New Prussian Review

Important Update!

2013-11-26T13:58:00.002-06:00

In case you have not noticed, I have not posted any of my "Things I'm Thankful For" challenge posts in a few days. No, I have not missed them. I have actually moved the blog! I have been having a few issues on here that I have been having problems getting anything done about. So, I just moved everything over there and since I had the day it has been a lot easier to move everything than I thought.

Also, it is a lot easier to update and keep everything organized over there and I also have an actual website format which makes things look a lot nicer.

If you care to find me and continue reading about food, fashion, and fun then head on over to

The New Prussian Review on wordpress.com!

Hope to see you all there!

Things I'm Thankful For! Days Nineteen and Twenty

2013-11-20T20:37:00.001-06:00

Another combined post! My apologies. I have been super busy. That also means that this post will be short. I have had so much stuff that I'm doing that I have been running around like a chicken with its head cut off. On with the post!

Anyway, today I am thankful for my Nintendo 3DS and my Pokémon games. Why this? It keeps me entertained when I travel and helps me de-stress. I do not have very many games for it, but my favorite ones that I have are my Pokémon games. I have a couple of other games for it, but not many. Why Pokémon? My love for Pokémon is deep and will never go away. I have been playing Pokémon since it first came out. Yep, I was around for Pokémania and still love it. Sure, others might think that it is a game for kids. I disagree with that though. While its primary target is for children, I have found that as I get older and the new generations come out that there are ways to make it a bit more challenging for me than the games were when I was a kid just playing through for the story. Now, I play not just for the story, but also for the experience. Pokémon Y has not disappointed me so far! On that note, it is also a really long game for a Pokémon game! Jeez! I am barely halfway finished and I got it a few days after it came out.

Well, until next time!

Stay de-stressed and wonderful!

Things I'm Thankful For! Day Eighteen

2013-11-18T21:44:00.000-06:00

Good evening everyone!

I am ridiculously thankful for doughnut molds. Making doughnuts without them is a pain in the butt. Now I can make cake doughnuts whenever I want and in whatever flavours that I want. Awesome! Also, it is super fun to make the little mini doughnuts because a single regular size cake mix will make about 10 dozen of them. It is amazing to look at! All those doughnuts...Now I am just making myself hungry. I am going to go make doughnuts.

Until next time!

Stay wonderful and beautiful!

Product Review! Pré de Provence 100% Shea Butter Extra Dry Skin Treatment

2013-11-18T15:34:00.000-06:00

It is product review time again everyone!

Today I will be reviewing a wonderful product that I've used for a couple of years now. I am not entirely sure why I have not written a review for it, but here it is! Pré de Provence 100% Shea Butter Extra Dry Skin Treatment is the review for the day.

If you have dry skin you know how much of a problem it can be to relieve that. Most of the time you go out and by lotions and creams in an attempt to relieve the inching and discomfort. For some odd reason I have ridiculously dry skin on my hands and scalp. I used to carry around hand creams and use them like nobody's business. However, when working with fine jewellery that does not bode well. The residue gets under your rings and fingernails which can make your skin turn colours if the chemicals in the cream react with the metal of your jewellery. Not good. Even worse is that it gets on the merchandise. Large gems and rings tend to show fingerprints and it gets worse if you have lotion or hand cream on your hands. Even if you do not work in the jewellery business you end up getting fingerprints everywhere and dropping things because your hands are slick. Finding a product that does not leave a slick, greasy, or oily residue is very difficult.

The good news is that Pré de Provence 100% Shea Butter Extra Dry Skin Treatment does not have very much of a residue of any kind. It is wonderful! Best of all, it does not really have a smell to it. This means that it will not mix funny with your perfumes or colognes. As the name says, it is not a lotion or a cream. It is a butter. Yep, you read that right. Since it is a butter it absorbs into the skin better in the same way that your kitchen butter will absorb into your food. Also, because it absorbs into the skin and does not stay on the surface you do not have to keep reapplying it over and over and over again. It also does not get everywhere like some creams and lotions will because it has a thick texture.

So, the bad thing about this product? Well, honestly it is a bit expensive. Granted, because you do not have to apply it as often it lasts longer than most lotions and that sort of makes up for it. Even so, when I purchased my most recent tube of it I spent $13 for the small tube! It seems a bit ridiculous for what it is. Since it works though, I do not mind that much. Also, the thick texture is a bit of downside. Wait, I thought you said that was a good thing. Yes, it is a good thing because it does not get everywhere and it is easy to close the tube back because it does not run. That is also a down side because it is sort of difficult to get it spread over your hands. You might also end up getting too much because you feel that in getting more it will be easy to spread. Not true. Using more will only give you that much more that you have to spread out. So, in that sense it is not very good.

Overall, it is a good product. I would recommend it to anyone. I always keep a tube of it in my purse and am more than happy to share it with my friends when they ask for some.

Hope you found this helpful! Until next time!

Stay beautiful and amazing!

Links of Interest
http://www.predeprovence.com/index.htm

Things I'm Thankful For! Day Seventeen

2013-11-17T22:46:00.000-06:00

I hope everyone has had a happy Sunday!

I am thankful for the wonderful website called ThinkGeek. Another website? Yes, another website. Why another website? This is not just any website. This website is the best site for nerds and geeks like me. You all should know by now how nerdy I am. This has basically anything and everything you could possibly want from various franchises. It even has stuff from Doctor Who. Amazing!

Once again this is a fairly short post. I have to wake up early in the morning.

Until next time!

Stay wonderful and beautiful!

Things I'm Thankful For! Days Fifteen and Sixteen

2013-11-16T21:51:00.000-06:00

I missed a day! Ahh! Oh well, I was gone and on the run from the time I woke up at 6 in the morning until about 1 this morning and then I got about 4 hours of sleep and started the hectic schedule all over again. Today I'm not out of town though. So, no traveling to deal with. On with the post!

