An Announcement!

 Three months can be a long time, but I like to get a head start on things when it comes to schedules and my blog.  So, today I have an announcement:

 

Exactly three months from today, Blog of a (Maybe) Teen Author's second annual Blog Party will begin!

 

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The annual Blog Party is a time of contests -

 

giveaways -

 

guest posts -

 

author interviews -

 

and lots of mingling with new people!

 

 

{via}

 

 

But, in order to have all of this, we need giveaway and contest sponsors.  We need bloggers and authors to guest post.  And we need authors to interview!

 

So if you're a blogger who'd love to join us -

 

an author willing to be asked crazy questions or giveaway a book -

 

 an artist looking to spotlight your Etsy shop -

 

or someone who knows such a person -

 

email me at newyorksnowflake@gmail.com and I'll gladly put you on the schedule!

To all my lovely readers, it'd be a great help if you'd spread the word and share a button!

 

Button code: http://maybeteenauthor.blogspot.com/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUM2VnLt7apOvEFS-qYUd4vU3ftJ97kNHN6zmstCYUiW3Kqspgc_gpssbix9oSCItmYPZ1cKo8kL098Kd0sSokVOgpOsL5mcHfn56GTw3UrvRUIjICYLr6GqB0t4zLdFS_0oyIrcoXads7/s320/Blog+Party+2012.jpg

" width="320" />

I Am From

flower of the military brat

I am from beloved dolls, from bubble wands and crabapple trees.

I am from bright colors and playful spirits,
Bookshelves and stacked boxes.


I am from dandelions and low-branched trees.

I am from reused Christmas cards and bony fingers;
From blue eyes and Edmond and receding chins.

I am from bookworms and individuals.

From the Don't Mess Up My Systems,
From the Act Your Ages and Same Differences.

I am from Noah's sons and Peter's vision.

I am from camoflague and brown-tan boots,
From dog tags and moving vans.

I am from first grade kisses.

I am from purple mountains and shining seas,
From liberty in law and patriot dream.

I am from unrecorded family trees.

From unknown countries and untold tales,
From unwritten history and unshared ancestry.

I am from America, and that's enough for me.

Homemakers-in-Training: The Heavenly, the Hopeless, and Me

people my age have trouble figuring out what to do with their lives.

There are three kinds of women in America.

There are those who are raised to be homemakers, who can cook and clean and organize and know exactly what to do when faced with scraped knees or algebra homework.

There are those who are not raised to be homemakers, and have to learn the hard way - after marriage, when Easy Mac and ignoring the clutter are no longer enough.

Then there's those who are in between.  That'd be me, lovely readers.


I'm great with kids.  I know how to make salads, enchiladas, and rice; I can bake a mean banana bread (from a box, but these days even that's an accomplishment apparently).  I've very proud of my bedroom, which I actually decorated myself and manage to keep clean.  It's like my own little house.

But I've never couponed or made a meal plan in my life.  I feel overwhelmed by a cookbook.  My number of fingers is greater than the number of loads of laundry I've ever done.  My dad is better with a sewing machine than I am.  (Well, okay, he's better than my mom, too.  I'd say it must be hereditary, but my grandma's a wizard.  Maybe it skips a generation and I'm just a late bloomer?  A girl can hope!)

So I've decided to take matters into my own hands and improve these things, or at least some of them, before I'm thirty and wondering why I call myself a homemaker.

Right now, this takes the form of creating a "household planner/binder" involving schedules, cleaning checklists (for my bedroom, I guess), and meal plans (hopefully that I can try out on my guinea-pig brothers).  To start off, I've hopped over to Only a Breath, one of the few Mom blogs I actually read.  I'm really glad I've been subscribing to her posts so long, because I know it's a place I can go for tips I'll understand on things I used to think were only for minivan-driving, three-kids-or-more-raising, coupon-blogging moms.

Sadly, this may result in actually getting my driver's license (for the purpose of grocery shopping) which my parents have been pushing me towards since I turned fifteen.

Can I just say that I hate growing up?

New Blog Series: The Pinterest Report

Since finishing the 30 Day Challenge a few weeks ago, I've been looking for ideas for a new Saturday series or theme.

Since starting this school year, my junior year of high school, I've also had more free time on my hands than I've had in a loooong time.

These two factors combined last week resulted in The Pinterest Report!

HTML codes don't like my blog posts, so to use this button, you'll have to save it to your computer and either turn it back into a button or make it link back to my blog.

 

Every Saturday, I'll post a recipe, craft project, cleaning tip, or something along those lines that I found on Pinterest.  Then I'll post my attempts and results when testing that pin!

