30-Second Sketch: A Game

February 2, 2015 | Allison

The other day I made up a game called 30-Second Sketch and I thought I’d share it with you. Here are the rules:

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For 3 or more players.

1. A player chooses a word to draw. (Example: ice cream)

2. Set a timer for 30 seconds.

3. On “Go!”, someone starts the timer, and all the players must draw a picture of the chosen word in 30 seconds. Everyone has to keep drawing until the 30 seconds is up, and stop drawing when the 30 seconds is up.

4. When the time’s up, everyone compares drawings and votes on which drawing is the best. (It doesn’t have to be the most realistic, it can be the cutest, funniest, or whatever the players like.) Whoever wins gets one point. If there is a tie, each winner gets a point.

5. One round is finished. The player to the left of the player who chose the first word gets to choose a word next.

6. The first player to get a certain number of points first, wins!

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My brothers and sisters and I had lots of fun playing this way, but here are some variations to try:

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1. Make this into a board game by writing the words to draw on cards, and making a gameboard. When someone gets a point, they move one space on the gameboard.

2. Instead of each player voting on the best picture, everyone takes turns being the judge for one round, like in Apples to Apples or Picwits.

3. You can take turns choosing words to draw or you can write several words on slips of paper and take turns choosing one each round.

4. You can play with two people if the players make a decision together on the best picture.

5. You can play 20-Second-Sketch for a more challenging version, or 40-Second Sketch for an easier version.

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Happy drawing!

***Allison***

Mystery Pictures

January 28, 2015June 13, 2015 | Allison

Two mystery pictures. What could they be? Take a guess, then look at the answers to see if you got it right.

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Mushroom

Cactus

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Where they what you thought?

I hope you had fun!

***Allison***

Hidden Pictures Post #2

January 1, 2015January 1, 2015 | Allison

How was your Christmas? Mine was great! I’m back with a new post after taking a break for Christmas.

You can see my first hidden pictures post here. Now for #2! I will give you some pictures, and you can try to find the hidden pictures within the pictures. If you get stumped, there are answers at the bottom of the post. Have fun!

#1. Can you find a stocking, the letter “b”, a spiky butterfly, and an evergreen tree? (Hey! That even rhymes!)

#2. Can you find Little Red Riding Hood?

#3. This one isn’t exactly hidden, but can you see how this could be a face?

Answers: (Sorry for the sloppy writing – writing freehand on pictures on the computer is hard!)

#1.

#2.

#3.

Did you find all the hidden pictures? Did you find any that I didn’t?

***Allison***

Tidbits

December 19, 2014April 20, 2016 | Allison

I have lots of little things to post about, so I thought I’d just post them all together. Here goes!

************************************************************* Sunset

Several days ago we saw this GORGEOUS sunset. I seriously think this was the prettiest sunset I have ever seen. The colors were so bright, and the clouds were all swirly.

Isn’t it gorgeous?!

Scents

If you haven’t tried this, you should! Put orange or clementine peels in a small pot. Put some water in the pot, and add some cinnamon and whole cloves. This makes your house smell amazing! Surprise!

This is a gross but true story: We got our Christmas tree a couple of days ago, and the kids insisted that we move the furniture so we could put the Christmas tree in its customary spot by the window. Since we moved the couch, we had to sweep all the dust up. My brother was trying to vacuum up a dust bunny, but it wasn’t going too well. You’ll never guess why. Do you give up? Ok: it didn’t sweep up well because it wasn’t dust at all – it was a dead frog!! Yep, a really-truly dead frog. Actually, it was more like a petrified frog chip, it was so dry and hard. Why this is so funny is because that frog was the one that had hopped out of its cage months before, and we never knew what happened to it. We thought maybe the cat got it, but nope! My mom said that maybe the dead frog was what we had been smelling a while ago. Gross!!

Oh, and one other little thing: Complete-the-Set game

This is just a little game I made up that’s fun to play while traveling or waiting for something.

1. Choose one person to be “it” for the first round.

2. The “it” person thinks of a set (primary colors, initials, etc.)

3. “It” tells the other players all but one of the items in that set. (For example, if the set was “primary colors”, the “it” person could say “blue, red, and…”, or “red, yellow, and…”, but they couldn’t say “blue, red, yellow,” because there wouldn’t be any part of the set left to complete!)

4. The other players take turns trying to complete the set.

5. Whoever guesses correctly first gets to be the new “it”.

Have fun!

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Happy Holidays!

***Allison***

A Gift Made for Destroying!

November 22, 2014November 22, 2014 | Allison

(Sadly, this post does not have pictures, but you can just try to imagine it.) For my brother Jeff’s ninth birthday, the kids got him a bag full of stuff especially for him to demolish. It had 6 rolls of toilet paper, 3 bars of ivory soap, 1 box of tissues, 1 tube of toothpaste, and 1 can of shaving cream in it. He had a lot of fun with it, as you can imagine!

With the toilet paper, we wrapped Jeff and his friend up and they ran around until they broke free of their super-strong bonds (ha ha! ☺). We also wrapped each other to the tree and then broke free, and held the roll of toilet paper on the back of the 4-wheeler while driving it, which made the toilet paper stream out behind.

Jeff and his friend carved two bars of ivory soap (well, actually they cut it up into pieces instead of carving it), and the other one we exploded in the microwave. Have you ever done that? If you haven’t, you absolutely MUST DO IT. All you have to do is get a bar of Ivory soap from the store (I think ones that are the most recently bought are supposed to work best), and put it on a paper towel covered plate, and turn the microwave on for about a minute. If you watch through the window, you can see the soap puffing up into a huge cloud. It has a very interesting texture: even though it looks soft, it’s actually hard and sort of crumbly. (Note: You have to use Ivory soap for this, not just a random brand)

Anyway, back to the gifts. The tissues are just for pulling out because who doesn’t want to do that sort of thing, right?

