A World Without Heroes by Brandon Mull

A World without Heroes

Brandon Mull

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A couple of weeks ago, a good friend of mine listened to me complaining that I am looking for a book to read that is different from the ones that I usually read. Since I was stuck on a World War 2 period and all the books I have read lately was based on that time.

At first I thought she is crazy, this is not my type of book, since it was fantasy based and I usually like more real scenario books. Well except for Harry Potter and Twilight saga. I found it an easy read. Brandon Mull has the way to transfer you into this world. Where you want to get up and actually help fight Maldor, and protect all the people of Lyrian.

The book starts where a prince is captured and blinded by Maldor; the prince then utters a WORD. A magic word, that can destroy Maldor, but alas this was a decoy Maldor. The prince is offered a chance to join Maldor or be tortured.

Jason is a teenager from Colorado; he is bored by his predictable life. Until he has a not so predictable work day at the zoo. He falls into the hippo pool, and is swallowed. The next thing he knows he climbs out of a tree in a different world. On his quest to get back home, he meets the Blind King who introduces him to Rachel who is also a beyonder. They start the quest together to find the syllables to the WORD that can destroy Maldor.

They go through difficult tasks to find the syllables. They meet displacers who can lose their limbs, and still life. They meet seed people who carries around an Amar, their seeds, this means they can grow again after they died. Jason got invited to the eternal feast, where he had to duel to be able to leave. Jason then goes to Mador’s palace and requests an audience with him. He then utters to word to Maldor. It does not work. Maldor has deceived his enemies all those years. There is no WORD that can destroy Maldor. Jason is then thrown in the dungeons after refusing to join Maldor.

Ferrin one of the displacers Jason met on his voyage, who is one of Maldor’s henchmen, helps Jason to escape. He then shows him a way home, when Jason wants to go help Rachel and warn her, Ferrin pushes him into the pool, and Jason emerges back on earth, on a farm.

This is the first book of the series. I am currently looking for the next one. This was a good change of scenario for me. It did take me a while to get used to the style of writing since I am a dedicated Jody Picoult fan. But when it finally captured me, it was a great book.

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50th

50 Posts

So today marks the 50^th post! Jay! I didn’t think I would last so long, and actually have some readers. Thank you. As you probably saw by now my blog does not follow normal patterns, I write about whatever takes my fancy.

Today my post is about the weather here. As you might know in South Africa it’s winter now. Usually it is pretty chilly here, but not this year. We have extremes. It is either extremely cold or mild spring weather.

Well last week we had really cold weather. I had to scrape the ice of the car. The weather was perfect. I love it when it’s that cold, especially if you have a day off and can just spend the day with your family. We snuggled under blankets, read books, played some games.

Frozen car (exuse the trash bags in the background)



I love how the ice covers the edges

More frozen plants



Our bird bath was frozen solid

Just for incase you don't believe me, that rock is on top of the ice.

Over the weekend we went to our local Pick n Pay, and they usually have a table full of games at discount prices. So we got Pictionary for Wii. That is one of the most fun games I have played. We found out my mom rules in that game.

I bought a new duvet cover when I got home and put it on my bed, I realised it is green. Time to redo my room, blue and green don't go together that well

I know this isn't a good picture of it, but it's a moss green, very light

Enjoy the rest of your day

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What to expect when you're expecting

What to expect when you’re expecting

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So last night we went out on a family date. This doesn’t happen very often since my parent work and then they don’t want to go out or there isn’t anything showing all of us want to watch. So last night it was a tossup between: What to expect... and Madagascar. But since our local cinema we usually go to have a special on Wednesdays if you are a club member we thought maybe we should go and see Madagascar, since it will be much cheaper. But alas their system was down so no cheap 3D movies for the van Heerden family. Since we had some Wednesday Spur special tickets I ended up paying only for 2 of the 4 tickets. Score!

The movie was very funny. I especially liked Cameron Diaz and Anna Kendrick. I liked her in Twilight Saga, but in this movie she really showed she can be in big roles. Elizabeth Banks was also amazing. She got to play the lady that everything goes wrong with. She gets all the symptoms, and she has a terrible meltdown at a conference. It was incredibly funny.

There is also a gang of boys in the movie which gets the dads ready for fatherhood. They walk in a park and gives advice, and share secrets about what they have done wrong with their children. I loved the scene where they walk and try and look cool.

I would definitely recommend this movie to anyone. In my book it gets a solid 4 out of 5 stars.

Here is a link to watch the trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=golwpEwgEWI

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlIp5COqqGM

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Movie Night

Saturday Night is Movie Night

I don’t know if other people have the same problem, so here goes.

At our house we have a lot of DVD’s and I mean a lot. We collected them over the years and every Saturday evening when there is nothing on television, as it usually happens we have a BIG fight about what to watch, since each one in the family has their favourites.

