The Sydney Royal Easter Show 2014

Oh my goodness, I am excited. I want to make the Easter Show this year the best one yet!
Now if you know me, - which you don't - you'll know that I don't really like rides. I've never been a rides person. I also hate heights. I screamed on the rides Tumble Bug and the Wild Mouse at Luna park. Whenever going to the Easter Show I've only ever been on the Giant Slide. And I still get jittery about doing it especially if I'm not holding tight to my younger brother. I usually just stand there and be boring as I watch everyone go on the rides especially my cousin who isn't afraid to do the ledge swing in New Zealand. So I've challenged myself to go on every ride that my cousin goes on. I am both excited and extremely nervous and anxious because she might pick something really really high, and fast and scary. But the reason I've challenged myself to do this is because a) I want to get the most out of the Easter Show this year because it's expensive, b) I don't want to just be the person who sits around and watches other people get out there and have fun like I usually do, c) it's more fun to go on rides with friends and so it's not really fair if I just sit around while my cousin goes on a ride by herself, and last of all d) I've found that a lot of the time when i challenge myself or let other people push me into trying new things or pushing me out of my comfort zone with things like rides, I find I actually enjoy myself, I just don't have the courage to get up there and do it.

Actually if you're not sure what the Easter Show is, It's basically like a fair held for just under two weeks every year at Easter time and is held at Sydney Olympic Park. It showcases competitions, shows, rides, animals, shopping, food and showbags. There are dog competitions, art competitions, farm animal competition, horse riding competitions, woodchop competitions, cake decorating competitions and much much more! All these events are pretty much the same every year but it's still exciting to go! My favourite things to see are the pig racing and pig diving competitions (they're so cute!), touching the soft sheep and alpaca wool (mmmm, soooft...), looking through the Woolworths fresh food dome where they showcase awesome food murals, browsing through the craft stores and of course showbags. I don't think I've seen the dog obstacle course competitions or only very briefly but every year I want to! I'm going to have to remember to mention that!

As always we've decided what showbags to get before we go there so we can just pop in and out without having to wander around and around trying to make the tough decisions there. On my wish list are two musts which are the "usual" showbags I get at the show, and they are the Tim Tam showbag and the Oreo showbag. The other two I am getting this year are the Picnic showbag and the Freddo Family Deal showbag.

So yeah, I will be trying to photograph as much as possible on the day and I will give you the best ones next week...Hold that thought. I'll see if I can fit it in. Oh I do hope I can fit it in. See we're going on Saturday the 12th. And I'm moving places on the 15th which is a trek. I'm glad to be out of this suburb, but I don't want to have to deal with packing again because I just can't be bothered. It feels like we moved in here just yesterday. We're not even THAT much closer to school which is annoying. I will probably have to wake up at the same time if not earlier, as I have to walk further to the bus stop so I'm not sure if it'll make much difference. Anyway,....I say anyway a lot. Is that annoying? It might be a teenage thing. I'm not sure. Anyway, If you're going to the Easter Show this year then I hope you have a fun time, if not, well then maybe you'll go next year! Cheerio!

Jody

I do not own these images

Melinda Young's Natural Material Jewellery Workshop

Hey guys,
I meant to post this last Saturday because last week I attended Mel's jewellery workshop with found natural materials at the Botanic Gardens. The reason I am only writing about it now is because I left my camera at my cousin's place and couldn't get it until this weekend which was a bit annoying.

Unfortunately the lighting was really bad in there so I didn't really get any photos. However you can see some of the fabulous jewellery made on the day on Mel's Instagram (@unnaturaljeweller). It was a wonderful day. I got a bit overwhelmed though as I always do. Even though we had the whole day to work, I still felt the pressure of what should I do? Should I try out some techniques? Use tools I'm not able to at home? What idea should I try out? What should I do first and will I be wasting time? Very stressful indeed but I did get like two pieces of jewellery out of it and started one. There's so much more I want to do though, I really want to make jewellery with chopped up pieces of wood. I realy want to make something like Mel's 'Aborescence' piece, with both natural and unnatural pieces. She has not made a blog post about the day as she has not really been blogging for a while. Bloggin is one of those things that you feel you should do but don't seem to have the time for it. Mel is quite busy and trying to keep in order blogs, Instagram, work and family can be quite tiring sometimes. I do try and encourage her to blog when I see her so maybe hopefully she will start blogging again sometime soon.

