50 State Quarters: Coloring Pages Using Folk Art Acrylic Paints

I've finished four more State Quarters coloring pages: Wyoming, Rhode Island, Mississippi, and Michigan. This time, I painted each with Folk Art acrylic paint (affiliate link). Painting in the tiniest letters was a challenge, but otherwise I really enjoyed painting each coloring page. I particularly had fun making the sunset background for Wyoming's quarter.

It's been a lot of fun using different art materials to do these coloring pages. Before this batch, I've used: 

• Ohuhu markers (Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Wisconsin)
• ink and colored pencil (Connecticut, Idaho, Missouri, Montana)
• Flair pens (Delaware, Indiana)
• Sharpies (Maine, South Carolina)
• Stabilo Woody 3-in-1 (Colorado, New Hampshire)

More State Quarters coming soon!

Universal Yums: Africa and Korea

Time for our latest Universal Yums boxes! This time, they feature Africa and Korea. As usual, each box held a nice variety of snacks, an informational card, booklet and sticker set. This is what came in the Africa box:

While a Universal Yums box usually focuses on a single country, this one covers a continent. The founder explained in the opening letter that they found suppliers who could meet compliance protocols in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Tunisia, and Egypt. They hope to offer future African boxes with a wider range of snacks. 

As usual, I started with the booklet. And, of course, my favorite part of the booklet was the trivia. Did you know that the Egyptians invented eye makeup, breath mints, bowling, and toothpaste? South Africa is home to the largest land mammal (the African elephant), reptile (leatherback turtle), and bird (ostrich). The capital of Ghana (Accra) is named for ants, which are plentiful there. A popular chicken dish in South Africa called “Walkie Talkie” is made of grilled feet and heads (hence, the walkie and the talkie). Interesting! But no thanks. The most horrifying bit of trivia involves the beloved Egyptian dish called feseekh. If you order it, be sure it is made by experts, as incorrect preparation results in violent food poisoning. Feseekh is made from rancid mullet fish, a tradition that dates the time of the pharaohs, when rotten fish were left behind when the Nile receded in the spring.

I really enjoyed an article about African cooking vessels. Do you know the origin and purpose of a potjie, tagine, sufuria, jebena, and couscoussier? You can probably guess what’s cooked in the last one if you don’t already know! A couscoussier is from Tunisia, long occupied by the French (thus the French "ier" word ending, like my last name). 

So how was the food in the box? Pretty good! The South African potato chips flavored with cape gooseberries were interesting and quite tasty, as was the Kenyan snack mix. The Ghanese plantain chips were ok; I love that they came with a fortune inside. My favorite goodies were Tunisia’s orange pound cake and Egypt’s pistachio caramel popcorn. Yum!

This was everything in the Korea box. 

I learned a lot from the booklet. Among the most interesting bits of trivia: Seoul has a Museum of Chicken Art (I'd totally visit); Kellogg's sells a version of Chex cereal in Korea that is green onion flavored; and writing names in red is bad luck because red pens were once reserved for execution orders (yikes - I'm doomed). I was intrigued by the recipe for dalgona, which they mentioned gained international fame through Squid Game. I still haven't seen Squid Game, and thus hadn't heard of dalgona. The only ingredients are sugar and baking soda, basically peanut brittle without the peanuts. I'd like to try some. There was an article at 9 K-pop stars' favorite foods. I like Korean food and have had most of the dishes mentioned, but not Korean potato pizza (#TeamJaehyun). Sounds delish! I enjoyed an article about South Korean corn dogs, as well as another article about complicated relationship been Japan and South Korean culture. 

How were the Korean snacks? Tasty! Most of it, anyway. While I would have preferred trying dalgona and potato pizza, I liked the blueberry and peach candies a lot and the chocolate-hazelnut wafer cookies were good. The honey butter pretzels were really interesting and the Choco Pie was fine. The red wheat/rice chip things were too spicy for me. 

Two more fun adventures through Universal Yums!

Blackberry Ink with a Feather Quill Pen

Have you ever made your own ink? There are many natural materials that can be boiled or juiced to make inks and dyes in a variety of different colors. Blackberries (the state fruit of both Alabama and Kentucky) produce a beautiful reddish-purple juice that kids can use directly on paper as ink. For extra fun, use a feather as a quill pen! Affiliate links below.     

