Be a kid again!

Bubble fun!

The other night I was hanging out with a group of friends and one of them decided that he needed to write a list of things that he enjoyed doing as a child and do all of those things in the near future. The funny thing is that I had done all of those things in the past year where as he had not done any of them since childhood.

Some of the things on the list were to: -Build a fort, -Use chalk, -Fly a kite, -Climb a tree, -Blow bubbles, -Play with playdough (which by the way I currently have a pack of 24 sitting in my room thanks to my roommate), and -Color in coloring books.

In a tree

It made me sad that he did not partake in those events since youth. I love all of those things. I then started wondering how many people just think they are far too old for those things. My guess is that even though I still do all of those activities I am sure the majority of people my age do not.

So here is my goal to all of you wonderful people out there. Make a list of things that you loved doing as a child or things that you think of

Fort fun!

children doing and go out and do them!

It really is a lot of fun and you will get much enjoyment out of those activities. So the next time you are bored make a list and go out and relive memories!

The fun of chalking

I want everyone to take a minute and think back to a your childhood. Think of when you were a kid outside when the weather was nice and warm. What were the things you enjoyed doing? Maybe it was blowing bubbles, maybe it was playing some sort of athletic game, or maybe it was coloring with chalk.

I am guessing that at some point in your youth you experienced the joys of playing with chalk. But why did those joys need to end in your childhood? I don't think they did need to end. In fact I don't think you are ever too old to have fun with chalk.

I love going out and doodling with chalk around campus. In fact I love it so much that last semester, every Thursday night my friend and I would go around campus and draw fun little pictures, so on Friday when everyone went to classes they were able to view all of our wonderful art and have no idea who did it. That's right world it was my friend and I that did those little drawings that brought smiles to your face.

When you are drawing with chalk do not do anything super lame, someone wrote "SKATY" (whatever that means) all around campus last year, everyone thought that was silly. Instead it is best to stick to drawing unless you have something cool or important to say with your chalk.

This semester when there was finally a sunny beautiful day, my roommate and I went around campus and drew the sun in different settings. With the sun we wrote lyrics to a song that involved the word 'sun' in it. It was great fun and brought joy to many people.

Not only is chalking a great pass time and great fun for yourself but you can also bring joy to the faces of others. So basically chalking is a win win situation. Now embrace your inner child, dust off that chalk that has been sitting in the corner of your garage for far too long, and go have some fun!

The fun of dressing up!

Do you need a bit of spice added to your ordinary outings? Do you need a bit of excitement and creativity brought into your everyday life? Well have I got the plan for you!

Every once in a while when I want to make something a bit more exciting I like to dress up, in either nice clothing, random cloths, or themed cloths.

Example A. One time my freshman year my friends and I all found the most random cloths we had and piled them all on and went to a movie together like that. We had a lot of fun.

 Example B. On another occasion my freshman year I randomly dressed as a super hero and walked around the dorm like that, it was hilarious.

Example C. Dressing up for girls nights and going out is always a fun idea. I don't know how many times my friends and I have just thrown on dresses and gone out to eat together. Another time my friends and I dressed up and went to The Cheesecake Factory downtown and it was just fun to have the chance to look pretty.

Example D: Sophomore year finals second semester my roommates and I were tired of studying and we just wanted to to something random so we put on really weird clothing and walked around the dorm with whatever food we had in our room and fed people that were studying for finals and needed a study break.

Example E: For my 21st birthday it was a Disney Princess themed birthday, so everyone that attended dressed up as a Disney character. I loved it!

So do something exciting and dress up at some point, it is rather fun and entertaining.

Your Mission

Their Mission was to dance and sing for someone they did not know

Anyone that knows me would tell you that I love to be random. Last year on one special day I decided that I wanted to share my gift of randomness with those that I love. I wanted people to be able to experience the joys and happiness of doing strange little things every so often. So I started handing out what is called "missions".

Let me explain what these are. Last year I started writing little tasks for people to do on little pieces of paper which I called "missions". I first gave them to people that I knew would love being given little random things to do every so often and eventually it spread and a lot of people started receiving missions from me. This happened on a weekly basis.

The person getting the mission would be delivered the mission via a piece of paper, an e-mail, through campus mail, finding it on the bottom of a bench outside... just to name a few. The missions usually start off something like this "Your mission if you so choose to accept it is to...." and it was a huge success.

Sometimes there were themes to my missions. One time I had a boys vs girls battle of the 90 girl bands. I gave the boys a mission to dress up together and perform a Spice Girls song and the girls had to dress up as Destinies Child. The two teams then performed after worship at school one Wednesday night and I got to vote on who did the best.

Another theme was that it was a huge game day around campus. I made one person tag everyone they saw, another played duck duck goose with everyone around them, another played Simon says everywhere they went, etc. 

Not all of the missions had a theme though, they were usually random. Some of the missions were things such as "Swing dance with 5 people today", "Draw 5 pictures for people and deliver it to them without them knowing", "Hug 7 people today, 3 of them have to be people you don't know", "Every time someone says 'What's up,' give them a handshake, turn around and walk away", and they went on and on. 

