Turtle

Hello, Friends!
Sorry I haven't written anything in awhile. I've been busy with college and stuff.   I just wanted to share something I've made recently. A week or so ago I made a wooden turtle.  I had just finished working on a previous project for an art class I'm in when break started.  I was stuck here at college for fall break, and so I decided that I wanted something to do while all my friends were gone.  So I decided to make a wooden turtle out of some scrap wood as a Christmas present for one of my friends.  I grabbed a block of Walnut wood and some poplar wood boards and got to work.  The feet, head, and tail of the turtle I cut out of the poplar wood on the band-saw.  I then took these pieces and sanded them down on the belt sander, to round off the edges.  Then I took the hunk of walnut and rounded it out on the sander as well, sanding off several inches of wood.  I ended up with pieces that looked like this:

Then, since I was stuck in my room for two days with little else to do, I sanded the rest of it down by hand.  Then I took a box cutter and cut a design into the shell of the turtle and sanded it down some more.  Then I glued all the pieces together with some wood glue, at which point it looked like this:

I considered the turtle finished at that point and am now waiting until Christmas to give it to my friend.  However, since I knew he might come over for open dorms, I left it in one of my other friend's room so that he wouldn't see it.  Then I was talking with her about a ceremonial object I have to make for a class.  We started joking around that I could just do something with the turtle and make an object for the "turtle worshipers." Since we were in a silly mood, my friend started dressing her up as a priestess while she mumbled stuff to the "holy turtle" (this was mainly to mess with a different friend, as she was trying to talk on the phone, and get her to laugh.)  Once we finished dressing her up, we decided that she was gonna go like that trick or treating this Thursday.  Enjoy:

Well, friends, That’s all I got for you for now, but you’ll probably be hearing from me again soon, or not, I never know.  I hope that every single one of your days until then is full of good times, good people, and good food.

Strange as a Dream

I had the strangest day yesterday.  It started off pretty normal, went to Church with my friends Allison, and Mikaila; and then went on a Walmart run.  Then things got a little more interesting when I went to Coldstone and Chipotle for the first time ever.  The adventure really started after we had gotten back to the dorm at the wonderful Cedarville University.  We had gotten some 1/2" PVC pipe and were making nerf blowguns with them.  I had duct taped the blade of a foam sword onto mine so that if anyone got to close in a battle, I could just whack them.  

  

We then took our blow guns with us to ambush some of our other friends whom we were about to eat supper with.  We took our blow guns with us to the dining hall, known as Chucks to the students.  On our way out of Chucks we see Dr. White, the new president of the University eating with his family.  He saw the weapon in my hand and gave me the nod of approval.  You know you have a cool university president when he gives you the nod of approval for carrying around a DIY nerf blowgun around Chucks like a moron.  Anyway, so then we were taking a shortcut through a building and decided that we were gonna start having a nerf war right then and there.  As anyone who is familiar with me knows by now, I get WAY into games.  It is ridiculous how competitive I am, I once literally almost died just so that I wouldn't be "it" in a game of blind mans bluff, but that is a story for another time.  I went to dramatically dive behind a pillar to shield myself from the oncoming missiles when it happened.  I had misjudged my backwards leap and ending up hitting a large porcelain vase and knocking it over.  Everything stopped and we all just stared at the shattered vase on the floor in front of us for a bit, not knowing what to do.  It turns out that maintenance is closed on Sundays so we couldn't go get one of them for help so we turned to the only authority figure we knew the location of.  Yep, my friend went back to Chucks and got the President of the University to come and help us pick up a broken vase!  And he came.  Of all the random people to have come and help clean stuff up, that might be the most random.  So random that if I hadn't been so embarrassed I would have wondered if I was dreaming.  While he helped us clean up, his eight year old daughter took my blowgun and shot at random strangers who were walking by and possibly her little brother as well!  When he went to leave, his 4 year old son wanted to continue playing with the blowgun (he had been running and retrieving the darts for his sister) and started crying because he couldn't.  So basically, because of me, the son of the President of Cedarville was crying.  THEN, and this is just the cherry on top of the icecream sunday that this day was, we went to put the vacuum cleaner back in the closet and found the most random thing I have ever seen in a closet.  It was a cardboard cutout of the retired pastor of Cedarville, beloved by all the students, Pastor Rohm.  and the cardboard cutout was holding a picture of a book that read "Cats for Dummies."  If that is not a strange, random day, then I don't know what is!   And I kid you not, all of this really did happen, I couldn't make up something this random even if I tried.  I hope this story brightened your day, and, if you are a Cedarville student, helped shape your opinion of Dr. White. 

