Rachel, Rosie, and I learned to longboard last summer after having our minds blown by this video! 

We are going to longboard all the way to Lake Michigan some time this august!

Photo of my awesome sister Rain by StudioBeerhorst

Photo by Candi Mandi.

Photo by Me.

illustration by Mapache Salado

Photo By ▲  Vanessa

Photo By Forestlass 1

I love floral patterns! But I start to need them in the dark month of February. They help me stay cheerful by reminding me of what is to come.

Photo By MichaMerrick

Photo by Parker Fitzgerald

Photo ?

I don’t think that floral’s should be limited to women and girls. they have a feminine connotation that some women and most men are uncomfortable with but there is nothing shameful about being a woman. They are brave and strong and beautiful. Wear floral prints with pride!

Photo from hyggeling happy

I hope I’ve planted some seeds of fashion inspiration in your mind dear reader <3

illustration by Rick Beerhorst

Movies have always been unbelievably magical experiences for me. When I was a little we didn’t have a TV set, but every once in a while we would go to Blockbuster, rent a video and watch it on our church’s VCR after hours. Words can not express how much I looked forward to this!

We would rent movies like Mary Poppins, My Neighbor Totoro, The Iron giant, Toy story and others.  Once the movie was over I would be so broken-hearted I’d be a total brat the whole way home. When my parents bought our first real computer (some time around 1999 or 2000 – a Mac) our movie consumption started in earnest. We would get DVD’s from our library’s (at the time) limited selection. When I was about 14 they decided to get a newer computer and much to my excitement,  they gave me the old one! This meant I could go to the library (By myself) and check out whatever movie I wanted (By myself) and watch it (By myself!!!) You’d think that there would be some sort of system in place to keep kids from checking out rated R movies — but there isn’t  LOL!

Illustration By Skeleton Dance
I would walk to the Library in the dead of Michigan winters to check out X-files Box sets or Sex in the City, and then watch them in my room stopping only for meals and bathroom breaks

(Here it is, your deep-seated suspicions and worst fears about unschooling confirmed!).

As a somewhat sheltered christian unschooled kid this was BIG. I remember being at a movie rental place with my mom when I was 9 or 10 and asking her why some of the movies where in the “Cult section”

(I knew enough about cults to know that they where very bad) she told me a very confusing story about the Rocky Horror Picture Show,

that it was a dangerous film that made people act silly, they’d dressed up like the characters, and watch it in large groups at midnight. So for the longest time I thought that every single movie in the “Cult” section had its own cult somewhere that acted like that while they watched it.

(a kind of wonderful idea come to think of it)

Photo By Dempster Lane

18.6 Million empty homes in America

3.5 Million homeless

According to the National Law Center. And that was in 2008…..

Photo By DecoJim

Here in Grand Rapids there is an empty house for every 8 houses. I live next to a huge beautiful house that has been empty for a year, it is bank owned. My parents live next to an empty house that has a big barn in the back, it was foreclosed last summer. You’d think that they would lower the prices on these houses for a quick sale but mostly they are priced like it’s still 2005 and so they remain empty. Grand Rapids is one of Michigan’s healthier cities, or at lest it hasn’t become the go-to place to shoot your post-apocalyptic movie like Flint, Saginaw, Pontiac, or Detroit. I have loved houses ever since I was little and I’ve dreamed of owning one. Last summer I even tried to buy one but I didn’t have two years worth of tax records (never mind that I could have paid 75% on the down payment) so it didn’t go through. Its a lot harder to save every penny when you don’t live with your parents but I’m doing my taxes and in a couple of years I’ll try again. I think that because of growing up with both my parents working at home and us kids being unschooled, home is a very sacred place to me. It breaks my heart to see all the beautiful turn-of-the-century empty houses in my neighborhood slowly falling into disrepair.

Photo By Matthew Schrader

I wonder how many more homes will be foreclosed before something changes. There is a  scene in a Michael Moore movie (maybe capitalism a love story?) where the last family living on a street of all vacant houses is getting evicted. It’s completely preposterous because the banks not going to make any money, no one is going to buy that house! But that’s just what they’ve aways done. If I was in charge I would start a house grant program that would give houses to artists, farmers, and community activists. Everyone knows that if you leave a house empty it will eventually fall apart.

Photo By Whitewall buick

Photo By Cyberoptix

Take back America’s Houses!

Here are some of the highlights

I Started blogging.

♥

I created the ArtPrize project PatchWork along with my good friend Rosie R.

I ran all the way to and around reeds lake. (5.2 miles).

