June 30!

Wow, here it is the last day of June already, which is also coincidentally my birthday! This month sure has flown by. Then again, summer months always do, don't they? 

Today looks like it'll be a great day! As soon as I'm done typing this, Mom and I are going to work on a new layout for her Howrse page together. She'll be showing me all the ins and outs of the Paint Shop Pro 7 program she has, so I'm excited for that. :) Then the humans of the house will busy at church and then getting together with Grandma's side of the family, which means my sisters and I have free rein of the house for the rest of the day.

Got to go! Mom is ready.

Bye!

*~* Later that day *~*

Here is what the layout looked like when we were done:

I'm quite pleased with how pretty it turned out. =) The rest of the day was pleasantly relaxed: a nice long horseback ride, Horse Isle 2 fun while listening to movie soundtracks, and watching Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron for the umpteenth time. 

Now Mom is home again, and it's almost time for us to go upstairs for our sleepover. I can't wait!

June 25, The Ideal Birthday

Hello people.

I've always thought that June 25 would be the ideal day for a girl to have a birthday.
Here's why:
1. it's one of the longest days of the year, so the daylight lasts a long time
2. it occurs near the beginning of summer vacation, which means no school to cramp your style on your birthday plus lots of free time to enjoy whatever gifts you get afterwards
3. early summer is usually nice and warm but not as hot as mid to late summer
4. the word "June" is pretty and doesn't take long to write
5. June 25th is exactly 6 months from Christmas, so present-receiving is as well spread out as it can possibly be
6. most people get diddly squat on their half birthdays, but people born on June 25 get gifts on their half birthdays every year
7. 2+5 = 7, and 7 is a lucky number
8. unlike people whose birthdays are early in a month, people born on the 25th have plenty of years to look forward to their golden birthdays
9. people born in June will be some of the youngest in their grade, so they can say stuff like, "I'm advanced for my age"
10. June 25 falls into the oak section of the Celtic tree calendar, and oaks are associated with strength, stability, and nobility

So, basically Julie is really lucky because her birthday is really close to the ideal: June 30. 5 days away and counting!

This post needs some images. I thought it would be interesting to do something similar to the birth flower thing Lily did, so here are our Celtic birth trees.

Me (Felicity): April 21
Willow - The Observer
Associations: imagination, intuition, and vision













Mom: May 18
Hawthorn - The Illusionist
Associations: contradiction, consequence, and relationships








Julie: June 30
Oak - The Stabilizer
Associations: strength, stability, and nobility









Bethany: August 8
Hazel - The Knower
Associations: creativity, purity, and honesty












Lily: October 15
Ivy - The Survivor
Associations: determination, change, and patience

It's Summer!

It's the first official day of summer and the longest day of the year! How exciting! Too bad it's so overcast today. We probably won't notice how long it takes the sun to set.

This time of year, lawns start to get brown spots, but the trees are lush and green with mature leaves. Lots of flowers are out too. Speaking of flowers, check out this link to an article about some highly unusual orchids. They look like animals! My personal favorite was the Holy Ghost Orchid.

6 Amazing Orchids

This post is still rather short, so enjoy these photos of our birth flowers. (Some of us are born in months that have multiple birth flowers, so we chose the one we liked best in these cases.)

Felicity: 

April's birth flower is the daisy. 

Daisies symbolize innocence, loyal love, and gratitude








Mom:

May's birth flower is the lily of the valley. 

Lilies of the valley symbolize happiness, humility, and sweetness.

Julie:

June's birth flower is the rose.

Roses symbolize love, beauty, and appreciation.

Bethany:

August's birth flower is the gladiolus.

Gladioli symbolize sincerity, strength, and infatuation.

Me (Lily):

October's birth flower is the marigold.

Marigolds symbolize grief, hopefulness, and grace.

The Wand Chooses the Witch

My sisters and I are all Harry Potter fans. We've often wondered what kind of wands would choose us if we were magical folk and not muggles. I looked up wand-matching quizzes online, and this was the first one that came up.

The Wand Selector

So, naturally, all 4 of us took the 25-question test. The creator of the quiz didn't want any direct links to the result pages. I wasn't sure if the same applied to screenshots or not, so I won't post those either. Hopefully the creator won't care that we directly quote her wand descriptions at times because I am not in the mood to get uber creative with my paraphrasing.


Bethany:

ash with phoenix feather: an ideal all purpose wand that is powerful, precise, and manageable
- indicates owner's strong magical abilities and inner personal strength.
- especially suitable for transfiguration and for work dealing with will-domination
- points to possible success in alchemy
- can be used in dark magic, though not for direct destruction (watch out that you don't get on her bad side, lol)



Me (Felicity):

cedar with dragon heartstring: a very strong and steady wand that is somewhat hard and inert
- especially suitable for transfiguration, though it is slightly lacking in precision (ha ha. Don't get too close to me when I'm transfiguring)
- a very powerful protective wand in both attack and defense
- may indicate the owner is of noble birth or from an old magical family (you know it)
- unsuitable for dark magic


Julie:

maple with unicorn hair: a pliable, light, and easy all-purpose wand
- especially suitable for charms
- adept at performing healing spells and for creating various "sweet and light" charms (er... I suppose this is better than "sour and dark" charms)
- not a wand that is much good for active battle spells (though I'm not sure why this is because maple supposedly has good "protective" qualities...)


Lily:

willow with unicorn hair: a soft and pliable wand
- especially suitable for charms and for connecting to the "otherworld"
- not suitable for spells that alter the structure of object directly but great for spells that alter objects' "spiritual structures" (I haven't a clue what this means...)
- indicates the owner has an ability to see hidden things, i.e. things "beyond common perception and understanding"
- excellent wand for invoking illusions and hallucinations