Although I didn't get any people pictures due to the poor lighting and me not asking to open the blinds (just one of those things you really regret not doing), I did still get some nature shots as we were in the beautiful Botanic Gardens which, if you don't know what I'm talking about, is in Sydney next to The Art Gallery of NSW.  My cousin and I walked around for a little bit but it's just so big that we only did a small loop because we wanted to get back to jewellery making and we couldn't really find any gum nut type trees if you know what I mean.

Anyway, it was a great day, the weather was nice and the jewellery making was fun. As always I wish I got more out of it. I was a little tired and so that made it hard to concentrate which made even more stressed out and gosh I am really stressed out. I don't think I can stand another week of school, I need a holiday, now.

Well I hope none of you are really anxious, conflicted, stressed or drained although you probably are feeling one or more of those things if you've been going to school or working. I must say Year 10 is harder than the previous years have been. I'm in all the top classes too which doesn't help because the teachers expect so much of us, move really fast in the topic and give us tonnes of extension work and homework. They're all trying to prepare you for senior years and what not. Anyway I should probably do some homework now I guess...

Jody

Art Assignment - My Parody of The Persistence of Memory

Hi guys,

So not yesterday but the Sunday before I started the practical part of my art assigment. Which was to take a surrrealist painting and change it. So I took The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali and changed it. If you don't know what I'm talking about, here it is:

At first I got the idea from the stopwatch with the ants on it. I thought, ants, ants eat food, food, it look like pizza. Then I looked at the rest of the stopwatches, and I thought they kind of looked like those soggy cheesy pizzas you see on TV. So I decided to just make all of the stopwatches pizzas. When I looked at the that white, drapey thing, for some reason I just thought it looked like the shape of a couch. Well, the top bit anyway. So yeah that was pretty much my inspiration. I tried to make the box thing in the corner look more like my desk, so I added a notepad and I changed the tree into those little wooden mannequin things. I'm glad I could finally use my pastels that I got for my birthday a while ago. Although I have no doubt someone has already thought of this kind of appropriation, I'm still proud of my work and I hope I've done as well in the theory part! :/

Development Stages...

The End Result

Well I hope you like that, sorry if the images take a really long time to load ;D If the fonts on the blog don't load properly just refresh the page and it should fix itself up. I need to start doing less posts with photos in it I think :)
Also, I'm sorry there hasn't been any fashion sketches for weeks, I'm not sure whether to keep going with that or not. I do want to but as you know recently i just haven't had time but I might start it back up again next week but I don't want to get your hopes up just in case nothing happens.

Jody

Day 7 of WIHS!

Hi guys!

So today was the last day of WIHS. With my dad's donation of $20 which I'll have to put on tomorrow, I will have raised $1000!!! I also have done a total of 76,957 steps! You can still donate up to the 30th of April so that's good otherwise I would've had to put on my dad's $20 tonight and that was just not going to work out.

Today I did 10,485 steps. I planned on doing extra but by the afternoon I got lazy (I'm ashamed to say) and so finished off my last steps at about 8:30pm by walking around the courtyard and the park...

Jody

CARE WIHS Day 5 and 6

Here are the photos from yesterday and today. Yesterday I did 10,352 steps and today I did 10,388. This morning my pedometer wasn't working and it was only registering about half of the steps I took. By the afternoon it had fixed itself up again but i hope it doesn't stuff up again!

Day 5

Fungi

Suzie will always help me get my ten thousand steps!

Day 6

We went to Spotlight at Birkenhead point today because I needed to get pattern and fabric for Textiles. So anyway, we passed Cotton On and these were having a Nothing Over $10 sale so we went in and I ended up getting these comfortable, comfy pants!

I am loving Instagram's new contrast button, it give a great effect!

So tomorrow is the last day from Walk In Her Shoes and I'm going to try and do extra for it! Also, so far I've raised $969!!
Be awesome, and I'll try and fit in another post soon. Most of the assignments are done I've just one more to do and quite a bit of homework. More good news, my aunt's workshop will be going ahead! So hooray! It's next Saturday at the Botanic gardens so it should be a good day! Also, I can't wait for the Easter show this year! I'm going with my cousins this year (as I have been for several years) and I've set myself the challenge of going on every ride my cousin does, so I really hope she doesn't choose anything too bad!

Until next time,

Jody