12 Before 12 (Updated)

School is on the doors! It's my last year! (Can't wait till I'm over with high school. Really.)

I'm so sad summer's over, it went by so fast :( And, I'm not excited for school. At all. Especially because of the pressure of grade 12 and official exams.

There is so much I need to do before school starts, below are 12 things I should accomplish before I head to grade 12:

1. Clean my room: Typical end of summer activity. Boo  Done: Friday. Sept. 13th
2. Finish working on Rawafid's library wall: In case you didn't know (I'm sure you didn't), I'm working on a huge drawing (which is practically little drawings around a quote) for Rawafid School. I still need to color it. I'll blog about it later! (It's taking so much more time that I thought it would!! And I can't work now, anyways, I'm too caught up with school :/)
3. Put all the healthy recipes I've been collecting and bookmarking and taking screenshots of together in one place.
4. Work on my book. I haven't worked on it for a while now, like a week. :(
5. Spend a day out with Leen.
6. Get back on track concerning my daily walks.
7. Finish reading at least 3 books.
8. Update my gallery on Snapshots. (I did start on this before school, I really did, but my laptop ran out of battery and the rest is history..)
9. Buy new glasses! The ones I have are too old-fashioned. (Can't go back to school with the same old fashioned glasses, now can I?)
10. Practice what I learned about InDesign and Illustrator this summer. Really need to do this but the CD I got won't work. (CD isn't working)
11. Buy new school supplies! Each year, I wait until after we start school to buy my notebooks, and that leaves me with tons of pages to copy. Not practical.
12. Decorate my converse. They're getting old anyways, and I saw this great tutorial about decorating converse shoes.

I'll update this post after school starts; hopefully I'll finish doing all those things. Other than those 12 things, I'll be mourning the end of summer! Are you happy to get back to school/ work/ college? Did your vacation end yet? :]
So I finished 5/12. Not good. (But I did start school earlier than I expected I would, since I changed schools.) 

Rawafid Graduation Party '13

What Leen & I Did:

• Folded brochures (lots of them) for about 3 hours, starting at 11 AM. Which were later handed out to people

• Decorated the certificates with ribbons
  
  
  
• I also managed to find a book called The Hunger Games Companion by Lois H. Gresh in the library and started reading it. LOVE IT so far! (I'm crazy about The Hunger Games FYI)
  
  
  

Decorations:

• Blue background: 

• Colored ribbons:

• Extra large certificates (love those!):

• BALOOONS:

PARTAY:

1.  This day was very important to me because I tried arabic coffee for the first time. And it tasted hideous. Absolutely hideous. I can't even describe its taste, & I don't know how people drink it! I even made Leen taste it. (She agreed after about 15 minutes of me trying to bribe her into trying it for a gum. She did, and had to get up and spit the coffee lol)
   
   
   
2. Apparently they call the dudes who dress up like this and yell stuff "a'arrafah". The way they were screaming things was funny  lol
   
   
   
3. Grade nine students make their 'le enterance'
   
   
   
4. The audience
   
   
   
5. The two girls in front of me were wearing nice clothes. Really, they were.
   
   
   
6. Little kids danced and stuff. With flowers. And flags. And dresses.
   
   
   
   
7. Daddy. Of course :]
   
   
   
8. Free water bottles (everyone loves free stuff! ha-ha)
   
   
   
9. Lights! Gosh, I remember how hot and scary it was to stand near those fireworks three years ago!
   
   
   
10. CUTIIESSS ❤
    
    
    
11. Throw your hats in the air. ASDFGHJKJALJ ❤
    
    
    
    
    
    
12. Group picture!
    
    
    
13. God, those were yummy
    

Graduation Day is one of the best days of a person's life. Aaaaaaahhhhh! It's so nice :')

Maggie: Lost In The Desert

I'm pretty sure she didn't mean to swallow up the whole ocean, she was just thirsty! :)

Visit to Golden Vision

I  visited Golden Vision on Monday, Wednesday, then Thursday. Golden Vision is a company in Beirut (that has so many rooms but I only spent time in the Graphic Designers' Room and the cafeteria).

Their motto: "Life is a series of images"

The work place is so welcoming, the desks are nice, and the colors of the walls are, too. AND THEY HAVE HUGE iMACS ASDFGHJKL. I'm not fangirling.