That’s all I got for you for now, but you’ll probably be hearing from me again soon.  I hope that every single one of your days until then is full of good times, good people, and good food. 

lost love

Here is a poem for you today
a poem to send you on your way
I must say, it is quite sad
with that warning do not be mad
here it is for you to read
to read of a sorrow filled deed
in happier times and happier days
when moonlight shone in silver rays
there was love in my heart
but that feeling had to depart
my love had to leave
and for that lost love my heart does grieve
I wish he would return and sweep me off my feet
but in my heart, I am afraid, I have accepted defeat
my prince charming will never come
though, of my friends, I will still have some

summers end

In days now long ago
there was cold and there was snow
and soon, too soon, that time will come again
so I pick up my book and I pick up my pen
and think of days now at an end
days of summer, long and warm
almost over now, as I sit in my dorm
days of sunshine, days of rain
days without having to work my brain
but the school year has come a-gain
off to Cedarville I go
awaiting the days filled with snow
but for now though
my class begins
and so my summer ends
my summer without a care
knowing my friends would always be there
the days spent with my friends
but it ends, it ends, and now my summer
ends

Fish Tacos

Fish tacos. When I think tacos, the first thing I think isn’t “let’s put some fish in that.”  and when I see some fish I don’t think “let’s put that in a taco.”  But my cousin did think that and so we had fish tacos for lunch just the other day.   It was actually not too bad. I wouldn’t say that I’d eat it every week, but I wouldn’t mind eating it once in awhile.

Preparing it is pretty simple, you cook up your fish and put them on a flour or corn tortilla.  Then you add whatever you want to it.  I added shredded lettuce, sour cream, red cabbage with lime juice on it, and the fish taco sauce that my cousin made.  Here is the recipe for the sauce to put on your fish taco:

3 T mayo

⅛ t salt

½ t sugar

4 tomatillos

2 jalapeno peppers

2 cloves of garlic

⅓ c cilantro stems (but leaves are just as fine, honestly)

First you broil the tomatillos, peppers and garlic for 3 minutes on each side or until they are looking slightly charred.  Chop up your cilantro stems into tiny pieces, doesn’t matter too much how small.  Then you throw everything into a blender and blend it together and you have the fish taco sauce.  You can change the amount of garlic and jalapeno peppers as much as you like to taste.  The sauce that I put on my taco had no peppers at all in it and it tasted just fine.

That’s all I got for you for now, but you’ll probably be hearing from me again soon.  I hope that every single one of your days until then is full of good times, good people, and good food.

Adventure is out there!

Today I went on a pretty exciting adventure, Sara and I went kayaking down a river.  The last time Sara and I had gone kayaking we had discovered a nest of earwigs in my kayak, so this time we decided to clean out the kayaks with a hose.  This left the seats of the kayaks sopping wet, especially in Sara’s kayak.

We arrived at the river with the kayaks in tow.  The first kayak we carried along the path in the park to the boat launch.  This was long and tedious and there was a man who looked like he might be a zombie in our way.  So with the next kayak we just cut straight across through the flower garden and pushed the kayak down the hill.  Oh, how I love gravity sometimes..  

Once we had successfully gotten into the kayaks we began our journey.  It started by going down the small rapids in the river.  I have never gone kayaking down any rapids ever so it was quite the experience, but I feel that I did well.  Sara, on the other hand, did not.  She somehow managed to get turned around and went over the last little waterfall backwards.  Other than being a bit shallow, that river was perfect, there was enough of a current and obstacles to make it interesting, but not too many to make it difficult either.  Also, although there were plenty of water bugs, there were no mosquitoes which I was thrilled about.

