Make Fun Of Life! - Activities

Welcome to our 'Activities' page!

6/12/2017

We were made to play - to run, to jump, to skip, to walk, to swim, to wiggle, and to move things around and alter our environments to suit us . . . and so with that in mind, here's to all that fun stuff and so much more!

What's here? Travel down this page and you will discover how to make Bouncy Elastic Fun Putty and One Big Cookie and other things humans came up with in their imaginations. We will have much more in the way of joyful activities on this page in the coming days, since there are an endless variety of possible expressions of fun that life has to offer to all of us. MFOL! . . . Because there's such a lot of lively living to do!

People to See, Places to Visit, Things to Do

6/11/2017

People to See, Places to Visit, Things to Do
□ Make a list of the people you have not met yet or have not seen in a while, the places you have not visited yet or have not visited in a while, and the things you have not done yet or have not done in a while.
□ Decide on a time period: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly (every 3 months), semiannually (2 times in a year), yearly, every two years, every five years, or every ten years.
□ Within each time period, visit one or more of the places on your list, meet one or more of the people on your list, or do one or more of the things on your list.

What to Take Along
□ A decent quality camera, not just the so-so one on your cell phone.
□ A notebook and a pen or a pencil.
□ Business cards with your name and contact information if you have any.
□ An autograph book.
□ A friend or friends.
□ A list of questions.

Root Beer Float Recipe

1/16/2017

Root Beer Float Recipe

Ingredients
□ Mug or large drinking glass
□ Spoon
□ Plastic drinking straw (optional)
□ Vanilla ice cream
□ Root beer soft drink

Instructions
1. Place one, two, or three scoops of ice cream in mug or large drinking glass.
2. Slowly pour in root beer soft drink.
3. Serve.

Add more mugs and spoons and plastic drinking straws, plus napkins and people, to make a root beer float social.

Root beer is a carbonated soft drink containing artificial sassafras flavoring, and does not contain sassafras or beer. It is widely sold under Shasta, S & W, Mug, Hires, and other brand names, particularly in North America, but is spreading in popularity and availability to other regions. If root beer is not available, try using other flavors of carbonated soft drinks.

Family Historian

1/15/2017

Every family should have a family historian, or perhaps two, or maybe a threesome, or more - you probably cannot have too many!

Collect from each member of the family and relative the following items.
□ A lock of hair, naturally colored, or gray, or white, or whatever is available.
□ A piece of paper with an autograph, or signature, on it.
□ A photograph or photographs.
□ Some physical details about the person, such as height, eye color, freckles, and so on.
□ Some detail about the person’s life, such as type of work he or she does, accomplishments, honors, and so on.
□ Date of birth.
□ A favorite quotation, joke, poem, short written paragraph, story, or note from the person.

Put each person’s items together on a page of a photograph album or scrapbook or in a frame or box. Keep it in a special place so that it will be available in the years to come, as for example, at family visits or reunions.

Merry Miser-Cheapskate Christmas

12/8/2016

As every miser and cheapskate knows, Christmas trees are huge, bulky, and they come in and take over your whole house (or tent, if you live in a tent). On the other hand, pinecones are teeny, weensy, and tiny. Mostly, though, they are cheap, because you can often find them lying around on the ground near pine trees. If you collect your own cones from the forest, be sure to bake them in your oven at about 200 degrees Fahrenheit for about ten minutes to drive out any bugs and moisture that may be in them, or place them in a dry, airy place to air-dry for a month or two. The oven heat and air-drying may cause the cones to open up, allowing you to more easily paint them or glue on decorations such as beads, glitter, yarn, or sequins. Wobbly pinecones can be glued to a round, flat cardboard base. Next comes the really fun part for misers and cheapskates: finding presents small enough and inexpensive enough to fit under an itty-bitty Christmas pinecone!

Make an Alphabet of It

10/26/2016

Make an Alphabet of It

At the top of a sheet of paper or a computer screen, write or type the name of a subject. Place the letters of the alphabet in a column along the left side of the paper or screen. Now write words associated with the subject next to each letter. For example, we can take the subject ‘work’ and make an alphabet of it.
________________________________________________________

Work Alphabet

A - achieving sales goals, answering phones, assembling products.

