Artblock is GONE!

Finally managed to do a full painting :D! This one took around 10 hours, and I used a photo of myself as reference to get the shading right.

I'm thinking about changing up the layout of this blog. Shall see when I feel like starting to work on that.

Yesterday mom and I were experimenting on making smörgåstårta-cakes (literal translation would be sandwich cake) for my graduation party. Here's a photo of them:

Two of them had salmon filling and two had ham. Yum!
I really can't believe that I'm actually graduating in just two weeks! Also, on Wednesday I found out my final grades for the final exams, and I was happy to discover that my points had been raised in two of them. I did not end up with stellar grades, but I'm still very happy with what I got :)

Shopping

Yay, I now have a dress for my graduation :). That's one more thing to cross off my to-do list.

I called my dentist yesterday. Seems I'll get my last two wisdom teeth extracted in June. I remember that last time equaled a few days of utter pain, so I'm not really looking forward to it :(. Well, at least I'll have it over with then, so that those teeth can't bother me at a later point!

My parents also offered me a summer job in case I won't get chosen for any of the ones I applied for :D. I'm starting it out already by helping out in my parents' bookshop and keeping it open on days that my parents usually have it closed. I'll also be helping my dad find material for a book he's writing. Seems I have my incomes covered for this summer!

And, because a blog requires a photo, here's a random photo of a mozzarella-tomato salad I made to go with today's dinner.

Life goes on

Life's been pretty much the same the past few days: I wake up, exercise, eat, watch some tv and go to bed. Rinse and repeat.

Currently I'm enjoying my last day of freedom, because my parents are coming back home tomorrow. To celebrate both their return and the easter holiday, I decided to make a smörgåstårta :D It's basically a cake but you use sandwiches for the layers and the filling is usually something salty (in my case I used ham, cream cheese and creme fraiche for the filling and tomatoes, cucumber and creme fraiche mixed with mayoonaisse for the top). Can't wait to taste it tomorrow :D

I also watched Forrest Gump for the first time today (about time!). The story progressed a bit slowly for my taste, but I loved the plot and all the characters nonetheless. I didn't really read the summary of the plot before watching it, so I didn't really know what to expect, but I definitely thought it was different from this - I'd kind of imagined the whole movie to have some kind of heavy action-war-chase story. Heh.

Also been doing slight revisions to my novel. Currently at page 82. It's slowly getting better, but I'm still having very big doubts as to whether it's current state is good enough for an agent to be interested in it.

Pie

Today I've been...

...baking this pie :D

...and revising this book (picture taken last November when I got the novel in physical format). A lot of the scenes in the beginning are shorter now, which I hope will let the story flow more smoothly :).

Mudcake :D

I celebrated my newly acquired freedom by making a mudcake :D Yum!

I also borrowed a whole stack of movies from my brother, in case I happen to grow bored. Looking forward to some chillax-evenings in front of the TV!

I did revisions to one more chapter of my novel, but I kind of have mixed feelings about whether to try to publish it or not. I like the plot I created, but I feel I could have implemented it less cliché-y. I don't really want to rewrite the entire thing either - I'd rather just write a new novel with an even better plot and more interesting and consistent characters. But on the other hand, I'm not ready to depart from my two years long project quite yet...

Sketches #6, exercise and pastries

It always feels really satisfying to be able to add more weights in Bodypump :D. Makes me notice that I am making some progress after all. Also, I finally came up with a good training plan for me! I bought a one-month card to the gym I go to, so now I have room for more workouts there. Current plan is:
Mondays: Indoor Cycling
Tuesdays: Bodypump
Wednesdays: Pause
Thursdays: Bodypump
Fridays: Pause
Saturdays: Bodypump
Sundays: Pause
Unfortunately, I'll have to wait until after final exams before I can take that plan into effect. Until then, I'm doing Bodypump those three days, but since I'm having final exams every Monday I'll most likely take some aerobic class on Wednesdays instead. And when the snow outside melts, I'll probably take up jogging on some of my pause days.

I ended up watching the movie Untraceable yesterday. I quite liked it even though it was pretty predictable and held a very dark atmosphere. Because of the movie, I completely forgot to post another batch of sketches:

And, glutton as I am, I just had to make some muffins yesterday!

This time I didn't leave them in the oven as long as I usually do, which caused them to still be a bit soft/gooey on the inside. I have to admit that I like them a lot better this way.

And, if that wasn't enough, I tried another recipe for the fastlagsbulle (a Swedish/Finnish pastry that is eaten during Shrove Tuesday), which turned out unexpectedly well - I had no idea you could put dough in a microwave and still get good results quickly!

Art class, intending to publish and cinnamon rolls!

You might or might not remember that I had this huge final project for art class a while ago. The finished work can be found in this blog post.
Today we finally got our grades for our works - and I was delighted to find out that I got the highest grade for mine (meaning 5/5)!
The artworks done during this class will be displayed at our school until the end of the month, and then all of the works that got the highest grade will be displayed in an art exhibition in May :D!

Also, I've decided to start sending my finished novel to publishers soon. After the final exams are over, I'm going to do one last proofread of the story and then start looking into how getting published works. It feels nice to finally be able to move on after having the novel just laying around on my hard drive for the past six months. I'm pretty excited for this, since I've been dreaming about this ever since I first started writing novel-length stories back in 7th grade. My hopes for getting published on my first try aren't exactly high, but I know that this experience will teach me a lot. If nothing else, it will motivate me to keep writing better.

Yesterday I made low-carb cinnamon rolls. Mom didn't really like them, but I'm completely in love with them! Even brought one with me as lunch for the final exam today.

Speaking of the final exam, I think it went so-so. I'm mostly worried that I might have wandered a bit off-topic.

Gonna stop writing now before this migraine kills me.

Muffins :D

I ended up making some muffins again for a change. Yum!

I wanted to try adding small bits of chocolate into the dough, but I didn't realize that it would melt in the oven, so my try at chocolate chip muffins kind of failed :(.

Shrove Tuesday...

...was already yesterday, but I didn't know about it so I celebrated it today instead with a yummy, home-made low-carb version of the traditional fastlagsbulle.

Should probably start studying for my final exams now...

Another regular day

I managed to write a total of 3000 words yesterday, even though I did stay up until 1 am to finish the chapter I was working on. I'm now at a total of 13 000 words, which is a little more than a tenth of what I'm aiming for (100 000 words), so it's coming along really well :)!

I was supposed to have a driving lesson today, but the driving school cancelled on me. Again. I think this was the sixth lesson that was cancelled for one reason or another. Getting a driver's license is starting to feel like a project that will never come to an end.

I also tried out a recipe for home-made ice cream, which turned out a lot better than expected. I've made ice cream before, but I actually think I prefer this new recipe :D.

I ended up making strawberry ice cream even though my favorite flavor is chocolate :P

Brownies!

I really wanted to make something to satisfy my sweet tooth, so I found a recipe for low-carb brownies that I decided to try out (I follow the low carb high fat diet). I must admit that I didn't have much faith in the recipe at first, especially since the dough tasted kind of awful, but the final product turned out quite yummy!

Now I'm going to try to get some pages written in my novel. I made a promise to finish my second novel this year, so I'd better get working. Getting started is just always the hardest part - once I hit page 100 or so, the writing process speeds up a great deal. Right now I've been stuck on page 20 of this novel for two months. I've just got to force myself to sit down and start writing, or I'll never get forward in the story.