Tag Archives: teen lifestyle

I’m Finally a Senior!

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After three interesting years of high school, I am quickly approaching my final year at a pace I’m not too comfortable with. With being a senior comes a lot of responsibilities and tasks that need to be checked off the to-do list. There are campus tours that need to be done, capstone projects that need to be started, SATs to study for as well as take, applications to send off to colleges, senior dues to pay off, a GPA to keep up, a show choir to lead now that I’ve been appointed captain (I’m super stoked about this), and on top of all that, balance a job on my plate. I will say that trying to write this list down got me breathing a little heavier, but every senior has to go through this. I should be able to do it too.

From the list, I’ve started campus tours. I visited Kennesaw State University a few weeks ago. I didn’t take any pictures, which I currently regret, because I was like a kid in a candy store. The campus is super cool and KSU seemed technologically advanced and offers good programs. In a few days I will be visiting the University of Georgia and I’m quite excited to see what’s in store. Another exciting milestone is that I started working. My first official job! I work as a cashier at a local pizza restaurant and I’ve been loving it. I’m the kind of person who will take working over sitting at home watching TV any day! Plus as a cashier I also take in orders, so it’s been definitely helping me build confidence when speaking to new people and enhancing my customer service skills.

A project that I’ve recently started is starting to take my senior pictures. I still have yet to sign up with a studio to get both my yearbook and cap and gown pictures. When it comes to the scenes my mom and I decided to do our own, ones that catered more to who I am and backgrounds that express the real Allyson. Like everything I do, I like to add a bit of a twist. My mom and I thought it would be a good idea to do some pictures at home since it’s where I live and spent my entire high school life in. We decided to do more of a high fashion shoot for my pictures, so we waited on a rainy day to take some cool shots. What I like about the pictures is that they have a range from almost playful to something a little gothic. I look like one of those chicks from horror movies who’s about to haunt someone (honestly those shots were my personal favorite). The rest of my senior picture scenes are still yet to be taken and ideas are still being brought to the table. Honestly, I think I need a scene surrounded by Disney characters. Those who know me will tell you that Disney movies make up my life. What can I say? I’m still a five year old at heart, despite the fact, I may need to face some responsibilities that require a tad bit of growing up.

AFI Top 100 Movies #5: Unforgiven, A Gun Fighter’s Internal Struggle

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A few days ago my mom had me continue my cultural journey by watching another movie that was on the list. The next movie we watched was Unforgiven. My dad was telling me about how Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman starred in it. The minute I heard the name Morgan Freeman I was all ears. My school seems to be really obsessed with Morgan Freeman because of his voice. A lot of my friends tell me that if they had someone to narrate their life then it would be Morgan Freeman. That makes sense!

The movie goes back to the Old West. Cowboys and gun fighters roam the towns on horseback with guns in their holsters and saloons are THE place to hang out. Will Munny (Clint Eastwood) is approached by the Schofield Kid because the kid wants Will to help him kill a guy who cut up a prostitute. There was a thousand dollars reward offered by the prostitutes so he figured that with Will’s help they would be able to collect. The kid goes to Will because he has a past of killing people for money. He finds a man that “changed” his ways for his now deceased wife. In the end Will decides to go through with it because he needs the money to help raise his kids. Will had always had a partner (Ned-Morgan Freeman) when he did his killings/jobs, so he brings him along and decides to split the money three ways. The whole movie is these three men going around looking for the two guys who cut the girl up without being caught by Little Bill, the town sheriff.  No guns are allowed in Big Whiskey (town) and this is a law that Little Bill is going to enforce even if he has to kill a couple of people in the process. That guy was an idiot, I mean what cowboy isn’t going to bring a gun wherever he goes? I guess that my takeaway was the question: can a bad man really change his ways?

All through out the movie the kid, Ned, and some of the prostitutes offer Will liquor but he turns it down. He gave up drinking a long time ago because his wife wanted him to give it up as well as his bad guy past. Near the end he finds out that his best friend Ned was killed by little Bill even though Ned backed out of killing anybody. When he finds out Ned is dead he goes into town to seek revenge. When he first rides into town he drinks a bottle of whiskey and when it’s empty he throws it on the ground. This shows how some events touch a person so much that it causes them to lose sense of what is right and wrong although in my opinion he lost sense of right and wrong at the beginning of the movie when he decided to take the law into his own hands. In the movie one of the prostitutes offers him a “free one” and he turns it down because he still has loyalty to his wife. I find it cute that even though his wife was dead he still wanted to remain faithful to her, no matter what. The man had some deeply rooted convictions for some things and no moral for others. Yikes! I think that the movie is called Unforgiven because even though he acts cool about killing people, at the end of the day he really can’t forgive himself for the bad things he has done. I don’t think that there can’t be anything worst than a person’s internal guilt because conscience can be harsher than any judge out there.