B - bundling orders, break, breakthrough.

C - calculating costs, career, clients, commute, co-workers, customers.
________________________________________________________

In a Work Alphabet, could we place ‘clowns’ after the letter ‘c’? Possibly, because some work takes place where clowns can be found!

Continue through all 26 letters of the alphabet. Some letters may be challenging, especially letters such as k, q, u, x, y, and z.

Can you make alphabets for subjects such as friends, walking, homework, neighborhoods, music, farms, church, government, playtime, or forests? On what other subjects what would you like to make an alphabet?

Time Capsule

8/26/2016

Time Capsule

What is a time capsule? A time capsule is a container that holds items, until it is opened by people at some time in the future to reveal what is inside. A time capsule is intended to allow people to learn about the way people lived or what things were like in times past. Time capsules can serve as messages or links between people who will likely never meet because they lived in different times.

How is a time capsule made? A good container for a time capsule is a five-gallon heavy-duty plastic bucket with a handle and a lid, similar to the one shown in the picture above. New, empty, clean ones are available from stores and online retailers such as www.Amazon.com. Some businesses buy these types of buckets with lard, laundry detergent, or other bulk material in them, and once they have used the contents, they throw the buckets and lids away, so you might try asking around to find if any local businesses such as restaurants or commercial laundries have empty ones they possibly might give to you at little or no cost. However, keep in mind that if a bucket contained pickles or other ingredients with a strong odor, it may be impossible to remove the odor completely, and it will taint anything you put into the bucket, and of course, you would not want to re-use a bucket that once contained a possibly hazardous substance such as a degreasing agent used by an auto repair shop.

Be sure everything you place inside the time capsule container is absolutely dry, because even a very tiny amount of moisture would migrate around inside it and damage or destroy all of the contents. A desiccant, which is a material that absorbs water, would be a good thing to include inside a time capsule. Although you might be tempted to include canned food or a bottle of wine or something else containing liquid, keep in mind that if the contents of a can rusts through or the cork or cap of a bottle fails with the passage of time, the entire contents of the time capsule will be destroyed. Do not place batteries or devices with batteries in them inside the time capsule; batteries can leak as they age, and the acid in them is very corrosive to metals and will damage other materials.

If you want to include information for posterity, remember that what you record it on could be obsolete by the time the capsule is opened - just think of cassette tapes, floppy disks, 8-track tape cassettes, VHS tapes, and so forth - although these things were once common, almost no one now has machines that can read or display what is recorded on them. Your best bet might be to go with good old-fashioned ink on paper and photographs printed on photo-quality paper.

You could purchase inexpensive books with blank pages or lined notebooks such as Composition Notebooks. You might take a notebook and go around asking people a question, such as, “What is the purpose of life?” or “What is your typical day like?” or “What is important to you?” or “What message would you like to send into the future?” or something else, and write their answers, their names, age or date of birth, and the date you asked the question, in the book, and include this in your time capsule for people to read in the future. A pair of men’s shoes and a pair of women’s shoes and some other articles of clothing would be great to include. How about a t-shirt with the logo of your school sport team printed on it? How about a few coins or some paper money? How about a few small children’s toys?

You could make a time capsule all by yourself, or you could ask each person you know to donate an item to the time capsule. Common, ordinary, everyday things might actually be better to fill a time capsule with than expensive or unusual objects.

Include information from your interests and the interests of other people; for example, if you like to cook, write down a few of your favorite recipes to include; if you like to make things by hand such as crafts or jewelry or fishing lures, include a few examples of your best work. Photographs are very important because people and places and things change dramatically over time; take photographs of your home, the street you live on, the main streets and attractions of your community, parks, schools you attended and places where you worked, your church or temple or synagogue, your pets, your vehicle, individuals and groups of people, and people doing things such as playing or picnicking or working. Each photograph should have complete information about it: date taken, names of people in it, location, and anything else that might be important to people seeing it in the future.

Place the lid on the container, and use a rubber mallet to completely tamp down the lid onto the container for a good, tight seal. If you do not have a rubber mallet, hold a piece of scrap wood on the lid and gently but firmly hit the wood with a regular hammer. Visually examine the lid and bucket closely to make sure the lid is on tightly and evenly.

