Sunday Randomness #209: Vending machine at a local laundromat

 

The local laundry mat has a vending machine and sometimes they offer seasonal treats.

Such as The Perfect Man treat around Valentine's Day a few years ago.  He's "sweet & rich". 

Sunday Randomness #275: Bringing puzzles back: Jan and Feb 2025 with 49 and 50 Sweet treats

White Mountain 1000 piece Tasty Treats (Yes, this one tempted us with temptation treats!)

MB Puzzle EZ Grasp 300 piece Ice Cream Social (Yet another temptation puzzle!)

 

The ongoing saga of B-B and B Part 23: Toy Stealing to Mutual Carrot Chomping

These contrasting videos were shot on the same day, less than a 1/2 hour apart.  Are these two behaving like siblings, or what? In the first one, at around 7:50 p.m., B decides that B-B cannot have his blue rubber and rope tug toy and makes some interesting vocalizations to determine toy ownership.

In the second video around 8:15  p.m. I had given them several full size carrots cut in half so that they would each get a few pieces.  Surprisingly, they still share common chunks of carrot. (Not shown in the video but they did share and took bites from some of the same carrot halves with their heads right next to each other.)  I would have thought they'd be more inclined to fight over the food.  When we first got B-B a year ago there would be some sharp reactive growls and behaviors from B over food and food bowls but now they take turns licking out each others food bowls and will even take turns with some foods.  B-B tends to wolf things down as quickly as he can but B takes her time.  However, sometimes she surprises us and eats more quickly.  She'll move over to B-B's portion and they communally eat from the same bowl with no signs of aggression or territorial/reactive behavior.  We have worked to make sure they both ate separately until they both seemed satisfied and used a spray bottle with water when one went to steal a treat from the other one.  We also put them on leashes when they get a long lasting treat like a cow ear so they have separation from each other to just keep one (mostly-I mean entirely-B-who would happily keep many treats to herself even if just to hoard them away from B-B who barks in frustration when she hogs some of the toys).  Maybe carrots are just the magical sharing treat since they've done this before: https://cookingandorscience.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-ongoing-saga-of-b-b-and-b-part-9.html

 

The ongoing saga of B-B and B Part 10 in which B-B battles a box

I'd thrown a treat in the cereal box and B-B was trying to get it.  Sweet B-B, we love you even when we're laughing at your antics! 
 

Old Faithful with 3 Ingredients

Jessica has been pressed for time with all of her practicing and various musical practice sessions so she kept the recipe for this week simple and sweet. Just butter, marshmallows and crisp rice cereal to make traditional Rice Krispy Treats.

Jessica starting doing free-form treats on a cookie sheet a couple of years ago since she found that it kept the treats airy and easier to consume. With this shape, one just pulls off the desired amount of treat instead of cutting the treats which inevitably crushed them and left a fair amount of crumb residue. So one gets more choices in size and shape and with less mess using the free-form method. Although it can play havoc with trying to figure out portion size..... how much of a handful is one serving?

Express Lessons for Family Home Evening

Do you often run out of time?!? Does it seem like you can't manage to organize Family Home Evening on a regular basis? Do people in your family seem unmotivated about getting together on Monday nights as a family?

Well, here's the answer! Yes, it's the all new and (I'm sure improved!) 52 Weeks of Family Night by Tamara Baggett. These "Fast and Easy Lessons for Young Families" (we're all young at heart!) will help you, too, to get back on the track of weekly (or sometimes more realistically-monthly) Family Home Evenings.

Each lesson is only a couple of pages long with a song suggestion, scripture reference and applicable stories for subjects ranging from "Ammon and the King" to "Family Garden" to "Family History" to "Rebekah at the Well" to "Stripling Warriors" to "The Widow's mite". A full 52 lessons fill the pages of this little gem of a book!

You can even have surprise lessons by using the numbered illustration cut-out cards in the back of the book. Just cut out the cards, have someone pick one and teach that lesson for the evening! Have even more fun by letting each of your children pick a card and do several lessons at once!

Yes, now your family can take just five or ten minutes to have family home evening-no more excuses! (This is just a minimum time recommendation-for actual learning and interaction the time should be increased with questions and discussion.) Treats Not Included.


(We really have enjoyed using this little book for some fast and easy lessons. It's been a fun way for us to involve everyone since the lessons are easy enough for each person in the family to present a lesson on their own and they plan that FHE. Our ratio of weeks with family home evenings to weeks without family home evening have become the inverse of each other thanks to this tiny book. Remember, this book is to be a supplement-not a replacement for a full fledged family home evening. Use as directed by parental instruction and prayer.)

Popcorn Balls and Yahtzee

For Family Home Evening we had popcorn balls for our treat and played yahtzee for our game with a lesson , song and prayers included. The kids obviously need to get a little more practice in before our games of yahtzee will move along quickly. I grew up playing at my grandparents and some of the games got rather exciting. But our kids were a little bored since they haven't mastered the different scoring possibilities like if you should go for a full house or a large straight or try to get the 63 points necessary to get the bonus 35 points on the upper section. Sigh. Well on to the treat which was chewy and yummy-but watch out for dental damage. This site is not responsible for any health issues which may arise due to following any recipe or suggestion on this site.

Here's the recipe for the popcorn balls:

Popcorn Balls
1c. corn syrup
3 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. butter
1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk
1 tbsp. vanilla
6 quarts popped corn

Combine syrup, sugar and butter and bring to a boil. Add condensed milk and boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and add vanilla. Pour hot syrup over popcorn and mix well with spoon. Allow mixture to cool somewhat and then grease hands and make balls out of mixture and place on parchment or waxed paper to cool. Reshape into balls if they start falling apart. Store in a covered container once they are cool and set.