Once Upon a Time….

Today Jaryl and I tried a new game called Rory’s Story Cubes! The game contains a small bag and nine dice that have different pictures on them. The rules inside are simple! Play by yourself, Play with friends! Roll the dice and make up a story linking together all of the pictures! OR have each person roll one at a time adding to the story. OR create a title for your story before you even roll the dice! The possibilities are endless!

Well Jaryl and I love telling stories, making up songs and stretching the truth….so I figured this game was perfect for us. A great way to practice our improv skills. The first story we told was a beautiful story about a very old, unhappy elf and how he brought color to the world. Unfortunately it was not written down! So here is one that we took time to record for you.

Once upon a time there was a 100 foot sea turtle. Every day he would sleep and sleep and sleep, until one day when his alarm went beeeep! beeeep! beeeep! But when he awoke it turned out it was not an alarm clock at all. It was a huge UFO landing on his back! The aliens got out of their ship and quickly turned on their LED flashlights (Why did they have LED flashlights on another planet? No one knows). They searched around. They looked right. They looked left. They looked back. They looked forward. They looked up. And then they looked down. And what they thought they were standing on was a huge castle.” Take us to your leader!” They chanted at the supposed castle. But the sea turtle had such a magnetic personality that it didn’t take long for the space aliens to realize that they were standing on something living, something with feelings, something with…intelligence. They looked down and chanted “Are you the leader?”. Just then the sea turtle rose out of the sea and flew them to a large field of sunflowers. In the middle of the field was a large book. The aliens rushed over to it and the turtle smiled. They turned to page 52 and lo and behold there was THEIR history written down. How could their history be in a book? “What happened? How could all of this be on this planet when we have never been here?” The turtle looked down at them and once again smiled. “Long ago this planet was yours. As your race evolved and your technology grew, a great war broke out. Few survived and those that did traveled to distant planets because this one became uninhabitable. But now the sunflowers have returned and so has the great on who watches over you. You may now stay.”

All in all a great game! I hope they come out with an expasion pack with different dice!

Day 27. The Rumscattble Card Dice Game.

Tonight Jaryl and I attempted to make our own game. I took my eyes off of him for one second and when I turned around he had his arms full of board games. Life, Scattergories, Cranium, and Yahtzee just to name a few. The next thing I knew he was on the floor picking and choosing different parts from different games.

It started out pretty rocky. What were the rules? What was the goal? How did we make every piece fit into the grand design? AND most importantly can we make it fun? We started over a couple of times until we finally came up with rules that we liked. We ended up using these game parts:

The board, Pawns and color dice from Cranium.

The tiles from Scrabble.

The tiles and tile holder from Rummikub.

A deck of Marilyn monroe cards.

Some dice.

A strip numbered 1-10 from the game of Life.

The letter dice from Scattergories.

The game consisted of memory,matching, verbal competition, card collecting, stealing, trying to make your opponents laugh, and even some word creation. It was complicated and had many different aspects. Although we had fun, we both decided we will leave the game creation to the professionals.

But the most important thing you need to know is….I WON.

Jaryl says “We ain’t no Milton Bradley. The next time I make a game it’s going to be with a set of dice…and that’s it.”

We rate this activity a 1/10.

Day 24. Paper

Origami. The Japanese art of folding paper. I have always found it to be whimsical. I have tackled many art forms, but I never did get into origami. In highschool I got a boy in one of my american sign language classes to fold  paper giraffes and elephants for me. I loved them so much and I know they are still in a box out in our scary storage (which will be a new and interesting project for another day). In fact now that same guy is dating one of my old best friends and I am sure he will be reading this. (Don’t judge us if our Origami sucks Sam!)

So here we go…..

My first attempt was a camel…. At first I looked at the instructions and it was as if I was reading how to put a piece of furniture together with instructions written in another language. But then I found animated instructions on the same web site and we were on our way!  If I had better paper he would have actually stood up. For a millisecond he did look like a camel.

So for attempt two I looked in my craft bag for better paper. (I was too cheap today to go buy origami paper)  Next I tried a pig and then a penguin.

Jaryl made me my favorite flower (a tulip). After that he became inspired to try to make one of those paper boxes that you blow up. Did you ever try to make those? But he could not remember how to do it…so he called it a “fox” instead.

Jaryl says “Grab some paper! Fold it into a square!  You’ve got origami!”

We rate this a 7/10
Go to www.origami-club.com and try it for yourself!

Day 12. Art Attack!

A few months ago Jaryl took a big interest in art. He has been reading books, looking at different works of art and trying out new mediums. Lately he has been really into soft pastels. So tonight we had an art night. Complete with a trip to the local art store. Jaryl spent way too much time conversing with the owner. All we went in for was some sort of sealant. (The nature of soft pastels is very messy and we needed to preserve our art before we frame it)  But eventually we left with a can of pastel fixative and we were on our way.