A time capsule can be buried in the ground - preferably ‘high ground’ that does not flood or become completely saturated with water, but one could also be placed inside the wall of a building, inside the base of a statue, inside a stone or brick or concrete wall outside, under pavement such as a driveway or sidewalk, in an attic or crawl space, in the space under some stairs, or in a seldom-accessed storage area. You might even put your time capsule in a cave, buried in the cave floor or behind a pile of rocks.

Now here’s something to consider carefully: Suppose you place a time capsule somewhere, and everyone who knows about it dies or moves away or forgets about it - how are you going to make a record of its location so that someone, perhaps someone who will never know or meet you, can know of its existence? Perhaps you might simply count on someone in the future stumbling upon your time capsule by chance.

You do not have to limit yourself to one time capsule. You could make a new one each year or every two years, or every five or ten years. As a school project, each graduating class of a school every year could make its own separate time capsule, or a scout troop could make a time capsule. A family reunion or a class reunion could be a good event at which to put together a time capsule.

Text Art - Sailing Ship

5/18/2016

Text Art - Sailing Ship

Let’s build a sailing ship together, using the characters and symbols found on the keyboard in front of you.

We’ll construct it line by line.

First, we begin with the pendant flags near the top of the masts, and the tippy-top of our topsails.

We’ll use the ‘underline’ or ‘_’ key, found near the right side of the top of your keyboard, followed by the ‘vertical bar’ or ‘|’ key located second from the top on the far right hand side of your keyboard just below the ‘backspace’ key, then the ‘tilde’ or ‘~’ key on the far upper left hand key.

_|~_|~_

Done! Now you begin to ‘get the picture.’

We start the next line, and you can guess the keys from what appears below.

_|~_|~_
)____))____)

That was the left-hand or open part of the parenthesis sign or ‘(’ followed by four strokes of the underline key, followed again by the right-hand or close part or ‘)’ of the parenthesis sign, and then repeat the keying sequence. We now hit the ‘enter’ key and do it all over again in the next line. Not difficult at all, right?

_|~_|~_
)____))____)
)____))____)

Now we build the deck of our ship. It is composed of underlines and vertical bars, plus the ‘slash’ or ‘/’ symbol located in the lower right corner of your keyboard, where it shares the key with the question mark or ‘?’ sign. Any questions???

_|~_~|_
)____))____)
)____))____)
__|__|__/

Now what we have is essentially a raft. To make it a ship we add a hull consisting of a vertical bar, several underlines, and a slash.

_|~_|~_
)____))____)
____|____|__/
|__________/

It doesn’t quite look right, right? No worries, we’ll get it shipshape before we sail out of the harbor - but first, we need some water or our sailing ship isn’t going anywhere!

A dozen, or twelve, tildes should do it.

_|~_|~_
)____))____)
)____))____)
__|__|__/
|______/
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now we begin to set things a-right and true. We move our curser to the front of each line and we toy around with the underline symbol, adding and deleting underline segments until it looks about right. Hmmm, we have two masts - would that qualify our ship as a two-masted schooner? We’ll have to drag in some old sailors and borrow their ‘nautical knowledge’ on that one.

