Make your own MONOPOLY

It was my mom's 60th birthday, and we were planning to go on a family vacation. My sisters and I wanted to make her something special, and one of the many things that we produced for her birthday (T-shirts, private movie screening, photo album, a short clip etc..) we also decided to make her a costume monopoly board, featuring some of the milestones in her life.

I could not have done this without finding this amazing monopoly - photoshop template created by Brad, and without the help of my lovely, two older sisters.
Here's what you do:

Plan your board. decide what do you want to write in each square. Download the Photoshop files from Brad's site. Change the squares according to your plans, add photos or cartoons when necessary. create the property cards accordingly. Note that the board size is about 60x60cm, though you can always make it smaller.

Decorate the board with family photos. That's a matter of preference and taste. Just make sure you have some family photos on the computer, crop them as desired and add them to the board. Best is to use the "Extract" command in photoshop (under the filter menu).

Chance / Community chest- we changed that to surprise/ greeting. the thought was that the players will fill the cards with greetings for my mom and surprise gifts or tokens they wish to give her. we made some empty cards for that purpose.

Make the houses and hotels. we couldn't find any Monopoly hoses on stores and it was too late to buy some on ebay, so we made some. We bough 1x1cm wooden cubes. For the houses, we glued little roofs on them  made of a red paper stripe. For the hotels, we just glued two cubes together.  

Make the money. since it was our mom's birthday, we chose to make money with her face on it. We took a good profile picture of her, used the sketch filter in photoshop and placed her face in the center of a Monopoly bill. After I had that, I just changed the value of the bills. You can then print the bills on colored paper, and get some costumed Monopoly money. 

Make the players. we had a lot of ideas, but due to shortness of time we choose some figures out of the "toy a day" site. we made little heads of the family players and glued them on the folded toys.

 

We printed the board in a printing shop along with everything else, but if you have a colored printer you can print the things at home. We glued the board on some hard board carton to make it strong enough, and to make sure it doesn't wrinkle. We also made a box out of used carton.  

That's that. I can not say that it's not a lot of work, cause it is, but it made our mom so so happy, so I guess it was worth it.

Happy birthday mom!

I find you very attractive- make cool magnets, pt.II

I know it might seem that I have a small magnet obsession, but we really do have loads of unwanted magnets and a lot of junk hanging on our fridge and front door (and we don't even have kids yet).
This magnets project is a great idea for a something to do with all the bear caps left after Shavuot holiday or the weekend .

What you'll need

• bear bottle caps
• nice looking paper
• cardboard
• white plastic glue
• some sort of contact adhesive
• round, strong magnets

this time I've used some nicly patterned origami paper I had lying around and bear bottle caps; I think that with this method, any paper can work (except for cardboards and such).

Method

1. If your bottle cap has dark patterning on it and your paper is realtively thin (especially if using napkins), you should cover the top of the cap before you continue. paint spary will work, I find that cutting out cardboard circles and just gluing them is easyier, cleaner and cheaper.
2. Make a mixture of plastic glue and water. I didn't measure the quantities,but you can tell there's a lot of glue in there by the color. don't be cheap. Rinse your paper in the glue water for a few minutes to soften it abit.
3. Put the cap in the center of the paper, slowly fold the paper inwards while   keeping the face of the cap as tight as possible. use one hand to hold the    folded paper in place, and the other to keep on folding.
4. Let the thing dry for 10-20 minutes. in the mean time, you can cover some more caps.
5. Cut another circle that will fit the inside of the cap. when the paper is relatively dry, glue the card circle to cover up the folded paper. you can use the magnets at this point to tighten the folded paper back. let dry for another 10-20 minutes.
6. When this complex is dry, use contact adhesive to attach the magnet to the bottom of your covered cap.
7.     Let dry, and you're done!

Happy Holidays all!

Things in jars make me all excited

This Friday was about making things in jars.

like pickles (did half the amount of cucumbers,but kept the amount of garlic and chilly. also added allspice which was not grounded.)

and pesto, and mini-sun-dried tomatoes. my recipe for these is ho-so simple, can can make a great effortless gift for Shavuot.

Dried Cherry Tomatoes
Take a big pack of cherry-tomatoes (the elongated ones are the sweetest and work best) wash and slice in half. place in a pan, facing up.
you can spread some sea salt, but lately I've just dried them "naturally" and I think the flavor is much better, also it's better for your blood pressure.Turn on the oven on very low temperature, between 100-150C degrees. after a few hours they will be dried. for long term preservation, put the tomatoes in a glass jar; add sliced garlic, thyme, rosemary, black peper. cover with extra-virgin olive oil; note that anything sticking out of the oil will get moldy. Enjoy! (: