Mystery Revealed! #6

January 30, 2016 | Allison

Dun-duh-duh-dun! I am now going to reveal the mysteries from this post. (Click on the link if you want to take a guess quick before I reveal them!) Ahem. *Clears throat.*

*Looks around.*

Wow, did anyone ever notice how neat computer keyboards are?

Hmm… the crayfish tank needs to be cleaned soon – it’s getting algae on it.

Alright, alright, I’ll have mercy on you! XD Here we go!

#1. Yeast! (I’m rather proud of this one. 🙂 I was doing a science experiment and noticed how pretty the yeast was up close. It was too pretty to show you only one picture, so here are two!)

#2. Swallowtail caterpillar. (See my post here that includes a video I took of one of these caterpillars turning into a chrysalis!)

#3. Empty corncob

#4. Florescent lightbulb

#5. Clementine peel (Not the rabbit but the orange. XD)

Ta-daa! Okay, now for the winners. I will add links to their blogs, if they have any, so you can check them out!

#1. Nicole is the winner! Congratulations Nicole, you got the most correct!

#2. Clara, Emma, and K.A..

#3. Josie, Christian Homeschooler, and CutePolarBear

Three cheers for everyone who played! (In case you were wondering, Clara, Emma, and K. A. tied for 2nd place and Josie, Christian Homeschooler, and CutePolarBear tied for 3rd place, so that’s why those names are together. 🙂 )I really enjoyed reading your guesses once again, and thanks so much for playing, guys!

***Allison***

Photography Tidbits

January 12, 2016 | Allison

Over the weeks, I inevitably collect some random photos that don’t ever make it into regular posts, which is why I make this kind of post! Enjoy the random photo-ness. 🙂

I cut the end off of an orange to slice it, like normal, and found this cute little orange-face grinning back at me!

Here is a picture I edited with my camera with the “Painting” setting. (Click on any individual picture in a collage to enlarge it.)

Before…

After

I got these animal pictures when we went to the Science Museum with our friends recently.

-Allison (room, science museum) 037 (1280x960)

-Allison (room, science museum) 036 (1280x960)

-Allison (room, science museum) 038 (1280x960)

More funny food! This guy is made from Swiss cheese, crackers, applesauce (for the pupils), and a pickled onion. XD

My little sister swinging. 🙂

Mushrooms!

And Coffee Bean’s eye. (A moment of silence for Coffee Bean. *sniff*)

I hope you enjoyed the “random assorted flavors of Allison’s photography!” 🙂

***Allison***

A Super Simple Salad: Iceberg Lettuce Wedges

January 4, 2016January 4, 2016 | Allison

Once when we went to a restaurant on a vacation, some of my family ordered lettuce wedges as appetizers, and they were SO GOOD! Those had blue cheese dressing and bacon on, I think. The other day I thought, “Why couldn’t we make those ourselves?” So I did! And they were yummy! They were also really simple because they only took three ingredients. So… here’s the “recipe,” although it’s so simple it can hardly be called a recipe.

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Ingredients:

1 iceberg lettuce head

crumbled, cooked bacon

blue cheese dressing (Note: Caesar dressing is also delicious if you don’t like blue cheese – I prefer Caesar to blue cheese myself. And my little sister wanted Ranch dressing on hers. 😀 )

Peel off the first couple of outer lettuce leaves, and slice the iceberg lettuce into six equal wedges. (I actually made seven wedges since we have seven people in our family.)
Place each wedge on a separate plate, and drizzle generously with dressing. Sprinkle crumbled bacon on top. And EAT!

Don’t they look delicious?

Let me tell you the story of the bacon bits. We got them in our stockings from our grandparents, because my cousin REALLY loves bacon, and she wanted bacon bits for Christmas. So my grandparents made us all some. XD It was a good stocking stuffer to me! 😀 XD

***Allison***

P. S. No more blog snow… 😥 😥

Choco-Peanut-Butter Candy Bark!