Yesterday's and today's is being group in together. The reason for that is because they are connected. I am thankful for my SUV and also, good German made cars in general. Why is that? Well, I have a M-Class Mercedes-Benz. It is an amazing little SUV. That thing has saved my life on a few occasions. Let me give you all a bit of my history dealing with cars.

My first car in high school was a Chevy Cavalier convertible. It was a good car, but it was not my car exactly. It was my parents' car and it was red and black. I did not really like the colour of it and I wanted a car of my own. My senior year I got a got my own car and it was awesome. That car was a white Ford Mustang with a leather camel interior and top. It was amazing. It was the car that I loaded up and took to Cottey with me. It was a great car until I got into a wreck with it. Though it was not considered totaled, since it was fixable, it was never the same after that. Sure, it looked like it had just rolled off the lot once they finished it. However, it never quite ran the same. I had more problems with it after that and my parents did not particularly like me feeling unsafe driving back and forth to Edmond everyday for school at UCO. I had always wanted a Mercedes and my brother-in-law just so happened to have a car and an SUV in stock at the dealership that he worked at. They were pre-owned, but that did not particularly bother me that much and out of the two I said that I preferred the car. Well, at the time we still had the Cavalier and we of course had the Mustang. Since my father had his truck and my mother had her car we decided that we would just get rid of the two convertibles and pay the balance on me a new and safer car. I came home from work and what did I find in the driveway? A silver M-Class Mercedes-Benz. My father had brought home the SUV rather than the car. I had never driven a SUV before and I was kind of intimidated by it. However, the SUV had so many bells and whistles that for a bit we were slightly panicked that it would make our insurance sky rocket since it was deemed a "luxury" car. Thankfully, our insurance offered discounts for certain safety features. This particular model with all of it's bells and whistles was mostly safety features. That sucker has a ridiculous amount of airbag, all steal body, automatic breaking and correction system, panic and anti-theft devices, and it has automatic rain sensing wipers on the front and the back. All of those added up to make our insurance less than what it had been! All in all, it was an amazing investment for the family. Its all steal body has kept me and my passengers from getting injured when idiot drivers have hit the front driver side of the car and also when the idiot texting slid under the thing. Both times, there was minimal damage to my SUV in comparison to the other cars that were practically totaled by the impact. The automatic breaking and correction system has also been a wonder on the slick and hazardous roads during winter and most of the time it did it so smoothly that had I not seen the light come on saying that it had engaged I would have never known.

So, as for good German made cars? Well, this ties back to why I am thankful for my SUV. Both of the cars that I had before my Mercedes were not German made. Those things had more problems with them and after the wreck that Mustang was basically useless to me because of how much I drive. The Mercedes, on the other hand, after both wrecks was able to be completely restored to where it looked and handled like it had just been brought over from the factory in Germany. Every German car that I have ever driven has handled so much more smoothly than cars made else where. They also do better in crash tests overall. By that I mean that as a whole, German cars perform better as a group. They are consistent and safe. I think this has to do with the German work ethic and the need to meet super high expectations in the finished product. They are all really safe and amazing cars.

I may be slightly biased since my family is pretty insistent on having German made cars. It was really strange to have a Ford and a Chevy to be honest. My family has more German made cars, be they Mercedes, BMW, Volkswagens, or what have you, than most families where we live. Oh, well.

There you have it! Until next time!

Stay lovely and beautiful!

Things I'm Thankful For! Day Fourteen

2013-11-14T20:53:00.001-06:00

Today has been a pretty stressful day in general. As such, this will be fairly short. How short? Well, here you go.

I am thankful for the technology of the cell phone. It makes it easier to get in touch to with my friends that are out of town. With out my cell phone I would not be left out of the loop on a whole lot of important events. Such as what happened in my circle of friends today.

Well, that is it.

Stay happy and wonderful everyone!

Things I'm Thankful For! Day Thirteen

2013-11-13T21:34:00.001-06:00

Hello everyone!

I just got back in from church. So, we have another late post. Oh well, that is life though. At least it is getting posted today and not tomorrow.

Anyway, today I am thankful for the paper piecing quilting technique. Why am I thankful for this? That is a very easy question to answer. It makes making quilts extremely quick and that means that in this cold weather I can get more quilts made to keep myself warm. It also gives me a good way to make those really complicated looking quilts without a lot of problems. It is also fun to make my own patterns. If you do not know how to do paper piecing and want to learn how to quilt, I recommend you look it up. It is really easy and fun!

Until next time!

Stay beautiful and wonderful!

Things I'm Thankful For! Day Twelve

2013-11-12T22:38:00.005-06:00

Good evening everyone!

I have basically given up on getting this posts done before later in the day/ night. It has been so crazy that it is ridiculous. Anyway, on with the post!

I am thankful for my professors at the University of Central Oklahoma. Not that my other professors have been bad. On the contrary, they have been pretty awesome. My professors at from the Philosophy and Humanities, History, and English departments are amazing! I still talk to them and I go visit them whenever I have the chance to do so. Why am I thankful for them? Well, numerous reasons really. The most important one to me is that they genuinely wanted their students to do well and would help them in any way they could. Also, they were all super nice compared to the professors from the other departments. I felt completely comfortable going to ask them questions about something that I was having problems with. Other department professors, not so much. Some of their classes were unnaturally hard, but I learned more from them than any other professors. Not just in class either. I learned a lot from them by just having conversations with them when we were hanging out in our department common area and they were having office hours. They are amazing! If any of you enroll at the University of Central Oklahoma I would recommend that you take some classes from them. You will learn so much from them! That is why I am thankful for them. They taught me more than I would have otherwise.

Until next time!

Stay lovely and beautiful!

Things I'm Thankful For! Day Eleven

2013-11-11T17:24:00.000-06:00

Happy Veteran's Day Everyone!