__|~___|~_
)____))____)
)____))____)
___|____|___/
|__________/
~~~~~~~~~~~~

So there we have our ship afloat in the water, all nice and proper, ready to set sail and head out to sea. We’re sure to have a safe journey and a profitable venture with our seaworthy crew of chuckle-heads from MFOL! We’ll christen it the U.S.S. Make Fun Of Life!

And that, ladies and gents, is a first class sailing ship! Ahoy! Thar’s pirates in them thar waters. Go below decks and fetch the muskets and prepare the cannons. Bring her about, mateys!

The characters and symbols on your keyboard can be used to create an endless variety of text art pictures, just use your imagination.

More activities follow below . . .

Lemon Candy Recipe

9/19/2015

Lemon Candy Recipe

All you need are three ingredients and a kitchen to make this hard candy. Responsible adult supervision is required.

Ingredients
□ 1 cup of white granulated sugar.
□ About 2 teaspoons of lemon extract or lemon juice concentrate.
□ Sheet of wax paper placed on a cookie sheet.

Instructions
1. Place sugar and lemon extract or juice in a nonstick cooking pan and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved and has no lumps, adjusting the amount of lemon extract or juice as necessary.
2. Heat mixture on stovetop burner using low heat to prevent sugar from burning.
3. Carefully pour the mixture onto wax paper or spoon onto the wax paper with a greased spoon.
4. Set cookie sheet of lemon candy aside until fully cooled and hardened.
5. Break candy apart and enjoy!

To make all pieces of candy the same size and shape, use a flexible candy mold. Candy may be stored in a plastic bag or other container; however, to prevent pieces from sticking together, lightly dust candy with powdered sugar. Please let us know how the recipe works for you, and please share your ideas for fun activities with us, at MakeFunOfLife@mail.com. More activities follow below.

No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies Recipe

12/12/2014

No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies Recipe

You don’t need an oven to make these cookies . . . so why not 'no-bake' some right now?

Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

Ingredients
□ 2 cups granulated sugar
□ 4 tablespoons cocoa powder
□ 1 stick or 1/4 cup or 4 ounces butter
□ 1/2 cup milk
□ 1 tablespoon vanilla flavoring or vanilla extract
□ 1 cup smooth or crunchy peanut butter
□ 3 cups regular rolled oats or old-fashioned oatmeal or quick-cooking oatmeal (sold as Quaker Oats and by other brand names)
□ waxed paper or greased cookie sheet

Directions
□ Combine the sugar, cocoa, butter and milk in a heavy saucepan and bring it to a boil over medium heat for 1 minute.
□ Remove from heat and add the vanilla, peanut butter, and oatmeal.
□ Working quickly, drop the mixture by the teaspoonful onto waxed paper.
□ Allow the cookies to completely cool and harden before removing them from the waxed paper.

The cookie mixture can be measured with one teaspoon, and a second teaspoon can be used to push the mixture out of the first teaspoon and onto the waxed paper. The recipe can be adjusted to improve it if need be; if the cookies come out too thin or too thick, trying changing the amount of oats; experiment by adding in small amounts of different ingredients such as chopped nuts or shredded coconut or chopped-up candy.

We hope to eventually have microwave directions for this recipe.

“You can’t roller-skate in a buffalo herd, but you can be happy if you’ve a mind to.” -Roger Miller

Many more activities follow - just scroll down this page. Make Fun Of Life! . . . where there's always something funny going on! ;-)

Bouncy Elastic Fun Putty Recipe

11/16/2014

Bouncy Elastic Fun Putty Recipe

Using common and inexpensive ingredients, you can easily mix up your own playtime fun that you can stretch, squish in your hands, mold into shapes, pull apart and put back together, and throw and play catch with over short distances.

Ingredients
□ 2 plastic containers with water-tight and air-tight lids (sold in the kitchen items isle as Glad Loc Ware, Rubbermaid Twist & Seal, Ziploc Twist 'n Loc, and by other brand names).
□ 3/8 cup of cold water.
□ 4 ounce bottle or 1/2 cup of PVA glue (white glue sold as ‘Elmer’s School Glue,’ ‘Elmer’s Glue-All,’ and by other brand names).
□ 2 or 3 drops of liquid food coloring or other coloring substance (optional).
□ 1/4 cup of warm water.
□ 1 teaspoon of borax (sold in a box in the laundry products isle as ‘20 Mule Team’ and by other brand names).

Instructions
1. Put the glue and cold water (and food coloring if desired) together in one container, place the lid tightly on the container, and shake the container vigorously for about 1 minute to completely dissolve the glue in the water; now set this mixture aside.
2. Put the warm water and borax in the other container, place the lid tightly on the container, and shake the container vigorously for about 1 minute to completely dissolve the borax in the water.
