Sunday, May 29, 2011

Movie Reviews--and my blog award! :-)

Here I am again, finally. I do apologize for how little I have been keeping up with my blog. I've been pretty lazy this whole month. BUT I have a very firm resolution to do better. :-)

So, before I go into the post, I want to thank Cat, over at World Crafter for my second blog award! Thank you so much! I really appreciate it.

So to receive this, I need to list seven things about myself that you all may not know. Ahem...this is always very hard for me. Anyway, here it goes!

1.) I love to explore tons of different hobbies, but I never stick to them long enough to be really good at any of them. (Grr.)

2.) I am a little weird about getting my hair trimmed. It makes me very nervous. Very nervous.

3.) I really would love to speak a foreign language. Italian and/or German would be great. :-)

4.) I love to travel, but the night before I depart I always freak out a bit and wish I wasn't going. Once I start my trip, though, I absolutely love it!

5.) I can  read music, but I am better at playing by ear.

6.) My two favorite genres of books are fantasy and historical fiction. (But only if the historical fiction is done well. :-)

7.) I don't like stuffing with my turkey. In fact, I don't like stuffing at all.

Wheew! Okay, now here are the blogs I think are wonderful and stylish. :-)

And I know Maria at Fire Fleet and Candlelight has already been awarded this, but I just want to add that I love her site and I second Cat's award! :-) (Plus, I don't follow all that many blogs! :-)

So, to accept the award, all you have to do is tell seven things about yourself that we may not know and copy the picture to your blog. And award a few other blogs that you like. :-)

Okay, now for my post. These movies are not new ones, really, but they are some of my favorites and I thought I'd do a few quick reviews.

1.) "The Cinderella Man." I love this movie. I don't usually go in much for boxing stories, but this one is different. It's very inspiring and I love how the movie centers mainly around the family. That's the reason Braddock is doing the boxing- to provide for his family during the Great Depression. It's amazing. A word of caution, there is quite a lot of swearing in this movie. Quite a lot. Other than that, it's very clean.


2.) "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Okay, the Lord of the Rings is my absolute favorite fantasy trilogy ever. I love everything about them. My family makes watching them something of an event. We only watch them very infrequently to keep them fresh and we tackle the series in three or four nights. All I can say is, if you've never seen the Lord of the Rings, you are missing out major big time!




3.) Romance wise, I think "Return to Me" is one of the sweetest movies I've seen. It's simple and mainly character driven. It starts off rather sad but moves along to be funny and sweet. It's really a lovely movie. Again, with this movie, there is a bit of language and a few bits of off-color stuff but on a whole if clean and fun to watch.

4.) I'm sort of a fantasy person. I love all the Narnia movies. I especially love "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader." I know it didn't follow the book super faithfully, but it definitely caught the feel of the book and I think it developed the whole idea of story very well. I liked how it was, in my mind, the most Catholic of the series. The whole idea of fighting the darkness in yourself...I thought it was very well done. I loved it.

5.) "The Great Escape." I know, this one is an oldie. But it is really well done. It's not one of the movies I can watch very often because it is rather sad at the end, but it is still one of the best movies I've seen. I sort of have a thing for WWII Prisoner of War stories. 


6.) "Hogan's Heroes." This isn't a movie. It's an old TV series. It's also about prisoner's of war during WWII. Only this show is way more light-hearted. The cast in this show work really well off one another- in fact you could probably say the show is character driven. Even when the plots are week, it's still almost believable because of how well the actors play their parts. In the show, these 'prisoners' have an elaborate underground system set up under the stalag. They pull of all sorts of crazy schemes to undermine the Germans. It is great fun.

Well, there you go. :-)
God Bless.
Amy

Oh, I found another sing that I am interested in. Here name is Sara Kemp. If you want to hear here sing just go HERE.

Monday, May 16, 2011

At last!

Hello!
So, I've been back from Scotland for a whole week and I'm just about over the jet-lag. :-) And now I feel up to writing about some of the amazing things I was able to do and see.
Let me start off by saying everyone should try and get to Scotland in their lifetime. It's such an amazing place. I am sold on it! :-) I am determined to find some Scottish ancestry in my family tree. Surely there is some! :-) Just a little? Please?
I love the whole 'flying' thing (except for airport security and hassle.) and even though the travel time was something like 19 hours, I still enjoyed every bit of it. (Not so much so on the way home, I confess. :-) It is weird traveling into the future, so to speak. Scotland is eight hours ahead of where I live. During the trip, we only had about three hours of night. We got into Scotland at noon and despite not sleeping for more than an hour (maybe two, but I think not.)during the trip (and not really sleeping the night before we left! :-) I was fine being awake. I didn't experience any jet-lag in Scotland, which was great. Who really wants to spend their vacation tired and bleary? NO ONE! :-)
I can't think of one favorite place in Scotland. There were so many special places we went to...
I'm just going to post a few of my favorite pictures. :-)





View of Edinburgh City from the Castle walls.




(From Left) Teresa, Katrina and I outside Holyrood Abby.

Holyrood Palace.

           (Legal drinking age in Scotland- 18;-) My first beer- a lager shandy. Very refreshing.

                                                         Aren't we fetchin'? :-)

                                                 Edinburgh Street- The Royal Mile.

                                       Holyrood Palace- the Queen's Gardens. Beautiful!
                                          Glencoe- Our only rainy day in Scotland!

I want to post more pictures but I'm still in the process of transferring the pictures from my sisters computer to mine. I don't have very many of the pictures on my 'puter yet.
I'll just sum up by saying Scotland is amazing. I love it.
I might post more pictures later...we'll see. But thanks for stopping by and for being patient while I got back to normal after my trip. Well...as normal as I get! :-)
God Bless,
Amy

I heard This Song while I was in Scotland and it reminds me of Scotland every time I listen to it. Um...the group is kind of geeky looking so I would suggest just listen...don't watch them live...ever! Seriously.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Hey, hey, hey!

Well, I'm back from Scotland! It was really amazing. Scotland is just a cool place. :-)
I promise to post pictures sometime soon. I'm still a little jet-lagged and I don't have the patience right now.

I want to say a 'HI' to my two new followers and Welcome!!!! I am excited to have you on my blog. :-)
Well, I'll be posting soon-ish. It's always a little hard getting back into the swing of normal life after a vacation. :-)
God Bless.
Amy