Posted: 30 Apr 2010 09:04 AM PDT

The Youth Music Academy will host its spring concert May 2 at 3 p.m. in the new Barbara Hodel Center on the campus of Patrick Henry College in Purcellville.

Choir and orchestra ensembles will perform jazz, classical and contemporary music.

The concert is free. Donations are welcome.

The Youth Music Academy was established in 2007 as part of an effort to serve the community and encourage local homeschooling families in their educational undertaking.

It comprises high school and middle school students and meets once a week on the Patrick Henry College campus for rehearsal.

For more information go to http://www.phc.edu/music_yma.php or call Steve McCollum at 540-441-8282.

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Nevada grad illustratescolorful children’s book

Posted: 30 Apr 2010 05:32 AM PDT

You may not be familiar with the name Sami Mac, although you've probably seen her work—she was one of the artists who helped paint the Character mural in downtown Nevada.

If you don't think the name sounds familiar, that's probably because it's just a moniker that she uses.

Her real name is Becky McIntosh, and she chose the name Sami to honor her father, who taught her to draw, and the last name Mac to represent the last name McIntosh of her children.

McIntosh is a graduate of Nevada High School, an artist and graphic designer with more than 20 years under her belt, and daughter of longtime Nevada resident MaryAnn Gardner.

Recently Sami Mac teamed up with native Iowa author, LaVina Varnony-Barcus, to illustrate Barcus' newest children's book, "Perfect in Mother Nature's Eyes."

"My roommate in college hooked me up with this gal. She's written a couple other things—she's kind of figured out the self-publishing process and wrote this children's book, and my friend got us together so I could do the illustrations for her," McIntosh said.

Doing artwork is nothing new to McIntosh, who graduated from ISU with a degree in graphic design. After college, she started out working as a graphic designer for about five years. During that time she also started doing freelance work for a T-shirt company, making character maps of cities. "I worked that to where I could do it full time and then take care of my kids at home. So it was all work at home and then I would just take the illustrations in. I worked that for 11 years, and then started homeschooling my kids," she said.

While homeschooling her children, she slowly started slipping out of the field of graphic design. Since McIntosh graduated from ISU, the graphic design field has seen some very large technical changes. Graphic design elements used to be produced largely by hand, but now the industry has become evermore reliant on computer programs.

"I kind of got out of the technical aspect of doing graphic design—I didn't know how to use (Adobe) Illustrator or InDesign, so I couldn't just hop back into doing a graphic design job after my kids got older and I was ready to go back to work."

So, for the time being, she took two part-time jobs at Mercy Hospital in Des Moines, where she lives. But despite not knowing some of the cutting-edge technology, she hasn't left artwork behind. McIntosh has been creating artwork for various purposes.

She had a hand in creating the character mural, just off of main street, and has donated artwork to the Leukemia Society, to name a few. "I've been keeping my hand in it, but I've been trying to get back into something that I could do for a living at some point," she said.

Recently she was given the opportunity to illustrate "Perfect in Mother Nature's Eyes," which she took.

McIntosh said that doing the 20 water- color illustrations for the book took her about 70 hours of work, but not all of that was spent just on the illustrations. She said that the author wanted to her to include some specific animals and flowers, and McIntosh wasn't familiar with all of them, so she had to spend some time researching what the author wanted and fine-tuning her artwork. After McIntosh finished the artwork it, was all sent to the publisher to be scanned into computers and prepped for printing.

This project has led to more illustration work for McIntosh as well. "(Varnony-Barcus) is doing another book; it's got the same main character in it—her name is Sadie. In the next one, she is getting a little brother," she said.

For now though, she is keeping to her jobs at Mercy, and working on keeping up to date in the graphic design field. "I'm just going to keep practicing it at home for now. I think a lot of it is just getting time to work on it. I've got four kids, ages 14-21, so I'm still managing on the home front and just setting aside some time to practice. I think that this has opened up some doors for me."

McIntosh is hoping to learn a little bit from her kids, to help get her in tune with some of the newest technology in the graphic design field, "I've got one girl in college now and a son that is going to go to Iowa State. They're both in art fields, so I'm going to kind of glean off of what they learn and try to get back into it through that door, too."

McIntosh has also spent about 50-60 hours working on her own book, "The Cowgirl Ballerina," which she is authoring in addition to illustrating. She said she hopes to get her book published at some time in the future, "I'd like to explore that avenue, too," she said.

The Nevada Public Library will be holding a book reading Saturday, May 8, at 10 a.m. The book is appropriate for ages 4-8. Copies of the book will be available to purchase.

The book is also available online at www.createspace.com/3433148.

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Khloe Kardashian: 'I Was A Shady kid'

Posted: 30 Apr 2010 06:59 AM PDT

30/04/2010

Khloe Kardashian said she was a "shady kid" when she checked herself out of high school at 17.

Khloe, 25, admitted she wasn't impressed when both her older sisters Kim, 29, and Kourtney, 31, graduated high school, so she made a big decision to ensure she wasn't left behind.

On MTV's When I Was 17 show, Kardashian said: "My sisters were my best friends. We all went to an all-girls Catholic school. When my sisters graduated, I felt I didn't have friends. There was no reason for me to stay."

Khloe decided that homeschooling was the way to solve her predicament.

She said: "And I was kind of a shady kid. So I located a home-school.

I went there, I enrolled myself. I had my parents sign, [but] I really signed."

Her mum Kris Jenner added: "One day I get a call from the school, asking me about these forms I had filled out and signed transferring Khloe.

"And I was like: 'What the hell are you talking about? Khloe's not going to home school.' Somehow, she convinced her dad and I that's where she belonged."

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Homeschooling

Friday, April 30, 2010

“Youth Music Academy spring concert” plus 2 more

“Youth Music Academy spring concert” plus 2 more

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