The Graphic Designers' space is big and surrounded by glass; and there were those little ants forming a long line on the glass- cuuute!

First Day:

Dad had some work there so Leen & I went with him. We basically just:

• Went through magazines
• Talked
• Saw what the designers were working at
• I talked to Aya, a graphic designer, about her work and stuff
• We Doodled (I drew this nice thing, really, but I think the paper's still in the car)
• Ate (Leen had a fajita and I had Cesar salad)

Second Day:

Dad dropped me off there (he, mom, & another teacher- Miss Nazha) had a workshop or something in Beirut. Anyways, I sat with Samir first, a graphic designer, and he told me about the basics of this program they use to design magazines (InDesign). Graphic designers use three programs in their work:

• Photoshop (for pictures mainly)
• Illustrator (Vectors and logos..)
• InDesign (Magazines, brochures..)

Then I sat with Aya and she talked to me more about InDesign. She showed me the 'before and after' brochures and magazines she was working on for an Iraqi company, and the transformations she did were crazzy! The original brochures/ magazines had jammed up words, ugly colors and pictures, and the transformed products were bright, nice, and comfortable to read. Their work is so nice.

Third Day:

I went to Golden Vision and Aya was going to arrive at 10 but she didn't come cuz she had some things to do. Anyways, I spent my time:

• Reading "Why Am I So Disorganized"; which I'm sure is beneficial but it was kinda boring and had lots of activities

• Sitting beside Samir and looking at the magazine he was working on
• Going through some of the stuff Golden Vision worked on previously. (They use very nice colors and modern designs. I didn't take pics of much stuff though)

• Reading "Faris" magazines with AlBaraa, a cute 7-year old boy (he's too cute, really)

• Drawing and playing tic-tac-toe with AlBaraa (using MEGA PENS). Using those pens is harder than it looks like. Really.

It was nice and fun, and I got to know what graphic designing is really like. Below is a collage from the visit. Yay! :D

(Thank you to everyone at Golden Vision for their time, especially Ousama, Samir, and mostly, Aya. :])

RIP Fluffy

My brother Amin and I got two kittens a few days ago and FINALLY named them yesterday. We named mine Fluffy, and his Buckbeak (Beaky); after Harry Potter animals.

Fluffy looked sick yesterday, and I wasn't at home all day today and Leen told me that she kept her head down all the time and wouldn't eat. I went to look for her after I came and found her dead on the grass.

Really, I don't cope well with death.

We were going to make them a house, paint and decorate it. This sucks :(

Below are pics of fluffy. First pic by me and second by Leen. Just look at her eyes!

Out at the Mountains

My aunt & uncle invited us for a feast at the mountains yesterday (Aug. 10th). The place we went to was nice; there were lots of trees and lots of kids. We arrived a little late, and a little late  was just in time for lunch. Lol. Anyways, we had meat and salad and potatoes and onions etc... then we had desert, cakes and fruits. Leen & I went for a little walk, & Leen took tons of pictures.

Lots of people were invited

Special Dish: 'Sfeeha' with a bee!

Lots of people=lots of water

The biggest salad bowl. Really, you had to see it!

Onions & potatoes

Mega watermelons

This looks yummy, & tastes even yummier. Can you imagine!?

Healthy Greens

Idk, maybe I'll never understand what people like in coffee.

Why would anyone need this in the mountain? Hmm..

Leen & I go for a walk

And of course, 'bizir'  was an essential (for Leen, not me)

Beautiful scene #1: you can see a lake in the distance

Beautiful scene #2: my  piece of watermelon

Then, le familia (smaller familia, me, mom, dad, sibs) went to the lake. I was feeling very inspired and I wrote some pretty nice stuff (I'm not even joking). We splashed in the water and Yaman stepped on a dead fish and freaked out. It was funny because he wouldn't go neat the water anymore!

Kara'aon Lake

Cool foam. Really, it's cool- I've never seen anything like this before!

Not so cool dead fish.

Le dad with kids

Le mom with kids

Le me with le converse

Guess what? I love you. (Me talking to my ice-cream cone)

In case you thought those cool pictures were taken by me, then you're wrong. Pictures courtesy of Leen Khateeb-my sister. (Check her out on instagram: @KhateebLeen)