December 2, 2015December 2, 2015 | Allison

This is what I made for my brother’s birthday a while ago:

I made up the recipe for this candy bark, because originally I was going to make candy bark from a recipe, but we didn’t have all the ingredients or I didn’t like the recipe or something, so I decided to make up a recipe myself. I call it “Chocolate Peanut Butter Candy Bark.” Or “Choco-Peanut-Butter Candy Bark” for short(er).

Now for a short description. Ahem. This candy bark is delicately flavored with only the finest chocolate and creamiest peanut butter on earth, and sprinkled with deliciously candied pecans… OK, enough fancy language. I’ll translate that for you. This candy bark is made with semisweet chocolate chips, peanut butter, and sprinkled with yummy candied pecans. My family rated it five out of five stars (to add to my meal planner thingy), so it had better be good!

OK, I think the introduction is long enough now, let’s get to the recipe!

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Chocolate Peanut Butter Candy Bark

1 and 1/2 cups of semisweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons of peanut butter
1/2 tablespoon of coconut oil (or any oil)
1/2 cup of candied pecans (I found a most delicious recipe for candied pecans on Pinterest right here. Seriously, even if you don’t make the candy bark, you should make these. You can do pecans instead of almonds.)

Melt the first three ingredients in a pan until smooth. Add candied pecans. Cover a cookie sheet in parchment paper, and pour the mixture onto it. Melt two tablespoons of peanut butter. (You can add just a few chocolate chips.) Drop the peanut butter in little dots all over the candy bark. Use a toothpick to swirl everything together to get a pretty marbled effect. Place the cookie sheet in the freezer for a couple of hours until candy is hard and brittle. Break into pieces and serve!

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I hope you enjoy this candy as much as we did!

***Allison***

Mystery Revealed! #4

November 7, 2015November 7, 2015 | Allison

Drum roll, please! I will now show pictures of what the mysterious things were…

#1: Wheel pasta

#2: Velcro

#3: Carrots

#4: Conch shell

#5: Popcorn cob

#6: Kitten paw

#7: Leftover spaghetti noodles 🙂

And now for the winners!

Abigail and Clara (my cousins♥) are first,

gadanagg is second!

Thank you SO MUCH to for playing guys! I really, really enjoyed reading your guesses. See you later!

***Allison***

Labor Day Celebrations

September 10, 2015February 14, 2016 | Allison

For Labor Day this year, my family, my grandparents, and my cousins got together and made potato chips and funnel cakes. Boy, were they delicious! We fried them both in a rather rusty contraption that worked quite well none the less. (Don’t worry, my grandaddy cleaned the inside of the kettle quite thoroughly.)

The oil in the kettle had beautiful reflections in it of the trees above.

First we made potato chips. They were deliciously light and crispy.

Next we fried funnel cakes. It took a bit of experimenting to get the batter the right consistency, but boy were they delicious! Here is a link to the recipe we used. At first the batter was too thick, but it made some quite interesting shapes.

Finally we got the batter the right consistency. Are you hungry yet?

We had lots of extra batter left, which made some tasty, very smooth waffles, although they were a little tougher than normal.

What did you do for Labor Day?

***Allison***

The Amazing Chicken Egg

August 31, 2015February 14, 2016 | Allison

School starts for us this week, only it didn’t really start: we don’t have much time for school, because we have to gather eggs. 😦 We recently got a new flock of chickens for our chicken houses, and we have to weigh almost every egg they lay. And there are thousands of eggs per day. I’m not kidding. We have about 24,000 chickens right now and we have to gather about 16,000 eggs a day. That’s A LOT OF EGGS! And it takes A VERY LONG TIME to pick them each off of the conveyor belt, weigh the ones that might be too heavy or too light, and put them in egg flats. Thankfully our family only has to do it for about 3 hours a day, because we aren’t the only ones working there. (Speaking of family, my sister Megan made a post about the actual chicken houses and chickens over on her blog. See it here.)

