Fishing for a Kitten
My son TJ is four (and three-quarters) and has a lovely relationship with our kitten, Zipper. They don’t always understand one another, or play the same way, but they love each other. Here’s a video:
What is an escape room?
An escape room is a team game that involves exploring a room and solving the puzzles you find there in order to get out.
In practise, that means being put into a room with a team and figuring out how to open and/or unlock various things. In Canberra, it is illegal to actually lock the room so although there is usually a large obvious padlock on the exit door, it is purely decorative (eg put on a second handle while the first handle actually opens the door). You can leave at any time (and come back in, eg after going to the bathroom or getting some air).
Most escape rooms take place in a single physical room, although some start in one room and take you through others as you progress through the various puzzles. Mine are one-room games that can be restricted to a tabletop if necessary, and they are macguffin-based ie you ‘escape’ by finding a specific magical item in one of the boxes, rather than by ‘opening’ a door.
Most escape rooms start you off in very dim light, so one of your first challenges is finding more sources of light. The darkness and lack of torches enhances the stress and forces you to work with your team-mates. Stress, frustration, and cooperation are huge elements in a well-designed escape room.
Another vital element is skill-sharing. A good escape room has a wide range of puzzle types, so different team members’ strengths can come to the fore eg. A puzzle box, a simple maths problem, a clue hidden in an unexpected location. I am terrible at puzzle boxes and not super mobile (so I won’t be crawling under tables if I can help it), but I can do maths.
Puzzle rooms tend to steer away from any maths harder than primary school level, because a lot of people hate maths. I have found that having a simple maths problem towards the end of the game is hilarious as people panic and can’t count good no more.
Each escape room has a fictional scenario to fire the imagination, and a timer counting down (usually the time limit is 1 hour, or 1.5-3 hours for much more complicated rooms).
During the last week both my parents and my siblings attempted my magical steampunk game, MADAM ALCHEMIST, and each session was filmed. If you’d like a better idea of how escape rooms work, I recommend watching the first and second videos. If you just like watching people alternatively swear and cheer, the third video is pretty much just that.
The first video includes an opening spiel by yours truly, and a few minutes of play by my parents.
The second shows a cut-down version of my brother and sister playing the room from beginning to end (complete with my patented sarcastic subtitles). It contains very mild spoilers ie you can still enjoy the game fully after watching (I edited it very carefully), but if you’re an experienced player I recommend playing the room before watching it. Of course, if you don’t live in Canberra/NSW then you might as well watch it.
There is some mild swearing.
The third is a super-short montage of my brother and sister’s play-through (all of which is also part of video #2). There’s almost no context, just the usual escape room experience of intermingled frustration, bickering, cooperation, and joy.
All clear? Good.
You can book through the store link above, or email me at MagicInTheMailStories@gmail.com to arrange a time and place of your choosing.
How to Make an Epic Dino Cake
My son turned four this week, and asked for a dinosaur cake. Once I had the revelation that (a) I don’t like cake, so (b) Why bother making it? but (c) I do like creating peculiar things, and (d) The only thing they’ll eat is a horrifying amount of icing anyway… It all fell into place.
Or at least, it fell.
TJ is a winter baby (which means parties must be inside), and his father, grandfather, uncle, and oldest cousin all have birthdays within about a week. So I arranged to have two parties today: one for TJ’s friends (at an inside playground with a dino room), and one for his numerous relations (at my house).
That meant I could make a single giant cake and use leftovers for party #2.
There are two basic schools of thought for dinosaur cakes: One big dinosaur, or a scene with several dinosaurs. In my opinion, the one big dino cake takes more skill. Sure, there are dino-shaped cake tins out there, but you still need to be able to have smooth icing. Not gonna happen.
I was clever enough to assemble the cake at the location of the party, rather than attempting to carry it safely in a vehicle (and to take my own knives and large containers in which to bring home the leftovers). I was also clever enough to order the base from Woolworths. I ordered a basic slab cake, two layers, no icing. It was $20. I took three layers off part of it, and moved them to the top at the back. Voila! A cliff face ready for a waterfall.
At Woolies I’d previously bought various items: edible glue (which I couldn’t figure out how to open, so I hacked it open with a knife; used it to stick cupcake topper sheets around the sides), writing icing (used for the blue lines in the water), Natural Confectionary dinosaurs, and a full roll of “ready rolled icing” suitable for a 22cm round cake, which I sliced into shapes with a butter knife for the water.
I’d made a double portion of chocolate buttercream icing at home (it needs to either be made or re-mixed on the day or the butter hardens and it’s useless), which had a pleasantly different texture to my “water”. I spread it in a hurry, and quite thick, so it just covered the top. I was using my hands and laughing maniacally at this stage, rather aware of my deadline as one of the kids had to leave early and there was another party using the room at 12, etc etc. The buttercream icing had enough stickiness to draw up some of the cake, and it also struggled a bit to hold onto the “cliff”. But it worked well enough. As you can see, smooth flat icing is not my forte (not that I was particularly trying this time).
This icing was easy to shove about, and it was great for standing up little dinosaurs later.
I had prepared some desiccated coconut ages earlier with food dye, intending it to be green grass but it was too blue so I chucked it in the water.
The trees didn’t really work (but who cares? They’re made of Tim Tams, mint leaves, and lolly bananas), although leaning them against the cliff helped (the edible glue didn’t—using icing might have worked a little).
The mountains and volcanoes are “chocolate” waffle cones. I’ll go into more detail about the volcanoes in a bit…
The flowers were a pack of edible flowers I impulse bought at Woolies when I was examining sundry icing/sprinkle products for inspiration.
