Guanajuato

Here are some pics that I shot in Guanajuato.

I hope you liked them! Comment!

~Amanda~

2 by Amanda · 365 Project

2 by Amanda · 365 Project

Hello everybody! I thought I would share about this new project that I started on the 28th. It's called 365 Project. I'll be taking and uploading one picture everyday for a year. My goal in this project is to improve in my photography skills, use my camera everyday, and learn more about editing photos. Here is the picture for day 2 (and the link to the website is above).

~Amanda~

Puerto Rico 2012

I got to go to Puerto Rico for 3 weeks to visit my family. I had the opportunity to capture many beautiful pictures on the trip. Enjoy!

I hope you liked the photos. Let me know what you think of them. Comment!
~Amanda~

My experience with pets

When I was younger I was one of those kids that wanted a dog or a cat or a hamster or pretty much anything that breathed. I've had lots of pets. As you can see I used past tense there. I had pets.

Let's start with the fish. I don't remember exactly how many fish I had. I lost all of them. AKA: they died. It was quite unfortunate. My sister killed one accidentally (she was little at that time). The poor fish was minding it's own business, swimming around the tank, not realizing that it was going nowhere, when my sister popped into the room. She took one look at the fish and came to the conclusion that the thing was hungry. Long story short: the fish suffocated to death in his own fish food.

 I had another fish (or maybe this was the same fish) in kindergarten that had died. My mom went to flush it down the toilet and immediately after flushing it, my mom screamed "It's still alive!!". I started screaming, not realizing that it was a joke, and the next day in school I wrote that "I was sad because…my mom flushed my live fish down the toilet." I also drew a picture of my fish waving goodbye from inside the toilet. I'm okay now. After watching Nemo, I know now that my fish is somewhere in the ocean because everyone knows that "all pipes lead to the ocean". 

My sister had a fish named Sushi and another one whose name has slipped my mind. Yeah, you read it right, Sushi. The no-name fish died when we were cleaning his tank and he fell into the sink. To make matters worse, my mom turned on the garbage disposal.  When we were moving we ended up giving Sushi (the other fish) away in a garage sale. That was probably the fish that lived the longest. In 5th grade my parents let me have my own room while my other two sisters shared the other room. I wanted a fish tank in my new room. So, we got two little guppies. One died a few days later because the dumb thing swam into the filter. After replacing that one, the replacement also swam into the filter. I gave up on fish, so I got a hermit crab. Bad idea. When those things die…it's NASTY!!! They stink and they detach from their shells so if you try to pick them up they just roll out of their shells and flop onto whatever is underneath them. Hermit crabs belong at the beach and NOT as pets.

I couldn't even take care of the class pet in 3rd grade. Our class had a hamster named Twitchy. It was my turn to take it home one day and I almost lost it in the car! 

Last but not least, Leo. I had a chocolate lab a few months ago. But, we gave him away. That dog was cute, but he was a handfull. He enjoyed taking the pillows off the couch and having us chase him until we turned blue.  Luckily, he didn't die, so I can say that I kept one pet alive, but now he's alive with someone else.

yeah....he's on my parent's bed...and he's not supposed to be

he tore up his bed and wore it as a necklace. Fashion statement?

My conclusion? Well, maybe I should stick with plants. But, if you’ve read my post about "How not to take care of your plants" you'd know that that might be a bad idea, too. 

~Amanda~

Comment!!

Sometimes the simple things in life are the most beautiful

Here are some more of my edited pictures. They were all edited on Picnik. I hope you like them.

window

a little girl eating bread

random graffiti 

cat sitting outside of a coffee shop 

inside the coffee shop

this was a bird sitting outside my window. The photo turned out like this without me having to add any effects.

So, I hope you liked them. Let me know if you have a favorite!

~Amanda~

A perfect life?

If you had the chance to live a perfect life, would you take it? You'd live a life that misses nothing and is always going the way you want it to. I sometimes wonder if I'd like to live a perfect life, and the answer would be a simple "no". I don't think that I'd ever start over and take back the mistakes I made. I made them for a reason and I learned from them. Everyone makes mistakes, but it's up to you to learn from them. A life that misses nothing doesn't sound so great. I wouldn't like to live a life that it just" perfect". What's the point? I think that too much of a good thing can be bad, at times. Too much chocolate, for example,  isn't going to end well.  A perfect life, in my opinion, wouldn't be all that perfect.

What if you had the chance to live your life over again. You'd just stop everything right now and start over. Would you do that? Life your life again and go back and redo the moments where you wish you'd said what you wanted to say, or talked to the sad, lonely person in the corner, or volunteered more of your time helping others less fortunate. What would you do differently? Would you be nicer to your siblings? Would you flash a smile when your mom asks you to wash some of the dishes? Would you spend more time reading your dusty Bible? Would you gossip less and accept everyone the way they are? I think that starting over could be an interesting experience, but why start over if you don't have anything that you'd want to take back? I think that if you realize that you want to take something back, you've also realized that you didn't do the right thing , and you learned from your mistake. If you want to redo something, I think that you've already gotten to the point when you know that you've messed up.

So, live your life to the fullest. Don't try to live a perfect life. I'm not saying that you should make a ton of mistakes. But, what I mean is that any mistakes that you've made, were made for a reason, and you should accept them and learn from them. Don't dwell on the past errors because you can't take them back. Worry is a waste of time because it doesn't change anything. "All it does is taint your mind and steals your joy." But, in the end, speak to that sad, lonely person in the corner. Spend more time reading your Bible. Be proud of the life that you're living. 

~Amanda

Have you ever wished for blue eyes (if you don't have them already)? Well, your wish can come true thanks to a new eye treatment.

I've met a few people that use color contacts because they're unhappy with their "boring" eye color.  How can a color be "boring"? I always thought that it was weird for people to go to the extreme of  buying color contacts (which are not cheap by the way) in order to have different colored eyes that are fake. I use contacts, but it's because I have horrible eyesight and I don’t use colored ones. And, let me tell you something. It's a  hassle to wake up in the morning and put on your contacts. You have to make sure that your hands clean and you have to have a mirror. You also need to buy solution to keep the contacts wet. It's just an extra step in my morning routine. I don't know why anyone would want to put contacts on every morning if they didn't have to and the only reason why was because they have a "boring" eye color. But a new eye treatment might come out that permanently changes brown eyes to blue . If the new treatment receives FDA approval in 3 years, as planned, then your dream of blue eyes could come true. "How does it work?", you may ask. Well, a special laser destroys the brown pigment in your eyes, which stimulates the color change to happen over the next few weeks. So yes, your eyes would be changing colors for a few days. The treatment lasts about 20 seconds and will cost $5000. The procedure is supposed to be safe, but it isn't reversible. Apparently, there are no side effects, but I'm not so sure. Putting "destroy pigment" and "safe" in the same sentence just doesn't cut it for me. What if you ended up with a shade of blue that you didn't like?

My thought about this is "I don't think so". I personally like my brown eyes. I might look weird if you changed my eyes to blue, because my skin tone is suited for my eye color. I think it's amazing what people will do to be "pretty". What's the point of doing that procedure if it's not even your natural eye color? I wonder if people with blue eyes want brown eyes. Would you do this procedure? Would you spend that money to get blue eyes that your not even sure you'll like in the end?