Anyway… during all those hours we find some pretty strange chicken eggs. I’ll bet you never even knew that chickens could lay eggs like the ones I’m gonna show you, but I assure you, they do. All of these eggs were found in one of our 3 chicken houses, from the same breed of boring ‘ol white chickens. Shall we begin the science lesson for today?

Let’s start with size. There are big eggs, and there are small eggs. And then there are HUGE eggs and tiny eggs. Here are the two latter sizes together for comparison.

The big ‘ol guy weighed in at a hefty 4 oz. (The eggs you buy at the store are about 2 oz.) The tiny egg is only 0.2 oz.!

Now for shape. Some eggs are almost round, some are pointy. Some eggs are short, and some are long. Here’s a long one.

Eggshells are also different textures. There are a few wrinkly ones, a few warty ones, but mainly smooth ones. There are mostly hard-shelled eggs, but once in awhile we get a softshell one (or two).

Another strange one:

Not only are the eggs strange on the outside, but they can also be strange on the inside. Remember the huge egg in the first picture? This is what was inside it:

two yolks and a tiny softshell egg! I have never seen this before. Two yolks are pretty common – we call eggs with two yolks “doubles,” and those are mostly the eggs we eat. (Sometimes this is problem, like when you make a recipe that calls for 3 eggs. Uhhh, one and a half doubles? ☺) But I have never seen an egg with two yolks AND a softshell!

Here is a picture of what’s inside a double.

Pretty boring, right? But here is an egg I found already cracked open on the belt:

A softshell with another softshell inside it!

And last but not least, we have the triple. A fairly rare egg that has – can you guess? – three yolks.

The list could go on and on, but those are the only kinds I took pictures of, so I guess I’ll stop there. 🙂

So are you surprised or what? It’s astounding what diversity there is in one kind of chicken egg, let alone in the whole world. What an amazing God it took to create everything!

***Allison***

Woodland Birthday Party

August 30, 2015February 14, 2016 | Allison

My sister Megan’s birthday was yesterday! She chose to have a woodland themed party with hedgehogs as the “life of the party.” (Hee-hee!) I thought I’d go through the decorations for the party and how we made a few of them. (Megan didn’t especially want to do all the decorations, so I got to make most of them – hooray!)

The colors of the theme were green and brown. For the decorations, I hung up twirled green and brown streamers and green balloons.

I also drew and cut out some forest floor type things like toadstools, grasses, and pebbles. It would have been better to make the toadstools out of red paper, but we didn’t have any. 🙂

Meet Mr. Hedgehog, the gift guy. I designed him; Megan painted him. Megan also had the great idea to use him to show the guests where to put gifts.

The table was really fun to decorate. We got the tablecloth, plates, napkins, and cups at Party City (which was FUN, by the way!). My mom made the cute cake, I made the hedgehogs, and Megan made the labels for the “Dew Drops” (water) and “Twigs” (pretzel sticks). I found the ideas for twigs, dew drops (which was originally named “Morning Dew”), and hedgehogs from Pinterest.

Here’s a tutorial on how to make this cute little hedgehog for snacking on. (Poor guy!)

For one hedgehog you will need

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A pear

Whole, black olives

Grapes

Toothpicks

Whole cloves

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First, peel the top of the pear for the hedgehog’s head.

You can try sticking a whole olive on the tip of the pear, but it worked best for me to cut the olive in half.

Stick two whole cloves above the nose for eyes.

Now make him prickly! Skewer a grape onto a toothpick, then stick the toothpick into the unpeeled part of the pear. I put the skewered grapes on in rows. I started with a row next to the head, then progressed all the way back to give him the proper rounded shape.

Such a prickly little guy!

Now for the party favors. I like to make things out of polymer clay, so I made clay hedgehogs for favors, along with little bags to put them in. At the end of the party, the guests each got to “adopt a hedgehog.”