So, we’ve just started our health and career unit. This means we’ll be learning about a few different subcategories of health and career, one of which includes healthy eating.

Now, healthy eating isn’t exactly a new topic of discussion for health and career– I remember being taught the food pyramid year after year in elementary school, along with having to categorize foods into the four food groups, and being told that popcorn is not generally considered a vegetable. This year, however, we did an assignment that I haven’t done in health and career, or any class, before: we had to make self-portraits out of food.

Well, we had to digitally edit self portraits out of pictures of food, but close enough.

Here’s what my portrait looks like:

Now, when I found out about this assignment, I initially wanted to create a self portrait entirely out of potatoes. Potatoes are my favourite food, and can be prepared in a variety of ways, plus they come in the shades I would need for my skin, lips, eyes and hair, so they seemed like a good choice for the project. However, I decided that there were some other foods that should be included in a food-self-portrait of me, so I scrapped the all-spuds idea and got to work.

I chose coffee beans for my hair and eyebrows, because they’re about the right colour, and because I owe coffee most of my ability to be a functional human being and not a total zombie. I also decided that my hair and eyebrows would be a good thing to make out of coffee because they make up a large portion of the picture, and I drink coffee every day.

I made my skin out of mashed potatoes, because I felt I should still honour my potato idea, and made my lips out of ketchup chips for the same reason.

My shirt I decided to make from Caesar salad, because I really like Caesar salad, and because I felt I should add in some kind of healthy food.

That covers most of the major parts of the portrait, but I also included milk (eyes), cookies (irises), black licorice (eyelashes) and blackberries (overalls/lining on shirt). Beyond being foods that I enjoy, most of these foods are things that I eat fairly regularly, and can remember having since childhood.

While I had some foods that I wish I could have worked into the portrait– pizza, avocados and mangos, to name a few –I thought it turned out pretty well and only mildly hideous.

Well, toodles!

So, today is Take Your Kid to Work Day, when all the grade nines go to work with their parents. Or in my case, with my mum and sister, Cleo, as they work at the same place, an environmental consulting company called Envirochem Services.

Envirochem is a company that other companies hire to make sure they’re not doing anything ridiculously harmful to the environment. They also do environmental investigations. However, the work that Cleo and my mum do mostly just seems to be bookkeeping.

While I was at Envirochem, my mum explained what invoices are, and Cleo explained how to file them. I also wrote some cheques, went to the post office to drop off a package (with Cleo), and met some of the most important members of the company…

(The dog’s name is Pip, and he belongs to a guy that works there. The platypus, as you may know, is named Perry, and he belongs to a different guy that works there.)

Getting back to the point, I’m not sure I would want to work at a company similar to Envirochem. While I was there I talked to some of the (alive, human) members of the company, and most of them asked me right off the bat whether I liked math and science. (Most of the people there are engineers or environmental scientists.)

And the thing is, while math and science are important, and I don’t mind doing them, they aren’t what I’m primarily interested in. I like fine arts– writing, drawing, music. If I could have any job I wanted I would want something arts-related because that’s what I enjoy and care about. However, I still don’t know what I want to do with my life. Maybe I will end up doing something similar to what my mum and sister do.

Toodles.

So. We’re learning about steampunk, which is, essentially, a subgenre of science fiction, and an aesthetic used in things like art, music, and fashion. The idea of steampunk is that there is an alternate version of the Victorian Era where modern technology exists, but is powered by steam.

So, similar to with Brinton’s theory of revolution, we had to ask a question about something that we didn’t cover in class.

So, I asked myself: can I make a steampunk dress?

Now, I didn’t want to make a full-size steampunk dress. Instead I decided to make a doll dress. Here’s a video, complete with yet more generic iMovie music.

After doing some research on how to make steampunk clothes, I sat down and got to work sketching out a pattern for the dress I wanted to make. As I did so, I realized it would probably be easier to sew a top and skirt separately, so I altered my plan a little bit, and continued on to cutting out the pieces of fabric I would need.

Once I was done that, I sewed the pieces together, and decided that while I hadn’t made exactly what I wanted, it was close enough to keep going.

It was only when I went to make the dress steampunk that I realized I had no clue what I was doing. For all that I had researched how to make something look steampunk, I didn’t have a plan on how to turn the assortment of steampunk-y things I had into something actually steampunk.

I did my best to attach the random eyelets, safety pins, key, and other pieces of metal to the dress in a way that looked steampunk, and upon failing that, turned back to the Internet for more inspiration, but eventually I realized I just had no clue what to do.

So, to answer my question: could I have made a steampunk dress? With more effort and planning, and the right materials, probably. Did I make a steampunk dress?

…That about sums it up.

Toodles!