Natalie Bourn

A sneak peek at my life.

Little Shop of Horrors at Broadway Music Circus

I was so excited to hear that my mom and I got tickets to see the Broadway at Music Circus show Little Shop of Horrors last night! This was my first time (and my mom’s) even hearing about the show and movie, so going in, I had no idea what it was going to be about, but I was happily surprised and actually really enjoyed the performance.

Their round theater was really cool and made the show a lot more interesting. It moved up and down, rose and fell, and had no backstage. They also acted in the isles which made the show even better!

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2018 Sacramento County Fair: Preview Night

It’s that time of year again and the Sacramento County Fair is back in town! Featuring amazing food, super fun rides, fantastic shows, an abundance of animals, and more, the fair is an awesome experience for everyone. The fair is May 24 through Memorial Day, Monday, May 28, 2018, at the CalExpo Fairgrounds. This is the 82nd year of the fair with the theme Let’s Eat, Have Fun, And Celebrate The Red, White, And Blue. There are so many fun things to whether your with friends or family at the Sacramento County Fair.

Media Preview Night: Food and Fun

The preview night for media and bloggers was lots of fun and we had a chance to try some pretty awesome food and check out the rides and entertainment.

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Speaking At Word Camp San Diego 2018

In April, I had the incredible opportunity to speak at my first WordCamp in San Diego, California. In case you don’t know, WordCamps happen all over the country, organized by locals. WordCamps are conferences where people can to go to attend different sessions about web design, developement, blogging, advanced and beginner techniques, and everything WordPress (publishing software for websites). Each one is unique with different speakers, themes, venues, attendees, and more. Anyone can go to a WordCamp whether your new to WordPress or a long term professional.

The theme for WordCamp San Diego was “A Salute to Our Troops” because the city has plenty of military history. The tracks were named accordingly, the signage, the, website, and the awesome swag matched the theme perfectly! My talk obviously didn’t match and neither did everyone’s, but mine was awesome either way!

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Starting A WordPress Blog And Finding Your Blogging Groove

I’m extremely excited to be speaking at WordCamp San Diego about starting my blog and finding my groove, my frustrations and hurdles, how I overcame them, the many tips I’ve learned along the way, and the tools I use.

I started blogging when I was ten years old, almost five years ago. I thought it would be fun and I wanted to share the fun things that my family and I were doing. Also, my mom blogs a lot for fun and for work and she encouraged me to get started.

When I first started blogging, I used tons of adjectives—I mean A LOT of them— in every post and it sounded a bit silly. My early posts also had exclamation points after every single sentence, sometimes two, three, and four of them because I was I was only ten and I thought everything was AWESOME!! Fabulous!! So cool! and Totally amazing!

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Starting Video and Getting Comfortable

Right now, “vlogs” are starting to become popular in movies and television, on YouTube, and just for fun. They’re short, or long, videos about what you did that day, an interesting place you’re at, where you’re exploring, and a lot more topics. Basically, a blog but with videos instead of words and pictures. Before starting our road trip to Death Valley National Park, I decided I wanted to start a video blog on YouTube.

Inspiration

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Road Trip Through Death Valley

Death Valley National Park is a lot different than what people typically picture in their minds when told it’s a desert. At least for me, I thought it was going to flat, dry, plain, and very sandy. Some parts are like that, but there’s a lot of variety throughout the massive park. There’s even a waterfall surrounded with greenery.

Death Valley Historic Mines

In Death Valley National Park and the small parts of Nevada close to the park, there are an abundance of abandoned mines. You can explore any of the mine holes you see, but be careful because we saw a sign that warned tourists about dangerous ruins, left over land mines, and more things like that. Throughout the park, if you look around on the mountains, there are a ton of holes all over the place. Those are the mine holes.

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Disney On Ice Dream Big Princesses Of All Ages

The PR Team for Feld Entertainment reached out to see if we wanted to review opening night for Disney On Ice Presents Dream Big and of course we said yes!

Disney On Ice Dream Big Princess, playing in Sacramento November 2-5 at the Golden One, showcases an ice skating show that teaches people about the romance of the Disney princesses tales, but most importantly dreaming big and about believing in yourself.

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Bit Of Extra Time Means Better Understanding

Sometimes going the extra mile is critically important for people to understand what they’re actually doing.

Recently, in Language Arts, we’ve started persuasive writing. Our teacher explained how to do it a tiny bit by giving us articles to read and sound book work, but it didn’t really explain what a great persuasive essay is like. Our assignment was to write a persuasive two-chunk paragraph about why or why not to go to college, then transform it into a speech.

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Word Camp Sacramento Volunteering

This year, in high school, we have to complete at least 25 community service hours to graduate over your fours years. This weekend I got 23 hours at Word Camp Sacramento 2017. I had a blast volunteering and definitely want to do it again next year!

Alaina Roberts, a friend from school, and I did lots of different things to help out during the whole weekend.

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Out With The Old, In With The New

I used to have a free blog over at WordPress.com, but I really wanted to have a custom logo, a better design, and link to my Instagram account. I also wanted to use my own domain name: nataliebourn.com. (My mom bought that for me when I was born – we’re total geeks!)

So I hired my parents!

Well kind of… I didn’t pay any money, but I was put into BaseCamp (their software to manage client projects) because my mom and dad worked with me like they would a real client.

They own their own design company called Bourn Creative and build really awesome sites. I wanted a cool one like the ones they make-I totally got one!

Most projects take a long time, but since I’m such an amazing client, it went really fast. *wink wink*

Here’s what we did!

Logo Design: I obviously needed something with elephants – That was a requirement. So my mom designed a few different concepts for me to review and I picked my favorite – the one with the biggest elephant and easiest to read type.

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