I knew that the farther we went down the river, the farther we would have to go back to get to the car, but hadn’t planned exactly how we would do this.  I figured it would just happen somehow.  Big mistake on my part, but this is where the real part of the adventure began. I wanted to go back, but I knew that neither of us had the strength to paddle back up those mini waterfalls and rapids so we had no choice but to continue on down the river.  After about a mile after I had wanted to turn around we finally came upon a bridge that crossed over the river.  We had wanted to stop at such a place, leave the kayaks, and return with the car; but there was a creepy man at the bank who was staring us down.  So we continued on.  About another mile up the river I decided that we probably weren’t going to find another bridge anytime soon and I could hear the sounds of cars nearby.  So I pulled my kayak out of the river and climbed up the nearby hill to try to find the road.  Let me quickly note that the hill was covered in beautiful, healthy poison ivy, locust trees (which are covered in thorns), and broken beer bottles.  Oh, and did I mention I went up this hill barefoot?

Sara and I ended up having to temporarily abandon the kayaks and walk up the road to try to find the town in which the van was parked.  We must have looked absolutely ridiculous bursting out of the woods and walking down the road; I had mud caked on my calves and, since we had hosed down the kayaks earlier, Sara had a wet bottom which she was painfully self conscious about.  We did end up finding the car after walking a couple of miles through downtown and getting plenty of strange looks from people who probably thought we were hobos.

Once we had stopped at a gas station and washed off our legs in the sink, we got  in the van and called my dad.  Dad came and single handedly carried both of the kayaks up the hill at the same time, thank you dad.  

I found this adventure to be exciting and would gladly go kayaking down the same river again tomorrow, after planning it much more carefully.  But I think Sara will never trust my spur-of-the-moment ideas ever again, which some might consider a wise decision on her part.  If you want to go kayaking down a river here are the tips I have for you. Plan everything ahead of time: who will have their phone on them in case of emergency, who will drive, how you will get back to the car, how many geese you hope to terrorize, you get the picture.  Also if you discover that you are in the middle of a large and healthy patch of poison ivy, do not fall into despair.  If you wash the part of you that came into contact with the poison ivy fast enough you might be able to wash off the oil of the poison ivy plant before it soaks into your skin and causes all the annoying itching.

I hope you enjoyed this story and learned something from it.  You’ll probably be hearing from me again soon.  I hope that every single one of your days until then is full of good times, good people, and good food.

Raspberry pie recipe

The other day I made a raspberry pie from this recipe:

4 ½ c black raspberries

1 ¼ c sugar

½ c all purpose flour

2 T softened butter

dash of salt

mix together all the ingredients, the order doesn’t matter

If you would rather use cornstarch instead of all purpose flour you can.  The ratio is 2:1 (so for every 2 cups of flour you would use, you instead use 1 cup of cornstarch.)  I mixed all of the ingredients together and put them in a 9 ½ inch pan that already had the crust in it.  I made the crust from this recipe:

2 c flour

1 c crisco

1 tsp. salt

½ c ice water

mix flour and salt.  cut in the crisco.  mix in the water last.  don’t handle the crust too  much or it will be less fluffy when you eat it

I couldn’t find the crisco anywhere so I substituted in butter instead.  If you want to substitute butter for shortening you substitute it at a 1:1 ratio (so instead of 1 cup of shortening you add 1 cup of butter.)  And I had to add some extra raspberries in mine cause it didn’t fill the crust.

Then I put the top crust on in a weaving pattern.  I let it bake for an hour at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  It was a beautiful pie, but not too beautiful to stop me from digging into it!  The pie crust was different than usual because of the substitution that I had made with the butter, it tasted different and wasn’t as flaky.  It didn’t exactly melt in my mouth but it still tasted amazing so I will be making more crusts in the future using butter instead of shortening.