One of this week’s required tasks was to complete this visual assignment. But, since the theme of our course is western I will be describing to you what is in my western character’s bag. If you don’t recall from last week my western character was the one and only strong but sweet cowgirl named Talie. You can read all about her here. Talie doesn’t carry a big bag around because she is always on the move. She uses a small bag that she ties to her belt. So, what does Talie carry around with her all the time? Let’s find out!

Little cash: She carries just enough cash when she goes to town to buy supplies and a cup of joe from the town diner. She needs that caffeine to prepare for the daily work that needs to be done on the ranch and to keep her alert and on her toes to protect her town from mischief.

Pocket knife: This comes in handy when she is out working on the ranch. Also, if things get a little out of hand when she is trying to hold down the law she may need to whip it out for a little assistance.

Treat: She always has some type treat for her sidekick (Smarty—her horse).

Hair ties: She needs to have extras in case they break (which they often do). Talie doesn’t like it when she is out working on the ranch or riding about town and her hair keeps getting in her face.

Once the rooster sounds in the mornings Talie gets ready and makes sure she has all of her essentials in her bag and she is off to tackle the day’s adventures.

I was searching through the visual assignment bank trying to find an assignment with a value of three stars. I came across this assignment. I found this one interesting because it is a game within an assignment. These assignments have been stretching my creativity and this one continued to do so. I wanted to pick an item that wouldn’t be too hard for others to figure out what it could be but, at the same time I wanted the item to have some sort of meaning to me. So here it goes and good luck!

This is just a part of the item that you are trying to determine what it could be. This part of it is round and can spin fast. There are generally four of them on the item and in total to complete the set for the item there would be eight. The part of the item pictured is white but they can come in many colors and different hardness values but they must always be round if they are to work properly. There a many different ways people can use this item. It can be used daily to practice a type of sport, used to help you get to and from close locations (just be careful of rocks and rough surfaces), or just every now and then for some recreational fun! Can you guess what the whole item is?

This assignment was worth three stars. As such, fulfilling half of the required six stars worth of visual assignments for this week.

I chose to complete this visual assignment because the other week I had completed the “My Bucket List” writing assignment. Before I completed that writing assignment I had not thought much about my own bucket list. I set goals for myself but I never really had thought about things I want to accomplish in my life in the form of a bucket list. So, I created a visual of my bucket list to complement my bucket list writing assignment I completed.

To create this photo collage of my bucket list I used photofun and found images that correlated to items on my bucket list. The first image in the top left is one of an inline figure skate. I am an artistic roller skater and at the moment one of the first things on my bucket list is to be able to continue to have the opportunity to compete nationally and internationally. The next image (top right) is of the leaning tower of Pisa in Italy. I love to travel so, the next on my bucket list is to be able to continue to travel around the world to see amazing sites (both historical sites and popular tourist attractions) and experience the different cultures. The image of a corn field represents the next item on my bucket list. Once I graduate and hopefully complete a masters program in an environmentally related field, I will be able to help develop a more environmentally sustainable method to produce high crop yields while, refraining from using excess amount of fertilizer and pesticides and allowing the soil enough time to replenish its own nutrients. The last photo on my collage is of a few dogs. I have always loved animals and when I was little I had wanted to become a veterinarian (but once I figured out I had to operate on animals that career path fell through because I didn’t want to hurt them). But, in the future I would like to be able to find time to volunteer at least once a month at animal shelters to help out these animals.

This assignment was worth 3 and a half stars, contributing to the six stars worth of visual assignments we had to complete this week.

Riza and Tate are sitting in their dinning room, enjoying mashed potatoes with a side of broccoli when all of a sudden, Dingo, their German Shepard mix, accidentally turns around, and with a whip of his tail knocks over their photo box. Riza and Tate look at each other and instantaneously both start laughing.

“Don’t worry about. I’ll clean it up.” Says Tate while taking Riza’s hand in his.
“Thank you, but you cooked dinner and it was delicious so I suppose I’ll clean it up.”
“If you insist,” says Tate while calling Dingo over.
“Good boy… good boy,” murmurs Tate while handing Dingo his last piece of steak.

Riza stands up and walks across the ice cold floor into their living room. The smell of the wooden cabin reminds her of the saloon and she decides to pour herself a drink before picking up the photos. Once she bends over to pick up the photos, she gasps, spilling a drop off wine onto the cold floor beneath her.

“My gosh– Tate — get in here. Quick!” Exclaims Riza as she puts her drink down. Tate runs into the room faster than his heart can skip a beat and holds Riza.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Asks Tate holding her in his arms. Riza turns around releasing herself from his embrace and says, “Remember that photo I was looking for?”

“Uh– no.” Says Tate releasing a sigh of relief.
“That one from our wedding?”
“Oh, yes! What about it?”
“Well I might have just found it!” Exclaims Riza as she reveals the photo from behind her back. Tate takes it in his hand to get a better look at it and a smile crosses his face. 

“My gosh, Riza!”
“I can’t believe that was 20 years ago. I was so young and beautiful.”
“You still are. You will always be young and beautiful to me.”

I found this image on google images and thought it matched perfectly to continue my story of Riza and Tate. I decided to create a story around the image and to incorporate my Western created characters. 

One of the visual assignments we were required to complete this week was the “Love at first shot” assignment. I chose this picture because it seemed that these two people really loved each other and the photo also captures the beauty of nature surrounding the couple. It also seems like it could be a picture worth a thousand words and have a good story behind it. So, for this assignment I decided to interject a creative story into the meaning of this photo.