Photo by Cmu Chem

I was in Craftsanity magazine.

I Moved out of my parents house and moved into the Hen House with my friends .

Photo by pearl beerhorst

I helped teach Grace and Rain to read.

Photo by Pearl Beerhorst

I made 6 by 6 foot rag rug.

I started an all girls longboarding gang. (More on that later)

illustration by Fiberopticunicorns 

My family and I were featured in an Etsy video

I’m kind of freaking out about not being a teenager any more. When was the first time you really felt like a “grown up”? and why?

Rosie R cooks dry black beans about once a week. The process of cooking dry beans is soaking them in water over night, then drain the bean liquid and cook them until soft. We’ve been saving the bean liquid for drying projects it makes a lovely soft gray-blue color! It’s tricky to get any color that’s not on the warm side when dyeing naturally

Photo by Freddy65

(most of the time you’re going to get a variation of brown, orange, Green or yellow)

 Instructions  Dyeing With Black Beans

1. Take dry black beans and soak them in water over night.

2. Strain out the beans from the liquid and set aside.

 3. Mordent your yarn (I soaked mine in an aluminum pot over night).

4. Take the still wet yarn and put it in a glass jar with the black bean liquid.

5. Place jar in a sunny place.

6. When the yarn is fully dyed the water in the jar should look almost clear When this is true carefully remove yarn from jar and rinse in luke-warm water then hang to dry!

Pardon the crappy Photo Booth pic.

Yesterday Rachel gave me a hair cut. This is the shortest my hair has been in at least 5 years and it feels really good! I think my favorite thing about it is how curly my hair has become, free from all the extra weight. I needed a change.

Yah – I feel like I’m about to turn 20!

I ♥ this  song but the video is just mehhh.

Just try to mess with me February I dare ya!

Photo by John Hanson

I feel so lazy right now! The Hen House is so cold and I’m in hibernation mode.

Illustration by  Olivia Horvath

How can someone be productive when all they want to do is drink tea and watch RuPaul’s Drag Race  I’ve seriously been having a hard time finding reasons to leave my bed.

(not in a depressed way – in a I’m cold way)

Photo by marrren

I usually error on the side of – if you enjoy it just go for it! as long as you’re not hurting anyone, but I think I’ve reached some sort of internal limit. Here’s a couple things I’m trying to do to un-glue my face from the computer screen

.1 Reading books.

2. Running.

3. cooking.

Photo by Greenshock

4. cleaning (Ugh).

5. Spending time with my friends & family.

6. Dancing.

What works for you?

Leon the Professional

True Grit

There is something incredibly powerful about the image of a girl with a gun and I have been thinking about why it has such a strong effect on me. I’m not attracted to the violence its self, maybe its the girl being her own hero (not just a pretty pawn to be saved from the villain).

HANNA

It could be that it’s a metaphor of mentally taking up arms against all the bullshit that women and girls are bombarded with everyday by mainstream media.

as I’m coming to the end of my teen girl years I can tell you that it was HARD

Becoming a woman means entering a war zone whether you wanted to or not.

 Photo by Exxelle

One of my biggest childhood heroines was Joan of Arc she fascinated me and still does. There is still so little really known about her. She led a badly beaten France into many military victories over England and saved France from English rule. Her biggest victory was winning back Orleans from the English in 1429 when she was 17 years old. Joan was captured in battle and sold to the English who burned her at the stake at 19. She said she was guided by the voices of saints, but one has to wonder what was really going on. I would give both my arms to know what she was really like.

I want to be Strong and Brave even though a lot of times I just feel really vulnerable and scared. You have to realize that no matter what you think or anybody else says you have power, and with that comes responsibility.
You can awaken each day to obligations you never chose – or you can decide now to choose them.  ~Robert Brault

Photo by drifted_abound

I feel it all I feel it all………… It can be so fucking hard to just let yourself feel. Everyone has their own coping mechanisms; food, alcohol, cigarettes, denial. It’s so scary to just let yourself feel, but pushing all that pain away just compacts all those feelings down deep where they slowly eat away at you. I have a lot of fear, sadness, and jealousy that I carry around with me and I feel really bad sometimes. I haven’t begun to understand how to stop feeling those things, but I do know you can’t hide from them.  One of the only things that seems to help me when I’m struggling is talking to someone. That doesn’t mean that afterwards I’m not sad or angry anymore, but figuring out why you feel that way might just be all that you can do. Maybe its something in your control to change and maybe not. Just get it out understand it, it’s a part of you.