I have a small break in my busyness today to make a post! Huzzah!

So, what am I thankful for today? Well, besides being thankful for our veterans I am also thankful for coffee. I drink like a Finn. I really do. I will not lie. I drink a lot of coffee. The funny thing is, it really does not have much of an affect on me. I drink a cup right before I go to sleep. I just like the taste of it. My parents are the same way. My dad can drink two pots of coffee by himself. So can my mother. It just runs in the family I think. Coffee is calming to me. I drink it when I am not in a good mood. Kind of like how a British person will drink a cuppa tea.

That is it. I am thankful for coffee and the wonderful calming affect that it has for me.

Until next time!

Stay wonderful and beautiful!

Things I'm Thankful For! Day Ten

2013-11-10T23:04:00.000-06:00

With it being Sunday and my involvement in my local church, this will be another late post. I do apologize. However, on with the post!

Another strange thing to be thankful for, I know, but I am thankful for it nonetheless. I am thankful for Amazon. Yeah, the online marketplace thing. You can get all sorts of things at Amazon! They also offer textbooks at a lower price than at the local bookstores. However, that does not really help on foreign textbooks. Amazon also has some pretty amazing hard to find items. Like Norsk Bananagrams! Yeah! I want those so badly. You have no idea the fun that I could have with those. Also, it gives me an excuse to practice my Norwegian and Danish since Danish uses the same alphabet. Their MP3 selection is somewhat better than iTunes and has some of the harder to find songs. At times their songs have a better price too. Awesome!

Anyway, since it is fairly late I better get to bed since I must get up in the morning. Oh life. Sometimes you get in the way of things I want to do. I really do not have a day off. My "day off" is Sunday and on Sunday's I am at the church most of the day. Church is fun though so I don't mind that in the slightest.

Until next time!

Get some sleep my lovely people so you can stay beautiful!

Things I'm Thankful For! Day Nine

2013-11-09T21:11:00.002-06:00

Happy Veterans Day Everyone!

So, with it almost being Veterans Day in the States and it is also day nine of this challenge things. As cliché as it sounds for today, I am thankful for our veterans. My father is a veteran and several of my friends are veterans. I am very thankful for all of them. They do so much for our country!

Thank you veterans!

Sorry today's post is so short. I am super busy today and do not have a lot of time to really get much of anything done. So, until next time!

Stay lovely and beautiful!

Things I'm Thankful For! Day Eight

2013-11-08T21:37:00.001-06:00

Good evening everyone!

I am posting this late again tonite. There really is not a reason for this apart from work has been crazy. I have running around like a chicken with my head cut off for the past few days. Why? Well, I have been working on a couple of projects. I am sort of going through a smidge of writer's block with book two on my series of novels. So, what do I have been working on another project that was put on hold because of writer's block on it. Oh, my brain. It never shuts off.

Today I am thankful for the wonder that is YouTube. Why is that? While most people find it to be quite the distraction, I find it quite the opposite a good deal of the time. I will say that on occasion it can be a distraction. The channels that distract me the most are listed on the end of this post. Anyway, my reason for being thankful for YouTube is that a lot of the music that I love is not available for purchase in the States or on Pandora Radio. So, I am able to get on the artists YouTube pages and listen to the music there. However, some bands don't have YouTube accounts because they aren't around anymore and I have to rely on YouTubers to get my fix of my favorite music. My favorite song is one of these exceptions. For those who are curious as to what that song might be, here you go.

Aknestik has not been together since 2002. I was really sad about that. That song gets stuck in my head so easily and I cannot find a way to get any of their albums in the States! It is so poppy and cute sounding. Aggg!!! Why did you have to break up!!!Anyway, YouTube is a wonderful way to share other useful things besides just music. I sometimes watch videos of lectures on there and it has been sited in a few of my papers. Strange as it sounds, I am thankful for YouTube. If nothing else, it keeps me entertained.

Until next time everyone!

Stay wonderful and beautiful!

YouTube Channels that Distract Me!
As you can tell from this list, I love Pokémon. Yeah, I am a huge gamer geek. I love it though! That requires another post though at a later date.

jacksfilms
TheJWittz
TheSwedishLad
Nice Peter
NateWantsToBattle
TamashiiHiroka
Mental Floss

Things I'm Thankful For! Day Seven

2013-11-07T22:28:00.001-06:00

This post is coming a bit later in the day than most of them. The reason for it is because today has been crazy. I wish the craziness would either slow down or go away completely. It just stresses me out beyond reason. *takes a deep breath* Anyway, on with today's post!

I am thankful for my boyfriend. Sure, he can be a pain and at times I think he does not really understand that some of the things that he does or say can come off as being hurtful, but overall he is a pretty great guy. In fact, he is the one that gave me a good deal of the charms on my PANDORA bracelets.

The most recent of those charms is the Maple Leaf. That is on there to represent my family in Canada. Matt puts up with my moodiness better than a lot of people and he really does a lot for me. I really don't tell him how thankful I am for all that he does for me. However, my strange personality quirks do not really let me say things like that out loud. I seem to be better at writing those down. So, I hope you are reading this Matt!

If I listed off all of the reasons that I was thankful for him I could probably write a short dissertation. Since I really do not have time to do that, I guess I will cut it off right here. Not because I am less thankful for him than other things, but I can think of a plethora of things I want to put down and I do not really know how to put them into writing. I am sure that if you have someone you love, you understand that feeling.

Until next time!

Stay Lovely and Beautiful

Things I'm Thankful For! Day Six

2013-11-06T21:11:00.000-06:00

Good evening everyone!

Today has been sort of hectic and I feel like I have been running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I started the day with no internet connection. Also, I woke up two hours before I was supposed to and could not for the life of me go back to sleep. Anyway, time for today's post! This one will be a bit longer because there is a story behind it.

I am thankful for this adorable ball of fur! Her name is Daphne or Caligula when she is being bad.

