Welcome 2014!

We found this vintage postcard picture online, and just had to share! Aren't the rabbits darling?

Happy New Years!

-Bethany & Becca

Christmas recording session

Christmas day was wonderful.

We stayed home, and invited some friends and church family to our house.

After eating way too much delicious food, we disappeared into the basement (the quietest place inside at the time) with our friends, Jon and Emma to try to record a few songs

                                                   The rabbits looked on with curiosity.

Much time was spent trying to get the microphones to cooperate with Jon's laptop

 and each other (my yeti doesn't play well with others). 

Then with random items from the house we constructed a padded closet, to act as a sound proof recording room.

That wooden room divider with towels draped over-top? Yep, that's the "sound proof recording room"
Oh yeah, we have a very professional set up :)  

However, after all that fussing about, we only used one microphone and

 found that things might work better if we squeezed the closet into the other room. 

It was already jam-packed with the foosball table, Mom's jewelry supplies, all of our arts n' crafts stuff, and general clutter that somehow collects when you're not looking, 

but that room has a door that we could close and lean a mattress against.

It was very sound proofed, and we made it work.

Jon and Bethany recorded the rhythm guitar part first, then added a couple other different layers to the mix. Then they stuck me in the closet to do my singing part.

Bethany: Which she did wonderfully.

Becca: No I didn't, couldn't you hear that flat note on-

Bethany: You did great, be quiet. It was my guitar that was flat.  :P

Jon played the melody during the instrumental verse at the end. 

Once the recording was done, Jon took it home and did some final audio editing.

Thanks Jon and Emma! 

Merry Christmas from the Clever Bunnies!

                                                        (Music coming soon!)

Simply having a wonderful Christmas time

     

December has flown by for us. I can hardly believe tonight is Christmas Eve!

Sorry it's been a while since we've posted last, but we have been busy with getting ready for company. Baking, cleaning, cooking, and cleaning (did I say that already?), and it does go in that order because every time you cook, or bake, or do anything it seems, a giant mess appears for you to clean up. Sigh...

   But amidst all that, we have also been doing some fun things as well.

   We bred our rabbits, Steve+Rosie and Simon+Sarah-Jane. 

Alright, that in itself is not especially fun, but come the middle of January, we should have some pretty fun results!

The bunnies have really enjoyed living in our warm basement, instead of in the sub-zero temperatures of our garage like they did last winter.
Rabbits actually do very well in the cold, it's just Becca and I who don't like going out in it to defrost water bottles.

Rosie

Steve

(Not everyone wanted to hold still for a picture)

We went to see the new Hobbit movie, Desolation of Smaug, with our home-school group last week. 

That was most enjoyable.  :D

"Da, why are there dwarves coming out of our toilet? Will they bring us luck?"
(For some reason, that seems to be the only quote stuck in my head)  

We discovered, and watched all three seasons of BBC's Robin Hood.

Hopefully after the holidays, we can find a moment to do a review on it, because we really liked it. Even though at the end, we were very sad, and all we could say was "Allan! Allan! Allan!"
(No pressure to watch the whole clip, you'll get the idea after a few seconds)

And our expressions looked just like this (That's Allan by the way, Allan a dale)

We could tell you why, but that would be a spoiler!

I got my hair cut!

This picture was kind of my inspiration. 

I do miss having long hair a little, but short hair is really fun. I'm going to donate the 12 inches that got cut off to Locks of Love (when I remember to get it in the mail). 

Our friend Mary made us some adorable dolls as Christmas presents. Can you guess who they're supposed to be?

And that's all for now! Check back soon: we'll try to get a Christmas jam session recorded and have that posted tonight or tomorrow.

Merry Christmas!

I Will.

Cave Secrets of the Pterodactyl Blog Tour - Stop # 9 My Editor and Illustrator

 Answers in Genesis has been one of our family's favorite ministries for a long time. So when Aidly commented on our blog, and asked if we would be a part of her blog book tour, we were very excited! Why? Besides the fact that her book is being published through Answers in Genesis, Aidyl is the adopted daughter of Buddy Davis! Some you may not know who that is, but we first learned about him through his music. 

(I tried putting a video here, but for some reason it has disappeared. To hear some of Buddy Davis's songs, you can find them on YouTube)

Before we turn the post over to Aidly, here is a little bit about her, and her book:

About the Author: Whether she’s building life-sized models of dinosaurs with her adopted family, trying her hand at cooking at a private retreat, or living in a barn, author Aidyl Ewoh (aka Lydia Howe) seems to have adventures follow her wherever she goes. Check out her book, Cave Secrets of the Pterodactyl and find out more about her at her Blog, Facebook, and Twitter. 

