A voice announces the expected weather at your destination. Another voice goes over safety procedures. Wait some more. Everyone is seated. Everything is ready.

The tube moves, like a giant bus. Slowly at first, it taxi’s around to the assign spot. The first voice announces you are second to depart. The bus goes faster, faster, faster. Suddenly you tilt upwards. You are soaring. Engines rumble, rumble, rumble.

Outside is dark, the sun is not up. Lights sparkle across the ground, a patchwork of glitter. Higher, higher, higher the bus rumbles. All is dark in the tube, save for small reading lights. Higher, higher, higher.

Turn your phones back on. Electronics on. Still Higher, higher, higher.

Look outside. The horizon is pink. The sun is rising. Look down. Snow blankets the sky as far as the eye can see. Brighter, brighter, brighter, the sun illuminates the snowy clouds.

There are incredible blessings being a second generation Christian, though.  You have parents who taught you from the Bible and instilled good morals in you.  You have been given guidence and know that you have Christian support when you need it.  But the hard part is that you grow.  And how your growth looks like can be hard.  How do we as young men and women who are second generation Christians grow from the children who had to be carefully guided in our faith to adults who make the faith of our parents our own?  It’s hard when it feels like the parents are holding tightly to the children with young faith that must be guided.

I guess it’s a duel thing.  Parents must let their children grow up and (horrors!) make mistakes.  But if they are there to help us, guide us, forgive us when we make mistakes, while still showing us our sins so we can get back into the straight path, that is so wonderful.  And we as children must step out of the comfortable and embrace the new.  It’s scary, oh so scary.  But God has promised to be with us as we try new things.  But the Devil WILL be there when we step out.  He WANTS to make us doubt and fear and leave God. But God has promised to give us no more then what we can handle, even when it feels like we will break.  It’s so hard sometimes!

I’m so blessed to have parents that, while they don’t want me to have a broken heart or a broken life, are willing to let me go try new things and make my mistakes.  They are here, though, when I need a hug or advice or just a shoulder to cry on.  I’m so blessed.

I have a dream now.  One day I want to just make costumes and make dolls for my living.  But in order to that, I have to devote time to working on the costumes and dolls every day.  So that is my next goal, spend at least an hour a day after work on dolls and costumes.  And then I will spend the weekends promoting my stuff online.  So I will hopefully have more stuff to share on here soon .

And then we have the Orthadox church.  I don’t know much about this church, but what I have learned has got me interested.  Things like some of their doctrines and why they believe certain things.  But the biggest thing that grabs my attention is the lack of division.  The Orthodox church has changed very little, in their basic doctrine, and appears to have very few splits in the church (I have not done through research on this yet, though).  The unity of the Orthodox church appeals to me.

I love unity.  I love the unity I have in my imediate family and friends and I hate it when there is disunity, when my friends fight or people are mad at other people.  That always hurts me.  And it has always confused me why there are so many different doctrines and why people always feel that others are not teaching the right things when it comes to the people. I don’t like finding stuff in other people’s work that I think is not accurate to the Bible.

I found this wonderful article comparing the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches.  It opened my eyes to some of the things the Orthodox church teaches that I was not aware of.  I have a friend who is in the Orthodox church and I am very interested in finding out more about it.

I’ve never realized before this past month how fast life can change.  I went on a big trip and found several states I would like to live in, other then AZ.  I never thought I would be happy living in another state, but God changed my thinking on that.  And He rekindled my fire for filmmaking again.  I’ve been off it for almost a year, but just this past weekend, my interest and excitement for it is starting to come back.

My life has changed so much in the past year.  I remember praying in 2010 for God to change up my life, but I honestly didn’t expect what I got .  I went from staying home all the time to working part time and doing a ton of traveling to a full time job.  I started actually exploring my love of costuming and Star Wars by getting involved in the Rebel Legion and 501st and now I’m an offical geek . I finally gave God my fears and concerns about being single forever and He gave me a taste of what it is like to not be single.

And this has all been in the past year!  I’m so amazed and so happy that God has been with me the whole way.  If I didn’t have Jesus Christ to relay on, I’m not sure I want to know what would have happened to me.  He has been SO good to me this year.

This film has been out for some years, but I finally saw it the other day and I LOVED it.  The film tells the story of a young girl sold into a Geisha home who goes from being a serving girl to the most famous Geisha in Japan and how she finds love and happiness.

Official Website

The film is a book adaption, so I will be off to the library to find the book .   I’m honestly not quite sure what it is about this film, but I found it completely fascinating.  Perhaps it was the world of the Geisha, all beautiful silks and enchanting conversations with men.  Perhaps it’s the mystery of what is a Geisha, something I have never seen and does not exist in my culture.  Perhaps it’s the charm of a past way of life.  Perhaps it’s just my romantic mind that loves seeing a beautiful girl get together with the man of her dreams at the end of a movie .  Maybe it was all of those together.  Either way, I found the film to be so fascinating, to the point I’ve already watched it twice (libraries are wonderful things : )) .

