Isn't She Lovely?

She's actually kind of creepy. Even for me.

Gutting It: A Zombie Story

Walking Dead has started (that last episode was stressful),  Halloween movies are playing  on repeat on various channels  (so many great ones) and fall has hit.
So what does that all mean? Nothing really. It's just one of my favorite months for those above reasons. And because of The Walking Dead, that means zombie dolls. The first doll is for the giveaway (which the winners have been very patient!). I wanted to do something more gross with the doll. I decided on exposed guts. The tricky thing with making guts was making sure that the additions allowed for mobility.
I grabbed this breyer doll.

I drew on her face to rough out features. And because drawing on dolls is fun.

Next came the heat gun.

Burned to a crisp! :)

I painted her face a pale tan color.

And then began to dirty and zombify her face with pastels. 

She's started to look like a pretty zombie!

I took her outside to gouge a hole inside of her abdomen. I wanted her intestines to show, but I also wanted her torso to move. So next came looking up anatomy for the large and small intestines to see if it would work. 

Link To Source

Dolls are made up of joints that allow for them to move similarly to humans but not perfect. So I was happy to see where the intestines end is a solid non moving area on the doll. After making the hole, I stuffed some paper towel into it.

The experiment to make realistic miniature intestines worked perfectly!

I took a piece of paper towel,

And cut a rectangular piece from it. Humans have a lot of intestine crammed into a small area, so I didn't need a thick piece!

Next, I wet the piece and rung out the extra water. Then I rolled it while coating it in tacky glue.

I let it set for a couple of minutes before I put it into the hole, trying to make it seem like intestines. After it was dry, I used a mix of pastels and fake blood to make it seem more realistic. Then I put a layer of gloss over it. 

After dirtying up her feet I decided she needed to have pink toenails.  Because. 

Isn't she lovely so far? She still needs details but I like her!

Great Couple Of Weeks

The last couple of weeks have been horse filled. I went to a model horse show where I got to see plenty of plastic pony friends.

Yay Scorpio Races!

Then during the past weekend, I went to a real horse show. I also competed for the very first time too!

And this happened. Zombies are slowly, but surely being made.

First Team Show!

My October is going to be a very horse filled month. It'll be filled with model and real horses and it's an awesome feeling. The past Sunday was a real horse filled one. Sunday was the first IHSA show for The Penn State Harrisburg Huntseat team. The team had an awesome first show. 

IHSA is short for Intercollegiate Horse Shows Association. It 'provides collegiate riders of all skills the opportunity to compete individually and as teams in equestrian competition. It was founded on the principle that any college student should be able to participate in horse shows regardless of his or her riding ability or financial status.' Which makes the organization pretty awesome because teams need riders of all levels. 

I went along to take pictures, and opted out of showing. I wanted to see how everything worked, plus I didn't feel ready! When you join IHSA, you have to take a placement test. Prior to taking the placement, I felt that Walk/Trot would be better for me. After taking the placement, I was bumped up to Walk/Trot/Canter because of having too many hours of instruction. So hopefully I'm ready for the next show in a couple of weeks, which the thought that I'll be doing actual horse shows is still surreal and just a bit nerve-wracking. 

Sunday' show was at Grier School. There were other teams there such as Penn State University Park, Millerville, and Susquehanna University. Just to name a few. 

The cool thing about IHSA is you don't know who you are going to ride until the day of the show. It's random and the first time you ride your mount is when you are about to show. So watching the horses warm up is important because it tells you how your horse moves. It isn't that one horse is smooth and the next horse is a wild bronc. None of the horses are poorly trained or dangerous. Some just have their own quirks. 

Each horse had its name on its saddle pad, which made finding your horse a little bit easier. There weren't any tack requirements because it's judged on equitation, so some horses had boots, others had martingales, and some went without anything. 

Two team members competed over fences. 

The rest of the team competed in flat classes.

It was fun to watch and learn how the shows worked. At the end of the day, the team posed for a photo with our coach and advisor. 

Banned Books Week

From Epic Reads

The last week of September is devoted to Banned Books week.
I was going to try to do all horse books, but horse books aren't on many banned book lists (Yay!). Animal Farm has some horse characters and Sodapop from The Outsiders does mention rodeos, but I felt like that was too much of a stretch.
There are many reasons behind books being challenged. Do I think books should be banned? Nope. Now, there is a huge difference between book levels and challenging. There are certain types of content within some books that I feel should be read by more mature people or else the meaning is lost. The themes of the book would go completely over his or her head. Challenging a book, even though the person is the appropriate maturity/reading level is completely different. Especially trying get books taken out of libraries instead of passing by them. Eck.
While I could just make a list of my favorite books that have been challenged/banned, I decided to list this year's banned books. This year's theme was Young Adult/Teen books. I was pretty happy that I've read five of the top ten books on the list.

The compete list of  banned/challenged YA/Teen books of 2014-2015, per Banned Books Week, are:

1. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
2. Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi 
3. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
4. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
5. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
6. Drama, by Raina Telgemeier 
7. Chinese Handcuffs, by Chris Crutcher
8. The Giver, by Lois Lowry 
9. The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros
10. Looking for Alaska, by John Green 

Epic Reads has an interesting distinction between challenged and banned books. Something I never thought of. I often thought the terms to be interchangeable. 

BANNED VS. CHALLENGED
Challenged Books: Books that people are trying to remove or restrict from schools, libraries, etc.
Banned Books: If a group of people challenge a book and they win, then the book is banned and removed from public spaces like schools, libraries, etc.

I was shocked that The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is number one. It is a coming of age story that is a mix of text and illustrations. It's told from a 1st person narration and is a fast read. I liked it and learned some about reservations. It was on the list of potential books for the local libraries to focus on for the year. It didn't win, but I'm glad I read it.

(Also, look at my chalkie variation!)

Persepolis is a graphic novel.  I read it in college for the graphic novel class I took.  It surrounds the author from childhood to early adult years in Iran during and after the Islamic revolution. I learned a bunch about an event in history that I wasn't familiar with. The movie that was made from it is beautifully animated and is a great adaption of the book.

Do you think books should be banned? Have you read any of the books from this year's list?

KILE Model Horse Show-Part 2

Here's the second half of pictures from KILE!

English Over Fences was the first english class.

Owned by Niki Hertzog

Other English

Owned by Lizzie Mace

Owned by Lizzie Mace

Owned by Niki Hertzog

Owned by Niki Hertzog

English Trail

I used my beach scene with Scorpio Races and a dog.

 I bought these tiny birds at a yard sale and put them at the end of the base. 

English Pleasure

Owned by Niki Hertzog

Cutting/Roping was the first western class. 

I loved all of the Bobby Jo models.

Look at the tooling!

Reining came next but I missed taking pictures.

Western Games

Owned by Lizzie Mace

Owned by Niki Hertzog

Owned by Lizzie Mace

Owned by Niki Hertzog

Other Western came next, but here's trail instead.

Western Pleasure. 

Here's my entry. My pebble arab named Blue. 

The performance champion is owned by Kris Gallagher.

Well, that wrap up KILE. It was fun, even though it wasn't my best show. Plenty of my things placed, so that makes it worth it along with seeing plastic pony peeps. :)