 

About the Book:Cave Secrets of the Pterodactyl:Traveling with her parents brings Lydia, daughter of explorer and singer Buddy Davis, plenty of adventure and mystery - from hidden clues in bookstores to cave paintings deep underground.

 Answer to the true or false question from yesterday: True. Yes, very, very true! :)

Alrighty! Now’s my time to get to brag a little bit on my absolutely wonderful editor and talented illustrator. 

Steve Golden is my editor and he’s done a fabulous job of helping not only my books become better, but also he’s helped me improve the quality of my writing. I’ve learned so much through his thoroughly nice emails. He is also really good at encouraging me by writing little comments about my story, like Oh, I like how you described that. Or, Good point. And sometimes he makes me laugh. In one book the girl is growing out her bangs and I describe them as “being right at that really annoying stage”, and he comments something like: It must be a girl thing. For some reason that struck me as really funny. 

I was introduced to Steve via email by my previous editor (a co-worker of Steve’s, who also helped me a tremendous amount, but was getting too busy for the extra work). When I first found out I was going to be switching editors, it was hard on me. I had grown to really enjoy working with my first editor (Tim), and I didn’t want to change. Looking back now, I’m really thankful for the time I had with my first editor, but I think it’s helped me grow even more to be working with Steve. 

I’ve dealt with a ton of health problems and am perpetually late with getting my edits back for that reason. Steve has been crazy-understanding about it and has taken tons of pressure off of me. (Although I will say, I sometimes have dreams, or I should say nightmares, about how late I am with returning his emails...) 

Steve has proven to be a very delightful editor, one who I am so very, very thankful for! He’s put up with a lot from me and made it extremely easy to work with him. I always look forward diving into our next project! 

Dave Ham is my illustrator. His dad, Steve Ham, and uncle, Ken Ham, work with my adopted parents, which is how we got to know him. He’s totally great at drawing! I wish I could just go sometime and watch him work, because I have a feeling it would be pretty fascinating.

We were in a real big time rush for getting Cave Secrets of the Pterodactyl  published, and Dave did an amazing job of jumping right on board with us and getting his illustrations done in a very short time slot. I can’t wait to see the pictures he comes up with for the next book! ;) 

So yeah, folks! You’ve now gotten to ‘meet’ two people who were very instrumental in getting my book published. 

To read a review of my book, find out the answer to today's True or False question, have the chance to enter a giveaway & find out what my favorite books were as a kid, check out THIS blog tomorrow! 

For an extra chance to get a free book, check out THIS post!

Everyone knows it's Windy!

Ever heard of The Association?

 This post's title is from one of their songs, a song we had in mind when we named a little gray kitten we found about two months ago.

I bet you're all wondering how she's been getting along at her new home. 

  Well, maybe you haven't... but I'm going to tell you anyways.

We went out to see family at Thanksgiving time, and got to see Windy again.

 She's still very cute, she's still very vocal and she's still small. 

What an adorable little baby!

Windy is happy at her new home.  

She has warm place to sleep, lots of places to explore and friends to play with.

This is Stealth, she is friendly; especially if you have a piece of Thanksgiving turkey she hopes you might share with her.

This is Cash, he is very friendly.

  He might consider himself as one of Windy's friends but I don't believe she agrees.

His idea of playing with the cats is picking them up with his mouth and carrying them around.

Stealth seems okay with that, but Windy does not think that sounds fun at all.

Cash's nose on the left

Thanks Uncle Randy, Aunt Chandra, Andrew and Jace for taking care of her!

We had so much fun with all our family this Thanksgiving.

Hiking in beautiful 50 degree weather

Rapidly exiting private property,

(No. We do not know the man who danced in front of the security camera.)  

Climbing this big rock,

Taking pictures at the top,

Squeezing through rocky crevasses, 

Hey, It's George!

And doing many other enjoyable things.

Hope you all had as much fun as we did this Thanksgiving!

"You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion,
and through us generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.
This service that you preform is not only supplying the needs of God's people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God."
2  Corinthians 9:11-12

The Fourth Doctor's Scarf

by: Bethany

It's fun, it's long, it's iconic, and it's a wonder the Doctor never tripped over the silly thing. 

 

Long enough to share!

 I decided to make one for myself, but since I don't know how to knit, I crocheted it instead. I didn't make it exactly the same, because I wanted to incorporate the colors in my plaid coat.

Snowflakes in my eyes!

Sarah-Jane approves

 The pattern I based it on, is found here, but  I changed the colors, and made it a little shorter (just a bit. it's still 16 feet long).

