Chopped!

February 17, 2015February 17, 2015 | Allison

I made up a contest based on a TV show we saw maybe 2 times called “Chopped”. “Chopped” is a cooking contest where the four contestants get mystery ingredients that they have to make into a dish in 30 minutes. Our version of “Chopped” isn’t quite the same, but us kids and our cousins had lots of fun playing it! Here are the rules:

1. Anyone who doesn’t want to cook, or who isn’t able to can be a judge. It works best if there are 3 or 4 other people who cook.

2. Depending on how many people are playing, there are a certain number of rounds. There must be one less round than the number of cooks (like musical chairs). Here are some ideas for the different rounds: Drink, Dessert, Side, Snack. (You can’t really have a main dish because one of the rules is that you can’t use meat or eggs or anything that might be harmful if it’s undercooked.)

3. The judge chooses two ingredients that the cooks must use. Make the ingredients relevant to the round (Don’t use tomatoes and corn for the dessert round ☺).

4. The cooks have 7 minutes to make a dish containing the ingredients the judge chose, plus up to four more ingredients of their choice. You may make the time shorter or longer as you wish. The minimum of ingredients is 4 and the maximum is 6.

5. When the time is up, the cooks have stop what they’re doing and bring their dish to the judge. They have to have used at least 4 ingredients, not more than 6 ingredients, and the ingredients the judge chose; if they haven’t, they’re out.

6. The cooks explain their food to the judges, then leave the room.

7. The judge(s) decides which dish they think is the worst, and put the dish under a big bowl so that it’s hidden. The judge calls in the cooks.

8. The judge takes off the bowl hiding the dish, and announces who is “Chopped” (out of the game). The player that got chopped gets to help judge the next round(s), and the other cooks get to keep cooking!

9. When it’s the last round and there are only two cooks left, whoever wins the round wins the game!

I hope you have as much fun playing this as we did!

***Allison***

Creation Museum!

February 7, 2015June 5, 2015 | Allison

We went to the Creation Museum in Cincinnati, Kentucky for a few days with some of our friends, and it was AMAZING! I highly recommend it! There are so many neat things to discover inside the museum, and they have a beautiful outdoor space, and a petting zoo – and not just your ordinary petting zoo!

First you come into a tall hall with Chinese dragons hanging from the ceiling and dragon information and legends along the walls. When you come into the actual museum you see this huge mastodon skeleton and then this habitat with moving dinosaurs and life-like people. Then you can go down this alley or tunnel or something which kind of goes through the museum and shows you lots of different things along the way. There’s a life-like dig-site where you can touch a real dinosaur bone,

and see a dinosaur skeleton!

There were several movie theater stops along the way, and the Garden of Eden which I really liked. (I mean, who knew you could still go see it, right?!).

There’s a cross-section of the Ark with life-like people that talk and move. This is a picture of a fake person that was in the display. I mean, look how real she looks!

There’s a neat room with small models of the Ark and what it could have looked like inside and out. It was really funny because we saw a stinkbug crawling around on the miniature people inside the display case!

Later on the trail we went to this amazing Insectorium that had lots of insects in glass display cases. My finger in some of the pictures shows how big the insects are.

Later on we went outside. There are lots of pretty waterfalls and bridges, and a petting zoo! This petting zoo had a zorse (zebra and horse mixed), a zonkey (can you guess?), wallabies (which we didn’t get to pet – one was too busy eating a Christmas tree that was in the cage!), peacocks, and other animals.

This is definitely not all we saw, but it would take too long to tell you everything! For more information, visit the Creation Museum’s site here.

***Allison***

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***

Square Doodles

January 17, 2015November 12, 2018 | Allison

This is really fun to do because you can use a bunch of different kinds of doodles and they all come together to make a really nice piece of wall art. You could do a color scheme like I did, or make a colorful, rainbow square-doodle paper. I colored this with purple, blue, and green gel pens. I got some doodle ideas and I think even the whole square-doodle paper idea from this doodling blog: https://doodleaddicted.wordpress.com/

The hardest part about making this is making the squares to put the doodles in. You might be able to print off a template for this somewhere, but I just did it by hand by measuring it off.

You could also do this in random circles across the page or put the doodles in outlines of hearts or whatever you want.

(Sorry, some of these pictures aren’t as good as they could be because I took them in my room in the evening.)

Happy doodling!

***Allison***

Clementine Butterflies

January 10, 2015June 5, 2015 | Allison

If you need to bring a little bit of spring into these cold winter days, these little cuties should help you do it. All you need to make them are clementines and celery sticks.

Sorry, I don’t have any pictures on how to make them :(, I’ll just have to try and tell you.

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1. Peel a clementine and pry it apart into two halves.

2. Take two clementine sections from one of the halves, and partially pull them open starting from the side that faces towards the middle of the clementine. This is very important, if open the sections the wrong way it won’t look like a butterfly. Make sure not to pull the sections apart all the way.

3. Cut up a celery stick into smaller pieces and put one piece each in the middle of the partially opened sections for the butterfly’s body.

5. Repeat to make as many butterflies as you want.

4. Serve on a pretty platter. You could have them hovering around fruit cut to look like flowers, do what I did and perch a few on orange slices, or think up your own arrangement. Have fun making it pretty!

5. Enjoy!

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I hope you have fun making and eating these delicious butterflies!

***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***

Room Switcheroo

December 7, 2014November 12, 2018 | Allison

My sister Megan and I switched room’s with my younger sister Carmen. We got a bigger room and… we got to decorate it! We might paint the room later, but for now we have flowered wallpaper.

This is my little corner:

Megan and I both made stars to hang near our beds.

I also made this little circle-doodley thing, because I love to doodle. I think I’ve seen something like it on Pinterest, but I didn’t pin it.

I hung my arm-knit scarves on my bed post. They are color coordinated, of course, because I just LOVE it when everything is color coordinated. ☺ And I did pin this to my Pinterest board here. You should seriously make one of these.