In case you cannot tell, that is a cat. A Norsk Skogkatt to be exact. For the English speakers out there that would be Norwegian Forest Cat or, as they are sometimes called, a Wegie Cat. Here is a picture of her face.

She is my second cat. My first cat was named Oscar and he died of old age when I was at college. We found him in an empty aquarium in our garage. Our garage had a whole in it at that time and the mama cat got in and had her babies in the empty aquarium. He was the last one of the litter and we decided to keep him. After he died I did not have a cat for about a year because my parents had two cats at home. Well, my dad's cat is really fat had hard to pet because he wiggles around and is so heavy it is hard to keep him on your lap to pet because of his wiggling and weight. My mom's cat on the other hand, is a Russian Blue that hates everyone except my mom and my niece Annie. I did not really have a cat that was mine anymore.

I had always wanted a really fluffy cat and when I found one at the Central Oklahoma Humane Society I thought she was just so beautiful that I had to have her. The problem was that another family wanted her and had looked at her earlier that day and they lived in the Oklahoma City area. I live two hours away and had no idea if she would still be there when I got there. So, I got in my car and took of for OKC on my day off from work and school. On the way there I was on the phone with my mother while she filled out the questionnaire to adopt her and emailed it to the Central Oklahoma Humane Society in hopes that it would secure her for me.

By the time that I got there she was still there. I was taken back to the "kitten room" where the kittens are kept to play with each other. She was a tiny little thing and mostly fur. I signed the paperwork, paid her adoption fee, purchased her a collar and some toys, and then put her in my cat carrier to bring her home with me. For a long time I had no idea what kind of cat she was and nobody could really tell me anything about her apart from what I had learned about her at the Central Oklahoma Humane Society. After doing a lot of research I have learned that she is a Norsk Skogkatt.

You are probably wondering why I am thankful for her. Well, here is the simple reason. She keeps me pretty happy. She is a lovable and ridiculously friendly cat that will sit on my lap and "help" me do lots of different things. She also enjoys editing my novels.

There you go, day six is done. Some of you all might think it is a strange thing to be thankful for, but I really do not care. I love and am thankful for my Caligula Kitty Daphne.

Until next time!

Stay lovely and beautiful!

Things I'm Thankful For! Day Five

2013-11-05T20:06:00.000-06:00

It's day five everyone!

So, today's will be short and sweet because I just got back from a meeting and am ridiculously tired.

I am thankful for my brothers and sisters from Eastern Star. They are some amazing people and I love all of them. With Eastern Star I have been presented with some pretty amazing opportunities. They are some of the nicest men and women I know and very generous. There really do a lot of good in the world and I will always stand up for them because they have stood up for me.

Until next time!

Stay wonderful and beautiful!

Sassy Citrine! November's Golden Birthstone

2013-11-05T11:02:00.000-06:00

Howdy everyone!

I have been so amazingly busy as of late. This past weekend I had my book signing in Stillwater, Ok. It went pretty well. I also did a reading while I was there. Once my personal website is up and running I'll be sure to get pictures up on there. Until then you can check it out on the website for the series. Anyway, on with today's post. It won't be very long since there is not much to tell about November's birthstone. I will tell you what you need to know about them though.

November's birthstone is the Citrine. What is a Citrine? Citrine is a variety of Quartz. Most Citrines that are purchased are heat treated Amethysts. What? Why Amethysts? The reason behind this is because amethysts are also a variety of Quartz. A great number of stones are. This is because Quartz is number two in terms of minerals found in the Earth's crust. The good thing about this is that since Quartz is such a common stone it is more practical to use the genuine stone rather than to use a synthetic or created stone. If it looks like a citrine, it most likely is.

Citrine only refers to the colour of the Quartz. Citrines can be found in varying shades of yellow and can have a greenish or a reddish tint to them as well. However, the most common ones sold are a golden yellow. Sometimes a light yellow-green Quartz is also referred to as a Lemon Quartz. Here is a comparison of two shades of colours. The cut stone is a light almost Lemon Quartz colour while the raw stone is a dark almost red brown colouring.

Where is Citrine found? Since Quartz is such a common stone it can pretty much be found anywhere. However, the most common places that it is found is from Brazil and other South American countries. It is sometimes found with Amethysts and stones that contain both the Citrine and Amethyst colouring are called Ametrine. Here is a picture of raw Ametrine.

Citrine, when used in jewellery, can be set in pretty much any colour of gold or silver and look good. When used in yellow gold though it does not really stand out especially if the stone is more gold in colour. White metals like white gold and silver seem to be the preference when setting this gem unless it is surrounded by other stones.

Well, I hope that this has been informative for you. There really isn't much to tell about Citrine since it is a variety of Quartz. It is very pretty though! It really depends on the setting of the stone. You can find a good number of Citrines pieces that are not very appealing to the eye. It just takes the right setting.

Until next time everyone!

Stay wonderful and lovely!

Things I'm Thankful For! Day Four

2013-11-04T21:37:00.000-06:00

It is time for day four of the Things I'm Thankful For challenge!

Part of me feels like I am cheating on this post since it is kind of two for the price of one, but I find it rather hard to separate these two people that I am thankful for. I am very thankful for the amazing pastor that we have at the church I go to and his wonderful wife!

Pastor Waterloo is the complete opposite of me when it comes to the temperaments that I talked about yesterday, he says that he is a sanguine. Yeah, he has talked about that in one of his sermons. Anyway, when I was a little kid I was very inquisitive and would have a bunch of questions for him after church. He always answered any questions that I had about something he talked about in the sermon or something from the shows that I watched with my parents on TV about religion. Not once did he treat me like I was a nascence for asking questions like so many people did. I really admire him and am very thankful that he is the pastor at the church I go to. A lot of other pastors that I have talked to in my various travels have been fairly unfriendly since I did not belong to their church. Pastor Waterloo has always been very happy and friendly towards everyone! I have never known anyone that has said one bad thing about him.