Somethings that I found the most interesting are also very controversial.  Like the whole fact that the girl was sold and had to earn her way out of slavery by becoming a Geisha and selling something very precious and unique to her.  The whole way the Geisha operate, just a step up from a prostitute almost, yet not thinking of themselves as prostitutes is very intriging.  And almost seems like they lie to themselves to preserve a sense of honor.

And the way they show no emotion, none at all.  They are perfect dolls, all dressed up in silk and painted faces with beautiful hair, yet just there to entertain and not to feel.  It’s almost scary.  Yet the depth of emotion behind those smooth white faces is entrancing and intriguing.

This quote says so much:  ”She paints her face to hide her face. Her eyes are deep water. It is not for Geisha to want. It is not for geisha to feel. Geisha is an artist of the floating world. She dances, she sings. She entertains you, whatever you want. The rest is shadows, the rest is secret.”  That is what intrigues me.  What is the inner life of a young woman trapped here like?  I kinda got a glimpse of it through the film.

Just as a warning, I would not recommend this film to young people under the age of 13 or 15.  It is a good film, but has many adult themes, most dealing with women and men.  Yet the reasons many would avoid this film (why I haven’t seen it for so long) are the reasons I like the film.

Dodging through the jungle, a young man runs toward a fortress, shells and rockets booming and thundering around him.

A marine struggles through the crashing waves, machine guns blasting the water around him.

Bursting out of a trench, young soldiers run screaming across a field as guns and cannons boom around them, tearing huge holes in their line.

Resolute, a drummer keeps his beat up, encouraging the men to continue on the field, dispite the booming cannon and peppering musket fire.

A farmer holds his ground as a wall of red advances on him and cannon booms around him.

Fireworks, booming, crackling, peppering, thundering. Beautiful shows of light and sound to remind us that our nation, our country, our freedom came at a cost. The cost of young lives bleeding to death on a field. The cost of orphaned children and widowed women. The cost of a man, of many men. The cost of broken hearts, broken lives. That is what I see.

The story is really about him learning his past and becoming comfortable with himself. He is in the uncomfortable stage of early teenhood and in that phase of not knowing who he is or why he is here. In the film, his journey involves going back to the reservation, his roots, and understand and forgiving his past and those involved in it.

There honestly weren’t alot of the ‘native american’ stuff we tend to see in films now, which I REALLY appreciated. I like stories about natives that don’t involved “Getting back in touch with mother nature” and such. Yes, they did make a connection with the land and knowing who they are. Yet, really, if you had a place where you grew up and you where searching to be whole, doesn’t having something familar help you find your way again? Even if it’s a Bible given you as a child, or going back to the family farm. Even whites and blacks sometimes find a part of the journey home when they go back to where the family has lived for so long. That is part of why I want to go to Canada someday, to find out a bit about the name I have carried for the past 21 years.

I did enjoy the movie, though it was kinda simple and silly, but it was sweet and it had Adam Beach. Adam Beach is really the reason I choose to watch this film. I’d seen him in later work (Windtalkers, Skinwalkers, Squanto: A Warior’s Tale) and I really like him as a man and as an actor. This was one of his first films, and it shows him young and fresh. Even still, he has the potential that took him on to be a good actor, though maybe not a great one.

Overall, I think I would suggest this to someone who likes Native American stories and/or coming of age stories.  And if you like Adam Beach’s work, this is a fun glimpse of him in his formative years as an actor .

The hilts extend almost all the way down the forearm, with the blades extending another 18″ or so further.  Yes, they are long, but I like them this way .  The blades are lit by small LED flashlights (the kind with the button on the bottom of the flashlight).   They are so much fun!

Image taken from Padawan's Guide

Currently I have made it through the shirt and the bodice of the coat. And I have the pants all cut out.

The shirt was fairly simple, just a long sleeve knit shirt with lots and lots and LOTS of pin tucks across the chest and around the arms. The hardest part on the shirt is doing the pin tucks. But they aren’t that hard.

Pin tuck glory

From my research, I decided that the tucks, which are in groups of three, are 1/4″ tucks spaced at least a 1/2″ apart. And then the groups of three are seperated by 2″.

Front pin tucks

Lots of tucks in there

The coat is a little more complicated, yet very, very simple. It has four pieces: the Front, the back, the sleeves, and the skirt. Very simple. But it is also fully lined. The coat fabric is a velveteen and the lining is traditional lining fabric, slippy and slidely and all lining . Lining fabric is wonderful to wear, because it is slipply and all that stuff, but it can be REALLY hard to work with.

The red lining

However, even with how fun it is to work with, the lining and the velveteen worked together really nicely. And bodice looks BEAUTIFUL! I’m so pleased with how it is turning out!

Bodice in all it's velvet glory

Compare! Taken from the Royal Handmaiden Society Episode I Gallery

Ready! Aim! FIRE!