Highest Honors Ceremony

Our school district holds a special Highest Honors Ceremony before graduation to celebrate all of the seniors completing high school with a grade point average above 4.0. It's a big deal. The superintendent, school board, and principals of all five high schools conduct the ceremony. Each graduate is introduced with where they will be going to college, what their major will be, and what career they hope to have. They receive the honor cords they'll wear at their graduations. It's really inspiring and a great way to acknowledge the hard work that goes into earning four years of perfect grades in advanced classes. 

Highest Honors Ceremony (affiliate link)

There were 190 students at the Highest Honors Ceremony for the Class of 2024. By now, they are 2/3 of the way through their freshman year of college. I sincerely hope they are all thriving and continuing to be as successful as they were in high school.  

50 State Quarters Program - Fun Facts

Between finishing a coloring page for each of the 50 state quarters and then grading the design of each quarter, I learned a lot about the 50 State Quarters Program. I found out about inspiration, innovations, and clever design decisions, as well as errors, omissions, and seriously disgruntled artists. Read on for the most interesting of the fun facts I discovered. 

Fun Facts About the 50 State Quarters Program

• Each of the 50 state quarters was minted for only 10 weeks.

• More than 34 billion coins were minted during the 50 State Quarters Program, but the amount produced for each state varied greatly. Virginia had the greatest number of quarters produced (1.59 billion) and Oklahoma had the fewest (416.6 million). 

• The inspiration for the 50 State Quarters Program came from Canada. Canada issued commemorative quarters featuring each of the 12 provinces and territories in 1992 to honor their 125th anniversary.

• The Onion produced two articles spoofing the 50 State Quarters Program: Collecting All 50 State Quarters Senior's Only Reason To Remain Alive and U.S. Mint Gears Up To Issue Commemorative County Pennies. 

• The Alabama state quarter is the first US coin featuring Braille writing.

• The Hawaii state quarter honors King Kamehameha, making it the first circulating US coin to feature royalty. 

• New Jersey's quarter was the first coin in history to show George Washington on both the front and the back.

• Kermit the Frog was named the Spokesfrog for the 50 State Quarters Program. He appeared in commercials and print ads.  

• The most significant minting errors in the state quarter series include the Wisconsin "Extra Leaf" quarters. There are two versions of the mistake: one with a "low leaf" and one with a "high leaf" next to the cornstalk.   

• The state outline on the Georgia quarter leaves out Dade County, in the northwestern part of the state. It wasn't a minting error, but rather a design problem. While that was presumably an accident, in 1860 the county seceded from both the US and the state of Georgia. That was never legally recognized and the county "rejoined" the state and the nation in 1945. Indiana's outline is also missing part of its northwestern corner. 

• On Tennessee's state quarter, there are only five strings on the 6-string guitar (which shows 6 tuning pegs). 

• The design contest winner for Missouri, artist Paul Jackson, claimed that the Mint needlessly "dumbed down" his design because they claimed, falsely, that it was "uncoinable." There's a lot to this story: read all about Quartergate. Then read about other artists who felt they were not given the credit they deserved for their designs.

• The 50 State Quarters Program was hugely successful. Roughly half the population collected state quarters, making it the most successful numismatic program in US history. The government has made approximately $3 billion from collectors taking coins out of circulation. 

The 50 State Quarters Program ended in 2008, but that was not the end to commemorative quarters. Three additional programs have led to quarters honoring US territories, national parks and forests, and American women. These programs include: 

• District of Columbia & U.S. Territories Quarters (2009)
• America the Beautiful Quarters (2010-2021)
• American Women Quarters (2022-2025)

There are some gorgeous designs. I have no plans to color them all, but I may end up coloring a few of my favorite quarters in the future, after I've forgotten how much work it was coloring the 50 I did!

Spuddy Buddy Idaho Potato Craft

The mascot of the Idaho Potato Commission is a potato named Spuddy Buddy. He was born in 1983 as Potato Buddy, dressed in a bandana and cowboy hat, and appeared in ads to promote Idaho potatoes. Ten years later, he got a big makeover, giving him his current look. Spuddy Buddy became known nationally after a 1996 appearance at the Today Show window and can now be seen in ads and in person at football games, with the Big Idaho Potato Truck, and many other places. He’s such an icon that I thought it would be fun to turn him into a craft. Affilliate links below. 

