The Warm and the Fuzzy: Part 4

(To see the other episodes of Warm and Fuzzy, just type “The Warm and the Fuzzy” into my search bar. This browser doesn’t let me add links. Argh!)

WARNING: Read at your own risk! If you are prone to cuteness overload (ahem, you know who you are) you may want to skip this post. I don’t wish to cause any cuteness-related *dies* and *faints.* Thank you. You have been warned.

Drum roll please…

I present to you, the cutest St. Bernard puppies that ever lived! AWWWWWWWW! SQUEEEE! HEEEEELLP!

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JUST LOOK. AT THAT. FLUZZINESS! AAAAAAHHHHHHH! He’s like a great big squishy teddy bear! (The dog, I mean. Not my brother.)

 

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This is one of my favorites. You are very good at posing, my dear boy.

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HA HA HA!

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And they’re exhausted. Puppy pile!

Oh. Yikes. A lot of you are down. Call the Emergency Cuteness Squad! Help! XD

I was going to ask whether you liked this post, but I think that’s kind of a rhetorical question.

You’re welcome.

***Allison***

P. S. I am happy to say that after getting my wisdom teeth out yesterday I am doing well, despite my uncanny resemblance to a chipmunk with a year’s supply of nuts in its mouth. 😛 Yesterday I seriously wasn’t sore – like at all – but today my cheeks kinda hurt. The pain medicine is keeping it bearable though. Plus I get to skip out on chores and play computer and eat jello! Oh YEAH! This is the life. XD Seriously though, it was way less painful than I thought. Thank you all so much for your kind thoughts and prayers! ♥

Let’s Play a Little Game Answers + News

Ahem. This post is scheduled because I am getting my wisdom teeth out on Monday morning! *Sniff* It’s kind of exciting, but… yeah. 😦 I would appreciate prayer for a quick recovery. ♥

Also, I have exciting news that is way happier and not as painful. XD My blog and I are going to be featured on Discover today! (This post was featured before, but this time they’re featuring my whole blog.) I’M SO EXCITED OH MY GOODNESS YAY! Check it out here on the Discover page. It’s not up yet, but it should be sometime today. 🙂

Okay. Now that the news part is done, we can move on to the game answers.

I simply matched up the vegetables with the correct number of flower. (Heh heh, that’s more confusing than simple I guess – just look at the pictures instead. XD )

Garden Game Answers 1Garden Game Answers 2

And the extra flower is…

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A nasturtium which incidentally can be eaten too. XD

I think garden flowers are neat because some (like the okra flower) look like real flowers, and others (like the lettuce flower and asparagus berries) I was surprised to see at all! You don’t really think of lettuce having a flower (at least I don’t).

And the winner is…

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CutePolarBear! You officially get the Green Thumb Award. XD

This was a pretty hard game, but you did a great job guessing, CutePolarBear! 😀

Thus ends your before-school nature lesson. XD

***Allison***

P. S. One last piece of news. We got our entries and ribbons back from the fair! My sister and I were pretty successful this year. 😀 I always love entering things in the fair!

Turkish Delight

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YES! I did indeed make Turkish Delight, just like in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe:

The Queen let another drop fall from her bottle onto the snow, and instantly there appeared a round box, tied with green silk ribbon, which, when opened, turned out to contain several pounds of the best Turkish Delight. Each piece was sweet and light to the very center and Edmund had never tasted anything more delicious.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – page 38

I was so excited when I found this recipe in an old cookbook my grandma gave me, called “Mennonite Community Cookbook.” (Here’s an Amazon listing for it.)

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  • 3 tablespoons gelatin
  • 1/2 cup cold water
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 1/2 cup hot water
  • Grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
  • Grated rind and juice of 1 orange
  • 1 cup nuts (optional)
  • Red or green food coloring
  • {confectioner’s sugar to coat}

Soften gelatin in cold water. Combine sugar and hot water and heat to boiling. Cook for 10 minutes and add gelatin. Simmer slowly for another 10 minutes. Add fruit juice and rind and red or green coloring as desired. Strain into a loaf pan, large enough that the depth of the mixture will be approximately 1 inch. Add chopped nuts if desired. Chill until firm and cut into squares. Roll in confectioner’s sugar.

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(I apologize, but I do not yet know how to make a printable recipe thingy like in professional food blogs. I know, it’s terrible. Awful. *Muffled laughter* Ahem.)

