skip to main |
skip to sidebar
My family and I are always doing crafts and art. These past weeks we have been working on a pirate ship board game. It's going to be an educational game that teaches and also entertains. I must say, it's coming out pretty awesome. It has crow's nests and rigging, a cannon, sails, and 2 upper decks... and of course a plank.
It still has a lot of work left. I still need to make the came cards and the gold coins. To be honest, I still have to figure out how it will really be played out. But i did have some trouble in creating one crucial element, the stairs to go from the lower deck to the upper.
So I decided to use wooden dowels and wrap them in plastic, then create steps using the wrapping technique as well. The plastic I used is called Polly Plastics. It's a moldable plastic pellet kit. It comes with 10 oz. of white pellets that melt clear and six baggies filled with color pellets that you can use to customize your plastic's color however you wish.
On my first attempt, I ended up using 1 TBSP white, 10 gold pellets, and 4 black. This is what it looked like after it sat in hot water for a minute and was played with. The water has to be really hot. I used my electric kettle to keep it at a nice temperature.
It took a little getting used to, trying to find that balance between too soft and too hard and getting the plastic to mold together well. But after some trial and error it went smoother and I was able to do mostly what I wanted.
I think this has so much potential. I'll be using it to create hairdos for my wooden peg people for use in future board games, as well as other cool artworks. My kids especially loved seeing what you could do. My favorite part is that you can use and reuse it.
I would definitely recommend it for any crafty family. To learn more, check out Polly Plastics on Amazon.
Except for the product(s) given to me for the purpose of reviewing, I received no compensation for this post. All opinions are 100% my own.
My electric can opener isn't all I thought it would be. I mean, it beats using a manual one on every can, but it definitely has it's flaws. For instance, it wont open big cans. It grabs a hold of a big can, tears through it for all it's worth for a whole 2 seconds, then stops like, "Nuh uh, I'm done!" Every time. I end up having to repeat the process 20 times.
So it's about time I got a manual can opener to assist. This one is from X-Chef. I love X-Chef. It looks just like other X-Chef gadgets, which is awesome because it matches my peeler and a few other items I have.
It seems pretty rugged as far as the handles and rotating part goes. It's got a nice set of loops to hang it if you'd like. I personally love hanging things in my kitchen.
It opens a can very easily with no catching or grinding to a halt. It did leave a small part unopened, likely because I removed it early and messed up the lid before reattaching it and trying to finish it off. It served it's purpose though and the can was opened.
It wasn't hard to place the opener on the can, sometimes with can openers that's an issue, but this one went on very slick. The wheel was easy to turn and I was done in no time. I am very happy with the can opener and I would recommend it.
To learn more, check out X-Chef on Amazon.
Except for the product(s) given to me for the purpose of reviewing, I received no compensation for this post. All opinions are 100% my own.
My nephew is an amazing little guy. He's all of 10 and knows how to change scripts and create mods for his video games. No one taught him, he just picked it up. He's so smart. He inspired The Big One to want to learn coding so that she could better understand how games work.
So we decided to check out coding courses and Simply Coding was nice enough to let us test out one of theirs. We went with the JavaScript course, it shows you the basics of creating simple video games using Java Script.
In the lessons, you first learn about the different parts of html, then you branch into what goes between the tags inside that html. We learned about functions, variables, types, and methods. We learned what each of those does and how to write them out correctly. We learned how to make objects bounce, disappear, randomize, and change.
The first game we did was Pong, basically ping pong in digital form. It was easy to customize the objects and text in the game. I used digital scrapping elements for the ball and paddles.
We learned how to make objects interact with each other. For instance, in the Fish game that we did next, we learned how to make it so that the big fish could eat smaller fish and grow. We were also able to customize that one fairly easily. We used a more decorative background and changed the fish up a little. We controlled the big yellow fish you see up above. It changed direction when we changed the arrow we were pressing. In this second game we did come across the first flaw of the program. We had to copy and paste the images from the Fish Image folder to the Pong Image folder because the code didn't work otherwise. It was an easy fix and anyone with a good understanding of how computer things work could have figured it out, so I don't consider it a big downfall.