Blackberry Ink with a Feather Quill

Materials: 

• fresh, ripe blackberries
• cheesecloth
• coffee filter
• large feather
• watercolor paper

Steps: 

Wrap several very ripe blackberries in cheesecloth. Tie an extra strip of cheesecloth around the bundle to use as a handle (unless you don't mind purple fingers!). Put the bundle in a glass bowl, then press the blackberries with the back of a spoon. Continue to press until you've extracted as much of the juice as you can.

Discard the bundle of blackberries. Place a coffee filter over a second container (hold it in place with a rubber band, if necessary) and slowly pour the juice over the coffee filter. It will catch any bits that made their way through the cheesecloth. Now you can use your ink for drawing, coloring, and writing.

A note about feathers: I used what I had on hand, which were dyed. For a project about natural dyes, I'd use natural feathers, which is what you'll find above in the materials list. I used my feather straight out of the package; occasionally, you'll need to prepare the feather by pulling off any bits near the writing end and possibly trimming the very end to make it smooth. 

If you let the paper dry between layers (naturally or with a heat gun), you can add more ink on top to get darker colors. I did this several times to get my final blackberry drawing, although I didn't trace over my writing. 

Obviously, it is imperative to have extra blackberries on hand for snacking! So good. 

When you are done with the project, discard your ink. Because it wasn't boiled and there are no preservatives, it's not meant to last long-term. If you would like to make ink that will last, I recommend this excellent tutorial by Dana Driscoll. Enjoy!

Compiling Our Lists: How Many National Parks We've Visited

During the travels that took our family to all 50 states, we spent a decent amount of time enjoying our nation's national parks. Steve hopes to visit them all someday. My goals are far less lofty; I have no interest in visiting some of the parks. Not because they're subpar; I'm sure they're stunning. But I'll be skipping the parks that are so remote that you have to take a tiny plane to get there and that don't have any services (or even trails!) once you're there. I'm a fan of passable roads, running water, and prompt medical service when I need it. Call me crazy. 

Let me clarify that Steve's wish is to visit each of the 63 national parks, not each of the 431 national park units or 175 related units. I'll discuss those in a future blog post, but for now I want to focus on the 63: Acadia to Zion. 

You can, of course, read about each national park on the NPS website, but for a fantastic summary in a single location, I recommend EarthTrekkers. I printed out their map and list in order to figure out how many parks Steve has visited and how many still remain.  

I started by highlighting the names of the twelve national parks that Steve and I have visited together (in yellow). These include: Acadia, Badlands, Congaree, Cuyahoga Valley, Gateway Arch, Grand Canyon, Hawaii Volcanoes, Hot Springs, Theodore Roosevelt, Wind Cave, Yosemite, and Zion. I visited Glacier Bay before I met Steve (in orange) and my mom reports that I visited Crater Lake and Lassen Volcanic as a kid. That brings my total to 15/63. I think. I might have been to Rocky Mountain in my 20's, but I'm not sure. 

Trevor and Steve took a Scout trip to Pinnacles without me (in green), and Steve and I went to Grand Canyon and Zion before Trevor was born, so Trevor's total would be 12/63.... except I just realized his grandparents took him to Crater Lake in August. So Trevor is at 13/63. 

Steve has been to ten national parks without Trevor or me (in purple): Carlsbad Caverns, Crater Lake, Death Valley, Denali, Great Smoky Mountain, Kings Canyon, Redwood, Sequoia, Shenandoah, and Yellowstone. So his total is 23/63, unless he's missing some from his childhood. That wouldn't surprise me. His parents are avid road-trippers who enjoy camping and hiking. 

It's frustrating seeing our (relatively) low numbers and realizing that they could be higher. We canceled a trip during COVID that would have included Yellowstone and Grand Teton. Bad weather kept Trevor from visiting Grand Canyon with Steve when I was attending Creativation in Phoenix in 2017. Steve and I cut Bryce Canyon from the first trip we took together because I was had horrible stomach pain (later diagnosed as IBS) and had struggled at Grand Canyon and Zion. Even though I was feeling a little better a few days later, I vetoed Death Valley on the same trip. We'd had car trouble at the beginning of our trip and I was paranoid about breaking down in the desert in July. As frustrating as they can be, car trouble, illness, bad weather, and global pandemics can all mess up the best laid plans. All we can do is plan more trips and hope things work out. That's what happened after our trip to nowhere; we made it to Hot Springs NP on our rescheduled trip. 

How many national parks have you visited? Let me know in the comments and tell me if you have a favorite!