Observe Interesting Rafter Ties

We'd been out walking, as usual, and had been noticing many decorative rafter ties on the homes in our area. It was getting dark, but we thought a fun project for the evening would be to "collect" a photoset of some of the more interesting ones we encountered. We could easily see doing this during the day sometime, and with a better camera (one with a zoom lens). But for now, here are five interesting ones:

The first is rather plain for this area, yet still decorative:



Next up is a similar one on a different home...



Here's a larger, squared-off one:



Here's a sort-of bayonettish one:



And, here's an absolutely vampirical variety!



Again, this is only a *small* sampling of a few that we were able to gather in just 10 or 15 minutes before sunset. Imagine how many thousands of varieties our city must have! But, no matter where you live, "collecting" photosets of architectural details seems like a good way to spend an hour or more.

What else fun can we do for an hour? Leave a suggestion as a comment! We would like to pick things on a regular basis. If a suggestion if inspiring to you and you complete one of the activities, be sure to send us a pic!

Make a Dessert!

We don't normally eat a lot of sweets other than fruits. But, sometimes we feel like eating something a little decadent. So, today for our fun, we made an impromptu dessert, and ate it (well, some of it) as a family.

What made this dessert extra fun is that we followed no recipes -- just threw ingredients into the food processor, pulsed it up, and served it. It turned out great! Here's what we included:

• 1 small handful of raw walnuts
• 1 small handful raw almonds
• 1+ cup shredded raw, dried, unsweetened coconut
• 1-2 Tbsp. carob powder
• few dashes salt
• a drizzle of agave nectar (dates might have been a healthier option)
• ~1/4 cup raw coconut oil

Tasty stuff! This mixture makes a consistency that can easily be formed into balls, if you would want to serve it at a party or some other semi-formal setting. Have you ever just thrown something together and come up with a great recipe? If so, feel free to share it.

What else fun can we do for an hour? Leave a suggestion as a comment! We would like to pick things on a regular basis. If a suggestion if inspiring to you and you complete one of the activities, be sure to send us a pic!

(p.s. Thanks to the reader who suggested that we attend a book reading tonight here in Portland. Had we not been busy this evening, we definitely would have attended, as that sounds like a fun outing!)

xxx

Walk In the Sun -- *Only* In the Sun!

We'll tell you about today's hour of fun as a photographic narrative.

As you can see ...



... it was a nice day today. (That's not our home, btw. It's just a nice home nearby and we liked the blooms.) In any case, Portland can be quite rainy in the winter, so it's nice when you begin to get more clear days in the Spring. We decided to go for a walk in the sun today and, to add a level of fun to it, we decided that we would stay *only* in the sun while we walked. For example, if we came upon a patch of sidewalk that looked like this ...



... then we would walk only on the sunny parts and not in the shadow. It was quite a lot of fun. From time to time, we found that we *had* to walk through some shady area. When that happened, we ran through it, and held our breath while doing so. Or, in a situation like this...



... we were often able to just walk on the street, thus avoiding the shade completely.

So, let's take a walk and see what we happened across!

Well, as you saw above, there are many interesting trees in Portland. Some even have their own plaques. For example, here's one we saw today:



(We did take a photo of that tree, but it appears not to have turned out well.)

Occasionally, Portland's famous "weirdness" would call us into some unforeseen direction. In this instance...



... it was to take a look at the odd statues on the porch. While walking there, we happened across this electrical box covered with rubber ducks:



Upon closer inspection, we saw that it had one of those magnetic word games on it. So, we stopped to make our own sentences. Mine appears atop the photo, Wendi's two sentences appear near the bottom:



At one point, we came across this horse statue that's chained to a ring in the sidewalk. We suspect that those rings (which are everywhere) were historically there to tie up (real) horses (as the neighborhood dates back to the late 1800s. So, we thought it was a humorous commentary by some local artist.



Much to our surprise, we spotted another one several blocks away:



Of course, not everything in our neighborhood is old. New homes are popping up in the rare vacant lots (or, in places where dilapidated homes have been torn down). Here's one such new home:



We've noticed that many new homes seem to be marketed with fancy signs such as the one shown in the picture. Whether this is a long-standing practice or a new trend in home marketing is unknown to us (as new city-dwellers). What IS known to us, though, is the price: $469,000. That seems borderline outrageous, although we certainly recall similar home prices from our days living in Washington, D.C. In any case, we're very thankful to have found a fixer-upper home in this trendy, yet quirky neighborhood!

As for the quirks, well, how about a second-hand store that has no employees?! As the sign says...



... if you see something you like, just call them and they'll open the store.

Finally, no Portland walk (in the sunshine or otherwise) is complete without noting the many felines encountered along the way. Some stand sentry to their homes ...