Pastor Waterloo's wife is an amazing woman! She is sort of a what you see is what you get lady and I think that is great! Some of the wives of pastors that I have met in the past have seemed rather unsociable and only want to talk to the top earners of the church. Ms. Brenda is nothing like that. She will talk to pretty much anyone in the church and despite my occasional anxiety around people, I have no problem going up to talk to her. She plays the piano for our church and she is really good at it. She also sings wonderfully. However, she is not your stereotypical "pastor's wife" type of person. She is very friendly and is willing to help you out if she can. I do not think I have ever seen her without a smile on her face. She taught a lady's evening class for a while that has, from what I have been told, has been put a hold until after all of the holidays. It was such a fun class. I admire her a lot.

So, there you have it! Day four is complete.

Until next time!

Stay wonderful and beautiful!

Things I'm Thankful For! Day Three

2013-11-03T22:39:00.001-06:00

It is time for day three of this challenge!

I am really thankful for my friends! All of them! Why? Well, because they are all amazing. As mentioned in my last post, I have a Melancholic Temperament and that makes it sort of hard for me to make friends. The friends that I have are very precious to me. I the small town that I live in there are really not a lot of people that share the same interests that I do. Even in my family I am sort of the odd ball. Not that my family does not love me, but I still am the odd one in the bunch. I think it is mainly because I am the youngest one in the group and you can read more about that and more about how I became more friendly and open in my post here. The funny thing is that despite this, I have found a friend at my church that I shares some of the same interests that I do. We both enjoy British TV and movies, similar authors, and amazingly we both enjoy international food. It was nice to discover that there was someone else that enjoys the international food that I get in! For so long I sort of felt out of place eating British sweets, drinking coffee from Germany, and reading as much as I did. I would have never met this friend of mine had I not joined our church choir. Truth is, I almost did not join the church choir despite my love of music and desire to still be involved in choir even though I was not a music major any more. The reason for this was because, as I have already mentioned, I am very introverted and am horrible at making friends. Joining choir at my church was a way for me to get more involved in my church by starting with something that I was comfortable with, music. Now I am on not only in the choir, but I am also on the decorating committee, and help in the nursery. I sure have come a long way from being so shy that I would get all jittery just talking to people I did not know from Adam's house cat.

So, today I would like to say a huge THANK YOU to all of my friends. I really do not say it enough, but I am really thankful for all of you. You have all had a small piece of bringing me out of my shell.

Until next time!

Stay wonderful and beautiful!

Thinks I'm Thankful For! Day Two

2013-11-02T09:24:00.000-05:00

Hello again!

It is day two on this little challenge thing. These are not going to be my normal length posts, as evidenced by my last post. I could make them as long as my normal posts, but then I would just be rambling too much and you all would get bored of that quickly. Without further ado, on to day two!

I am thankful for my family! Here is a picture of my mother, Aunt Mary, Grandma Mary, Grandpa George, Uncle John, and Aunt Becky. It was taken quite a while back.

My family is amazing and wonderful! They are so supportive of me and each other. I am the youngest of ten children and I have a plethora of nieces and nephews and for the most part we all get along really well. Sometimes we get into little tiffs, but deep down we love each other. Without my family I would probably be a lot worse off. For those of you who do not know me personally, I have what the Ancient Greeks would have called Melancholic Temperament. What does that mean? Well, it means that I am an introvert and that I over analyze things to the point where sometimes I get really overly stressed out and depressed about the world around me. I like to socialize, as many people that have a Melancholic Temperament do, but I just feel really awkward in a lot of social situations. So, if I consider you a friend and actually walk up to you to have a conversation consider yourself lucky. While I do consider myself to have an upbeat personality, I have to work at that. According to the Myers-Briggs Personality typing I am an INTJ. My family keeps me balanced and from getting super depressed. So does going to church, but since my church is sort of like part of my family I will include them as well.

So, to my biological family and my church family, thank you! I am truly thankful for all of you!

Until next time!

Stay wonderful and beautiful!

Things I'm Thankful For! Day One

2013-11-01T05:59:00.000-05:00

Happy November everyone!

Apparently, the thing to do during this month is to post one thing that you are thankful for each day until Thanksgiving or the end of the month. So, I have decided to do this. I challenge you all to do the same thing!

The first thing, and thing I am most thankful for, is God. Yep. God is number one on my list. I am so thankful for God and everything that he has done in my life. I have been through some pretty rough spots in my life and I would not have made it through without him. Thanks to God I am the person that I am today. Sure, I still have my days of being incredibly disappointed in the world around me, but on the whole I am a pretty happy person. God has brought some pretty amazing people into my life and I am truly thankful for that. I am even more thankful for him sending his son to die on the cross for not just my sins, but for the sins of the world. Knowing that I have his love has got me through some pretty tough times and I will forever be grateful for that.

There you have it! Day one of November is checked on my list. What are you thankful for this day?

Until next time!

Stay wonderful and beautiful!

Ich bin ein Preuße, kennt ihr meine Farben?

2013-10-28T14:37:00.002-05:00

Hello everyone!

As of late I have been getting some questions about my ancestry. Specifically about how I can be Prussian if the nation of Prussia does not exist anymore. Today's post will not just be about my family. Rather, today's post will be about genealogy. I have been doing my family's genealogy for quite a while now. So has my mother's side of the family. It is ridiculous how much we know about her side of the family! Of course, if you knew who was in my mother's family you would know why it is plentiful to come by. Yes, on my mother's side I do have royal and noble blood and that makes finding out about various family members very easy. I will leave it at that. My father's side. Not so easy. Why? Mostly because his family has had no interest in learning where they came from. He is also American Indian and that complicates things a lot! Scattered in today's post I will have tips for those of you who wish to trace your family back as far as they can. Without further ado, let us start digging into our pasts!

