1. I became intrigued with a certain one-ingredient ice cream recipe. Who wouldn’t? Several weeks ago, there was a lot of buzz about freezing bananas and making faux ice cream by putting the iced chunks in a blender. Here’s the recipe.
My review: It doesn’t live up to the hype. It’s been touted as a great weight-loss-friendly dessert, but you need about 3 bananas to make a bowl. A medium banana has around 100 calories. That’s 300 calories, which is no small thing. Also, while the texture was okay, it was strangely sweet. In the future, I’m going to save frozen bananas for smoothies.
2. Sam’s birthday portrait was made by a cool iPhone app called LEGO Photo. With it, you can upload any photo in your library or camera roll and it will render the photo in tiny LEGO bricks. You can change the colors, too. Here’s my husband, looking like a million bricks:
3. If your baby was born in a hospital, he or she was probably wrapped in a pink and blue striped blanket. NPR is collecting photos of babies swaddled in the iconic blankets for a project called Beginnings. If you have a photo of your newborn in the wrapped in the iconic blanket, learn how to be part of the fun by participating in an ode to the blankies.
Strangely, my kids never used these blankets at the hospitals where they were born. But I’ve seen many newborn photos over the years and across the web that lead me to believe we are in the minority. Hospitals in the Denver metro area like pinstripes and teddy bears.
Bea and her dimple as newborns
Archie all fuzzy and new
Teddy the Newborn in repose
Consider this my ode to the hospital pinstripe blanket. My 5 oldest children’s newborn photos aren’t on the hard drive. I can attest they had the same pinstripe blankets as the littlest 3.
4. Have you heard of Letterboxing? My friend, The Casual Perfectionist, is a letterboxing maven and with her encouragement we started finding letterboxes a few days ago. It’s safe to say we’re hooked. The kids love that it requires stealth, cunning, and feeds the imagination. We have a journal, a stamp, and an account at AtlasQuest. It’s a bit nerdy but a ton of fun. The most astonishing aspect of letterboxing is that there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of letterboxes hidden in Colorado alone. They are everywhere, including in stores and restaurants, libraries, museums, parks, and trails. Chances are if you’ve left your house, you’ve been near a letterbox and you didn’t even know it.
5. Look! A-frames. I love these. My uncle had an A-frame cabin at Blue Mesa, Colorado. It was the setting of one of my favorite Lifenut posts, The Explorer.
6. Here’s your Fall 2011 Fashion Report from Elle Magazine! It’s great if you want to look like a crow. That’s been hit by a truck. Then ANOTHER truck barrels over it going 90 MPH.
Letterboxing sounds a lot like geocaching, except you use a gps to find the boxes, and you can take (if you leave in exchange) a small trinket, or else just stamp a notebook. I’d love to do it, but I don’t have a gps and I can’t get my kids to get excited about it. Maybe letterboxing is a good first step to that? I’ll go check it out… thanks!
Letterboxing sounds like a more fun version of geocaching. I guess I’m a bit of a troglodyte, but using clues to find boxes sounds more fun and interesting to me than using a GPS. I had only vaguely heard of letterboxing, but a quick look at the website showed that I seriously ran less than 2 feet from one earlier tonight on my run.
And I LOVED your description of that fashion shoot. Hah.
And thanks for the heads up about the NPR project. I am totally looking back at all our Judah photos and finding some great ones of him wrapped in that blanket. It also makes me miss that sweet little baby. sniff.
I hope you send in a photo of Jude! Let me know if he ends up in the gallery.
Oh babies!!! Sweet… Isn’t it funny how you can see who they have become… And theirs my little Archie!!! I claim him, he crept into my heart before he was born!!! Have a fun weekend!!!
Oh, letterboxing sounds intriguing. Like geocaching with a fun twist. Love the baby pictures — adorable! And the Lego app looks very cool. Though I’m wondering if I would then feel compelled to create physical Lego mosaics of my kids, because I think they’d look awesome in their rooms. Hm…
Katrina, that wouldn’t be a horrible thing! Cheap decorating. Plus the kids like playing with the app.
But if you take pictures of their LEGO creations and then use the app, that’s taking it too far. 😉
My husband accidentally *STOLE* a couple of those blankets from a hospital in Utah when we had our daughter. I think it was retaliation for the poor treatment I received.
Love letterboxing….but I’m not as gunho about it as the other girls are.
I don’t see any of those Fall looks being acceptable for a PTA meeting.
Your babies may not have had the blue and pink stripe blanket, but I recognize the hat they’re wearing. Sydney and Addie each have one (Jules got a knitted red one since she was a Christmas baby)!
Jacob’s baby scrapbook has a whole layout designed around that blanket! Both boys had them, so I’ll have dig out the photos and send them to NPR!