like the fantasy aspect. I'm weird. :P

four. This school week has been so long, even though it's only been three days. Today was better; we had club pictures for Newspaper which killed time, in Algebra everyone was very giggly, and we got to paint in Art. :) One more day until the weekend--it is sad I'm counting down, isn't it? Well, I always do this.

five. I just wanted to say Happy Birthday to three of my dear cousins (they are triplets). I know they sometimes read this so if you are, hope your birthday was super fun! :D

~Starr

tired of winter

So today they made us go back to school, which I feel was a bit unnecessary. I mean, I was having so much fun, or at least enjoying myself, on winter break. Why'd it have to end???

Anyway. It was really super boring and I almost fell asleep in every class (But I didn't). School is just so blahhh and gray and yawn and yeah, I think you get the point. I'm not saying that it's easy; it's not. I have to work hard but usually I get pretty decent grades. It's just...there are so many other things I would rather do with my time, you know? Like sleep. >.<

The weather seems to mimic my sentiments. The sky is all gray and empty and so are the trees. It's cold and wet (I think it must have rained today, but I didn't see it). I'm tired of winter. If the holidays are over and it's not going to snow, then winter should just be over. Anybody with me on this?

I don't have any new pictures or interesting to share today but I'll post some next time when I'm hopefully out of this funk. Of course warm chocolate chip pumpkin muffins and fuzzy sweaters do help a bit.

~Starr