Something New

I am starting something new.  Today I had my first movie review published on the Milligan Library blog.  I am super excited to be reviewing movies from their collection.

Check out my review of Star Trek here!

Organization

Last night I had this whole big long wonderful blog post written in my mind, complete with pictures.  And then, I couldn’t get my computer to recognize my computer card.  Seriously annoying.

This weekend I did a lot of work around the house.  I organized some things, decorated some, and really just got the house in order.  And I’m so happy with it too.  I was going to show you the pictures of my new stuff, sadly I can’t today, but hopefully sometime soon I’ll get to share it with you!

I Declare

I declare this weekend organization weekend (I wish I had a more clever title than that).

I have a desire to be organized and have a cleaning schedule and do all those kinds of things that a good wife should do.  I do not know where exactly this desire comes from because it is obviously not coming from my brain, because my brain is definitely not on board with it.  I think we have talked about this before, but don’t feel the need to stop me.

Over the years I have tried countless ways to get myself organized.  I have tried binders, checklists, reminders that hang on the wall and nothing seems to work.

So this weekend, I am scrapping it all and starting over.  I do not have a real plan, I’m just going to see what naturally comes out of it.  Who knows, it could be chaos, or it could be genius.  I guess we shall see.

 

 

And obviously if I were really all that organized and scheduled I wouldn’t keep forgetting about the Thursday-Morning Tell-About.

Movie Lists

It is fun to have goals and to be able to check things off a list.  I know that I do not need a list to watch and enjoy the movies that I watch.  But it just makes it more fun to keep track and check them off.  So in my last post I asked for suggestions on the next list that I should work on.  I got a few suggestions.

One suggestion was all the Disney movies.  This one sounded really fun.  I love Disney movies.  And then I looked up the list of them.  Did you know that there are 483 Disney movies?  I never realized there were that many.  I’ve always known that they put out a lot of movies, but I never realized just how many.  I counted up the ones that I have already seen and I have seen 176 of them.  Not bad, but that still leaves me 307 to watch.

Another suggestion was to watch all the nominees for best picture.  This is a list of 503 movies, including this most recent Oscar awards show, and I have watched 176 of them.  That leaves me with 327 to watch.

The last suggestion and the one I’m leaning toward is the American Film Institutes’ top 100 list.  I counted up the ones I had already seen, and came up with 58.  So that only leaves me with 42 to watch, and they must be good.

Is there a list of movies that you would most enjoy reading about?  Vote here on which list you think I should start checking off.

84 Movies in 19 Months

It all started around October of 2011.  I decided that I wanted to watch all 82, now 84, Oscar Best Picture winners.  Well, after a little over a year and a half, I have done it.  I am really proud of my accomplishment.  The only thing is that now I do not know what to watch now.

In this post I have compiled my absolute favorites from the list, the movies that most surprised me, and the movies that I really struggled to watch.

The following seven movies are the ones that I was thinking were going to really be a struggle to watch.  Either I had heard something bad about them, or the description on the back really did not sound that interesting.  But in the end, I found myself really enjoying them.  Some of them even almost made the cut for the favorites list.  The following are in order from the least surprising to the most surprising.

1-Chicago (2002)
My mother is a big musical fan and she does not really like Chicago, and I was not allowed to watch it when I was little, so I think I had a bad idea of it going into it, but I really ended up enjoying the story and the music.
2-Unforgiven (1992)
I knew nothing about this movie when I popped it into the DVD player.  All I knew was that it was a Clint Eastwood western.  I figured it would be a lot of gun fighting.  What I found was that it was actually a very deep story that I did not expect.
3-On the Waterfront (1954)
This movie was one of the first older ones that I watched, and I just thought it sounded boring.  This is an old Marlon Brando film and it actually ended up being a really good movie.  I enjoyed the story and it actually got pretty exciting in the end.
4-Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)
This is a really great story about a man who pretends to be a Jew in order to write an article about how they are treated and I found this movie to be very powerful when I foolishly thought it would be boring.
5-The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
When a movie is over two hours long, it can be hard to start in the first place.  When I finally put this DVD in, I was expecting to really hate it, I did not think a story about the circus could be all that exciting, but I was wrong.  The story involved several characters and even had a twist at the end.  I really enjoyed this movie, the full 2-ish hours of it.
6-Tom Jones (1963)
This movie was really funny.  There have not been very many funny best picture winners.  They hardly ever get nominated, let alone win, so I was surprised to find this movie as funny as it was.  It was the story of a ladies man and what happened when he actually fell in love.
7-The Life of Emile Zola (1937)
This movie was awesome and the most surprising for me.  I sat down to watch this movie one night while I worked on the budget.  After only a few minutes into the movie I had to put my work away because I was so intrigued.  I highly recommend this movie.

Moral of the story—do not judge a movie based on the description on the back—when in doubt, give it a try.  It may surprise you, like it did me.

Now, this next list is of the movies I really struggled to watch.  There are only 6 of them, which is pretty good from a pot of 84.  I got lucky that I enjoyed 93% of the movies and only suffered through 7%.  These movies either just plain bored me, put me to sleep, or I just thought the story was not very good.  So here are the 6 movies that I did not like, in order from “okay” to “meh” to “I will never watch again.”