So Turkish Delight wasn’t at all how I pictured it. I pictured it kind of creamy and puffy, like tiramisu or meringue or something. Actually it’s more like glorified jello. XD It tastes kind of like a citrus gummy (you know the orange slice kind) rolled in confectioner’s sugar. It’s yummy though! I could use a piece right now…

Grating the lemon and orange rinds:

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Turkish Delight (1)

Turkish Delight (2)

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Mixing it all up: (I think red is a more traditional color, but I didn’t have any red food coloring, so I used green. :/ )

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It looks like this after straining. (Okay, that sounded really weird. You don’t actually have to exert yourself, I just meant it looks like this after straining the rinds out. Much better. XD )

Turkish Delight (3)

The finished product! This would be a great snack to have at a Narnia party.

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Notes:

  • Turkish Delight is super sticky. Possibly the stickiest candy ever, at least before you coat it in confectioner’s sugar. 😛 Keep a close eye on your pan while the candy is cooking so it won’t boil over like mine did. Heh heh. But don’t worry – soak your dishes in warm, soapy water and the stickiness will dissolve.
  • I kept the leftover strained rinds because they are really yummy! They’re pretty much candied lemon and orange peels after soaking in that sweet juice. Mmmmm!
  • If you’re making this for a Narnia party, you could serve it in a round box like in the book. You may also want to label it “Non-Enchanted Turkish Delight” just for clarification. You wouldn’t want any of your guests to turn traitor, now would you?

Does this look yummy, or does this look YUMMY?! Do you think you’ll make Turkish Delight? Do you like the Narnia Series?

***Allison***

P. S. Guess what I’m doing tomorrow? I’ll tell you in the next post. Mwahahahaha! (Hint: it’s not exactly fun. At all.)

Photography Prompt #2

Hey, guys! Clara alerted me to the very important fact that this is National Photography Day. Of course I had to do something for such a day. So instead of a planned recipe post (which I think you’re going to like, girls and book lovers), I’m going to do a photography prompt to get your creative juices flowing. If you have a camera, this is the day to use it! XD

Photography Prompt 2

Here is that bubble picture that I’ve put on my blog I-don’t-know-how-many-times. XD

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Look at these reflections! I’ve never quite figured out what the reflections were…
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I was so excited when I got this almost-perfect reflection of a Canadian goose at our pond.

 

 

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Water is a really fun reflective thing. Especially mountain lakes, or ponds at sunset.

 

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This is a picture of my Dad’s eye. You can see the reflection of my camera lens and finger poised to click the button. You can even see the scene from our window! (I think there’s the cornfield and the leaves of a walnut tree.)

 

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I just took this one recently. You can see a distorted reflection of our house and me sitting awkwardly on the steps holding the sprinkler between my knees. XD
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I really love this one! I took this picture of my friend on our Amelia Island vacation. I edited it (if you haven’t noticed) to make her hair and the reflection in the sunglasses stand out.

 

Which was your favorite reflections photo? Are you going to “celebrate” National Photography Day? Do you think you’ll use this prompt?

***Allison***

P. S. The baby bunnies are one week old! They are also THE CUTEST THINGS THAT EVER LIVED OH MY GOODNESS HELP! Don’t worry, I’ve been taking lots of pictures. 😉

P. P. S. You only have two days left to do the garden guessing game!

Art Lab, Episode 11: Colorful Cacti

(I pretty much just copied and pasted this from the Art Lab blog. 😉 )

Hello, dear readers! I’m back with Episode 11 of Art Lab. Today I’m going to show you how to concoct some colorful cacti. (That was fun to write.)

This is the gorgeous inspiration I found:

Pretty!:

{via}

I’m going to use a canvas and acrylic paint for the first piece of art.

Begin by painting the background of your picture. I scooped up both white and blue paint on my brush to make a more textured background.

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Now you need to populate your desert. Here are some ideas for cactus shapes: (And yes, I am aware that these cacti look rather sickly. Maybe their desert was extra dry this year or something. XD

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Paint your cacti the same way as the background – blending together different colors of wet paint onto the canvas.

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And finally, embellish your plants! Add dots, dashes, and beautiful blooms. Ta-daa!

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I also made these ATCs:

I had fun painting the flowers with the one on the left. So pretty! The one on the right was inspired by an actual cactus we have that looks kind of like that.

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I hope you enjoyed today’s prompt. If you were inspired to make art from this post, we’d love to see it! Get the details on how to send in art on our Art Gallery page.

***Allison***

BABY BUNNIES!!!

Ahhhhhhhhhh!! I’m SO excited! Finally, finally Willow had babies! It was a few days past her “due date” and we had pretty much given up hope when my brother Jeff was cleaning out the cage and he saw something buried in the straw. You guessed it – it was tiny baby bunnies that Willow had hidden from us! There were six of them under a mound of straw and rabbit fur, but one was dead *sniff*. So now we have five teensy weensy little bunnies! Two are black, two are spotted, and one is white (although they may change color as they get older.)

They seem to be doing pretty well. Since we didn’t see when Willow had them, we’re not sure how old they are, but we think about 4 days old? Does anyone know? (By the way, here’s a neat video that shows baby bunnies growing up.)

