Winter Break Blogmas Days 4-5: My Family's Weird Christmas Traditions

Day 4 (Beware, Spoilers of Frozen may make an appearance)

Happy Christmas Eve even though it's technically not even Christmas anymore as I write this hahaha...  

Christmas Eve was kind of a relaxing day in the morning until four PM hit and all my aunts/uncles/cousins started arriving at my house for our annual Christmas party.  This year we had hotpot, which is an Asian meal thing where you're just constantly cooking stuff in a single pot.  There's a bunch of uncooked stuff like sliced beef, mushrooms (blech), veggies, seafood, and fish meatballs (THEY'RE SO GOOD) that you can just pop into the pot whenever you want to eat it.  You also mix a bowlful of sauces to dip your food in.  I usually don't really like hotpot, but this time I enjoyed it a lot for reasons I do not know.  Maybe my hotpot maturity has grown or something.  

Two years ago, the adults brought us kids to see The Adventures of TinTin as part of our Christmas present.  This year, we went out together and watched Frozen, as per my request.  And let me just say that this movie was absolutely phenomenal and one my my favorites right now.  I loved it sooooo much, and that is a lot to say for someone who already has her "favorite first three movies" list pretty much etched in stone.  The list, in case you're wondering, goes like this:

1) The Sound of Music (no duhhhh)

2) Tangled (another no duhhhh)

3) Peter Pan (with Jeremy Sumpter, not the cartoon version)   

Ha!  I just realized that all my favorite movies are nice and frilly and have moderately happy endings.  On the other hand, my favorite books are pretty gory and may or may not have all its main characters barely alive in the end.  Just thought I'd point that out.  

Aaanyway, Frozen.  I purposely avoided the trailers and teasers and such before this movie came out because I just knew that I had to go and watch it in theaters.  Not only cause it's a Disney movie, but the creators of Tangled made it!  I really wanted to just go in and see this movie without any prior knowledge of anything, and as a friend suggested, without any expectations.  I feel like I did a pretty good job avoiding all things Frozen cause all I knew was that there was a reindeer and a live snowman called Olaf.  I had no idea that there were in fact TWO princesses, so that surprised me a lot during the first few minutes of the movie.  

My Favorite Things About Frozen

1) Score/Songs: I really loved all of the songs in this movie, and it just reminded me a lot of old Disney movies, which I haven't watched in a while.  It just really brought back good memories when the characters just randomly burst into song, and everything onscreen would just start dancing.  

2) Olaf the Snowman: "Hi, I'm Olaf and I love warm hugs!"  Oh my goodness, I loved this little snowman.  He was just spontaneous and so selfless (I almost cried both times when he started melting), and so EXTREMELY funny.  I mean, you don't get a snowman that actually wants to be in the sun, enjoying the sand and getting a tan.

Source: neptunetwin.com

3) The characters in general: Because this movie was created by the creators of Tangled, I kept my eye out for similarities.  And while it really bothers some people, I found it really exciting when the characters in Frozen resembled the characters in Tangled!  Anna and Elsa totally looked like Rapunzel, while Kristoff and Hans bore slight resemblances of Flynn.  Sven the reindeer behaved a lot like Maximus the horse because they both act like dogs!  One last thing, the kindom was just like Tangled's kingdom, right by the water. 

4) The animation: Most of the movie took place in snow.  Usually, snow is really boring, but the animators made the background so interactive with beautiful snowflakes and Elsa's temporary ice castle.  

5) The moral of the story: I feel like there were multiple morals to this story.  The first was to love and cherish your siblings.  Now, I'm supremely guilty because I'm pretty mean to both of my sisters.  Sometimes I really can't help it because they're quite annoying, but after watching Anna sacrifice everything to try to talk to her sister, I feel like I should try harder to be kind to my own.  I feel like Elsa, who feels like she needs to shut out Anna to protect her, but without the need to protect my sisters.  Another moral was that true love is not only for THE ONE, but also for your own family members.  Yeah, so basically I felt like this movie was telling me to be nice to my younger sisters.  

