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!

Spicing up games



The beauty of games



Hello there! So one thing I love to do when I am bored is play games.

 I grew up on board games and card games, so it is a wonderful pastime. Sometimes it gets a little boring just playing "normal" games so it can be fun to spice them up a bit.



Apartment Twister

 Example A: Apartment Twister. This is how you play it; get a Twister set... or rather the spinner you use to land on a color. Spread colors around your apartment, house, or room. Gather friends and start spinning a color. Instead of using the sheet of circle colors the players use colors they find around the apartment to put their feet or hands on, the rest of the rules are to be followed the same way. If you fall over you lose, if you take a hand or foot off a color,you lose. This game is great fun!

Telephone Pictionary

Example B: Telephone Pictionary. Most people have played telephone and most people have played pictionary, now combine the two. This is one of if not my favorite games. This is how you play: everyone playing gets a piece of paper. Everyone first writes a sentence; it can be a random sentence, it can be a lyric, whatever you want it to be. Then everyone passes their paper around the circle to the next person and the next person draws a picture from the sentence. They then fold the sentence and pass the picture around the circle to the next person. The next person has to write the first thing that comes to their mind that they think the picture is and then they pass it to the next person after folding the picture, and the next person draws a picture. This continues until you get your paper back. It is great fun and super silly. I now have a huge binder of wonderful telephone pictionary games.

Example C: Squirrel tag. I have friends that like to play tag... with squirrels. They try to trap the squirrels and tag them... they do not really succeed but it is very entertaining to watch. When I partook in this game I was afraid that I would get bitten and get rabies, but it was still fun.

Example D: Campus tag: Tag someone on your campus, start running and hope that it causes a huge chain reaction.

Example E: Duck duck goose... A lot of times when I see people standing in circles I like to just start walking around that circle and tapping them on the head and playing duck duck goose, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't but it is great fun when it does.

These are just a few wonderful pastime games. If you are bored and have friends gathered I urge you to try a game out or if you want to try something goofy at school try out one of the big group games.

Enjoy!

The Doodle Wall

The doodle wall

Hello all of you cool cats out there. How are you feeling on this Wednesday evening? Are you a bit bored and need a little pick me up to help you get through the rest of the week?

Well I have just the task for you... it is called "The doodle wall". This wall is magical, it holds the key to all that is colorful and fun. What is the wall you ask? Well just hold your horses I am about to tell you.

This is what the doodle wall is: it is a glorious wall made of paper and it is where you and all of your friends can gather together to make doodles!

Yes I know it is very exciting. For this you are either going to have to find big roles of paper or lots of paper and cover a wall with it. My roommate and I use crayons for our doodle wall. If you use markers it may get on the wall and that would not be good. Pencils do not show up that well. So crayons are the best option.

When you don't know what to do you can simply go into your room and color. If you need a break you can go and color. Coloring is a good stress reliever. If your friends are over and you are bored go and use your doodle wall! Are you catching on to the fact that this is a wonderful idea? Because you should by now.

If you have a doodle wall it is challenging you and your friends to be creative... you can literally doodle anything and it is a lot of fun.

So I challenge you oh loyal viewer to go and make your very own doodle wall because you can have hours of fun and a new decoration for your wall!

The beauty of sculpting

Our tree hugger

Hey! Just in case you have not noticed, it is cold outside. Why is it cold outside? Because it is winter in Iowa duh! And what normally comes with winter? SNOW!

If you are like a normal human being, there is probably a good chance that every once in awhile you get fed up with snow or even HATE it.

Well calm down you. Instead of seeing the bad in that white wet fluff, look on the bright side. You can do amazing things in it. My personal favorite is the art of sculpting!

I have a good friend here at school that likes to leave little sculptures in the snow around campus come winter time. It is such a pleasant surprise to see her beautiful work, it brightens every ones day.

A couple of years ago that friend and I sculpted a 'tree hugger' it was pretty fantastic if I may say so myself. She submitted it to National Geographic, and it got published!.



Our dinosaur



This past Sunday it was beautiful out so a couple of my friends and I sculpted a dinosaur in front of the library on campus. It was beautiful! I have heard a lot of positive feedback on the sculpture and I think it has made a lot of people happy.

Our 10 foot tall snowman

Last year my friends and I constructed a 10 foot tall snowman that was simply glorious. That same night we put a snowman in front of our pastors house. He woke up the next morning to a pleasant surprise in his yard and it completely made his day.

So the moral of the story kids is that snow CAN be fun and you can make people HAPPY by creating beautiful things out of it. So do not just sit there. Go create!

While you were gone... I revamped your room

Streamer fun!

What could possibly be more fun then revamping a friends room while they are gone? The correct answer is... not very much.

I want to tell you about the gloriousness known as decorating a friends room while they are either A. Working at camp with you and you decide it would be fun to play a bit of a joke on them. B. Gone for the weekend on a cross country meet. or C. Off on a wonderful trip in California.

I am about to tell you of three stories of me, your lovely author getting bored and deciding to have a bit of fun and let her creative side overflow into room decorating.

The boom boom room

Victim #1: My first summer at Wesley Woods I got bored one night and I decided it would be a bit of fun to blow up a lot of balloons and make signs and empty them into what is known as the "boom boom" room. The boom boom room is a room that consists of 8 boys every summer. It is always the messiest (and possibly smelliest) room out of all of the counselors at camp.

One night near the end of the summer I blew up balloons inside of a fort that I made in our lounge and while all of the boys were off a friend from camp and myself emptied the balloons into the room. I also made signs for the room such as "pretty pretty princess", "beware", and other silly signs and put them up everywhere. The boys were very surprised when they came to their room and could not figure out who filled their room with balloons, they even kept asking me to help  them figure out who did it.