So a couple of months ago we came up with the brilliant idea. Each one picks two of the movies they really want to watch, write them on a piece of paper, throw them in a bowl, on shakes the bowl and draws the winning movie. This way no one can say they never get to watch their movies. Sometimes if we are in the mood on a Sunday we will draw another movie from the remaining ballots.

Our Ballots

This is what you look like when you don't win

And this is what you look like if you do



Excuse the washing lines, it was pouring outside and Saturdays are our washing days. What do you guys do when you can’t choose?

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Snow White and the Huntsman

Snow White and the Huntsman

So over the weekend I caved in and went to see Snow White and the Huntsman.

I thought it was great, my sister did not. I loved Kirsten Steward in this movie; it was as if the role was written for her. Charlize Theron was great as the evil queen. And of course her being an ex-South African also helps J

Kirsten's signature look

The evil Queen

The actors really pulled you into the movie; they submerged you into the story and made you want to help fight the evil queen, cry when one of the dwarves died.

The evil queen has a curse on her where she can stay young forever; all she needs to do is take the youth of young beautiful woman. She marries the Snow Whites father and kills him on their wedding night. She then makes it look like an attack on the castle, and hides Snow White in the dungeon. After the queen ‘takes’ another beautiful girls youth, she turns to her mirror and asks the age old question “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” the mirror then replies that on this day there is one other who is fairest of them all, and that she will either be the queens downfall or the key to eternal youth.

Snow White then escapes after the queen’s brother goes to fetch her, she goes into the dark forest and the queen sends an expert of the Dark forest to get her.

The adventures in this movie is really capturing and definitely worth it.

And of course it helps that the Huntsman is super cute ;)

You can see the trailer here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgfYBJoPFFw

The last song that plays while the credits are rolling is from Florence and the Machine, Breath of life. It is one of the best songs, the tune plays in my head the whole time enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROtBbOcdFxo

Catch up

Catch up

I know I haven’t blogged in a long time, so here is a quick recap of what has been going on around here.

We went bowling a couple of Sundays ago (to be exact my dad’s birthday) At first I was really sceptical, our family do not do games very well, I could already picture my sister sulking, my dad mad as hell and me trying to keep everyone happy. Well my feeling was almost right. On Sundays this place has a special, instead of paying R40 you pay R25 on Sundays, but you need to buy two games. This works out great. Since the first one is more a warm up game, and getting the feel. Since this was our first time we played.

It was really entertaining, my dad loved it. He really got in the groove and thrashed us. I think it’s his new favourite past time.





My Dad proud after a strike





The people in the next lane took her ball





My mom is a good sport, she was way behind

And somehow, someone snapped one of me J

At our Bible study group we played the Bible Knowledge game. With this I realised I need to read my Bible from start to end. Luckily we had a guy on our team who really knew the Bible so at least we didn’t come last J

We are in the middle of one of the coldest winters Bloemfontein has seen in a while, and this morning we woke up to rain, and I don’t mean the drizzling kind. The raining-so-hard-getting-soaked-from-one-drop kind. I love rain. The only thing about the rainy weather is my leg is giving me trouble. I am not sure if it’s the weather or if I need to go see my doctor. Will give it another of couple of days

This is our part of our back garden, its all mud this morningJ

We also had a masked ball a couple of weeks ago. But that deserves a post of its own.

I am busy with a very nice book at the moment; it’s called A World without Heroes by Brandon Mull. It’s not one of my types of books that I usually read, a friend suggested it. And now I can’t put it down.

I wish you all a wonderful weekend

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Autumn Crayon Art

Crayon Art

I have finally finished something I saw on Pintrest, these crayon art has been really pretty and I really wanted to test it out, but just never got to it. So I pushed through and got myself some supplies. I wanted to make a Autumn canvas since we are in Winter here in South Africa.

I got a large square canvas for R54, a couple of boxes of crayons for about R14 a box and some glue sticks for my glue gun which was R20 for about 10.

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Some crayon packs

My trusty glue gun

Leave I decided on

Of course I had to atleast test if the crayons will actually melt, with my luck I would have bought the non melting type :)

testing

I then proceeded by glueing all the crayons onto my canvas, this was probably the only thing that really took some time. Since I had to decide how the colours would work best and had to fight with our puppy who wanted to play at that exact moment

All glued-up

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I then proceeded by glueing all the crayons onto my canvas, this was probably the only thing that really took some time. Since I had to decide how the colours would work best and had to fight with our puppy who wanted to play at that exact moment

I then traced the picture lightly onto the canvas and filled it with prestick. I used small pieces since I wasn't sure if the prestick would also melt. I then used my hairdryer on high heat and medium strenght blowing.

All melted with the little white prestick

 I then pulled off the prestick and used a permanent marker to colour in the picture

And the result is this beautiful autumn art

Finished product