If you'd like to participate in The Pinterest Report, contact me at newyorksnowflake(at)gmail(dot)com or comment on this post!  Your report(s) will be posted on your blog and mine, with links to each other's, on the same day.  You'll also be asked to put the above button on your blog and leave it for the month during which your report(s) is/are posted.

Stay tuned for the first weekly Pinterest Report next Saturday!

Teen Writing Contest!

Well, my lovely readers, today is another happy day of firsts for yours truly.  Why?  Because today starts the second round of Sarah from Inklined's Teen Ten Page contest - and I'm the critiquer! :)

Here's how it works:

1. Teenage writers send the first paragraph of their story, up to 150 words, in the text of an email to Sarah at sarah(dot)y(dot)faulkner(at)gmail.com.

2. Sarah and her friend Hannah from Candy Apple Books will judge the entries and choose two winners.

3. These two winners will send in the first ten pages of that story and get a critique from me!

Rules:

1. One entry per person.  If you send in more than one entry, you will be disqualified.

2. Sarah will send you an email confirming that she received your entry.  If you don't get a confirmation within 48 hours of entering, re-submit your entry.
3. The contest closes at 11:59 PM Eastern time on Thursday, September 16th.

4. If you are a blogger: please either post about this contest or grab the button below and put it in your sidebar.  Then, when you submit your entry, either tell Sarah you grabbed the button or give her the link to the post where you shared the contest.

Are you a teen writer?  Then what are you waiting for?  Go enter the contest and then spread the word!

{The code doesn't want to work for me, so to grab the button, save the image to your computer and, when putting it on your blog, link it to http://inklinedwriters.blogspot.com/}

My Writing Notebook

Most writers have either a writing notebook or a writing bulletin board.  All I have is a box under my bed of stuff from elementary/middle school and files on my computer from high school.  So, one day a long while ago, I decided to get a bulletin board.

Being the way I am, I went for the biggest one.  Therefore, we were limited in where it would fit on my bedroom walls.  This led to it hanging above my bed instead of my desk and becoming a sort of collect-all for random papers, like movie tickets, class notes or notes to self, postcards, library papers, drawings from kids I babysit, and the like.  It's nice to have a place to put all of these, but the idea of its being used for writing quickly vanished.

Several months later, at my church's annual Father-Daughter Banquet (a very formal event), I won a pink polka-dot magnet board with four cute butterfly magnets.  (We won't mention how unladylike it is to be the first daughter of eight contestants to swallow a Reese's cup and whistle into a microphone.  Suffice it to say that I won "a game.")  Well, I was planning to make this into a writing board, but that didn't quiet work out either.  It *is* used for collecting notes and thoughts for future blog posts...

So recently I was walking through the store and looking at all the clearance and spotlighted school supplies.  I've always been a sucker for new notebooks, highlighters, ink pens, sharpeners, calculators! Folders!  Binders!  Oh, the glorious supplies aisle!

Ahem, as I was saying.  I will take any excuse to buy said supplies.  So I decided to make a writer's notebook and buy a binder, file folders, and two actual folders.  (As well as markers and a notebook I later returned.)  That night I watched a movie on my laptop while decorating the cover of my binder.  The result?  An actual writer's notebook I fully intend to use.  I even printed off notes from my current WIPs to put in the folders!

The Law of Fetucide

It's been a while since I talked about abortion and the pro-life cause, although it's a fight that's close to my heart.  Recently, a lady at church told me about some local news she'd caught and thought I might want to share with you, my lovely readers.

A man in Henry County, Georgia, ran over his pregnant 27-year-old girlfriend in his pickup truck.  Police arrested him and charged him with felony murder and fetucide.  Being as involved with the pro-life cause as I am, I was a little surprised to hear such a charge existed.  Fetucide?  Is that new?  But I looked it up, and apparently it's a real law in Georgia.

Fetucide as defined by Georgia law basically means any unborn child being intentionally killed without legal justification by hurting the mother or being intentionally killed while their killer commits a felony.

So, a doctor does an abortion.  His justification is that the baby's unwanted (the parents can't afford kids/another kid, the situation involves a single or teen mom, the parents want a different gender, etc.).  According to the doctors, abortion does not hurt the mother.  And sometimes it doesn't - not physically, anyway.  But it always affects them deeply psychologically, and there are more cases of physical problems than abortionists will admit.  In conclusion, a man kills an unborn child on scant-but-legal justification and maybe without harm to the mother.  He's innocent.

This Henry County man runs over the mother and gets charged with what's essentially two different kinds of murder.  Right now, officials aren't even sure if the deaths were intentional or accidental, but either way this situation doesn't sit right with me.

How does any of this make sense?  Why does one man kill a baby and get called a doctor, while another man kills a baby and gets called a criminal?  It's so twisted.