So there ya go, my take of Frozen.  It was a very, very awesome movie (also cause my dad was appointed the refiller of the popcorn bucket, so us girls didn't miss anything) and I give it an 8.5 out of 10.  

Song of the Day: "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" from the Frozen Soundtrack

Day 5

So today, my whole family woke up pretty late because we don't have the tradition of opening our presents on Christmas morning!  We actually opened them all last night when our cousins were still over.  

I decided to start a Christmas tradition where we watch a movie (this year was The Sound of Music) on the couch, piled with snacks, pillows, and blankets.  I'm hoping this tradition will stick.  :D

Remember that haul post I did before school started about nail polish?  Well, I also did my nails today with my Sephora nail polish (FINALLY)!  Here's a picture...  I'm quite proud of my work.  

For this manicure, I used the polish called "A Color That Can't Be Tamed" by Sephora by OPI.  It's basically billions of mint green glitter pieces.  It's too thin to go on its own, so I put on a base of white first before I put on the mint green.  I think that the effect is so gorgeous, and it kind of reminds me of winter in a way.   

Song of the Day: "Royals" by Lorde

Winter Break Blogmas Day 3: Monday, Still the Worst Day of the Week

Hello and welcome to Blogmas Day 3!!  If you haven't yet, catch up with me on Winter Break Blogmas Days 1 and 2 right HERE. 

Surprise, surprise I woke up at 10:30 AM fully intending to get up and get ready for a Speech Team party at 1 PM.  Of course, you know me.  That didn't happen at all and I slept until 12 PM.  

When I finally got up, I blasted music from Spotify (WHICH IS FINALLY FREE ON MOBILE AHHHH!!) wrapped my white elephant gift, and just wandered around the house until it was time to go.  I also brought along tissues and a boatload of cough drops cause I was still sniffling, sneezing, and hacking all over people.  

Turns out, I didn't use a majority of my supplies cause I got a huge headache and sat at the party for about 20 minutes until I finally just called it quits and headed home.  Ha, you should have seen me.  I looked like the most pathetic, antisocial person sitting there alone and looking miserable.  Hope I didn't ruin anyone's party experience with my awesome "modeling for the sick" pose.  I also hope that someone got my white elephant gift!  It was a jar of Nutella and headphones (the headphones were NOT in the jar).  :)

For the rest of the day, I kind of lounged around the house and tried to get rid of my headache by taking a nap.  Candy Crush and YouTubers also took turns entertaining me during the afternoon.  Here's my favorite video from today's batch of uploads.  Connor Franta and his siblings are too funny...  I love how his sister laughs the loudest out of all of them, but they still all look the same when they're laughing!

Sorry today's Blogmas is so bad!  I really didn't do much, but I promise that tomorrow will be better.  Joy to the world cause my whole extended family from my dad's side is coming over for Christmas Eve dinner!  And we're gonna watch Frozen!  So there will be a detail-filled review of that coming very soon...

Song of the Day: "More Than Ashes" by Tim Reimherr

Winter Break Blogmas Days 1-2: Feverish Beginnings

Hello everyone!  It's been quite a while since I've posted hasn't it?

Well, I'm pretty determined to keep my blog going, so I came up with an idea.  As you may already know, I'm subscribed to a bunch of musicians, beauty gurus, and other Youtubers that I like to keep up with.  A selection of them are doing Vlogmas this year, which is basically them vlogging their daily lives each day during December, all the way till Christmas. I've decided that I kind of want to do the same thing except that the time span will be my two weeks of winter break, and I'll be blogging instead of vlogging.  I'll also include a Song of the Day at the end of each Blogmas.  These songs will be from any genre.  Today I'll be doing both day one and two of my winter break Blogmas!  So let's get started...

Day 1

Saturday, oh Saturday.  This happened to be the first day of winter break, a day that I'd been looking forward to since the beginning of December.  I already planned out what I'd do: sleep in (something I hadn't done since mid-October), eat a good breakfast, read Allegiant by Veronica Roth, and get ready for two orchestra concerts that I was performing in at 3 and 7 pm.  Of course, my first winter break dream plan didn't go as planned at all.  