I did enjoy the movie because the effects weren’t bad and the story was interesting. There was some action but for a western movie I kind of wish there was a little bit more. I also feel like the story didn’t concentrate enough on Will, Ned, and the kid but a bit more on Little Bill and his past than they needed to. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they included some of his violent history but I wish they didn’t include so much. I do recommend people to watch this movie because it was a decent movie and I enjoyed putting myself into some of the characters shoes.

One of the funniest moments in the movie was when Little Bill kept calling the book about English Bob the Duke of Death the Duck of Death, the writer who showed him the book kept trying to explain to him that it said Duke but Little Bill would just ignore his little comment.

AFI Top 100 Movies #1: Citizen Kane or Citizen Lame?

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My mom is a huge stickler about teaching my sister and I how to become more cultured. Last summer she had us learn all the different art periods and the top 100 paintings and artists. Having to learn this was a major bore and I threw a fit every time she called us into her room to learn more. She also had us read a huge book on mythology which I actually enjoyed because I loved learning about the different Greek gods and the stories associated with them all. This year my mom has decided to have us learn all the classical music periods. I have really enjoyed listening to all of the different styles of music but could pass up the music lectures any day! My mom also decided that she is going to have us watch the 100 greatest american films of all time. She wants my family to finish all 100 of them before I go off to college but at the rate we’re going at we’ll probably be done by the end of the summer. Ok, I’m exaggerating a bit.

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The 100 greatest films of all time are movies that have been chosen by an American Film Institute’s panel which includes more than 1,500 leaders of the film industry. When I first heard about my mom telling me that she wanted to watch all 100 movies I was super excited because I don’t have to go through any boring lectures and I get to lay back and enjoy movies that have been picked by many actors and directors. My mom had me watch the movie that was rated number one on the list, Citizen Kane. I kid you not when I tell you that it was difficult for me not to daze off. It felt like the movie lasted forever and as if it was going nowhere! It took place in the 1940’s so the effects were pretty cheesy and I can’t stand cheesy effects. Plus the movie was in black and white and I like being able to see my movies with color. It adds more life to the movie and even personality. I do understand that this was a gigantic achievement for the film industry when it came out but I’m 14 and let’s face it, all the movies from my time are in color and with way cooler effects.

I didn’t like the movie but I do remember that afterwards my dad, sister, and I started making fun of it. In the beginning of the movie we get Citizen Kane’s last word which was “Rosebud”. We laughed because it was a really odd choice of words to say when you die and of course we couldn’t stop from thinking of a certain biological need (if you catch my drift). I also remember that after the movie ended my dad and I were so bored that we took a champagne bottle cork and his flip flops and started playing a ping pong like game that we called flip flop pong! Every time we hit the cork we got a point and the points where scored in “rosebuds”. I know, it is stupid but we needed some sort of exercise to wake up. 🙂

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Citizen Kane (1941)

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Of course as a little fashionista, I had to pay attention to the clothes that the girls were wearing which was pretty much the only fun I got out of the whole movie. There was not a lot of fashion as the movie concentrates mainly on the main character, Mr. Kane.  However, because Kane was pretty rich, he was able to buy his wives a lot of things. Some of the things they got were nice looking clothes and accessories for the era and I can always appreciate nice vintage pieces. In the first picture, his first wife Emily is wearing a dress where the sleeves come down to her shoulders with lace and flower details. The other two pictures are his second wife, Susan Kane. In the first picture Susan was wearing some sort of shawl with a fur detail  and a hat with waves in the front. The second picture shows her in a sheer shawl with crystal embellishments. This last outfit was my favorite outfit that came out of this movie because of how elegant it is.

And here I am as Mrs. Kane!