The program does come with all the files you need for creating the games, including audio. It comes in a downloadable WinZip file. What's nice is that the program also comes with a cool 8 GB flash drive that looks similar to a key. It's one of the coolest USB drives I have ever seen and it's a nice size storage too.
Now, this is where I'm brutally honest. I really don't think my daughter would be able to handle this course. It's not that she's not smart, she's so incredibly smart... it's that the coding needs to be exact, you need to focus and memorize... I think my nephew could do it. He has a head for this sort of thing. I think The Big One might be more interested in html and website design. This course is definitely for kids who are okay with techy speak, a sample code would be something like this:
enemy.scaleSize(.5 + Math.random() * 1.2);
enemy.moveTo(-enemy.getWidth(), Math.random()*(enemy.getClamp().y)) I'm glad to have it though, it makes for a really fun time. It was interesting to see what happened when I made small changes to things like friction, acceleration, etc.
To learn more, check out Simply Coding on Facebook, Blogger, Instagram, Amazon, or on their website at SimplyCoding.org.
Except for the product(s) given to me for the purpose of reviewing, I received no compensation for this post. All opinions are 100% my own.
I love my essential oils. I use them to help my anxiety, I use them to wake me up, help me sleep or even to just smell nice. They're good for cleaners and Febreeze style fresheners. The only thing I'm not big on is that they aren't super portable unless you get the smaller bottles. Most of my bottles are the larger 4 oz. glass ones, so they aren't exactly going with me.
So when I found out that such a thing existed as essential oil roller bottles, I was so excited. These ones in particular are cobalt blue glass vials with roller balls at the top. you basically just fill it with whatever oils you want and pop the top in, that's it!
I decided to go with a combination of Jasmine and Bergamot. Jasmine for anxiety and help sleeping (I've had a bit of insomnia lately), and also because it smells nice enough to pass as perfume. I filled the bottle half way with each.
At first the roller ball seemed a bit stiff, but after sitting for a few days, it rolled much easier. It works exactly as I had hoped it would and leaves a wonderful smell behind.
I would definitely recommend these bottles for whoever might want to be able to bring their oils around with them.
To learn more, check out 2PM Essentials.
Except for the product(s) given to me for the purpose of reviewing, I received no compensation for this post. All opinions are 100% my own.
My dental hygiene habits are not great. I blame it on my childhood... can I do that? I do remember being asked to brush my teeth once in a while and I remember in high school, I brushed almost every morning and tried to get myself in better habits. But to be honest, I am terrible at anything that's "routine". My teeth are so bad now, brushing hurts and I hate flossing. I've always hated flossing. the picks don't bother me too bad, but the string turns my fingers blue and slips off my finger tips. I hate everything about it.
Until now. Why? Well, because I have a water flosser. It's a device that creates a very strong stream of water that blasts through the gaps between your teeth and essentially flosses your teeth for you. It's amazing. I'll be honest here and say that if the water isn't warm, it hurts my teeth. So although I do try to keep the flosser by my bed to remind myself, I can't use it without going to get warm water... room temp water is too cold.
The flosser doesn't run on batteries like you might expect. It runs on an internal battery that you recharge by plugging it into the wall, much like your cell phone does. I haven't charged mine once and I've used it for at least a week on the charge it came with!
The flosser has three modes. It has a normal mode, a soft mode, and a pulse for massage. More brutal honesty, the normal mode actually made my gums bleed a little. It's a powerful stream of water. My gums are very unhealthy though, so it's no real surprise. The soft was fine and I should use it until my gums are more healthy. The pulse was interesting. I prefer a more steady stream, personally.
It holds the water in a removable water tank. you can either fill it up by taking the water tank off or just flipping up the cover on the top of the machine and using that. Both work just as well, it's all just a preference thing.
I would absolutely recommend this flosser. It even comes with an extra tip for couples and they have separate colors so you can tell them apart. To learn more, check out Gurin on Amazon.
Except for the product(s) given to me for the purpose of reviewing, I received no compensation for this post. All opinions are 100% my own.
