"These babies are FANTABULOUS! Absolutely indispensary."

I don't normally do my nails, but in this case, that's right.  They're absolutely indispensary.  Check 'em out!!

First, for your viewing pleasure, my The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings inspired nails.

               They're

just practice nails, by the way.  I think they turned out pretty well for a first time!


And my Les Miz-themed nails.  I'm especially proud of my '4'.  : )

That's what my hands look like right now, by the way....  Seriously.  One hand is for The Hobbit and the other is for Les Miserables, the awesome movies that are coming out in December (which is the best month of the year).  I did them while listening to the completely awesome and very creepy, yet still awesome three part Adventures in Odyssey episodes, "The Labyrinth."

And it just so happened that the things I've been wanting to post about are Hobbit and Les Miz-themed, too!  How's that for spontaneous planning?  : )

I'll start with Les Miz.

Check this out!!  I nearly flipped when I saw it on Ally's blog.  Remain calm - and don't watch it more than three times in a row.  It's not pretty.  (I may or may not be speaking from experience....)

So, yeah.  Pretty awesome, right?!  Amy did a second-by-second rundown of it, which I heartily enjoyed reading.

Aaaaaand... there are some pretty awesome posters floating around the Internet!  I found a few more the other day, available here and here.  Javert looks a little weird, but that's okay because the red 'Javert' below him totally makes up for it.  This one has to be my favorite, though.  Uber cool.

On to The Hobbit!!

This video came out today and I've already watched it a few times.  Sure, it's only thirty-three seconds long, but the dialogue between Bilbo and Thorin is sooooo awesome.  (And I can't see Thorin without saying, "It's Thornton!  Look back at me....")

I knew there was a place where you could watch the trailer with alternate endings, but we were never able to get them to load.  And I just found them!  Huzzah!



But the thing about The Hobbit that I'm most excited about is the music!!  I just listened to the entire soundtrack today.  In it's entirety.  The whole thing.  All. Of. It.  And It. Was. Ah.Mazing.  Here is the link for you.  It's an hour and forty-five minutes long and the pause button doesn't work, so I'd suggest you find something good and looooong to do - like math and chemistry and Greek - and listen to it.  A few times, if you want to.  And let your school take even longer because you're thinking about what the track titles mean.  ('My Dear Frodo'?  Wassup with that, PJ?)  My personal favorite songs are all of them, with an emphasis on all of them, but especially 'My Dear Frodo' (First the Hobbiton theme, then it's creepy!  Whaaaaaa?), 'The Adventure Begins' (It's so fast-paced and hobbit-y!  "I'm going on an adventure!"), 'An Ancient Enemy' (Whoooooooaaaaa....  Deep and ominous - that's how I like it!), 'RADAGAST THE BROWN'!!! (This one is SO COOL!  The electric violin takes the stage and it equals awesomeness.  If you don't want to wait to listen through all the other songs, just click here.  It's awesome.  And amazing.  And awesomeness sauce.  All rolled into one.), 'Roast Mutton' (Again, so hobbit-y, but with a dash of foreboding), 'The Hill of Sorcery' (Looks like I need to read the book again...  And the Radagast the Brown theme is in here a little - awesome!), 'Warg-Scouts' (There's a great John Williams-esque brass part in here, with another pretty awesome cello/bass/timpani solo.  So cool!), 'Riddles in the Dark' (Which I can't wait to actually see!!  Anyway.  This song captures Gollum to a 'T'!  All those tremolos in the string section totally add to the creepiness!  And the really long, gradual crescendo at the end - chills, y'all.), 'Brass Buttons' (The Warg-Scouts theme in the middle is awesome!  I'm dying to see the footage and dialogue during this one!  Plus, the end is so awesome. All those grand pauses, then the continuation of awesomeness....  Golly Pete.), 'Out of the Frying-Pan' (Golly, jeepers!), 'A Good Omen' (Great song!  And a really creepy ending - here's hoping we'll see Smaug!), then the extended scene song, 'Dreaming of Bag End' (The pennywhistle did a little bit of the Hobbiton theme, but a lot of it was new, which I loved!), which was right after 'Song of the Lonely Mountain,' the credits song.  (And boy, is it worthy of some kind of award!!  It totally embodies dwarves and Thorin and The Company.  I loved it!!  I won't tell you how many times I listened to it....)  You can listen to 'Song of the Lonely Mountain' here, by the way.  It's got to be one of my favorite songs on the album.  That and 'Radagast the Brown.'  If you only have time for a few songs, go listen to those.

Wow, that was a lot.  I hope you guys take the time to listen to that music, though - it's totally worth it!!  If you've already listened to some of the songs, whatd'ya think?!

And all this news about Les Miz!!  Goodness gracious.  The month of December is already awesome enough (what with Christmas and parties and concerts and recitals and *cough*my birthday!!*cough*) and now it's going to be even greater.  Wow.  I can't wait.  I'm going to be reading The Hobbit and probably (hopefully) Les Miserables during my month-long Christmas break (I'll shout it from the rooftops, I don't care - I love homeschooling!), so that'll keep me busy until all these awesome movies come out.  Sighhhhh.....

What about you guys?  Are you as excited as me?  Or is it just me...?

Hoping I'm not the only one REALLY EXCITED about this December....

~Eowyn~

(Oh, yeah....  Bonus Awesome Points if you can correctly guess where the lyrics in the blog post title come from.)

The Random Post

Above, my mutant Independence Day peach cobbler. It was better than it looks!!


I've been debating writing this post for a while. I don't necessarily like writing random posts because, as you all probably know by now, I tend to get a little long-winded. Ha! I'd love to do an entire post on each little thing happening, but I'm not that long-winded!


So. Here we go. The Random Blog Post. It's full of random things. I'll be skipping from one subject to another. (Don't say I didn't warn you....)