This bench is located between 5th and 7th avenue in a small little town in Oklahoma. The sidewalk is used heavily, given it is one of the main routes for kids walking to and from school every day. Annabeth (girl in picture) and John (boy in picture) walked this route all through their years of elementary, middle, and high school. It wasn’t until the last week of high school that they met. John had been riding his bike on the sidewalk and it had been raining and he had crashed near the bench. Annabeth had been running late that day to school (unusual for Annabeth) and saw him lying on the ground. She quickly ran over to see what the problem was and saw he was badly hurt, so she called the ambulance. She stayed there with him until the ambulance came and took him away. A week later, at graduation he came up to her and thanked her for her help. He realized how beautiful she was and asked her out. Coincidentally, they had picked the same college to attend and continued dating the next four years. But, when graduation came Annabeth decided she wanted to go to medical school in Florida and John had been accepted into his dream school to get his masters in Washington. They were worried about their relationship and if they would be able to sustain it even though they would be far apart. So, with heavy hearts they both decided it would be best to break it off, allowing them to focus on their studies. So, the years passed and they both graduated successfully, but they would often think about each other. The following holiday season they both (not knowing the other had) traveled home to Oklahoma to visit family. The day before Thanksgiving Annabeth realized she was missing quite a few ingredients so she had to walk to the store and on her way back her bag ripped and all of her food fell to the ground. She was very upset and quickly began picking up all of her purchases. While in her haste she didn’t realize someone else was helping her pick up things and when she looked up, there was John. So, they sat down on the bench to talk about the previous years and how much they missed each other. They went on to get married and moved back to that small town in Oklahoma not far from 5th and 7th avenue where they can still walk together to the store and other places in town. Always passing the bench that they walked by so many times for so many years, where Annabeth first helped and met John, and where they were reunited.

This is my Motley Crew! These are photos of my siblings and good friends. My last name is Motley and when I tell people this they usually say something about the band, Motley Crue. My siblings and friends act silly a lot but are very hard workers. We all have a variety of talents and may seem really different at times. So, we can relate to the real Motley meaning—“varied in character and appearance”. But, we stick together and can always have a great time. I found this assignment to be rather difficult. When I first read the directions I did not think it would have been as hard as it turned out to be. First, I did not have photo/collage software or app so, that is where I started. I created this collage using photofacefun. I chose the collage style then began to upload photos to their respective slots. But, before I was able to do that I had to edit existing photos to make them into headshots of the person I wanted to place in the slot for the collage. I had not done this before on my computer but, I was able to figure it out. I think that this step will most definitely help me in achieving future assignments because it will be very useful to be able to easily crop and edit existing photos within my picture library. So, for each image/person I put into my collage, I cropped them out of an original picture and uploaded them into the slot. Then I decided to name my collage “The Motley Crew”. The typing tool unfortunately did not work, so I had to use the doodle tool and paint the letters onto the pictures I uploaded as the background. I feel I learned a lot while completing this assignment but, it seemed more tedious than I believe it should have been.

Here’s a tour of my humble abode in Fredericksburg. I decided to live off campus for junior and senior year and I think the coolest part about doing that is being able to decorate my house and room however I want. So, this is my room and as you can tell one of my favorite colors is coral. I got a lot of my inspiration from Pinterest, one of my favorite social media sites, and kind of just went with it. The best part about my room is I barely bought any of it and most of the stuff was furniture I had from home and I just refurbished it. I really like my room because no matter the weather outside, or the mood I am in that day t’s always so bright and reminds me to stay positive.

Oh, also Agnus wanted to be a part of this assignment and tour so as you can see she’s hanging out by my bed! I took all the pictures with flash, and included a panorama of my room and then created a pic stitch. The panorama is a little older than the other pictures so that is why there are some differences between the pictures. In order to get Agnus involved I used the app fotobom and just cropped her right in. This assignment was fairly easy and fun to do!

As I have already stated in a previous assignment, I am obsessed with my dog so how could I not complete this assignment. It required me to crop my dog anywhere on campus and I thought simple enough. This assignment was actually fairly easy for me because I found an app on my iPhone called Fotobom which allows you to crop pictures anywhere. Its super easy and only takes about a minute so if you ever need to do a quick photoshop on a picture you should really look into this app! The only problem that I had is that for some reason the background image of campus became a little blurry when I saved the picture to my phone but overall I am pretty happy with the results of this and I think Kya is too! She’s so happy to be people watching on campus today!

Remember Riza from last week? Well she’s back! And this time she wants to share with you what is in her purse. These are her essentials to get her through the day.

For those of you who don’t recall meeting Riza, you can click here to find out what she is all about.
Starting off with the purse, she choose a black purse to contain her essential items because she is all about the minimalist look. The gold buckles remind her of her husband, Tate, and the old west. Inside you find an old rag, caramel candy, a blue bracelet, chapstick, pen and paper.

NOTE: She would also have cash on her, but we caught her at a time where she had just used up all her cash. Also, there is no cellphone because Riza is from a time when phones did not exist.

Well, why are all these items in her purse?

Old Rag: As you may know, Riza is an owner of a saloon along with her husband, Tate. She is constantly serving and cleaning up after others, hence the old rag.

Caramel Candy: As a 40-year-old woman, Riza and Tate have decided not to have children. Instead she focuses the love she would have for her children towards other children. Children especially love Riza because she is always handing out caramel candies.

Blue Bracelet: This bracelet represents the love Tate has for Riza. Tate gifted this to her on their 20 year anniversary and she keeps it with her, no matter where she travels or goes.

Chapstick: As a lover of loving clean and sharp, Riza decides to not wear makeup. Instead she adds chapstick to her lips daily to give them a powerful, yet soft glow.

Pen and Paper: Riza is constantly taking orders from her customers, thus she has the pen and paper in aiding her to remember what customers order.

This is what can be found in Riza’s purse. What’s in your bag?