At closing I finally revealed to them that it was I that filled their room, and it was glorious.

poor gnome

Victim #2: While my friends were off at a cross meet one weekend last year my friend and I decided that it would be fun to make lots of signs, break into their room, and decorate their room for them.

But the scheming did not stop there. My best friend whose room we went into loves gnomes so we decided it would be a good idea to write a ransom letter for his gnome and leave it on his desk... we required that we receive cookies in return for his gnome. It was a bit difficult to break into their room, we had to break in through a window with our mad ninja skills.

We eventually made it inside of the room, took pictures on my friends camera, and left quietly. They returned home from their meet with a new room and very confused questions as to how we broke in. Of course when my friend went to bed that night to feel dirt in his bed from our shoes and a breeze from his window he easily figured out how we broke in.

The beauty of decor

Victim # 3: Victim number three actually just happened this past Sunday. My friend who works out at camp (Wesley Woods) went to California for a week. So my roommate, one other friend, and myself decided that it would be a grand idea to go and decorate his apartment for his return.

We filled it with streamers and signs. We also wrote all over his mirror. It was simply beautiful... or so we thought. When he returned he was pretty much in awe of our masterpiece... actually I think he just laughed a lot. For some reason he knew it was me right off the bat and called me. However it was a surprise that he was not expecting upon his return and he thanked me.

So I urge you oh faithful reader to go and decorate someones room while they are gone. They will return to a pleasant surprise and be very happy that you were thinking of them. Of course in some cases your victim will get you back and make a you a victim of a different prank (which will be discussed in a later blog) but it is well worth it.

Coloring playhouse



 Do you like to color? Well I do... but I like to do more than just color on sheets of paper or in coloring books. I like to think outside of the box.
My roommate decided that she wanted to be creative in the coloring department as well, but we faced a bit of a challenge; we were not entirely sure what it was that we wanted to color, we just knew that we wanted to color something cool that most people did not have the opportunity to color on.

And then my roommate remembered the perfect Christmas gift that she thought about getting me... a coloring playhouse that she saw at Target... but who wants to buy a coloring play house when you can clearly make your own?

The installation of the house

So my roommate and I decided to liven our lives up a bit, we found a massive thing of cardboard, we got several different colors of duct tape, and we got a knife and decided to have an adventure. We constructed our very own coloring playhouse that is now proudly sitting in our bedroom.

It ended up taking four of us to work on it but now we have the best house ever; it has a door and a handle and it currently has a sun roof (we haven't finished the top yet). Several people can fit comfortably into the house and anyone is welcome to share their coloring talents on the house and decorate it anyway they would like.



From the inside looking out





















The Fort

So I am sure that most of you have been waiting anxiously to hear my first suggestion on what to do when you need a fun activity. Well wait no more friends, here it is; BUILD A FORT!

OK so you might be thinking that this is a lame idea, 'how could a fort possibly be cool'? Well first off if you are thinking that, I am judging you a little bit, but you are not the only person out there to think such a thought.

Let me just tell you that forts are incredible things.

Step 1. The Simple Fort. You can do the simple 'build a little fort in the living room' tactic. Inside of that fort your possibilities are endless. You can play games in your fort, talk in your fort, you can even watch a movie from your fort. This summer at the camp I worked at, I led a Bible study inside of a fort.

The party does not stop there my friends...

Step 2. You can build a MEGA FORT. This summer we built a GIANT fort and then we put up a projection screen and watched a movie on it from inside of our fort. We had popcorn and 13 teenagers comfortably inside of the fort. Inside of another mega fort I was able to hide a few dozen balloons that I blew up right before dispersing them into someones room at camp for a prank (that is another story in itself).

Step 3. Build a permanent fort in under your beds. My roommate and I have a huge room here at school and we pushed our beds into a little nook in the corner of our room. We decided it would be a sweet idea if we lofted our beds and built a fort in under them. My roommate and I now have a permanent fort under our beds filled with pillows and a light.



From the inside of the Simple Fort



My roommate and I like to do our homework in the fort, we will bring friends in there to talk. We have watched movies on a computer inside of our fort and I have even taken a nap in our fort.



I strongly urge you to grab some cloths hangers, heavey materials, and a lot of blankets and find a great place to build a fort. It is a lot more fun then you may realize.



So release your inner child and build a fort gosh dang it, it is a blast!





Getting started

Princess Sarah: someone put a crown on me for this picture

Hello world. I am going to be truthful with you, the reason that I am starting this blog is due to the fact that I need to make one for my journalism 2.0 class. I have been struggling with trying to figure out what the concept of this blog should be.

Most people that know me know about my love for creativity. So I think the theme for this wonderful blog will be based on my creative skills.

If you are wondering if this blog is right for you here are some helpful hints to clue you in: do you find yourself getting easily bored and wishing you had a fun activity to do? Do you love being random? Do you wish you could come up with more fun creative/ random ideas to do? If you answered yes to any of these questions then this blog is perfect for you!

In every post I am going to give you; the reader or the viewer if you will a fun new activity to do to keep you from being bored or to help you up your randomness factor. The suggestions will not be simple things such as go to a movie or go ice skating. Oh no my friend this blog is not called 'The power of creativity' for nothing.

Instead I will give you ideas that are 'out of the box thinking' ideas that will help you to have fun in ways that you have never thought of before. So get ready to put on your creativity shoes and have fun with me. I look forward to talking with you in the future.