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Me as Mrs. Kane

Tantalizing Twenties: Thoroughly Modern Millie Flapper Costume

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Thoroughly Mpdern Millie flapper costume teen fashion blog

Thoroughly Mpdern Millie flapper costume teen fashion blog

Thoroughly Mpdern Millie flapper costume teen fashion blog

As I have mentioned before in previous posts and in my about section, I’m in chorus. We do a lot of different concerts throughout the year and they are always super fun to do. The concert I enjoyed the most was our end of the year concert which we turned into an award show to honor seniors before they left. The award show we were trying to recreate in the auditorium was the Tony awards, but we named it the Rhoades awards after my chorus teacher. The Tony awards is an award show were they give awards based on Broadway performances. Each chorus class was given a different musical and it equaled a grand show over all. All of the chorus classes got assigned the song Anything Goes from the Broadway show Anything Goes as the opening and the ending. I’m in the beginners group and we were assigned to perform songs from the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie. For three months we practiced the song and the dance so we would look amazing on stage. The practices were so much fun and I enjoyed getting to dance and sing because I love doing both. The women’s chorus class were assigned Mama Mia, men’s chorus was assigned Newsies, mixed was assigned The Lion King, show choir was assigned American Idiot, and the capella group was assigned songs from West Side Story.

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I thought show choir had the best performance because of how a lot of the members had great facial expressions, amazing voices, and lots of enthusiasm when they were singing. Plus I like a few Green Day songs that they sang so it was really entertaining to watch. All of the chorus groups did amazing and I enjoyed standing back stage and attending practices so I could sing along. Something you may not know about me is that I’m a huge musical girl. I enjoy being able to watch a movie and then all of a sudden hear a song with good lyrics and music to go with it. In my previous posts I mentioned how my favorite musical was Les Miserables, I was really upset when I found out that the year before I became a freshmen they did Les Mis and that I missed my opportunity in being able to perform in such an amazing musical. I dream of being able to sing One Day More along with other amazing voices, the layering of the voices would sound amazing.

To perform Thoroughly Modern Millie we were told to dress up as flappers because Thoroughly Modern Millie takes place in 1922. My mom and I spent a couple nights looking for flapper dresses that were either purple, silver, black, white, or blue. I found this black flapper dress on Amazon and it looked amazing! I may have had a flapper dress on but I still didn’t look like I came from the 1920’s. To get a more vintage look I added long pearls, long black gloves, and a very sparkly head band with lots of sparkle. The headpiece we did ourselves! The outfit looked great and it was comfortable to perform in. One of the things I was stressing about was having a wardrobe malfunction but everything turned out great. I did my best and I didn’t break any legs.

 

Style Cravings: Skinnies and Midi Rings

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I was looking at Pinterest the other day and found a picture of a skinny ring with a nice and clean design, a very unpretentious ring and I started wondering if I could find more of them. As I started diving into the world of the skinnies I was more and more convinced that these thin circles would end up been a trend as it has the power of making the hand look super feminine. I was not surprised to discover that celebrities such as Rihanna, Vanessa Hudgens, and Kristen Stewart have already been sporting them.

Midi rings are rings for your fingers just like any other ring. The difference about midi rings is that they are thinner, you  can layer them with other rings, and they don’t go all the way down your finger. I think these rings are super cute and stylish!  I prefer the midi rings to be stacked instead of just one because it adds variety and makes the hand look complete.

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Midi rings come in all sort of shapes, sizes, and colors.  I like looking through the different midi rings and looking at all the different designs they have. I’m not much of a ring person because I can never seem to find the right size for my fingers. It kind of stinks that it’s difficult to find rings for my finger because I just really love the style and all I can do when I see these rings is imagine all the countless outfits I can create with them. It won’t be very hard trying to create an outfit since most of the rings come in either silver or gold so they can match many outfits.

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Most of the styles I included in the pictures are from Etsy however there are multiple websites for you guys to go and order some of these for yourselves. The picture with the guitar at the top shows Willow and Bloch skinny that you can order from their site as well. The options are unlimited! Even though the skinnies and midi rings alone are super cute, a little tip would be to make sure that your finger nails are in good shape and maybe even painted to go along with the cute ring look. I mean think about it, if your nails are not up to par, then it will distract people’s eyes from looking at the nails instead of the rings. Midi rings can change up a style and add some flare to a boring outfit.