In future posts I will tell you more of the missions I give people. I will say that after I started this trend people decided to turn around and give me missions back. One time I had to deliver so many pens from our chapel to people I did not know... including but not limited to elderly women at Wal Mart. Another time I had to have a war with my friend outside in front of our library with a banana as a weapon.

If you can get something like this going and actually get people to participate, it can be great fun. It not only brightens your day and the people participating in the event but it also brightens those that see the silliness taking place.

Your mission, if you so choose to accept it is to do something silly today and get people involved with your antics. 

Good luck!

Pranks

The tee pee of my car

One thing that is fun to do when you are bored is to pull pranks. Now I am no master at this though I wish I were. However I do have friends that are pretty good at it so I like listening in on their stories and every now and then I like to initiate pranks by myself.

The best thing is when you can pull a prank on someone and then they do it back to you and then a "prank wars" start between you and your component.

Car + Balloons= success

 A couple of summers ago I filled a room at camp up with balloons and to get me back one of the boys tee peed my car. Earlier this semester the girls next door put weird skeletons and plastic spiders in front of our door (and no it wasn't around Halloween time). So one of my roommates and myself put streamers all over their door. I have also trapped people in their room by covering their door with toilet paper and signs before on their birthday. I filled a car up with balloons, and I have broken into many rooms and decorated them for the residents (as well as kidnap a gnome).

Ransom note for a gnome

Some of my friends love pulling pranks on one of their roommates who is not very observant. Last year they took his door to his room off the hinges and hid it from him. Next they turned the door upside down so it would not close correctly. Next they put a different door entirely on the frame. Lastly they took the door off the hinges so anytime he tried to close it it would fall on the ground.

Bike to deck

We tied that same boys bike to the outside of their deck. This year he had water beads and his roommates liked to hide things such as pumpkins in the beads until he noticed them. That boy was also the victim of an April fools prank last year involving a toilet spraying water all over him when he flushed it.

Streamers!

So the moral of the story is to find someone that is a good sport and is overly easy to pull pranks on. If you ever watch "The Office" Dwight gets pranks pulled on him all of the time, so find a Dwight in your life and be creative but not too mean.

Dance Parties!

Dancing!

Probably one of THE best pastimes to partake in is the wonderful thing known as a dance party.

I absolutely LOVE dancing, I danced for 17 years... however to partake in a dance party you really need no dancing skills once so ever, in fact sometimes it is more fun to have no background in dancing to do this wonderful thing.

So what is a dance party? Well let me tell you: For a dance party it is best to have at least a couple of other friends with you or maybe just one other friend and it is pretty wonderful if you pick out a happy or fast beat song to dance to.

During dance parties it is great fun when you make up dance moves. One of the best things about dance parties is that you can look silly while dancing and no one will judge you, in fact that makes it way more fun!

So why have a dance party? Well for starters it is incredibly fun but it can also be a great stress reliever. At the beginning of camp last summer my partner that worked with my for the high school programming at camp and I were stuck in the office a lot at the beginning of camp. So him, one of my bosses, and myself  decided that we needed a bit of a break everyday or a bit of a stress reliever and we started having what we called our "5:00 dance party". At 5:00 every day we played a song and danced away, it was our fun break for the day.

We carried our dance parties on and off throughout the summer with various people from camp. This was a tradition that I brought back to school. Every so often when I get tired of doing homework or am having a bad day I will just play a happy song and announce to my roommates "it's dance party time" and we will have a dance party.

It is so fun to watch peoples dance moves and different styles and to just take a few minutes break away from the normal to have fun and dance. So for you bored people that are sitting there reading this blog, you should probably stand up, turn on a song, and start dancing!

Cooking/ baking fun!

Getting ready to cook, watch out world

Who likes to cook and who likes to bake? I personally love both! However it can be really boring if you do everything the traditional "normal" way. So I say spice life up a bit and be creative while doing these tasks.

First off I want to talk about the beauty of making dinner. When making dinner it is fun to make it for others right? Right, so my friends and I have started doing "family dinners". Family dinner is the wonderful thing where once a week we come together in someones apartment and make dinner for our group of friends, the apartment switches every week. It is just a great time where we can bond and eat together and come together as a community.

For my best friends birthday last year I made him things with the theme of "food on a stick" so everything was on a stick. Kabobs, corn dogs, pop-cycles, fruit dipped in chocolate, meatballs on a toothpick, it was great fun!

It is really fun to experiment, one of my great friends and I made Indian food the last time she came to visit me.It is now our tradition to experiment and make new food when we are together.

Baking! I love to bake but I also like to be creative while baking. I like to make birthday cakes for my friends birthdays but they tend to be interesting or say something interesting on them. For instance, for one of my friends birthdays we wrote something out in sprinkles on top of the cake for another one we added dye to the cake and made it multicolored and wrote with dye all over the frosting. I once had a cake with a Barbie stuck in the middle and the cake itself was her dress.

For valentines day my friends and I made heart cookies... but they were not your pretty pink and red cookies oh no, they were an ugly greyish blue color, it was great fun.

So have some fun with your cooking skills today and fill your belly!