To answer the questions about my Prussian ancestry I will say this. The farthest back that I can get in my Prussian ancestry is to a male ancestor, I will not mention names on here because of who members of my family are, and he came from Bartia. Where the heck is Bartia?! Bartia does not exist anymore so it is not too surprising if you have not heard of it. In fact, it would really surprise me if you did seeing as how the only person that I have ever met that knew what I was talking about was a college professor of mine whose family also comes from that area. Bartia is where the Bartians lived. Before I get flooded with questions as to who the Bartians were I will answer that for you now. The Bartians were one of the Baltic Prussian Tribes, of which there were between 9-13 (that depends on who you are talking to). They lived in the area that is now part of Poland. Wait! Wouldn't that make you Polish?! Nope. Way back in those times the Poles were a West Slavic group of tribes. They did work their way up towards the Baltic region, but that was a bit later. So, to answer the question outright as to whether or not I am actually Prussian. Yes! I am in fact very, very, very Prussian. On both sides of my family. I will get into this topic now.

As I said above finding out about my mother's family is ridiculously easy because of their ridiculous record keeping about family births, baptisms, deaths, moves, and every other thing about the family. My father's side is the exact opposite. Finding out about American Indian families is hard. This is because they just did not keep records. We can only trace my father's American Indian lineage back so far and then it just stops. Although we can get pretty far back! Thanks to census records and oral history of the tribe we've got quite a bit. There is however this wonderful, although some would argue it is horrible, quirk in our tribe. Way back when, the Oto-Missouria tribe did love them some French and Dutch fur trappers. Those French and Dutch fur trappers brought with them their need to keep records and keep track of every thing. Of course, they also tried to convert us to our own religion, but we will forgive them for that. They did not know any better. This has helped finding out about my father's family a lot easier.

Filling out a census is a pain in the butt. I hate filling them out, but they are necessary. They also are a great help to anyone trying to find out anything about their family. Without these census records I would have never found out that part of my father's family came from Canada. Yep. I have always known that the Oto tribe lived way up in the Northern United States, but I did not know that they actually lived for any length of time up in Canada. Now, part of my mother's family does live in and are from Canada. So, having Canadian relatives is not that much of a surprise. The surprise came with it being on my father's side. I even traced that part of my family back to Harald "Bluetooth" Gormsson. I am his 40th great grand-daughter. If you know anything about Nordic history you should know who that is. He was the King of Danmark and Norge. The Bluetooth communication technology is named after him as well and uses his Rune initials. Funzies!

Another surprise came when I was tracking down parts of my mother's family that had not been explored. That is when I found this lovely person on my family tree.

Who is that handsome devil? That is a cousin of mine...kind of a distant cousin, but a cousin none the less (Distant cousin to my family is 3rd cousin and back). That man is Georg Friedrich Ferdinand Prinz von Preußen. Yep, that is the Prince of Prussia. You can read more about him, his lovely wife, and the House of Hohenzollern by clicking on that picture of him. Like I said, I am Prussian. There is a picture of the Prince of Prussia. So, yes, you can be Prussian even though the country does not exist anymore. We still have a prince! He does not have any political power and he does not really want any. Either way, I admire him. He is pretty awesome and I found it interesting that I am related to this man.

Is there a point to all of this? Do you really need to know about part of my family's history? Not really, but there is a point to it. I would have never known about being related to the Prince of Prussia or that I was even Prussian had I not had any interest in my family's genealogy. I had always been told that there was noble and royal blood in my family's past and now I know where it comes from. Actually, it comes from both sides. Some of the stories that I had been told about my family turned out to be true! You never know until you look it up.

Okay, okay, so the point of this post even though it is really long is this: learn about your family history! You might even find out that you are related to someone famous. You might even learn that your family was from a country that you didn't even expect them to be from. I was not expecting to have more of a family connection than my first cousins on my mother's side be from Canada. I defiantly was not expecting the Prince of Prussia to pop up on my family tree or the King of Danmark and Norge. Learning about your family history is exciting and it can make world history more exciting if you know that your family had a hand in some of the events or lived through some atrocities that happened in the past. It has defiantly changed my world view. I look at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and it means more to me now because part of my family wanted that built that as a symbol of peace. It is now one of the most recognized monuments in all of Germany! You never know what you will find out about your family. So go out and learn about your family and your history!

To help you along the way here are some of the most helpful sites that I have come across when doing my family's genealogy. Some of them are free and some are not. RootsWeb is free and one of the most useful ones that I have come across and is basically a free version of Ancestry. I recommend an Ancestry account if you want a paid for site. It is wonderful and has the most resources of any site I have come across. Have fun and I hope that you all find something interesting in your family history!

RootsWeb
Ancestry
My Heritage
Family Search

A Brief Update!

2013-10-14T14:58:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone! Happy Thanksgiving to my wonderful readers in and from Canada! I love you all!

I have not forgotten about you all! I promise. I have been and will be pretty busy for the rest of the month, but I will try to post something soon. So, what is going on that has me so busy? I will tell you.

First off, for those of you that have not heard I will be having a book signing coming up. It will be in Stillwater, OK at their public library on the 26th of this month. I would love to see you if you are in the area! It will be a lot of fun. I am also doing a reading from my book that day later in the day.

Also, next week is Oklahoma Grand Chapter of Order of the Eastern Star. I will be helping with one of the banquets and as such I have a lot of things to get done. It will be worth it in the end!

This past weekend was Spiritual Boot Camp at my local church which turned out to be a lot of fun and we also were getting ready for a wedding at the church the coming week.

I also have my usual things to do like work, tutoring kids, good old fashioned book learning, and other fun stuff like that. So, I will be pretty busy and hopefully I will be back to posting on a regular basis after this month is up. You can also look forward to the new website! I will tell you more about it as it is being finalized.