Anyway, here are the pictures. Since they’re so tiny, they’re cute and ugly at the same time. 😛 They’re just starting to grow some velvety fuzz. ♥

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Their mini ears are so funny!

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Look at that lil’ nose!

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Awww!

 

What do you think? Are they cute or ugly? Sometimes I think they’re adorable, and sometimes I think, “Why am I even holding this tiny ugly thing?” XD Have you ever had baby bunnies?

***Allison***

P. S. Megan did a post about the baby bunnies too. Check it out here!

Beach Sunset + BIBPC #3

We went to a Lake Eerie beach on our vacation right as the sun set. It was absolutely gorgeous!

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I love this picture with the lighthouse and the orange sky!

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Whoa! I don’t think the sunset was quite THIS bright in real life.

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I love sunsets and beaches, so a sunset on the beach equals twice the love! 😀

Now for my BIBPC entry. The category this time was “Worth It.”

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Story Behind the Photo: My friend is posing for a picture after we had a big shaving cream fight with her and her siblings. It was so. Much. Fun. Even though we and the lawn got super messy (we had to take showers and change, as you can imagine), and the smell of shaving cream was everywhere for a while, it was definitely worth it!

***Allison***

P. S. Oops! You guys were right! Two of the flower pictures in the garden post were the same. I changed it now. 😉 If that affected your guess, please feel free to guess again!

Let’s Play a Little Game…

I was out taking pictures of the garden this morning when I had an idea. It’s garden season, so let’s play a little garden game…

The Rules:

Your job is to match 9 different flowers to the 9 different vegetables they produce. For instance “tomato and __ (insert number)” match, or “#1 and #__ ” match. One vegetable can match a flower from either collage. BUT! I’ve included one extra flower that does not match any of the vegetables to make things more interesting. 😛 Next Monday I shall reveal the answers and the winners (see below). It’s kinda similar to my sister’s “Name that Flower” game. As in Mystery Pictures, I won’t approve guess comments until I reveal the answers.

*Update* Oops! The 4th and 8th flower pictures were actually the same. Sorry about that! I fixed it, though. Thank you for telling me, Rapunzel!

The Points:

  • 1 point for each pair you match correctly
  • 1 bonus point for correctly telling me which flower is the trick flower
  • 2 bonus points for correctly identifying the trick flower
  • And no going outside in your garden to check your answers! (Or looking them up on Google. (Or Bing, Megan.) *Shakes finger*)

Ahem.

I’ll tell you the vegetables, and you tell me their matching flowers:

  1. Okra
  2. Cucumber
  3. Green Bean
  4. Tomato (I hope you knew that already)

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5. Lima bean

6. Lettuce

7. Asparagus

8. Corn

9. Butternut Squash

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And here’s the extra flower which may either match one those vegetables up there, or it may be the trick flower. Who knows?

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I hope you enjoyed this slightly strange, random game; I know I’ll enjoy reading your guesses! 😀

Do you have a garden? Do you like gardening? What is your favorite of those veggies up there?

**Allison***

BIBPC + Updates

Hey, guys! This post shall have various and random things in it. 😛

BIBPC

I’m participating in Megan’s photo contest, BIBPC, so here are my entries for the first and second category. (Since I’m her sister I got away with showing her the first one without posting it – so it’s late but it doesn’t matter. 😉 )

#1: Fuzzy

Story behind the photo: We went to look at a friend’s Saint Bernard puppies (there were 11!) and I took a gazillion photos of cuteness itself. This picture is a sneak peek of a future post. After playing with the puppies for a while, they were thoroughly exhausted and flopped down to sleep. HE IS ADORABLE, OKAY!

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#2. Dew drops

Story behind the photo: I got this picture when we were on vacation. It was just after a rain, the lighting was perfect, and the picture turned out really well! The daisy looks happy, don’t you think?

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Art Lab

Art Lab is back, new and improved! We added some new artists to our team, which is now composed of Hayley, me, Megan, Clara, and Anika! We will take turns posting on our personal blogs, and then copy our post to the Art Lab blog (which we’re redesigning). We’re also going to have a gallery page where you can send in pictures of your art inspired by Art Lab!

Swap Shop

Speaking of art, Hayley is doing a really neat art contest – with prizes! Check out her post for details. And if you like my entries, I’d love if you’d vote for them! 😀

Blog Photos

I know that some of the photos on my blog haven’t been showing up. You know why? I uploaded them from Google Drive, per Clara’s amazing free space tutorial, but unfortunately Google changed Google Drive recently which means that the photos won’t work! BAD GOOGLE! Thankfully I can still have free space by creating another random blog and copying and pasting my pictures from there. Phew!

See ya’ later!

***Allison***