I used "I Love This Yarn!" from Hobby Lobby:

Purple
Coffee=Brown
Antique Teal
Aubergine=Red
Greybeard
Pistache=Light Green

Any other colors could be used. The original ones are:

Purple
Camel
Brown
Rust
Mustard
Grey
Olive Green 

To start, crochet a 10 in. chain with first color, then in second stitch, single crochet rows as follows:

8 purple                        8 purple
32 grey                         38 brown
16 brown                     10 grey
10 teal                          30 red
22 red                          14 teal
8 purple                       20 green
20 green                      8 purple
8 teal                            32 grey
28 grey                        12 brown
14 red                           20 teal
8 brown                        8 red
10 purple                      12 purple
32 green                       6 grey
16 teal                          34 green
8 red                            16 red
34 grey                        12 teal
10 purple                     20 brown
12 green                      12 grey
8 teal                           10 red
18 red                          16 teal


For tassels, cut 16 1ft lengths of each color yarn (to make 8 tassels on each side), and knot them on the ends of the scarf, spacing them evenly.

Looks like I need to do a little trimming to even them out :)

This is my first time writing out a pattern, so if anything is confusing, let me know.


  Becca and I have been Doctor Who fans for only about a year and a half. Thanks to our friend Zach, who told us about the show, we decided to give it a try. It was only a couple days later that we found a Doctor Who marathon on TV, and started watching.
   The first episode we saw was "Flesh and Stone". The one with Eleven, River Song, Amy, and the weeping angels.  We were dropped right in the middle of the second episode of a two parter, and we were kind of lost, but it was really interesting! So, we kept watching, and watching, and watching…

  We went back to the beginning of the restart, fell in love with Nine, sadly watched him regenerate, and then skeptically watched Ten. It didn't take too long before he became a favorite, and then we came back around to Eleven. It was fun watching that, since we had only seen a little disjointed section of his tenure, and soon we were caught up to the new episodes that were playing.
  After that, we began our venture back into the original episodes. And I could go on and on, but I should probably stop before this turns into a commentary of the entire series.  :)





Note: While Becca and I have very much enjoyed watching this series, it does have some objectionable content.  At which we wince and groan and exclaim "That was completely unnecessary!"

In the Bleak Midwinter

Go Teen Writers: 100 for 100 challenge

by: Bethany

    Since August 23, I have been participating in the Go Teen Writers 100 for 100 challenge.

What does that mean?

For 100 days, I have been writing at least 100 words a day for my novel. It has been great for getting me into the habit of writing everyday, instead of just when I feel like it. Because writing a book that way goes very slowly for me.  :)

     My total word count for the challenge was 35,577, averaging writing about 355 words a day. I don't think that's too shabby, considering I have never done anything like this before.

    Since I am now 35,577 words farther into my novel then I was before, I thought I should post about it, giving you a sneak preview.

   The title is "Long Road From Canaan", and it is a historical novel set in Old Testament times, around the rule of King Solomon. 

Synopsis:

  Shalin son of Danel thinks he knows where life is taking him, and frankly, the direction bores him. He doesn't want to oversee his father's orchards that have been in the family for generations, marry one of the featherbrained girls in his village, and grow old, having never traveled past the next little village. 

 If that's what his father expects him to do, he has another thing coming.

   Shalin wants adventure, to see the world, and to have the chance to make his own life. So he heads to Tyre. Tyre is a great center of civilization. Merchant ships throng the harbors from as far away as Egypt and Greece. Surely here a man can make his fortune…but what if he looses it instead?

   When Shalin returns home and finds that he has lost much more then his money, his travels take him south to Israel. 

   There he meets Raisa, a poor girl whose family struggles to make do with the little they have, yet still joyfully trusts in this God of theirs.  Shalin's experience with the gods of his land have made him bitter and doubtful that anything good can come of such devotion. 

  But this God is much more then an idol in a gilded temple, and Shalin begins to learn that not only does God care for him, He has been guiding his entire life.

City of Tyre

One of the characters

(all of these pictures I found on the internet.)

So, there you have it! I'm about 3/4 of the way through writing the first draft, and then I'll have lots of editing, but this is the closest I have ever been to writing an entire book, and it's pretty exciting!

Speaking of books…

  Becca and I have been invited to participate in a blog book tour for Aidyl at Noveltea. She has just had a book published through one of our favorite ministries, Answers in Genesis. 

   

  The tour will be stopping here on December 11th, but it starts on the 2nd. Here's the link to see the schedule. Be sure to check it out!