... some walk down the steps to greet you, perhaps in hopes of a friendly pat ...



... and others walk away, which in cat language translates roughly to, "Talk to the tail."



What else fun can we do for an hour? Leave a suggestion as a comment! We would like to pick things on a regular basis. If a suggestion if inspiring to you and you complete one of the activities, be sure to send us a pic!

Create an LOLcat

For tonight's fun, we decided to create our own LOLcat. If you're not familiar with LOLcats, it's basically a web phenomenon by which people take pictures of cats and then add humorous captions. Generally, the captions are from the perspective of cats, which presumably would make various spelling and grammatical errors if they could type. The leading site for this (of which Jim and Bailey are enthusiastic fans) is called icanhascheezburger.com.

To create our LOLcat, we flipped through some photos of our own kitties, Sotheby and Trillian. As it turned out, Bailey had taken a perfect photo of Sotheby. So, we put that up on the screen and spent a few minutes coming up with various captions. In the end, we selected Wendi's contribution, and then we all took a few minutes to ensure that it was appropriately grammatically incorrect. In the end, our LOLcat was as follows:

We were all quite pleased with it, and we submitted it to icanhascheezburger.com, in hopes that they'll post it for all to enjoy. If they do, we'll link to it here. :-)

What else fun can we do for an hour? Leave a suggestion as a comment! We would like to pick things on a regular basis. If a suggestion if inspiring to you and you complete one of the activities, be sure to send us a pic!

Create a Mind Map!

Today we learned a fun and creative way to organize thoughts. We've heard the term "mind-map" before, but never really looked into understanding what it is about. Well, our friend @Jaymes Peluso-Hoffman posted a link on his Facebook page about mind-maps making people smarter. Who doesn't want to be smarter, right?! So, we checked it out and ended up spending some time creating some personal mind-maps, ourselves!

Here's the video Jaymes shared:



In the video, Tony Buzan talks about mind-mapping a bit (he created the concept), and explains that no one's brain works in the list-making way like we are taught to organize our thoughts in a school setting. He brings color and curves to thinking, which is then organized in a fluid, colorful, beautiful way on blank paper. We liked the idea, but wanted to find out more. So, we did some searching on YouTube and found a lot of helpful videos to understand the process for creating a mind-map for ourselves.

Here's one of the videos we watched to get a bit more understanding about the process of mind-mapping:



So, armed with colored pencils and pens, we went to work on mind-mapping some projects we've been working on. For Jim and Wendi, this involved mind-mapping some projects we are currently tackling for our Pure Jeevan site. For our child, Bailey, this involved mind-mapping for an essay assignment for a writing class. You'd be surprised, as Bailey was, how incredibly fun and useful this can be for creating an outline for an essay!

Here's an image we found on GoogleImages of a mind-map about mind-mapping!.



This was a fun, educational, and very productive way to tackle some larger tasks. It's a creative tool we'll continue using, also! Try it and let us know what you think (and if you've already been mind-mapping, share some of your experiences and maps with us)!

What else fun can we do for an hour? Leave a suggestion as a comment! We would like to pick things on a regular basis. If a suggestion if inspiring to you and you complete one of the activities, be sure to send us a pic!

Find the Lighter Side of a Darker Situation

We didn't quite have a pre-planned hour of fun today, but we wanted to post here, anyway, for two reasons: (1) We really want to make a habit out of posting here at least every week day (because having fun is something we're interested in making habit of), and (2) Sometimes "life" happens to you, making it necessary to change your original plans.

Today we wound up in the Emergency Room for nine hours! Nothing too serious... everyone is fine. But, nine hours is quite a span of time to spend in a place like that. We thought it might be fun, if also somewhat mischievous, to editorialize a bit while we had the opportunity. So, we snapped two photos during the visit. Ever wonder what's for sale in hospital vending machines? Well, here's the answer:

Well, we suppose some credit is due for at least putting the bottled fruit juices in a prime visual spot, and for listing the more heart-healthy snack items. However, to tell you the truth, most people seemed to be opting for Cokes and Snickers bars.

Another "fun"-ish thing Jim did was to engage a stranger in a weird conversation -- which probably could be its own post someday. Jim says he was regaled with one old man's wild tales of inventive car destruction stories (cars swinging from ropes, cars being drawn and quartered, and other bizarre uses of cranes and automotive machinery) and one intriguingly grim memory from the man's childhood, in which the (then) young lad rolled down a hill into a cemetery and landed in a grave!

In any case, there was no "fun" fun (i.e., planned fun) carried out today, but we'll be back Monday with something else! And speaking of that...

What else fun can we do for an hour? Leave a suggestion as a comment! We would like to pick things on a regular basis. If a suggestion if inspiring to you and you complete one of the activities, be sure to send us a pic!