Safety Tip: Don’t blow in a pencil sharpener
Rachel shared the following safety tip as a drawing on her bedroom easel: Don’t blow in a pencil sharpener! She did recently, and the results were not pleasant for her. 🙂
Our Family Learning Blog
Rachel shared the following safety tip as a drawing on her bedroom easel: Don’t blow in a pencil sharpener! She did recently, and the results were not pleasant for her. 🙂
Rachel loves drawing on the easel in her bedroom. This is a recent drawing she made of “a bowl of fruit.” Awesome to see her language skills developing. How wonderful she LOVES to write!!! She has probably written 4 books in the past few weeks.
I received an email from Facebook today that I’d been tagged in a photo…. taken (most likely) around 1980 in Columbus, Mississippi! Whoa! 🙂
I wonder what my dad and I were looking at?!
Alexander and Sarah:
In response to your question about hiding and showing text in a post, so you don’t have to reveal a spoiler for a book or movie, I found the post, “Toggle Visibility – Show/Hide Anything.”
Here is my example. You may need to view JUST this post for the javascript to work. I pasted both pieces of code from that post below:
If you have not read Harry Potter 7, you might be wondering what happens at the end of the book! Do not click this link unless you want to find out what happens!
I copied the javascript from the above page and pasted it into my post first:
<script type="text/javascript">
<!–
function toggle_visibility(id) {
var e = document.getElementById(id);
if(e.style.display == ‘block’)
e.style.display = ‘none’;
else
e.style.display = ‘block’;
}
//–>
</script>
I had to make a minor modification so the text is HIDDEN to start.
This is the code I used for this in the second part, I kept the top javascript the same:
If you have not read Harry Potter 7, you might be wondering what happens at the end of the book! <a href="#" onclick="toggle_visibility(‘harry’);">Do not click this link unless you want to find out what happens!</a>
<div id="harry" style="display:none">In the end, Harry defeats Voldemort and marries Ginny Weasley. They live happily ever after!</div>
You should be able to copy and paste the above code and use it in your own posts.
I used HTMLizer to allow the code to be visible.
This evening my kids helped me create my first contribution to “The International Cooking Show,” sharing our favorite family recipe for fondue.
We recorded this in one take on my iPhone, and I edited it in iMovie ’09. I used the iMovie settings shown in Steven Sande’s post, “How to make iPhone videos sparkle with iMovie.”
The unedited version of the movie was almost 14 minutes long, with the stirring portions sped up the final video is 8 minutes and 14 seconds long. The free “royalty free music” I chose for this video was “Shiny Tech” from Incompetech.com. I noticed that in the video titles I actually misspelled the name of the recipe, it should be “Yodler’s Fondue” rather than “Yodeler’s Fondue.” I’m not going to go back and make those changes, however, since it would require recompressing and uploading the video again to YouTube!
Sarah recorded the entire video except the last two minutes, which were filmed by Alexander. She still needs to work on keeping the camera still and stable, but this is an improvement over some of her past recording efforts. We’re all continuing to learn together! It’s so fun to be able to put together a quick video like this on the fly, add a few edits, and then publish it online.
Apple technology makes multimedia authoring so easy!
If you have any gourmet chefs or aspiring chefs (we have the latter) in your house, please join The International Cooking Show wiki and add your own contribution!
Cross-posted to “Moving at the Speed of Creativity.”
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cook, cooking, food, imovie, iphone, show, video, youtube, fondue, yodler
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We rode The Heartland Flyer Amtrak train from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth today. Sarah gave this short tour I recorded on my iPhone just before we got in to the final station.
Video uploaded to Flickr with PixelPipe, mobile blogged with WordPress 2.1 for iPhone.
Alexander and I spent some time this afternoon “cleaning up” the shared iPhone and iPod Touch applications we have installed on our family iTunes account. One of the biggest jobs was reducing the number of applications on mom’s iPhone. She is not very interested in games and mainly uses her iPhone for phone calls, texting, and the calendar. We removed about 40 applications from her iPhone tonight.
We were able to get her down to just three screens, which is a big simplification and improvement over what she had previously. One disadvantage of using the same iTunes account for two iPhones and an iPod Touch is that whenever someone installs a new application and syncs back to the computer, the next time others sync that application is installed by default on their device. So, unless you “uncheck” applications which are not wanted, you end up getting lots of additional applications when others in the family are adding them to their mobile device.
Most of the apps on this second page are actually for our 6 year old, Rachel. The first two programs, Brushes and Sketchbook, are drawing programs we just bought for her today using an iTunes gift card Santa brought in her stocking.
I’ve updated our full list of now “pruned” iPhone and iPod Touch applications this evening. (We got this list down to 164 tonight.) Getting mom down to just 48 apps is pretty good!
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app, apps, iphone, ipod, ipodtouch, itunes, touch, applications
We shared a live webcast over Ustream yesterday on Christmas Eve of our front yard, as a record-breaking 14 inches of snow fell on Edmond and Oklahoma City! We recorded two segments during the day. The “Peaceful Christmas” Pandora channel was streaming as the audio channel for these webcasts.
18.5 minutes: Playing in the snow during the day
2.5 minutes: Playing in the Christmas Eve Snow at Night (with our camcorder’s “Night Shot” feature enabled)
Today we enjoyed a bit of sledding and more playing in the snow in our front yard. This was an image of PURE delight on Rachel’s face as we got ready for another sled run together!
If you’re wanting to order a hat like mine in this photo, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but this was a custom creation I made several years ago when we lived in Lubbock using a stocking cap and a puppet. 🙂
Here is the Flickr slideshow of all the images we took on granddaddy’s camera yesterday and today. His Sony camera ROCKS. Someday we’ll get a camera that takes images this good! We’re fortunate he’s willing to share with us now!
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christmas, edmond, eve, fun, oklahoma, photos, snow, sled
Sarah recorded episode #3 of “The International Cooking Show” today, demonstrating how to cook holiday sausage balls. Her sister, Rachel, joined in this episode which runs 7.5 minutes.
Background music for this video is “Malt Shop Bop” from Incompetech Royalty Free Music.
We used the same recipe for these that we’ve used since 2007.
Ingredients:
3 cups Bisquick
1 pound uncooked Jimmy Dean pork sausage
4 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp. dried rosemary leaves
1/2 tsp parsley flakes
Steps:
Cook the sausage in a pan, breaking it up into small pieces.
Combine all ingredients in a large bowl “meatloaf style.”
Form mixture into small balls, and place them evenly on a greased cookie sheet.
Bake for about 15 minutes at 350 degrees F.
Share and eat!
Please create your own cooking videos and add them to The International Cooking Show project wiki!
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christmas, cook, cooking, digitalstorytelling, international, show, sausage, balls, holiday, appetizer
We recorded part of the ceremony tonight at Alexander’s Court of Honor for Boy Scouts, using the UStream Broadcaster application for the iPhone. Alexander was recognized for advancing to second and first class tonight.
Sarah received a request today from a friend to create a video showing how to tie a scarf. Here’s her video we recorded this evening!
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howto, tutorial, video, youtube, scarf, style, clothes
Our local paper, the Edmond Sun, published photos in its print edition today of the youth involved in last weekend’s performance of the musical, “Bremen Town Musicians.” The November 20th article, “Animals come to life in FAI musical,” provides more background and one photo of the cast.
Additional photos are available (thanks to Graddaddy) on my Flickr set for the performance.
Hopefully The Edmond Sun will run the photos from the print paper today online. Generally I’ve noticed The Edmond Sun doesn’t do as good a job as The Oklahoman / NewsOK to digitize all its content and make it electronically available.
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arts, edmond, fine, institute, play, bremen, town, muscians, fai, musical, theater
Deborah Barrows’s took the following short video of Sarah at ACTEM09, sharing a quick animation she made for Cheryl Oakes using the software program Animation-ish by FableVision.
Way to go Sarah! Now I’m going to need to find time for Sarah to show me how to use Animation-ish, as well as her brother and sister!
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animation, creativity, fablevision, learning, software, sarah, Animation-ish
I took the following four, 90 second videos yesterday driving north along K-177 between Cassoday and Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, enroute from Wichita to Manhattan. This national scenic byway is one of my favorite roads in Kansas. The low clouds and lighting in these videos don’t do justice to the autumn colors of the prairie, unfortunately, which are quite spectacular even though the “peak” of the fall colors seemed to have already passed.
I added these videos to my Flickr set, “Manhattan Fall Colors,” which includes lots of amazing images of autumn colors taken later in the day in Manhattan. These include three panoramic photos from the day, which I linked and discussed in my post, “Beautiful Kansas fall colors and more iPhone panoramic picture fun with Pano.”
Yesterday Rachel and I gathered some acorns and acorn “hats” in the Sunset Cemetery in Manhattan, Kansas. She has been wanting to collect acorns for some time, and I remembered that the oak trees in this Manhattan cemetery produce LOTS of acorns each year, both large and small.
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kansas, manhattan, acorn, acorns, collecting, collect, find