Until next time! Wish me luck on my book signing!

Stay wonderful and beautiful.

October's Opal Birthstone!

2013-10-01T12:05:00.000-05:00

Shalom!

I hope everyone is doing well. It has been crazy busy where I live. However, I have been working hard on keeping you all informed on various things. So, it is October. This month is full of various holidays! We have: All Hallows Eve, Samhain, Winter Nights, Thanksgiving (for Canada), Columbus Day, Nanomonestose, and a whole bunch of made up holidays like Mole Day and Sweetest Day. For me, I have family with birthdays this month. What is the birthstone of October? The Opal is the traditional birthstone of October. However, with Opal being a fragile stone, the alternative is Tourmaline. Today I will be talking about the Opal, since it is the traditional stone. So, on with the post!

Opal is a type of silica that contains about 6% to 21% water. It is commonly found with sandstone, basalt, and rhyolite stones in Australia. In fact, 97% of Opals in the world come from Australia where it is considered the national gemstone! Some Opals come from Mexico or Oregon. Fun fact, Opal is the only stone that can throw off every colour with minimal cuts to it.

Speaking of Opal colours, it comes in many different colours. The most desirable Opals are the ones that throw off the beautiful plays of colour. Sometimes if the stone is clear and has a great amount of colour play it is called a Jelly Opal. However, you can also find more that are a milky white, bluish green, yellow, brown, and colourless. Many of these opals are not very desirable. However, there are the beautiful Mexican Fire Opals and the Mexican Water Opals. While they do not give off a great amount of colour play, they do throw off green flashes. Fire Opals are a red to a yellow colour while Water Opals are clear with a blue green colour inside. Black Opals are extremely hard to find and are considered to be some of the rarest Opal one can find. However, Boulder Opal is even more rare and is very beautiful as well. Boulder Opal is Opal that is found in small streaks within other the surrounding stones. People will often polish the whole stone into a cabochon and make it into jewellery.

Opal

Boulder Opal

Fire Opal

Opal is almost always polished into a cabochon. Because of the nature of the stone it makes it near to impossible to cut the stone. The nature of the stone also makes it incredibly fragile! You would not believe how many people come in to the jewellery store with broken Opals. We have even gone to put a new Opal into a ring with an already broken stone and broke the stone we had to put in there. It can be quite frustrating. This is the reason why most jewellers will dread selling or even seeing Opal rings or bracelets. If you are going to buy an Opal your best luck is going to be buying pendants and earrings. Because of their fragility, imitation Opals are very common. Thankfully, they are also incredibly easy to identify if you know what you are looking for. Chances are, if it looks like thin little triangles or squares put together and sealed under something, chances are, they are imitation. Very rarely are they real and a jeweller will let you know if what you are looking at is imitation. If you come across a piece when you are out and about and you are not sure if it is genuine, there is a simple test that you can do at home! If you hold the Opal in question under a UV light and it fluoresces then it is genuine. If the Opal does not fluoresce under the UV light it is NOT genuine! However, if in doubt just take it to your jeweller and they will be able to tell you if it is genuine or not.

Before I close, there is a common superstition that if you wear an Opal and it is not your birthstone it will break or you will lose it. This is not true at all. I have a PANDORA Pink Opal ring that I wear all the time at work and it has never cracked, never been lost, and I have never had any problems with it. It is just a fragile gem and you have just as much chance of cracking it as someone born in the middle of October.

So, I hope you learned something new today about this beautiful stone. If you have any questions feel free to ask!

Until next time! Stay beautiful and lovely everyone!

Tips for College: Be Social

2013-09-30T14:22:00.001-05:00

Hello everyone!

Let us talk about being social in college. This is important! Yes, being a good student and studying so you can do well is even more important, but so is having a social live. There are numerous reasons for this. Today I will talk about just a few of the more important reasons. So, let us get started shall we.

First off, I should probably give you all some background on my social life so that you will see where I am coming from in terms of my social life. As a child and up into my young adult life, I was shy and did not make friends easily. Yes, I was in numerous extracurricular activities in school, but that does not equal being social. On the whole I tried to keep to myself because I had issues with some of the other students picking on me since I was the "smart kid" and I never really told anyone about it because when I did it got worse for a bit. My mother always told me that they only picked on me because they knew it bothered me. As long as I ignored them it seemed to be manageable. Part of my problem may have, and probably still does when it comes to the random moments of social awkwardness that I still experience, come from the fact that I am the youngest of 10 children. Yeah you read that correctly. I have 9 siblings and a plethora of nieces and nephews. Because my oldest sibling is in his 50's and the next closest in age to me, that is still living, is in his 30's, there I have mostly be around adults. Since most of my siblings have children and some of their children have children, I have also had a lot of dealings with little kids. This is probably the reason that most people that are around my age view me as being ridiculously mature for my age. On the flip side, people that are older than me seem to think that I am too childish because I still enjoy things from my childhood like Pokémon and various other anime, cartoons, and games. That has turned out to be a good thing though since I connect with little kids and my nieces and nephew seem to think of me as the "cool aunt" and my cousins think I am pretty cool too because I will play games with them, watch cartoons with them, run around the park, and even go to concerts with them. In high school when I was thrust into a group of four different grade levels from the entire city I was kind of at a loss as to what to do with myself. It did not help that when I was in 4th grade my older brother, he was a teenager at the time, shot himself in the basement bathroom of my grade school. That was the first time that the death of a person had really hit me hard. Because he was close to my age we got along really well, not that I do not get along with my other siblings. That we the first time I had seem my brother Robert get mad like that, throwing his keys, kicking his VW van, and what have you. However, a friend of mine had asked me to go to church with her a few mouths before and I had been going there for a bit. This turned out to be a good thing because I had a good support network, small though it was because of how shy I was at the time. I still go to that church and if you are wondering why I am bringing this up, here is why. In high school I had a few good friends, but I still got tormented about being the "smart kid" at times by the same kinds from junior high. However, there was always one boy outside of my friends that whenever I saw him in the hallway or in line at lunch he always said "hello" to me. I think, I am not sure since I am not in his brain, that he probably recognized me as someone from church and that was why he talked to me when he saw me in the hall. Maybe it was because it seemed like every time that I saw him I was having a bad day and I looked stressed out and that I needed someone to acknowledge my existence, I have no idea what it was that made him say hello, but he did. His name is Brett. I sometimes sit over by him and his wife at church, she is an amazing photographer by the way and if you live in northern Oklahoma and need someone to take pictures she is your girl. Turns out, when I went out to dinner with a group of friends, him and his wife were with us, he asked if I had always been a quiet person. Well, I was until someone actually acknowledged me in the hallway in high school. That was when I started to be more talkative and actually started gaining more friends. So, if you are reading this for some odd reason Brett, thank you for just saying "hello" to me in high school. It meant a lot to me then to have someone acknowledge my existence outside of my small group of friends.