1-How Green Was My Valley (1941)
2-The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
3-Gigi (1958)
4-Dances With Wolves (1990)
5-A Man for All Seasons (1966)
6-The Deer Hunter (1978)

And finally, the list of my top twelve (I just could not stop at 10) movies that were my favorites from the 84 I watched.  These are the ones that I would watch again, several times, and that I would not hesitate to recommend to you.  The following are in order of favorite to most favorite.

1-Grand Hotel (1931/32)
2-Out of Africa (1985)
3-It Happened One Night (1934)
4-Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
5- Wings (1927/28)
6- No Country for Old Men (2007)
7- The Godfather (1972)
8- The Apartment (1960)
9- Argo (2012)
10-Shakespeare in Love (1998)
11-The Bridge over the River Kwai (1957)
12-In the Heat of the night (1967)

So there you have it.  I am so glad that I watched these movies.  On average I watched 4 best picture movies a month, on top of all the other movies that I watched.  And I will make sure I keep seeing the best picture movies in the years to come.  Now I just need to find a new list…

Any suggestions?

Cue the Trumpets

Cue the trumpets and the glorious fanfare…

I have watched all 84 Oscar Best Picture winners!!

I am so happy and feel so accomplished.

Now what to watch…

Look forward to a more detailed post about my favorites and the ones I struggled to get through soon!

One Down, One to Go

Tonight I watched “The Greatest Show on Earth,” my second to last best picture movie left to watch!
It was really good.  It was about the circus.

I only have one more movie left to watch, it is sitting on top of my television.  All I need to do is get the time (over 3 hours) to watch it and I will be finished!!

It is bittersweet.  I mean, the whole goal has been to watch every movie on the list, but I have enjoyed it so much that I don’t want it to be over.

I guess I’ll just have to make myself a new list.  Any suggestions?

Saying I’m Sorry

Sorry.  I have been totally unmotivated to blog the last few days.  We had a pretty busy, but good, weekend and I’ve just been feeling crummy.  I feel like I feel sick more than I feel well and I just hate that.  Tomorrow I’m going to go see an allergist and then next Tuesday I am going to have a regular doctors appointment because I just want to start feeling better.

There’s a lot of things on my to-do list, but I’ve been pretty apathetic about all of them.  I bought some strawberries to plant almost two weeks ago and I have not gotten my weeding done to plant them and now I’m afraid they are going to die before I plant them.  So I really need to finish my weeding today or tomorrow.  There is no food in the house because I haven’t wanted to go to the grocery store.  And the house is messy–as always.  Hopefully I can get my act together this week.

So again, I’m sorry that it has been quite a few days since I have blogged and I have missed it but I just haven’t felt like I have had anything to talk about.  Any ideas?

Thursday-Morning Tell-About

What?

It’s Thursday morning already?

Where did the week go?!

This is today’s Thursday-Morning Tell-About.

Life has been crazy recently.  I have been really busy and running around.  I’m super excited to hang out with some best friends tomorrow and my parents are coming in.

You want to know what I’ve been reading and watching?  Check out my pages —–>

And here is my favorite pinterest pin:
And hopefully I will be on the ball next week and get out a real Thursday-Morning Tell-About for you all.

Missing the Milestones

For years and years and years while I was in school it seems like there was always a milestone to look forward to, and you knew when it was going to happen.  You know when you are going to move on from every year in school.   Milestones are important and it helps you see where you’ve come from and gone.

Graduation from High School.  I thought I knew exactly what I wanted.  I was young and tan and ready to start college.
This is me, my first week of my freshman year at Anderson University.  Do I look different?  My freshman year of college was a big one for me.  I made all new, amazing, friends.  Did all kinds of things I had never done before, played every intermural, dyed my hair, pierced my nose, stayed out way too late, and loved every minute of it.  And still miss it sometimes, but it just got better from there.
My sophomore year, I transferred to Milligan College.  While Adam will tell you it is because we started dating and I transferred for him, that is really not the case.  It was really a God thing.  I decided I was transferring two weeks before school started, and everything worked out, which is how I knew it was a God thing.  Gosh, we look so young here!
We came back to our junior year at college engaged.  It was a very fun, yet stressful year at school.  With being engaged, there were a whole lot more milestones to look forward to like showers, dress shopping, registering, planning, and tons of other things.  There was a lot to look forward to.

And then we got married! And went on our honeymoon!

And then we came back to campus to finish up our senior year.  Let’s compare, shall we:

Beginning of Freshman Year

Beginning of Senior Year

Freshman vs. Senior.  Big difference?

And then we graduated and moved across the street to the Emmanuel Village.

And now what?
There are no actually set date milestones to look forward to, except birthdays and anniversaries and we are a while away from any big ones.  Let me just say, my life now, without set milestones, is weird.  And hard.  It is hard to just keep going without a milestone to focus on getting to.  It makes it harder for me to see where I am going.  I am happy with where we are and am trying to be content and not wish it away, but I want to know where we are going and when we are going to get there!

Any of you post-school people feel like this?