I also used:
-Green and yellow sprinkles for grass/sand. (If your child is very scientific, this is not the cake for them… grass is a relatively recent plant.)
-Edible white balls from the same pack to be dino eggs (quite a stretch).
-Dino candles (they are parading across the water at the top of the waterfall. I presume this is how they became extinct. That, and being on fire). Ebay.
-Lots of fondant dinosaurs from ebay (actually, I was pretty happy with them despite how fragile they are. They mostly survived the post and last a long while (weeks), and taste better than anything rice paper-ish).
-Dino sprinkles around the edge of the water (SO not necessary… AND mixed with other sprinkles… but TJ was rather taken with the idea of dino sprinkles).
-Strawberry topping carefully applied around the edges of the volcanoes for lava (it was important that none of the topping got inside the volcanoes).
-Mini plastic dinos (tube of 20 or so for $4 from Kmart and I dropped some in each party bag afterwards), and two wind-up dinos ($3 each at Kmart).
-Dino cupcake toppers for the sides of the cake (stuck on with “edible glue” from Woolies), and Tim Tams.
As you can see, the aesthetic I was going for was: I bought a whole lotta vaguely cake-related stuff and I aim to use it ALL.
So there it is in all its glory.
Now let’s talk volcanoes.
I dug two holes in the cake, and inserted small empty (clean) coke bottles (I experimented with other shapes and the mini soft drink bottle worked best). Then I broke a hole in the pointy end of two waffle cones and placed them over the top.
I was careful to make the bottle hole and cone hole match up as well as possible. You can see one of the bottles in the top of this pic:
The cones did shatter a fair bit, but they fundamentally worked.
Bring a SEALED bottle of DIET red (the colour doesn’t matter; a lot of people use Coke because the dark colour is more dramatic but obviously red was better here).
At the last moment, fill both bottles. Then drop two MINT MENTOS into each one.
NB: The red diet drink I used uses stevia (considered a more ‘natural’ sweetener than the old chemical ones that have a number and/or a multisyllabic name). A LESS natural drink is likely to cause a greater explosion.
My daughter and her friend held the wind-up dinosaurs and let them go when I said, “Now!” and dropped the mentos into the volcanoes.
I lit the candles before pouring the diet soft drink into the bottles.
Horrible things that didn’t happen
Here are some of the common pregnancy side effects that I managed not to have:
-very painful feet and ankles
-massive weight gain
-varicose veins
-huge numbers of moles (the skin kind, not the rodent)
-gestational diabetes
-dental problems or other bone issues due to calcium going out of mum into the baby
-high blood pressure
-complications at the birth
-ugly baby
-colicky baby
So THAT’s nice.
In a shocking break from recent tradition, I will NOT be talking about Louisette tomorrow, or posting another photo. I’ll actually be writing a good old-fashioned “Daily Awesomeness” entry. Then on Wednesday I’ll post all about breastfeeding (including the results of getting Louisette’s tongue tie fixed, which is happening tomorrow and will probably have instant results) and my mental state.
To tide you over, here is a near-fatal dose of cuteness that will have to last you until Wednesday (unless I snap and post something tomorrow after all). Regular readers will recognise Louisette’s cousin. Louisette is honestly getting prettier every single day.
Plot Device Film, and Ten Untranslatable Words
Here is a movie and an article that are sashaying around the writerly blogosphere at the moment.
Yes, it’s a long film for youtube. But it’s way shorter than a movie, and just as good. Say hi to the zombies for me.
And this is an article by someone who has picked ten words that have been adopted from English into other languages due to their precise meanings.
Octopus in an expected place?
When CJ and I pootled about Merimbula’s beaches earlier this year (when it was, you know, warm), we met this guy:
It’s the first time I’ve seen an octopus in its natural environment, and we were both over the moon.
Not to be confused with Octopus in an unexpected place, one of my all-time favourite blog entries.
An Australian, an American and a British girl walk into a Chinese recording studio. . .
This video was recorded by a British girl and features an Australian man and an American woman recording a dialogue intended to assist Chinese students learning English. It singlehandedly explains all the Chinglish you’ve ever seen. As you watch, keep in mind that they were not allowed to alter the script in any way. Enjoy the increasing insanity as the Australian man starts playing multiple parts. Don’t forget to listen carefully to exactly what they say.
The fake glasses are Korean.
And here are some random photos from January last year when CJ and I went to Beijing.
I blogged about China here and here, and about the Great Wall here.
#308: Skyfire
Skyfire means two things:
1. Fireworks set to music.
2. Canberra’s annual rush hour – with drunkenness and Canberrans (unnaccustomed to serious traffic) in the mix.
Oh, and jet fighters.
People gather all around Lake Burley Griffin for hours before any kind of show begins. Around six o’clock, stuff starts happening. Jet fighters, helicopters, Jessica Mauboy, radio people (it’s run by 104.7FM), and so on.
The barges above are where all the explosives are. The helicopter is either part of the entertainment or standing by in case of drunken accidents. Beside it is the Carillion, which lights up at night (you can see it in most of the photos below).
It was very cold, and even rained.
And then it began!
Here’s a video to show you what “fireworks set to music” actually means.
The final song was “Firework” by Katy Perry.
The instant it was finished (as captured above) we elbowed children and drunks out of the way willy-nilly in order to get out of the crush before it fully congealed.
As always, totally worth it.
Tomorrow is the FINAL DAY of the Year of Daily Awesomeness.
There’ll be a greatest hits video.
Felicity Banks 