Me, Myself, and I: Middle Child

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It’s been a while since the last time I did a Me, Myself, and I post and I decided to do yet another one! I wanted to talk about two of some very important people in my life, my sisters. My oldest sister’s name is Leighann and my younger sisters name is Megan. If you haven’t been able to guess yet, I’m the middle child of the family. Leighann is 21 and Megan is 13. Leighann has never really lived with us because she’s my half sister and she lives with her mom, but now that she’s 21 she moved out of her mom’s house. Even though I don’t get to see her as much as I would like to, I still always miss her and lover her. My younger sister lives in the same house as me so it can get a little fussy when having two teenagers in the same environment most of the day. My little sister and I fight a lot and we have our differences, some of our fights are really stupid! Although we fight a lot, I love her so much and she’s one of my best friends (a long with my mom of course). It’s becoming hard to hang out with my little sister now that we both don’t share a lot of the same interests. When we were smaller all we would do was play with dolls and go outside and play princess, but we’ve both grown out of that stage. Something that we both enjoy though is food, I like to cook sometimes and she likes to eat. Another interest we share is beauty, so what we will do is paint each others nails or do each others makeup. The way we found these similar interests was by sitting down together and talking about what we could do to spend more time with each other (which was my mom’s plan). Just yesterday my sister and I were watching George Lopez outside and we would both laugh so hard. Even though we just watched a comedian, I don’t think it will be easy to forget that day when all we did was just laugh together for the first time in a while. The picture above is a picture of my sisters and I when we went out on a little lunch and shop trip with my parents. That was a fun day because I got to be with all my sisters and at the same time go shopping!

Charming Madison,GA Day Trip

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It is not easy to convince a teenage girl to get out of the house unless it is something fun, however my mom puts her foot down and drags us out every now and then just to make sure that we don’t forget to: “EXPERIENCE” as she likes to put it. Over spring break we took a trip to Madison, GA. Madison was voted as one of the 16th most top picturesque villages in the world by Budget Travel. I’m really glad that we all decided to go in mid spring because all of the plants, flowers, and animals were out and it was super pretty. At every corner there would be some sort of flower and explosions of color painted the town. I must say that along with the flowers came a hurricane of pollen. I wore grey oxfords to walk in and by the time I got home they had turned yellow. The first thing we did when we got to the little town was walk around and visit a few of the houses, such as this one house called the Rose Cottage. In some of the pictures that my mom took of the house you can see orbs (ghosts). We thought it was interesting that of all the pictures that were taken that day only in that house the orbs were captured. Can you see the one below in my shoulder as I reach to the tree? Spooky!

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We then went to the Madison Tea Room. Ever since I was a little girl I have dreamt of  having a real tea party with tea cakes, finger sandwiches, and the fancy hats! When we walked into the Tea Room I was taken aback at how cute the place was and how I just wanted to get myself a table and start drinking tea. We actually met the lady who owns the Madison Tea Room and she was so kind! She let my sister and I try on some of the display hats and let us walk around and take a look at the place.

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The architecture of the houses there was amazing. There were a lot of buildings and houses with antebellum architecture. If you have ever watched Gone with the Wind, then you would totally feel like Mrs. Scarlett in one of those huge houses. There were so many different buildings there and places to go.

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Everywhere we would walk, there would always seem to be something historical. I remember once we stopped at one of the historical markers and it told us that at that place absolutely nothing happened. I laughed harder than I should have, I mean it was truly unexpected. Some of the historical markers talked about people they lost during wars like the Vietnam War and some even date back to the Civil War which I thought was pretty cool.

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There was this one little park in the town that was super spacious and instead of benches there were about 3 porch swings on each side of the park. My family has this tradition where when we go somewhere new, we make sure to stop at a candy shop and get fudge. We got some cookies and cream fudge along with some peanut butter fudge which both tasted amazing! Not only was the fudge good, but every other food we enjoyed while we were there. We stopped at one restaurant and got some mozzarella cheese, herbs, and tomato smoked together with pita bread and that was my favorite appetizer out of them all. Some other appetizers that we tried were homemade tortilla chips and a cheese dip, some roasted garlic hummus, and fried artichoke hearts which were all good as well. My family decided that we would just rather snack all day instead of eating lunch which turned out great because we got to sample different appetizers in different restaurants throughout town. I even got to try a Jack Daniels bread pudding that day. It was super good! I was kind of upset that I got stuffed halfway through the dessert and couldn’t finish it, I really wanted to finish it. If you live in the Atlanta area then I recommend Madison for a really fun and economical day trip. I had a lot of fun and I’m pretty sure that you will too.

