Bailey Anne Bravely

Closeups: lobster boat, islands, lighthouse. CLICK TO VIEW LARGER. Voila! I was on vacation last week on an island in Maine, and painted my nails schmancy on a rainy day, inspired by spectacular past island sunsets. Sorry for the dim lighting on the full set; I did closeups of a few so you can get the idea. I'm holding up my hands against a foggy day saying, "Here, these are the sunsets I am waiting for, but all I see is rain." As in my previous post, the fine detail is regular acrylic paint and a tiny paintbrush. What I did: 1. Paint entire nail orange. 2. Paint hot magenta on the top and bottom so it looks like an Easter egg. 3. Paint lighter pink splashes across the top for clouds. 4. Paint the bottom half with shiny pale blue, but make it so the brush is partially dry so it doesn't cover all the pink and orange so that you get some color reflecting in the ocean. 5. Paint the silhouettes with acrylic and a tiny brush and LOTS OF PATIENCE. All the skies...

This is from a while ago now... and yes, these are my real nails. My parents think I'm an alien because neither of them have excessively curved narrow fingernails like this. How to get this effect: the red and blue is regular nail polish, painted alternating fingers. The white is regular acrylic paint that you would use to paint a picture. I paired the white acrylic with a teeny-tiny paintbrush to get the fine lines, and then painted over the whole thing with clear nail polish to make it shiny and protect the acrylic from washing off. Warning: make sure the acrylic is ENTIRELY dry before covering with clear. The clear nail polish really likes to smudge the acrylic. The trick, as with most things, is patience. Just go really slow when drawing the lines so you have time to think about what direction it's going, especially when using your non-dominant hand. It can help to sketch your design on paper first to have something to reference when you paint. This was really...

Have you ever smelled an active sugarhouse? If you haven't, you're missing out. (For those not in the know, a sugarhouse is where you make maple syrup.) Sadly, sugaring is over for the season (and has been for a long time; yes this post has been a long time coming), but if you want to recreate that delicious scent, try any baking recipe that includes maple syrup. Maybe in future I'll post the recipe for my maple cookies with orange juice frosting. This post will cover my now-not-so-recent visit to the best sugarhouse: that of my Uncle David. I have been blessed to grow up with an open invitation to come visit whenever he and my Aunt Jane are sugaring. The dates of the sugaring season are in Spring, but beyond that they depend entirely upon the weather: you need cold nights and warm days to get the sap flowing. The weekend I was there was perfect. Here's the point where the lines from the trees flow into the little vacuum hut before moving on to the sugarhouse. ...

Whoa guys I was on TV! I didn't see it live (as my television is only hooked up for games and movies, not actual TV), but here it is on the internets!  I'm the one in the pink skirt. Sadly they did not catch a very exciting part of the dance-a-thon, but what can you do. Last week was crazy busy! Saturday was the Dance-a-thon to raise money for the Winooski Dollars for Scholars . The week previous went thus: Monday night I went out and bought some super-comfy sneakers for the event, Tuesday and Wednesday nights were spent making matching shirts (my friend Shannon was the other half of our two-woman team), Thursday night we went to see the Saint Michael's College production of Dead Man Walking , and Friday night we went to a homeschool group's brilliant production of Much Ado About Nothing , starring as Hero a lovely bright young lady whom I'm helping in her endeavor to write a novel. (If and when her novel becomes available for purchase, I will promote it on here, ...

The new Train song "Mermaid" is really super catchy, and in this post I'm going to compare it to the other two mermaid songs I know: "The Mermaid" by Great Big Sea (though originally written by Shel Silverstein, which I learned while writing this), and "Mermaid Town" by the Abrams Brothers. The Train song is certainly the most polished (read: moneyed) of the three (please excuse Vevo's obnoxiousness): While the Abrams brothers win the prize for most creative and most adorable: And then there's Great Big Sea (skip to about 2:00 for the song): Great Big Sea has a special place in my heart because my cousin Josh really likes sea shanties, and now I associate them with our annual summer vacation to an island off the coast of Maine. We put Great Big Sea on repeat for hours and it's glorious. For the songs, I shall look at three aspects of quality: music, lyrical content, and the video. The video for Great Big Sea ...

People think I'm super patient. I guess I am, but most times it doesn't feel too difficult... you see, I have a secret. I do rage. I do get upset and frustrated. But I don't get really angry at any one person. Usually. Here's the rage I could write, if I didn't have my soon-to-be-not-so-secret trick: Argh, taking the bus downtown is so exasperating; there are so many bleeping so-and-sos around all the time. That person driving the car passing the bus after it's clearly trying to pull away from the curb is a jerkface and I hope they get hit by oncoming traffic! Even if they pass while the bus is stopped they could hit those kids trying to cross the street. Don't even get me started on the genius who passed the bus right at an intersection. Just exactly how the bleep did they expect to look both ways before entering the intersection? THEY DIDN'T! And then there are the pedestrians. Ugh. That jaywalker is clearly stupid; I can't believe he just cr...

I'm almost twenty four. Somehow, I missed out on the ultra-cool Latin-American tradition of the quinceañera--a party specifically for young ladies when they turn fifteen. This may be due to the fact that I am not, in fact, Latin American. Did you miss the party as well? Do you need proof that you should be upset that you missed the party? Well, ladies (and gentlemen because ladies), search any upscale formal dress vendor online ( try this one ) and you'll see that some of their most gorgeous ball gowns are labeled "Quinceañera Dresses." See? Why was I not aware of this before? Never fear: I've got a plan ! ( Said in high-pitched redhead voice ) This will take some time to fully plan, so next year, when I and many of my friends turn 25, we can all get together and have a TWENTY-FIVE-ceañera. Wait. That doesn't quite roll off the tongue. Okay, what about in Spanish like the original?   V einticinc añera . Hmmm. French? Vingt-cinq-añera . Um. V ijfentwint...

"Nerdfighteria is not a fandom," posits one commenter on a John Green Facebook post. I don't ask you to believe this by the end of this post, but I agree with John in his aspiration that identifying as a nerdfighter should be values-based. Quick introduction: "Nerdfighters" arose as a term to describe those people who watch the videos of John and Hank Green . It's grown to describe a community of people, including John and Hank themselves, who identify as nerds and take on a responsibility to change the world for the better, in whatever way they can. The goal in nerdfighter terms is to "decrease worldsuck." And there's an actual non-profit organization now to do that. John and Hank talk about the "bank of Nerdfighteria" as a description of all the quantifiable charity the community has generated. On a more personal level, the community touches individual lives by inspiring people to be comfortable with themselves as human beings....

If you haven't started watching The Lizzie Bennet Diaries , go now. You want to be a part of this. Pride and Prejudice  is literally happening in my news feed, and all over the rest of the web, right now . Lizzie Bennet, aka Elizabeth Bennet, main character of the story, has a vlog--a video blog--and posts updates about her life twice a week. I'm pretty sure this method of storytelling has never been done before; at least, certainly not to this extent. You can follow Lizzie and most of the other characters on YouTube , Facebook , Twitter , Tumblr , and more: Gigi Darcy has a ThisIsMyJam account (sign up, btw, it looks cool), and Jane Bennet has a Pinterest and a Lookbook . Several independent websites related to the story have sprung up as well; for example, Darcy's company Pemberley Digital has its own website. I won't link to the travesty of a website George Wickham just created yesterday. Ugh. The characters post in character on all these sites. Fans can chat ...