Smile!

I recently started arranging my dry cereal or crackers into smiley faces when I eat them.

Cheese crackers. This was the first smile I made with
food.

Made with Yummy Mummy cereal (and one marshmallow)

Count Chocula

Yummy Mummy marshmallows

Chocolate chips

I think this one was made of Count Chocula marshmallows.
Not sure.

This one was star sequins. Not food, but hey, it's nice.

New Moon Girls magazine had an article about kids with cleft palates, a condition that disfigures the nose and mouth, and how girls like me can help these kids. When you find a smile in the world around you, you take a picture of it. You pledge to donate money for each picture of a smile to a charity that provides surgeries for kids with cleft palates.


You can also host a smile-a-thon. Ask family, friends, and neighbors to find or make smiley faces and take a picture of them and pledge money to donate to a cleft palate charity.

It's very fun to make smiles. You can do that too, or host a smile-a-thon yourself! (I actually haven't done that yet. Something to talk to my mom about.)                                                                                                    

Jell-O!

 I LOVE making Jell-O. I don't know why, just something about the taste, and the texture, and how fun it is to cook.
It's very good with whipping cream mixed in it ("decadent", Mommy calls it).

 I've stopped using the brand name packets after Mommy said that some of the food dyes they put in the Jell-O packets are banned in Europe. Instead, I make it from scratch, using this recipe.  I couldn't put the whipping cream in it, though, because Mommy says the lemon juice might make the cream curdle.

Sliced lemon smiley face!

First, Mommy showed me how to slice the lemons in half. That part was fun. For some reason, I really like using the knife. Then I squeezed the lemons, added some sugar and water, and started boiling the juice. That was not my favorite part -- I'm not a big fan of hot things. Luckily, Mommy did most of the work with the boiling water.

Stirring the mixture

The lemon gelatin dessert took a long time to set. Kathy was very impatient. The whole evening, it was, "Taryn, will the Jell-O  be ready soon? Well? Will it?" She called it Jell-O even though it wasn't. When it finally was ready, she thought I gave her less than I gave myself. (I didn't.) But we both liked it very much. 

Mommy made her special whipped cream to go on top, and it was very, very good. It reminded me of a lemon meringue pie.

Ready to eat!

Someday when I grow up,  I want to figure out a way to powder fruit juice without using artificial flavors and colors for my gelatin dessert. Then I'll package the mix. It'll be even better than the brand name packets. (And healthier!)

Papercraft! Papercraft! Papercraft!

When Kathy's friend came over to play one day, she brought over a Minecraft creeper made of folded paper and tape. I am a huge fan of Minecraft, so I begged the friend tell us the name of the website where she had gotten the creeper. 

The creeper

The website is called Papercraft. It has a bunch of mobs and blocks you print out.  They're unfolded, like this:

An unfolded NPC (non-player character) villager 

Folding the mobs was pretty hard at first. I got so frustrated I cried! But later Daddy showed me a cool technique for folding and tape-adding, and now I am Papercraft obsessed.  So far I have made:

• A block of diamond ore
• A bed
• A furnace
• A crafting table
• A cake
• A TNT block
• A pig

My creations. From left to right: Diamond ore, the pig,
the furnace, the crafting table, the cake, the TNT, and
the bed.

Kathy folded:

• A bed
• A baby creeper

Kathy's bed and baby creeper. Isn't it cute?

The next thing I'm going to attempt to fold is the villager (above). Hopefully, I won't get too frustrated. =)

Fishies!

I just downloaded a fish tank for my blog. My fishies are so sweet! The red one is named Kira, the orange one is Lola, the yellow fish is Heidi (yes, like the Project Runway judge. Kathy named her), the green one is named Fern, and the blue fish is named Skye. When they're hungry, you can click on their tank to give them food and they'll swim towards the it. 

To download a fish tank for your blog, go to "design." On your left, you will see the word "layout." Click on that. Then go to "add a gadget." When you're in the gadget department, click on "more gadgets." Search for "fish," and it will bring up the results. There should be six search results. Click on a fish tank, and start customizing your fish! 

Rock-climbing Time!

A while ago, I went rock climbing with my Girl Scout troop at a place called Sportrock. 

Belayers are the people who work at a rock-climbing place. They helped us with our harnesses, held on to our ropes when we were climbing up and rappelling down, and did our helmet fittings. They were also our instructors. The belayers who helped us were very nice and encouraging.

Learning the rules

Before we could start climbing, we had to get fitted for helmets.

Then our instructors explained the rules. The first one was: don't take off your helmet. Seriously. Don't take off your helmet. If the rope breaks, you could fall on your head and probably die. Also, if you slip on the "rocks" you could hit your head. The second rule was: do not touch the dangling ropes. Those are for your safety so you don't fall off the wall. I can't remember the other rules.

The big walls were huge, forty feet tall, with little bells you could ring at the top, and "rocks" that were marked with different color pieces of duct tape. The belayers explained that the markings were there so you would know which path to the top was easy, and which path was hard. For example, green was the easiest path to take, blue was between easy and hard, and pink was the hardest. (Actually, I don't remember which color meant what. But you get what I mean.) The easy path gradually disappears as you get closer to the top, so it gets harder to climb.  

 Mommy and some other adults decided to start on the big walls. I was impressed. That was a brave place to start! Most of the troop and I decided to start on the smaller walls--they were maybe ten feet high and easier to climb.

Ready to climb up the little wall! Mommy had to take this picture
with a special lens. That's why it looks rounded.

Mommy and the other adults walked over to us just as I was about to start climbing. She had gone all the way to the top! She even rang the bell. I was totally going to do that.

When I climbed the big wall, I almost, almost, almost gave up. My legs were so tired. As I went higher, I couldn't find a good grip. I told myself that I was almost there ... I reached the top of that forty-foot wall and rang the bell! It was great. I felt energized. Happy. Like I could do anything I wanted to. 

About to reach the top!

When I rappelled down, my legs collapsed when I reached the ground. I couldn't believe I'd actually done that!