The toothpaste was really cool. We took it outside and put it on a piece of cardboard (which later proved rather ineffective) and Jeff took off the lid of the tube and stomped on it really hard. The back of the tube burst open and the toothpaste squirted several feet away onto our, he he, porch door – *oops!* (Don’t worry, I wiped it up. Well, at least most of it ☺)

The shaving cream Jeff just squirted out all at once into a plastic tub and we had fun squishing it.

This was a fun and different sort of gift that left no toy behind that we had to try to fit into our stuffed toy cupboards. Do you know someone who would like to get a demolition-gift-package?

***Allison***

Computer Code Hieroglyphics

October 30, 2014June 5, 2015 | Allison

I’m pretty sure that’s not what they’re technically called, but it sounds neat! Actually, they are sort of hieroglyphs. There are all sorts of signs, symbols, and shapes like these: ☺,♥, and ▲.

Here is the super-easy how to:

1. Press down the “Alt” key on your keyboard (on the computer I’m using, the “Alt” key is just to the left of the spacebar).

2. While still holding down the “Alt” key, type in the number. (Example: if you hold down the “Alt” key while pressing the number “127,” you get this: ⌂)

3. You may need to use the top number pad on some computers.

Here are some fun starter codes although there are over 250 codes altogether.

To use this chart, just hold down the “Alt” key while pressing the number shown.

☺=1

♥=3

♪=13

☼=15

►=16

Explore and find way more codes by typing in any number while holding down the “Alt” key.

These symbols are fun to use. You can do something like: ♪ Happy♫ birthday♪ to ♫ you! ♪

You can also use these as borders and dividers for pictures and text. Like so:

▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲▼▲

If this worked for you, please leave some “hieroglyphs” in the comments. Have fun discovering!

***Allison***

Blog Award!

October 23, 2014June 5, 2015 | Allison

Yay! Megan nominated me for the Daisy Chain award!

These are the questions I’m supposed to answer.

Ana or Elsa or Olaf? Hmmm. This is hard. I like them all! Maybe Olaf, though – the movie just wouldn’t be the same without him!

Mac and cheese or pizza or hot dogs? Pizza

Tulips or daffodills or daisies? Daffodils. They are so cheery in spring!

Hedgehogs or giraffes or kangaroos? Hedgehogs. They’re so cute!

Blue or red or green? Another hard one. Either blue or green.

Thanks for nominating me, Megan!

Make Your Own “Tumble” Game

October 9, 2014June 5, 2015 | Allison

There is this game called “Tumble” or “Kerplunk”, and one day I decided to make my own version, with a few tweaks to the original game. It’s fairly easy to make and it’s very customizable. This game could also make a cute gift for a child of any age.

To start with you will need the following: •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

♥ Some sort of cardboard roll (I used the roll from a roll of curling ribbon this time, but I’ve also used a toilet paper roll)

♥ Some sort of wooden stick that is longer than your cardboard roll (such as bamboo skewers or toothpicks)

♥ A hole-punch (a small punch works best)

♥ Marbles (or any small, round ball)

♥ Something to decorate your tube with (I used pretty tape)

♥ Markers (you can also use paint)

♥ Scissors (no parentheses needed, except I just used them…)

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

1. Make sure both ends of the cardboard tube are open.

2. Decorate it however your heart desires! 3. This is the hardest part. Punch holes in the top of the tube, making sure to stagger their placement. (See the picture below.) If you make all the holes the same distance away from the top of the tube, the sticks will bump into each other and will block each other from fitting into the holes. Also make sure there are enough holes for the sticks.4. To make the sticks, color or paint the ends of all but one of them. It works best to have a lot of sticks divided into three or four colors. Make one stick stand out by coloring it all one color, making it a different color, whatever you like.5. Optional step: Cut semi-circles from the bottom of the tube to use as doors for the marbles.

6. Another optional step: You can make balls out of polymer clay to use instead of marbles if you like.

6. Play the game!

To set up, put all the sticks randomly into the holes, then sprinkle the marbles on top. If the marbles fall through, it means you need to add more sticks to fill up the gaps where the marbles fell. Punch some more holes for the sticks if necessary.

Here are the rules: Each color of stick is worth a different amount of points. The one that is different from all the rest can be the special stick. Make it give you, say, 10 points plus another turn, or something like that. Here’s a scoring chart that you can change to fit your game:

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Green-tip: 40 points

Blue tip: 30 points

Pink-tip: 20 points

Blue stick: 15 points + another turn

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Each player takes turns pulling out a stick, one at a time (unless it’s the stick that gives you another turn). If, while pulling out a stick, you make a marble fall, you lose 20 points, and you don’t get the points from the stick you just pulled out. Whoever has the most points after all the sticks are pulled out, wins the game!

Have fun!

***Allison***

Doodle Fun: Heartstrings

September 19, 2014November 12, 2018 | Allison

I like this technique of doodling. I’m sure other people have already thought of it, but I found it out myself one day and liked it. I decided to show you how to doodle it so you could have fun with it too. Here we go!

First, make any shape you like (it doesn’t have to be a heart).

Next, start drawing columns within the borders of your shape.

Don’t draw the columns over top of each other, just let the go under each other.

It looks neat to make the columns different sizes too.

Now for the coloring part! (Yaay!) I just chose three main colors, but you can choose more if you like – try it with rainbow colors! You can also use different shades of each color, especially if you don’t have very many colors.