3. Pour the borax-water solution into the glue-water solution, place the lid tightly on the container, and shake the container vigorously for about 1 minute (occasionally you may encounter a temperamental batch that may need up to 5 minutes of vigorous shaking to absorb all of the liquid and fully congeal into a single lump).

What just happened? The glue is a type of polymer called Poly-Vinyl-Acetate (PVA for short), while the borax is a chemical called sodium borate. When mixed together, the borax reacts with the glue, and the resulting substance absorbs the water to form large, smooth, stretchable, slightly bouncy molecules.

Store bouncy elastic fun putty in an airtight container, such as a resealable plastic bag or a plastic container with a lid, to prevent it from drying out. If it is divided into 2 equally sized chunks, each chunk will fit inside a resealable snack-size bag. If stored for a long period of time, the putty may become inconsistent; just rework it with your hands to get it back into shape.

Please note that the ingredient borax should not be confused with boric acid, which is a completely different substance. Borax is safe to handle, being nontoxic in contact with the skin or if ingested in the quantity used in the recipe. Boric acid, however, is a potentially harmful substance which should never be in contact with skin or ingested. Read package directions before opening to ensure you have the correct ingredient.

Although safe and nontoxic, bouncy elastic fun putty is not intended to be eaten or ingested by humans or animals, as it contains no beneficial nutrients and is not a food product. The play material is for children six years of age and up and for adults, with appropriate adult supervision recommended for persons of any age whose mental state might require adult supervision in play and recreational activities.
________________________________________________________

Coloring Your Fun

Food coloring is one option for making your toy visually captivating, but if you want vibrant colors that really stand out, called ‘day-glow’ colors, use the ink from highlighter markers. First, get a plastic container with a watertight and airtight lid, one container for each color of marker (highlighters come in yellow, green, yellow-green, pink, orange, blue, and sometimes other colors). Add 1 and 1/2 cups of water to the container. Using a pair of needle-nose pliers, take apart the highlight marker, first pulling out the felt tip and placing it in the container of water, then removing the piece of plastic from the base end or bottom of the marker, and finally pulling out the inside material from the marker. Lay this material on a piece of kitchen plastic wrap and make a cut with a pair of scissors along the length of the plastic casing; it will not be necessary to remove the casing, only to cut through it to allow the ink to disperse into the water in the container. Now place it in the container with the water. Put the lid tightly on the container, and shake the container vigorously for about 30 seconds. The colored water is now ready to be measured and used as the cold water to mix with the PVA glue in the recipe.

Another coloring option is a beverage or drink mix (sold as Kool Aid and by other brand names). If you add no coloring substances to the recipe, you can make white bouncy elastic fun putty.
________________________________________________________

Build Your Own Bouncy Elastic Fun Putty Factory

B.E.F.P. is great for birthday parties, science classes, and all kinds of fun get-togethers for children, childlike grownups, and adults who might have forgotten how to play and need to be reminded.

If you want to make great gobs of gooey stuff over and over again, your life will be greatly simplified if you build a ‘factory.’ Here’s how: Get a plastic storage box with a lid, to hold everything: containers with lids, measuring cups and measuring spoons, PVA glue, borax, and coloring substances if desired, all of which go into the making of your fun. You might also want to include sheets of plastic or plastic table-cloths, paper towels, resealable plastic bags, kitchen plastic wrap, plastic trash bags, and any other items to help with manufacturing and clean-up.

And sure, you could make bouncy elastic fun putty and present it as a finished product to people, but you could also allow them to mix up the ingredients themselves, even allowing them to choose what color to make their toy.
________________________________________________________

Please send an email message to MakeFunOfLife@mail.com and let us know what you like to do for fun with your B.E.F.P. As ever, we are M.F.O.L.! . . . Specializing in smiles.

One Big Cookie Recipe

11/15/2014

One Big Cookie Recipe

Makes one single-serving deep dish chocolate chip cookie.

Ingredients
□ 1 tablespoon melted butter.
□ 1 tablespoon white sugar.
□ 1 tablespoon brown sugar.
□ 3 drops of vanilla.
□ pinch of salt.
□ 1 egg yolk.
□ 1/4 cup flour.
□ 2 tablespoons chocolate chips.

Instructions
1. Mix all ingredients together.
2. Microwave for 40 to 60 seconds in a cup or bowl.
3. Allow hot cookie to cool before eating.

Bird is the Word!

11/14/2014