We came home and chose an object in the house for us to both focus on. As you can see we both had very different styles and takes on the same flowers. This was my first experience with soft pastels. It was fun working with something that blended and smudged so easily. At the same time the easy smudging is also what made this medium so difficult. What can I say, I have always been more of a painter. Pastels are really Jaryl’s thing. Below you will see both our versions of the flowers and also a couple other amazing pastels Jaryl did this week.

We give this activity a 15/10.
Jaryl says “I love doing this. We got crayons for adults! Can’t go wrong with crayons for adults!”

Host an art night with your family! What a great way to have fun, release stress, get creative and get away from the television.

Jaryl’s on the left. Madison’s on the right.

Day 9. We Attempt Cake….on a stick.

Cake pops! I do not know why Americans are so obsessed with food on a stick. But we are. And it seemed sometime last year cake pops started appearing everywhere. Starbucks, food magazine covers and even last week I went in Fred Meyer and saw individual pre-packaged cake pops for sale! Quite frankly, I don’t know why it took me this long to try to make them myself. As most of you know I love baking, have a horrible sweet tooth and I love cupcakes so much they were featured at my wedding. So why wouldn’t I try the latest cake fad?

So today we made chocolate cake pops with a cream cheese icing and semi-sweet bakers chocolate. While researching online I discovered cake pops are a great thing to make when you have left over cake. What a fantastic idea! Left over birthday cake, wedding cake, or just plan old I had a bad day cake crumbled up to form yummy pops! Talk about food recycling. (And who ever thought that would actually mean something tasty.)

Jaryl and I had a good time as you can see in the below photos.

Here are the things that went wrong.

-I did not buy enough sticks. (I couldn’t even find lollipop sticks and was forced to buy a 20 pack of “cookie” pop sticks that were too big and too expensive. So if anyone wants my left over “cake balls” come on over.)

-I did not buy enough chocolate. (Are we seeing a trend here? The remaining pops that did not get coated in chocolate got coated in frosting.)

-Jaryl dropped one on the counter after he coated it in chocolate and it happened to land in some parmesan cheese…..mmmm.)

Here are the things that went right.

-They were delicious. So delicious in fact, that just one made my stomach hurt. (That’s when you know it is good.)

-It is fun crumbling a cake. (How often do you get to ruin stuff for fun? Maybe one of our new activities this year should be pieing someone in the face….any takers?)

-I think they are cute! Plus as a bonus it is my sister’s birthday tomorrow and I already have cake!

We rank this activity a delicious 10/10. 

Ewww. Cheese Pop.

Day 3 Reduce, Reuse, REBUILD!

This morning on our 6 AM drive to work Jaryl looked at me and said “We should make a table out of old books!” And with that our daily quest was on. I immediately began to google different ways of using books. Sure enough it had been done (What hasn’t now days?). It looked do-able. “Alright, after work we will go to the thrift store.” I said. We were both excited about our adventure.

By 11 AM I got a text from Jaryl. It said:

“Maybe we could build something with old VHS tapes. They Are just sitting around until the end of time.”

Too True. Billions of movies just sitting and wasting away. Jaryl knew this idea would appeal to the super recycler in me. While also appealing to the building engineer in him. I suppose the idea occurred to both of us a few years ago when  we saw an episode of Ellen where she held a contest to see what people could make out of old VHS tapes.  People had a great time making DVD shelfs and other types of furniture. But today we were ready to see what we could do.

Later that day when we reached our local Value Village  we were disappointed. They did not have exactly what we were looking for and I thought we could find some tapes for less than $1. So we got back into the car and headed up to a fun thrift store called Helping Hands. It is a unique store with a maze of rooms and always a great selection. We left the store with 26 VHS tapes (for 50 cents a pop!) and a funky blue tray for the table top.

NEXT. Something to hold it all together. We stopped at Fred Meyer and stared at the plethora of glues, adhesives and even duct tape. Finally we landed on a large spray bottle of Elmers Craft Bond. We were not sure if this was going to work.

When we finally arrive at home Jaryl begins arranging the tapes as if he is a 4-year-old playing with blocks.

“You are having fun aren’t you?” I ask.

“YEAH!” He says while smiling.

I begin cutting the covers of the movies to mod podge onto the table top. The house is filled with fumes and we are forced to open all the doors. I did not know this would be such a chilli project. 

After trying the glue different ways and rigging the tapes so the glue will dry, it finally looks like this will work.

Unfortunately the adhesive needs an hour to set and the mod podge is still wet. So we wait…

Until finally after much begging on my part I get Jaryl to attempt to attach the leg of the table to the base. But then he makes me wait until that dries. Ugh. I was never good at waiting. I just want my part to go on! 

Finally it is time and we get ……… THIS:

 Not that bad! And as you can see atleast 11 pounds. (Thanks weights.)

So with a little creative thinking, some old VHS tapes, Spray glue, Mod Podge, and a plastic tray you too can have an eco friendly end table!

We rate this project a 10/10.  Jaryl got to build, I got to mod podge and we both got to work as a team. Plus we get a new table out of the deal!