Instead, what I thought was a slight cold on Friday turned into a fever when I woke up on Saturday morning.  I was lying there in my bed thinking, What am I going to do?  I don't think they can get anyone else to play my parts, can they?  And even if they could, what have all my Sunday night rehearsals gone to?  My mom, of course, was really concerned and tried to convince me to stay home.  Our conversation went something like this...

Mom: YOU HAVE A 102 DEGREE FEVER YOU NEED TO STAY HOME.

Me: *moans* No...

Mom: WHAT DO YOU MEAN NO?!  

Me: *croaks* It's my responsibility... *hacks up a lung*

Mom: IT'S YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO KEEP YOURSELF ALIVE!!!!  YOU ARE KILLING YOURSELF, YOU CAN GET A SECONDARY INFECTION  AND KILL OTHER PEOPLE, YOU'RE GOING TO GET PNEUMONIA!!!!!!

Yeah...  That's what happens when your mom has a pretty high degree in nutrition/health whatnots.  And also when she has a highly imaginative mind.

Anyway, I ended up performing in both concerts, the first one being a real uphill battle.  During a couple of pieces, I really thought I was going to collapse, no joke.  The stage lights were pretty harsh.  I played sleigh bells in "Sleigh Ride" by Leroy Anderson, and that piece requires sleigh bells to play the ENTIRE song.  By the end, my arm was even achier and sorer than it was already, and I had sweat dripping off my forehead.  But hey, I think I sweated off my fever if that's even possible!  The second concert was easier for me cause I was smart and brought chamomile tea.  I also did my hair and makeup to make myself look slightly more presentable than my feverish-first concert self.  

Song of the Day: "Sleigh Ride" by Leroy Anderson (hehe... you never saw that one coming)

Day 2 (Beware, Spoilers of Allegiant by Veronica Roth)

Sunday (today) was better than yesterday.  However, I couldn't go to church today because I pretty much exhausted myself to the extremes from yesterday's escapades.  I did have a nice little church service of my own, though.  I was reading my Bible in a year thing and part of today's passages happened to be Psalm 119!  It was so long, but it was a good refresher.  All I can say is that the dude who wrote it really like to phrase and rephrase his ideas.  Multiple times.

I also got the chance to finally watch Man of Steel!!  I've been meaning to watch it since it came out (haha definitely did NOT happen), and today seemed like an excellent day.  One thing I've got to say is that I liked the soundtrack better than the movie, but I still liked the movie a lot.  I hope that very badly written sentence shows you how much I liked the soundtrack.  But seriously, my favorite part of it was every time the epic drum sections came on.  It gave me chills.  Every time.  Hans Zimmer fan 4 lyfe.  Oh, and the movie itself?  I think Henry Cavill is enough to explain it.  

The last interesting thing I did today (well, hopefully it's interesting) was lie in my bed and read the rest of Allegiant.  AND OMG THE ENDING OMG OMG OMG OMG.  Like seriously.  I sat there reading and rereading the parts over and over to make sure I didn't miss a thing.  At first I thought Veronica Roth was being super sly and tricking everyone with the "Hey I'm dead, but I'm actually not!" kind of thing.  But I kept on reading and I realized that NONONONONONO TRIS IS REALLY DEAD.  

At first, I was devastated because I was like, How can she kill off her main character like that?!  Nobody kills off their main characters!  Then, I realized that no, Tris was not the main character.  She may have been the main character in the first two books, Divergent and Insurgent, but Allegiant was definitely different.  Veronica Roth split this third book between the viewpoint of both Tris and Four.  Four kind of became the main character as the book developed.  

To be honest, I was totally expecting Four to die in some tragic way and that Tris would be devastated.  I guess I was quite wrong about that...  I'm still kind of in a shock right now about it, so please forgive me if my review of the end of Allegiant is absolutely terrible.  The only thing I'm looking forward to is the Divergent movie that's coming out next year!  Yay!!

And to end off my day, I proceeded to watch a bunch of videos interviewing the original movie cast of The Sound of Music. What can I say?  I love this movie/musical and I've watched it more than 100 times, at least.  

Song of the Day: "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" from The Sound of Music