Texture Pack Review One: Persistence

Hi readers! I apologize for the lack of posts. 

Anyway, I'm reviewing a texture pack called Persistence (you can download it here.) The pack is compatible with the most recent version of Minecraft (1.7.4).

Here are some screenshots:

A sheep (love the big eyes!)

A cow

A pig (again, love the eyes!)

A chicken. It's not a very good picture. If I had a better one, you could see the eyes were super creepy.

My house

A chest, bookshelves, cake, and enchanting table.

An anvil, (not very visible) furnace, crafting table, brewing stand, and water.

The "Wall of Food" (if you're a Minecrafter, you'll notice the new fish have the same texture as usual)

And here are the screenshots of the default Minecraft look for comparison (I tried to put them in the same order as they were above, but Blogger was being stupid.):

The pig.

The sheep.

The chest, enchanting table, bookshelf, and cake.

The same furnace, anvil, crafting table, brewing stand, and water.

The bed

The cow

The chicken.

My house

The Wall of Food

Now for the review part. I liked how this pack gave the cows, sheep, and pigs adorable eyes. Also, it was really great because they changed the textures on the flowers, and a couple other packs didn't do that. But the armor texture hasn't changed, except for the boots, and the salmon, clownfish, and pufferfish didn't change either. The paintings look the same too. I think that could definitely be improved. 

The pack was good overall. But as I said earlier, it could be improved. My rating: four out of five stars.

Happy Birthday...

Miss Dawn! She turned forty-four two days ago. (Sorry I couldn't post then.) 

Hope you had a great birthday, Miss Dawn!  

Cosmos

Mommy, Kathy and I just finished watching Cosmos. It's a really cool show about our universe and the galaxies and life of any kind and so many other things.

My favorite part of the episode was when Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about how there's a theory that our universe is in a little "bubble", and how it might be floating in a sea of an infinite number of other universe "bubbles". If that's true, it would be amazing. All those other planets and suns. Maybe even life. There might be an alternate Taryn typing a post for her blog. Wow.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hello, readers! Happy St. Patrick's Day! Today is a supposed day of luck, and leprechauns (cute little elf-like creatures wearing lots of green) will bring Lucky Charms to your cereal cabinet. They will also turn the milk green.

Nothing really lucky has happened to me today. And it snowed AGAIN. Aargh! It's March, for goodness sake! Maybe it's snowing so much because Frozen is coming out tomorrow? 

Anyway...have a good St. Patrick's Day! --Taryn P.S. Did something lucky happen to you today? Tell me in the comment box.

Iceland.

Yup, I'm going to Iceland! Mommy and Daddy have just purchased tickets, although the tickets aren't the ones I was talking about in the previous post, with the airline-paid-for breakfast, bath, and tours...

It doesn't matter! I'm going to have fun anyway! I'M GOING TO ICELAND! WHOO!

Iceland??!?!?!?!!?!?

Readers, I am SO sorry about the lack of posts lately. I hope you forgive me. =)

Okay, about Iceland. My mom was browsing the Travel section in the newspaper, and she found a flight for a three-night vacation to Iceland, with "only" nine-hundred-something dollar round-trip tickets. But apparently, the airline is also offering to pay for breakfast, accommodations at a hotel, a guided tour of a place called the "Golden Circle", another tour of a museum, taxes, and this is my favorite: admission to "Fontana geothermal baths and use of towel".

You have to pay to use a towel! That's pretty funny. 

Anyway, you can travel anytime in May, or through September fifteenth through the whole month of October. And since we're going to Japan in October, and my parents appear to be serious about this whole Iceland thing...

I AM PROBABLY GOING TO ICELAND IN MAY. HOLY COW. 

(Kathy and I do have an alternative option. We could stay with our grandparents instead of going, but no offense to you grandparents, I'd rather head off to Iceland. 

How to make your own lipstick: A Taryn Tutorial

Hello, readers! This post is about how you can make your very own lipstick. It's based on the New Moon Girls recipe, but I rewrote the instructions in my own words. Here they are!

You will need: 

• A nontoxic crayon in the color of your choice (I used Crayola)
• A 1/2 teaspoon almond oil, preferably with vitamin E
• An almond-size clump of shea or cocoa butter
• Beeswax
• Grater thingy to grate beeswax
• Small funnel
• Double boiler with about an inch of water in the bottom
• Empty lip balm tube (it can be from an old lip product, or you can order them from here) 
• An adult to supervise and clean up

       

How to actually make the balm: Pick a crayon in any color. Go ahead, choose a crazy neon green or dark, dark blue. This is your lipstick and it will be awesome.

Heat a stove to low and put the double boiler on it. Ask your adult to watch it.

Next, cut off the tip of your crayon and peel off the wrapper. Break the crayon in half. Then break one of those halves in half. 

Peel crayon

Break crayon

Make smile

Put that aside. Now, grate/shred the beeswax until you have about this much.

How much beeswax you should have

Another use of the adult

 Now, put your cocoa/shea butter, the 1/2 teaspoon of oil, a half of a half of your crayon, and the beeswax into the top part of the double boiler. Stir slightly and let it melt.

While the beeswax mixture melts, set up the funnel. It will go into the tube and should look like this:

When the mixture is ready, pour it into the funnel (or the tube, I don't know exactly how to put it).

Carefully, take the funnel out of the tube and place your lipstick in a safe place to solidify. While it does that, come up with a cool name for it. (Mine is Strawberry Soda. Now if only it tasted like strawberry soda...)

Finished project

 I forgot to tell you, you can add a sticker or homemade label to your balm. Attach it with fun Tapefetti, plain tape, or glue.


Also, you might have to sit on your lipstick for a bit in order to make it soft enough to use, which is what I'm doing as I type this. 

Hope you found this useful and fun! --Taryn

Snowboarding!!!!

Hello, readers! Guess what? Yesterday, Daddy and I woke up early (6:39 a.m. early) to go snowboarding! It was so fun!

Yes, just me and Daddy. Mommy and Kathy weren't interested. 

 So anyway, after a 1-hour-and-fifty-minute drive, Daddy and I arrived at our destination. We got fitted for snowboard boots, got snowboards, put on our gear, and hit the slopes!

Okay, we didn't hit the slopes immediately. It was more like we hit the snowy-area-behind-the-ski-racks. I needed to learn how to stand on a snowboard, how to buckle and unbuckle the straps the held my boot on the board, how to push the board so I could get on the chairlift, and how to get off the chairlift. It was hard because I kept having to reposition my foot to push the board. I figured it out eventually. 

Then we went up the chairlift to the bunny hill. Daddy helped me with my boot, and we started down the slope.
I fell on my butt a zillion times on that first run. But I made it down without any injury, and we did the hill again and again and again until I got the hang of it or until it was lunchtime, I don't know which came first. 

After lunch, Daddy convinced me to try a bigger hill. It wasn't super difficult, but it was much higher up than the bunny hill. But there was nothing smaller and I wanted to try doing something bigger. I was scared, but I did it anyway, and actually had some fun--just enough that I wanted to go again.

When Daddy and I got tired and decided to leave, I made a list of observations:

• I can snowboard with my left foot in front nearly as well as I can with my right. I am generally goofy-footed, but with snowboarding, it almost doesn't matter. Almost.
• If you snowboard the way I do, which I can't exactly describe, it really makes your thighs hurt.
• Snowboard boots are MUCH more comfy and easier to put on than ski boots. Also, you can jump in the snowboard boots.
• It's easier to get on and off chairlifts in skis. 
• The place I went to has really good turkey-pesto paninis.