Was I social when I went off to college and then to university? Well, yes and no. I was certainly more social than I was when I was a little kid. I started at Cottey College right out of high school, and I mean right out of high school because I took summer classes online, I only had one friend that was even going there with me. There was another girl from my school, but she was more of a classmate than a friend. My friend that was there was in a different dorm and we didn't see each other that often. So, I was effectively on my own when I actually got to move into my dorm room that August. In my suite there were ten girls, two of which were from Sweden, two from Texas, one from Chicago, one from Michigan, one from Montana, one from Malawi, one from Missouri, and then me. Of them, only one was a returning student. Despite us going through some sticky spots due to our differences, we all got along pretty well and I still talk to some of those girls from my first year. My second year was a whole other story. That year was filled with drama deluxe. However, I still talk to a lot of my friends there from Cottey. I was more involved in other activities and have far more friends from the University of Central Oklahoma where I was in a much smaller academic department that was closer knit than a two year "finishing school" like college.

Now on to what this post is actually about. Probably the most important reason to actually be social in college is, this could possibly be taken as being shallow and I assure you that I do not mean it to be but I will go ahead and say it, networking for the future. Think about it logically. The people that you will ultimately hang out with are your best friends from high school and your college friends. Who are you going to turn to when you need to get a job? You are going to ask your friends if they know of anyone hiring in the area you are in or wanting to go, you put them down for references on applications, and you may end up working for them. As sad as it is, the old saying of it isn't what you know it's who you know when it comes to getting a job is very true. I ran into this at a place I used to work at. The management just handed jobs over to their friends without following their own policies and I was overlooked for jobs that I was more qualified for in favour of the management hiring their buddies. Thankfully, I do not have to deal with that anymore. So, be nice to your friends as they will most likely end up helping you in some way when it comes to the job market.

Everyone goes through some rough patches in their life and I am no exception. Thankfully, I have had always had a good support network. How did I get this support network? Well, at first it was just my family and it has since grown. However, these people did not just pop up out of nowhere. No, I actually had to go out and make friends. That's right. I had to be social. Thankfully, being social at university becomes a bit easier than in high school. In college you have a vast number of people that don't really know everyone and they are pretty much in the same boat as you. So, don't be afraid to just go up and talk to someone in the hall between classes or in the department while you are waiting to talk to a professor. Also, universities generally have a greater number of extracurricular activities and clubs to join than your average high school because of the sheer number of students they have. Some of which are from completely different countries and their interests tend to vary a great deal. By joining a club or any other student group allows you to make friends that share the same interest as you. At the University of Central Oklahoma I joined Chess and Games Club, Medieval Society, and the Philosophy Symposium group. These people have been there for me through a lot. They are some of my closest friend that I have. I talk to them all the time. I probably would be a lot more stressed out if I did not have their support.

Reason number three, and this will be the last one on this already ridiculously long post, is that it can actually help with your grades. *gasp* Really?! You have to be kidding me. Nope, I am serious. When you think about it this really does make sense. Since most of your friends that you make are going to be in classes and most likely have the same major, at least have a minor in the field you are studying, you will most likely call them for help if you cannot get a hold of your professors. Also, who are you going to ask to be in your study groups? Your friends. Most of the time my friends and I had study groups at either a coffee shop, the library, or a restaurant of some kind. Usually a pizza place or a place that was open 24/7 because we sometimes stayed there until about 2 or 3 in the morning. If it was a coffee shop it was either a Starbucks or one of the local coffee shops that actually liked having college students there. Your friends can also help you get over your nervousness about presenting a paper because you can read it allowed to them. Just be sure to tell them to correct you if they find something wrong with it. They are your friends they are not going to criticize you just for laughs. When you actually study you tend to do better in your classes. Just saying. I mean some of the classes that I took at university I could not have made it through had it not been for my friends.

To sum things up since this post was really long, making friends and being social has a lot of perks in terms of your happiness, health, employment, and your grades. Friends can help you out of a lot of sticky situations. Just remember, that lovely quote by the wonderful C.S. Lewis.

It is true! If you never go out and make friends you will never experience that wonderful feeling. I had that moment when I met my friend Andrew's wife, at the time she was not his wife. Her name is Rosemary. Those two are probably some of my closest friends. I have known Andrew since I was in junior high. At that time I had not met another girl that had quite the same interests in games and crafts as I did. Also, I have not met another person who eats eggs and hash browns the same way and loves rubber ducks as much as I do except Rosemary.

So, go out and make friends! Be social! I promise it will not be the end of the world if you do. Believe me. I am very introverted and it takes me a while to make friends and start being more talkative around people even today. However, going out and making new friends has really made me more of an upbeat person that gets along with a wider range of people. That has helped me out a lot.

In closing I would love to say THANK YOU to all of my friends! I adore each and every one of you and you mean the world to me.