In which we explore a cardboard box and outer space.

I got a purple wig on Etsy and put it on Andie

so very anxious. Going back to school is not going to be fun for her after a nice long summer of not having to interact with people.

, but that really did not work, so now Lilly has it and I took pictures for that too, and magical wig swaps, but I don't know if I was feeling unmotivated or uninspired, or if I just had really boring story ideas.

THE POINT IS.

the dolls found a cardboard box, painted it, and Lilly got to decorate it. This is her room, she has a purple wig, and I gave her freckles now.

That about brings us up to date except for the time when Rylan and Andie visited the fish pond and yelled at the goldfish.

Take it away, Lilly!

Howdy, everyone! We found this cardboard box and I got to decorate it all by myself!

In this picture you can see me with my new hair (I love it!), The dresser where all my favorite outfits reside, a painting of a robot holding a tiny hat that Gwen's cousin painted, and on the chair is where i'm trying my own painting. I've done several art camps and those were my favorite things of the whole summer! (I loved them even more than my purple hair.)

There isnt much over here, just my bed and some orange flower decorations that were made from the sides of a tissue box! Arent tissue boxes pretty?

Up here is the Lego steed, Lottie, my red hair bow (which doesn't go with my hair anymore! : (  boo hoo.) and Planty the Potted Plant.

I did a darn fine job decorating.

Purple hair and freckles! Excellent.

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The Star Guide season is over, and that makes me very sad. I had a lot of fun. I was able to speak out loud to the groups that came and then interact with them in small pods, helping them find the right stars. Can you believe that? I had fun interacting with people! I was working with some boys from a homeschool group (their names were Sam and Batman, in case you were wondering. Batman didn't say much.) helping them find the wild duck cluster and I was making sound effects for the telescope and laser and babbling in general. "happy go lucky" they called me. "talkative".

Those words have never described me before. Apparently I do great at people-ing when I actually know what i'm supposed to be talking about.

My fellow Star Guides, John, Braden, and Brett are pretty fun too. We goof around while the guests are in the planetarium. We all have these fancy lasers so you can see the beam going up 5 miles into the sky so we can show people that no, the Hercules cluster is over there. There was a grasshopper in the warm room so we all lasered it to see what would happen. At first Brett thought it was the crippled one we had found earlier and was opposed to hurting it. But when we discovered otherwise... It just wouldn't be a good idea to leave the fate of humankind up to Brett, Braden, John, and Gwen. (the grasshopper didnt burn, which is dissapointing, but it is probably blind now. Just the light reflecting off the walls hurt our eyes.)

Brett and I will talk about books we've read, or Braden will show us youtube videos he found of people who made laser shotguns. (those were cool. They could burn things up in one blow. epic.) John and I found some brownies that were half normal brownie and half weird yellow brownie. (we get paid in knowlege and snacks.) they were Micheal Jackson brownies. They've taken to calling me Gven instead of Gwen. Sometimes I'm out aligning the lasers and they are in the observatory and they start shouting "Gven" through the telescope window at the top and they sound like a bunch of those seagulls from Nemo. So I go up there and John teaches me and Brett how to work the astrophotography telescope. Here are some pictures we took and edited:

Triangulum galaxy. John and I took this on the last day of the season.

Mom and dad came earlier than expected, so we only spent a few minutes editing it, which wasn't a good idea. The background is too dark and we did something wrong so you cant see the spiral arms (which you could see in the original picture)

This is the Dumbbell Nebula, which is an easy thing to take a picture of so it was the one I learned with.

I'll explain it as best I can.

We choose a thing we want to take a picture of, align the tesescope on a nearby star so it's focused (still don't get this part, im a newbie.), and move the telescope with the computer program so it points directly at the object, and move the dome so the window matches up with where we're trying to look.

Screwed into the end of the telescope is a normal cannon camera.

We check to see how long of an exposure time we'll need (30 seconds to a minute and 30 seconds, depending on how bright the object is. We should be able to do 10 minutes if we wanted to, but the building settled so if we do more than 2 minutes it picks up the normal shaking of our feet.

So we take 20  one minute long photos and stack them together (the individual photos are called subs.)

In photoshop, we lighten the picture, remove the gradient (it looks like someone is shining a dim flashlight on your picture), and bring out the colours. Lots of times we get asked if using photoshop is cheating. No. we aren't adding in elements of other pictures, just making the original bright and shiny.

Here's the whirlpool galaxy

Braden took this one. It's kind of dim and far away which makes picture taking difficult, but it turned out nice, especially for a 5 minute edit (they cant spend hours editing photo when they're trying to teach the visitors that need to go home and sleep.) Basically if you want something done right, you leave it up to Braden.

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What do you think of my blog design?

I haven't changed it or anything, you can stop looking.

I was just wondering if I should change it.

Cause maybe it looks unprofessional.

Then again I am not the most professional person in the world, am I?

But maybe the juxtaposition would be a good thing.

Opinions?

Gven