First off, I'm super excited about My Fair Lady at Proms 2012! Anthony Andrews as Professor Higgins!! That's enough to get me excited - listening to Sir Percy, uh, I mean Anthony Andrews' version of Professor Higgins, which has been greatly acclaimed... pictures, at least. (No sound or video clips... but it won't be like that for long!) Can't you just hear him singing, 'I've grown accustomed to her face....'? Can't wait!!!


And I just looked at the updated My Fair Lady page - guess who's also starring as Alfred Doolittle?! Alun Armstrong!! And Jenny Galloway as Mrs. Pearce! *happy sigh* My younger brother is having a friend over, but... I think I'll step out. : P


I just found a way to actually listen in - hope it'll work!!! If not, I shall be one very sad, very disappointed, and very cranky Anthony Andrews fan. : D


Second, heehee.... I don't think anyone at church last week knew I was a Jedi. Ha! *crickets* I guess I should explain.


I am not a Star Wars fan. Never have been, and probably never will be. There's just something a leeeetle weird about "The Force" to me.... Anyway, I just got a new phone (Woot! No Internet, though... I got it so I could text a little faster than I was using a flip phone.) and one of the first apps I downloaded was a lightsaber app. Please don't ask me what posessed me to get it - I don't know. (But just because I don't like the movie doesn't mean I can't like the special effects and music, right?)


Okay, so I've been letting my little brother play with it. And he loves it. He rode in the car for an hour and played with that app the whole time - just changing the colors and type of lightsaber the entire ride! That was two Saturdays ago. I thought I had a good idea going when I told him that he could play with it in church the next day. *sigh* Silly me.


He sat in my lap for the first part of service, then when the sermon started, I pulled my phone out, double-checked the volume to make sure it was on vibrate, and handed it to him. He gave me the hugest and sweetest little smile and then tapped on the hilt of the lightsaber. The laser-blade shot out... complete with the sound effect. AHHH!!! I could feel myself blush as I snatched my phone away and turned it off, then handed him his Bible. Argh. I knew I'd turned the sound off! Weirdness.... My other brother just kept staring at me and silently laughing. *frusterated sigh* After church, Arwen told me that the lightsaber shot out right as Dad turned on the laser pointer and pointed it at the screen. So it looked like the church's laser pointer was equipped with an awesome sound effect.... *facepalm* Thank goodness that our church is really small - only about eight families and seventy-ish people total. So I didn't embarass myself that much... well, not really. *facepalm again* Moving on to a less embarassing random topic....


We've started listening to Adventures in Odyssey again! We had a really nice Christian library where we lived before and they had all of the AiO albums. We listened to almost all of them, then couldn't when we moved two states away. Anyway, we decided to buy a few albums at a conference a few months ago and I've really enjoyed listening again. It's not very often that you get funny, suspenseful, Christian entertainment such as radio dramas or movies! I've been trying to keep tabs on good indie Christian films in development so that I can see them and actually feel good about something I watched in a theater. (I'd recommend October Baby and No Greater Love - two lesser-known indie films. And there's also the Sherwood Pictures films.... But I really enjoyed October Baby - maybe even more than Courageous? Scandalous, I know....) Anyway. My younger sister is auditioning for the AiO Get In The Show! contest and I'm really hoping she wins... and that has nothing to do with the fact that you get a lot of the albums if you're in the top twelve! : P


Some of you may or may not know, but I'm a hopeless TV show addict. Old TV shows, specifically. Hogan's Heroes, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Waltons... I love them all. I also recently discovered Growing Pains! It's really fun to see Kirk Cameron as a teenager. (And after reading Still Growing, I sort of had to watch the show because he talked about it a lot and got my curiosity aroused!) I don't know if I could recommend GP, by the way, because there are a few questionable subjects such as dating. The ones after Kirk became a Christian - Season Three and beyond - are better. You can really tell! (But, if you're looking for a really good TV show to watch, I'd totally recommend The Dick Van Dyke Show. Extremely clean and very funny. But, hey! It's Dick Van Dyke!!)


Ooh, and speaking of movies.... We watched Captain America for the first time a few days ago! I think Captain America is my favorite superhero, too! (Out of the half-half-dozen I've seen, anyway....) Heehee - we were watching it and I kept recognizing people. "Hey, look!! It's Mr. Thornton!! And that guy from Amazing Grace - the Duke of Kent!! And Elrond!! And that guy from the Kit movie!! And Mace Windu!!" But I totally lost it when Dominic Cooper appeared. The mustache threw me off, but when he said, "We are ready," I knew who it was. "It's Willougby!! DON'T TRUST HIM, STEVE!!!" I seriously had my doubts about him for the entire movie... but he was trustworthy. : D He was funny, too.


All in all, I really liked Captain America. My dad used the remote and bleeped out (most of) the language. (Donations to the ClearPlay/TV Guardian fund are welcome....) I really liked all of Steve's values, which were very different than most people's today. And that scene when he told Maggie that he was waiting for the right partner? *sigh* Me likes.


On my novel.... I haven't written since I finished my 50k words! I'm starting to go through withdrawl... I can hear Nikki and Alec calling me... weird, right? I'm going to work on it sometime soon - really soon. Maybe while my younger brother's friend is here.... I don't know. Anyway, excerpts are coming... just as soon as I can figure out how to do excerpts. Does anyone have any pointers on that? I just can't figure out what to put up here! Definitely not the whole thing - it's not nearly ready - but I don't want to do too little. Just how much, though?! : P


And my dress for the ball is very nearly started. Heehee. And the fourth part in my Les Miserables series is in the works! Do not fear - it shall come!!! Soon, too!!


If you've made it this far... you should be commended. Thanks for listening to all my ramblings. : D


~Eowyn~