This will change your life. I'm not kidding. Best Speech You Will Ever Hear - Gary Yourofsky.

Guys.
GUYS.
I want you to stop what you're doing and watch this speech. RIGHT. NOW.

I present to you Gary Yourofsky, an amazing and brave animal rights activist who changed the lives of many, many animals... AND people.

This guy is RADICAL. He has has given 2,495 lectures to more than 60,000 people at 180 schools in 30 different states AND in several Israeli cities and schools. The lecture below has been translated into more than 30 languages and has received over 7 million hits on YouTube. He has been legally (and unjustly) punished for random acts of kindness and compassion. He's been banned from entering several countries because of trying to serve justice towards animals. For example, in 1997, in Ontario, Canada, he liberated 1, 542 minks from being slaughtered on a fur farm... which led to him being kicked out of Canada.

This speech will completely change your beliefs about meat consumption.
Yes, it's one hour long, but I can assure you that it's totally worth it. This guy is a pure GENIUS. I promise that this will be a good use of your time. It's not just a good use of your time, it's an IMPORTANT, LIFE-OR-DEATH implied use of your time. Please watch it. It's all I ask of you.

So go on, click on play.

How do you feel after watching this? Did you know about Gary Yourofsky before?

I'm on Instagram!

Just a quick word today to let you know that after giving it a lot of thought, I finally opened an Instagram account!
I'm loving it so far.
I haven't spent much time on it with everything else going on (yes, I only posted two pictures up until now), but if you leave me your account name I'll definitely follow you and we can be Insta-Friends (can you say that?)!
I added an Instagram badge to the side of my blog underneath my Pinterest button, but you can just click the link to my page right here:
I'm @carmenpriotto (http://instagram.com/carmenpriotto).

Do you have Instagram? Link up!

Have a nice week everybody.
Xx

P.S: These are Instagram cookies I found on Pinterest! How awesome is that?



(http://www.bakerella.com/homemade-graham-crackers/)

Fancy some Pork Lard?

So the other day I was munching on some cookies.
Plaza del Sol Cinnamon Hearts imported from Spain, for the record.
After eating 3 or 4 of these small cookies, my eyes wandered over to the list of ingredients on the box.
And what is listed as third ingredient ? Pork Lard.
In a panic, I looked up "pork lard", and although I already could have told you what it is if I weren't in a state of shock, to my horror I read that it's... pig fat. Right off the pig. "Lard can be obtained from any part of the pig as long as there is a high concentration of fatty tissue", Wikipedia says.
I was munching on pig fat.
I WAS MUNCHING ON PIG FAT!!!

It's like if you cut off the fat from your body and cooked it up into your food. You're eating the fat from a creature's body. And in your cookies.
How SICK is this?! Why mix PIG FAT into innocent little cookies?! 

I felt like throwing up. I felt like the world had tricked me!

Now doesn't this just look DELICIOUS? Is your mouth watering at the sight of these blobby lumps of FAT? YUM!

I was quite shocked and traumatized from this whole experience, as you can probably tell.
And I'll definitely be checking the ingredients in my cookies from now on.

Room inspiration + great reads!

These days, when I'm done with school and homework, and I have a few minutes to spare, I open my laptop to search for furniture and wall decor for my room.
You guessed it, I'M RE-DECORATING MY BEDROOM!
I am soooooo excited about this.
Re-decorating a room implies a certain amount of organization, as you can imagine- so I've been sorting through those papers we all stash somewhere with the hopes that they'll disappear on their own.

Do you have any DIY room decoration projects that you'd like to share with me? I've found several, like this heart shaped photo collage:

and this tassel garland:

The other thing that I've been doing a lot these days (actually, these nights) is the immensely pleasurable experience of crawling in bed and reading the books of my choice. I underlined that because it's a TRUE LUXURY for me to have the liberty to read whatever I frickin' want.
The reason for that is that NO teachers, at the moment, have assigned me a book to read.

I finished reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (highly recommended) a few days ago and am now reading It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini.

What are you reading? Anything noteworthy?

2014, welcome!

My family and I

Just wanted to wish a very happy 2014 to all you lovely people out there.
Please know that anything is possible if you set your mind to it, and that you are totally capable of accomplishing your goals. I hope that in this year you will grow- I wish for you to gain experience, wisdom, and for it to glow everywhere within you.

Blogging was a big part of my 2013, so I'd like you to know, again, how much I love you all.

How did you spend new year's eve?
I spent it with my friends. We had a ball! This is us with our "champagne" ;)

Left to right: Andrea, Minnie, Me and Bailey

Happy new yeeeeeeear!