w00t I win!

Soooooo I just got home from town hall. I was at an awards ceremony for a writing contest I entered awhile ago, my Language Arts teacher entered an essay I wrote in the beginning of the year. The contest was for fiction pieces and mine was not fiction..... but I won first place so anyone who has a problem with that can SUCK IT.
I am just so excited!!!
I figured I had won an honorable mention or something, because they receive about 3,000 entries for each contest. That means that your writing probably doesn't suck if you get an honorable mention. And I got first place for my age group!
WHAAAAA!!!!!!!!
Just for shits and giggles, ima compare the ceremony to a pageant. Ya'll are familiar with the show Toddlers and Tiaras, right? Gotta love TLC.
In a pageant, you don't want to be called up first. If you win first place in your division, that means nothing.
You wanna pull a Miss Ultimate Grand Supreme. Yes, that is the official title.
So you try your hardest and hope to be called last.
The ceremony:  I get there, find my name tag, and find my seat in the second row with fellow derp Phlobes over at http://thegirlwiththebigblueblog.blogspot.com/. We both entered. We were sitting there, laughing at how precious all the first graders in front of us were. They called up all the honorable mentions. Phlobes got one! She thought she was overdressed, but she was the only one from our grade so she looked awesome by herself.
I'm pretty sure we're all gonna be in the newspaper tomorrow.
I didn't get called. I just kinda sat blankly, and it didn't sink in till Phlobes said, "Gurl. That means you got first place!" And we did an epic high five.
LAAAAA!
I am just so happy! I got a $5 Barnes and Noble giftcard, a notebook with butterflies on it, and a pen.
Plus a framed certificate and a trophy WITH A GENIE LAMP ON IT.
Yeah.
Plus, there's another essay contest at the end of the month so I will definitely be entering that!
Wha! My teacher told me that in all her years of teaching (a loooong time), she's never had a student who has such a way with words. I love her so much, she's the best LA teacher I've had so far.
My next essay has to be 300 words or less. As in, LESS THAN A PAGE.
Most people would give a sigh of relief and say, "Whew! I don't have to write a lot!"
Where as I, upon reading the guidelines, thought "Nooooooo! That's so restrictive!"
I am an extremely verbose (read: wordy) writer. We recently wrote memoirs. The average length for most classes was 2-3 pages. Mine was 8.
I think I'm going to write about how reading helps you escape into another world for an hour. How you can travel the world, have a fight to the death, fall in love, or learn magic without leaving your chair.
Sound good?
I think so.

New Background and Color Scheme

So I felt like jelly beans would be more appropriate for this blog.
Because the name is sophisticated, but in a totally ridiculous way that probably is only funny to me.
So there are two directions I could go in: Fun like candy or smarticle like books and wine glasses.
Either way, the other design with the notebook paper was hurting my eyes.
Which one do you like better?