 

Spuddy Buddy Idaho Potato Craft

Materials: 

• cardstock or construction paper (tan, brown, white, red)
• scissors
• pens (black, yellow, brown)
• craft glue

Steps: 

Begin by cutting out all the pieces you will need: 

• one tan rectangle, with two corners rounded (body)
• one large red rectangle, the same width as the tan rectangle (shirt)
• two thin red rectangles (shirt sleeves)
• two thin white rectangles (trim on shirt)
• two long brown rectangles (legs)
• two brown gloves
• two small white rectangles (trim for sleeves)
• one white rectangle (design on shirt)
• two white shoes 
• two white eyes (not pictured below)

Use a black pen to draw pupils on the eyes and to color the black portion of the shoes. Then use a brown pen to draw an outline of Idaho on the white rectangle. Color outside the outline with brown and inside the outline with yellow. Then write IDAHO in brown. 

Glue everything in place. Then use the black pen to draw eyebrows, a nose, and a smile.

I really enjoyed making Spuddy Buddy!

Zen Doodle Name Art

I'm calling this Zen Doodle Name Art. It was really fun to make. Affiliate links below.  

Zen Doodle Name Art

Materials:

• drawing paper
• ink pads
• blending brushes
• repositionable letter stickers
• black fineliner

Steps: 

Use the letter stickers to spell your name on a piece of paper. The ones I put in the supply list above are repositionable, so you'll be able to remove them later. If you use something else, like I did, stick them to your pant leg a few times to remove some of the adhesive before putting them on the paper. Otherwise you risk tearing the paper when you remove them. 

Use the blending brushes to cover all of the exposed paper with color. I used three colors, but you can obviously do whatever you want. 

Carefully remove the stickers. 

Now fill in each letter with a different pattern. 

That's all there is to it! I love projects like this for groups, because the finished designs will look completely different from one another. Enjoy!

Tournament of Champions VI

We did something really cool back in September 2024. We were in the audience for Tournament of Champions VI. 

Tournament of Champions VI (affiliate link)

This was the fourth time that Steve and I were able to participate in filming a TV show. We were volunteers on Mythbusters in 2012 and 2013 and Restaurant Impossible in 2021 and we absolutely loved each experience. (Jeopardy in January 2025 was #5!) Tournament of Champions films in Windsor, about an hour from where we live. When I saw the call for audience members, I jumped on it immediately. We love the show and are rabid Food Network fans. And since Trevor had turned 18 and college hadn't started up yet, he was able to join us! 

We weren't allowed to take any pictures anywhere on set, so I was thrilled when Guy Fieri took a selfie with the audience and air-dropped it to all of us. I was expecting to have to do screen captures of the episode itself in order to get any photos to scrapbook. This was so much better! 

We were in the audience for two battles, with very strict instructions not to say anything until the episode aired. So from September 11 to March 2, we kept our mouths shut. It was so exciting when "our" episode was on and we were finally able to talk about our experience. And there was no missing us in the audience - there was one camera that stayed on the audience the whole time, so I'd guessed that we'd appear on screen. Quite a few times, as it turned out!

As I said, we watched two battles. The first was the #2 seed Adam Sobel versus the #7 seed Adriana Urbina. The randomizer gave them little neck clams as the protein, broccolini for produce, a blow torch for the equipment, smashed for the style, and black tea for the wildcard ingredient. Adam Sobel was the winner. The second battle pitted #1 seed Antonia Lofaso against #8 seed Maria Mazon. The randomizer delivered chicken breasts, leeks, a donut pan, herbaceous as the style, and yellow mustard. Antonia Lofaso won that battle. Commentators were Justin Warner, as expected, and Tiffani Faison, who was new to the job. The previous commentator, Simon Majumdar, was there; but it wasn't until the episode aired that we learned  that his new job is to interview the judges after each round. The judges were Wolfgang Puck, Alex Guarnaschelli, and Maneet Chauhan. 

We had a great time watching the battles and seeing everything that goes on behind-the-scenes. There's so much that goes into making a TV show go smoothly. It was great fun seeing chefs that we admire and have watched for so many years. Guy is just as much of a character in person as he appears on TV, if not more. Whenever the cameras stopped rolling, he was interacting with the audience, telling us jokes and anecdotes. All in all, it was a fantastic experience.