Teen Fashion: Cool and Warm Enough

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Spring Break is now over and we went back to school Monday. I hated having to wake up early because I got used to sleeping in till noon. It was kind of funny walking into school Monday because I would look around and find people with really bad tans or people who got sun burned. Plus everyone was walking around as if they were the living dead because they were so tired. All this week we have been going full throttle in our classes  now that our EOCTs (End of Course Test) are coming up. The teachers have been so stressed out with trying to get everything covered which sucks for the students because these are the times we get double the homework. But summer is just around the corner and I’m super excited for the break but after a few days I start to miss my friends and my classmates.

This outfit was taken during spring break in Madison, GA.  The city was such a beautiful place and there were flowers everywhere which I loved. I will be talking about the city and a few things we did while we were there in one of my upcoming posts so you guys can get a feel for it. It was such a cool place and I definitely would recommend for people to take a nice trip there.

Spring break was kind of cold for us down here in Georgia so I had to wear a long sleeve shirt and pants to go to Madison. I wore a white tank top with a long black and gray striped cardigan over it. I also pared it with a white, black, and gray beaded necklace. I also added dark purple pants to the outfit to give it an unexpected color. The shoes matched the gray in the top of the shirt. The outfit was perfect to go walking in because when it was cold I had the cover up and once it got warmer I could just take off the cover up and just wear the tank top and the outfit would still look nice. Once I got home I had to do some serious washing because the pollen got all over my clothes, the shoes looked yellow instead of gray by the time we were done walking.

Inspiration Monday: Cherry Swimsuit

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Inspiration Monday: Cherries Swimsuit
Today is yet another Inspiration Monday, but I’m going to give you guys a little something different. A few selected fashion bloggers and I were chosen by ModCloth.com to participate in their Uniquely You challenge. The challenge was that they would give us a piece of clothing, and we would have to create a story (outfit) using that one piece we were given. The winning look will be displayed on ModCloth’s Wanelo page with a link back to the outfit creator’s blog. Challenge accepted! I thought that it was really cool how she reached out to me to join the challenge and I couldn’t wait to get the piece. One of the catches was that I had to create an outfit that would look good on plus size women as well.
The one piece I was given to work around was a bathing suit with a cherries fabric. I created two stories for the challenge because I was stuck in between two outfits. I also decided that it was best to include both because all women have different personalities and style. I used dresses for the stories because I thought they were chic to go along with the bathing suit and they were easy to slip on over the suit. Also, from my previous experiences of going to the beach or the pool, my family would usually go out to eat because we were too tired to cook after a long day of swimming so it was easier to just get dressed nicely and go eat. I used all the red and the green from the cherries found in the bathing suit in the outfit because I like to match my bathing suit to my outfit.

Inspiration Monday: Pebble Lake Outfit

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Inspiration Monday: Pebble Lake
Inspiration Monday: Pebble Lake by teen fashion blog

As you guys could already tell, I really love Pinterest. It’s just an amazing site, I can look up anything and it shows me so many interesting things. A few of my favorite categories to go and look at are mostly hair/ beauty and humor. Sometimes people post things to wrong category and I end up seeing some cool things that I find interesting even though it has nothing to do with what I’m looking for. Plus with Pinterest I can post anything that I like or I may need for the future on one of my personal boards and I wont lose what I need.

One day on Pinterest I was on the humor section and all of a sudden this gorgeous picture of multicolored pebbles under water came up and I was amazed by the beauty of the picture. I found out that the picture was really Pebble Shore Lake in Glacier National Park. I looked up the lake for more pictures on Google and I was not disappointed. The lake was beautiful and the multicolored pebbles were just gorgeous! I think I found a new destination that I would love to visit. I decided to use the picture for my next inspiration Monday because the colors were just amazing and perfect to work with, plus I don’t think I could ever grow tired of looking at that picture.

I made sure to use winter clothing for this outfit because since Glacier National Park is in Montana, you can expect it to most likely be chilly. The long sleeve shirt is light blue to represent the sky and the mountain range. Plus I was going to need a soft color in order to use bright jewelry. I put some regular jeans along with the outfit to keep the soft blue. The purse and the jewelry all included the bright colors found in the stones. I thought the watch incorporated the colors from the stones very well, plus it was a really piece of jewelry. The shoes are brown and simple because there was already so many colors in the accessories that adding more colors in the shoes would just look like a bit much.