~ Strawberry Picking at Butler's Orchard ~

Today was an awesome day!  The weather was just beautiful!  What better outdoor activities to do with kids than picking strawberries!  We headed to our neighborhood Butler's Orchard for some sweet and juicy strawberries.  I love these turquoise containers that they gave us!

These strawberry plants are very low to the ground.  You have to move the leaves away to find the ripe strawberries.

Sometimes, you may get lucky and find some nice strawberries just hanging out.  Unfortunately, I was to busy taking pictures of it and forgot to pick this one!

The strawberries are so juicy that the juices were just squirting out of my niece's mouth!  She couldn't stop eating them.

Some of them were super ripe and some of them are perfect in a couple of days.  Most of them are small, smaller than a standard meatball.  But the sweetness and juiciness makes up for the size!

We also stopped by the farmer's market and got some Strawberry Apple freeze.  It was too sweet for me though.  I rather have just the strawberries.  The strawberries are $2.29/lb, very reasonable price.  We will be going back again soon!

~ The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef ~

I went down to the Natural History Museum in DC a few weeks ago and saw this amazing coral reef display. Everything was made out of yarn!

It was not a wimpy display either.  It was full blown, life size corals and other sea creatures!  I was so mesmerized by it that my family just left me there by myself.  Can you just imagine how much work it was to create all these creatures??

They also have some made with wire crocheting.  I have seen similar items on Etsy I think.

They even have some made with beads!  Wow!  It's amazing!  Can someone give me a pattern to make this please?

Maybe I should start with this smaller one....

Unfortunately, I was busy and didn't write this up sooner. It was a temporary display that ended on April 24th. You can still find a portion of it in New York though, if you want to see it in person.  I love the Natural History Museum!  Can't wait to go back soon!

~ Addicted to Plants vs Zombies ~

I have seen this game advertised many many times, but I have always resisted.  I am still recovering from my Bejeweled addiction and just started to ease myself out of the Zuma Blitz obsession.  But, I saw a deal for Plants vs Zombies and just bought the game for $3!  $3!!  That's a great deal for hours and hours of entertainment.

 So, what is this game?  Basically, you have to set up these plants that will help you defend your home from zombies.  There are many different plants and many different zombies.  Everything is drawn very nicely and it's a very fun and relaxing game.  After all the action from Zuma Blitz, this is a nice change of pace.

Besides the main adventure mode, there are mini-games, puzzle mode, and survival mode that you need to unlock. 

This is one of the mini games where you have a slot machines that give you plant seeds and sun.  There are so many different games rolled into one!!

And you can make your own zombies.  So funny!  This is my current favorite.  So cute!  Ok, even though I have been busy with this, I still made 12 pairs of earrings last night and took some pictures today.  I will be posting about that soon!  

~ Cherry Blossoms at Kenwood ~

Every year, I try to get down to DC to see cherry blossoms.  But, every year something happens and I just don't get to see the cherry blossoms.  This year, I went down to DC but it was too cold and I ended up at the museum.  But, I found out about Kenwood so I headed there to see some cherry blossoms!

The cherry blossoms were so pretty!  It was like a fairy tale!  It was very crowded though and I did feel bad for walking on people's lawns.

Since Kenwood is just a neighborhood, I brought Momo too!  He was quite excited about everything! 

Here are some closeups of the cherry blossoms.  Most of the cherry blossoms were white.  I think pink is prettier, but the sheer amount of blossoms is still astonishing.  My brother took this picture :)

This is taken with my S95.  Not sure what kind of flowers these are....

 

My S95 again... not as sharp as the Nikon, but I didn't want to carry it around.  

Kenwood is a very nice neighborhood and it's nicely organized to handle the huge amount of visitors.  It was hard to find information about it though.  There is no address and I had no idea where I was going.  I just saw that it's on Brookside Drive and River Rd.  On weekends, there are cops there to direct traffic so it wasn't too bad.  There was many parking spaces along the street and you just have to follow the signs.  I think it's easier to just enter the neighborhood at River Rd and Dorsey Ave though. 

There were a lot of kids selling lemonade and cookies for charity, which is very sweet of them.  There is also a small area for hanging out and perhaps a small picnic, I think.  It's in the middle, on Brookside Drive.  I think I will go back on a weekday next year, or maybe go down to DC again.  The flowers are so pretty!

~ Hello Kitty Mah Jong Set ~

Do you know what Mah Jong is?  It's a Chinese game with tiles, similar to Gin.  I love to play and I own a cute little purple glitter set.  But, it is simply not as cute as this set!  It even comes with a silver metal case to hold everything!

Everything is so cute and pink!  it comes with a felt mat to play on too!

Check out the dice!

There's a yellow/gold gitter hello kitty set on ebay but it's super expensive!!!  I want it but ... I don't need it.  I don't even play that much.  I'll just have to go play with my friends whenever I need a dose of Hello Kitty cuteness and mah jong :)

~ Zuma Blitz Tips: The Yellow Dirt Road ~

What a sad moment. I am hanging my head in shame because I didn't get the gold medal this week! I lost by 80,000 points! Sad!

 Ok, I am over it.  I am pretty proud of my score though!  A full 2:00 game! 

And 1M just for the fruits!  Yea!!!  That was a pretty unbelievable game.  I have gotten past 2M a few times, and 2.4 once.  But, just couldn't get past this score. 

And I got to level 80.  That was madness.  But I am so glad because my little froggy is now forever yellow.  Ok, the 10% speed boost helps too.

So, this week was kind of weird.... For some reason, they had an old board up for a while.  It was "Dark Sand" from about a month ago.  Strange.  Anyway, this week's Zuma Blitz board is confusing!  These curves are killing me.  And the yellow track makes it hard to see the yellow balls!

The fruits are in the little curve in the upper right and lower left hand corner.  Pretty easy to get to so this is another high scoring board.  It is a little bit tricky though.  The curves makes you think you can hit the fruit but really, there's a ball in the way.

Anyway, here's my choice of powers for this week.  You gotta have the time and I am pretty confident that I can get the fruits, so Epic Fruit.  Also, I like the Bombs because the tracks are close to one another.  Bombs are very effective.  This board is also awesome for gap shots!  Because the tracks come from opposite ends, it takes time to switch between aiming at the tracks.  So, concentrate on one track at a time.  I am not using Hot Frog because it's pretty hard to get the Hot Frog on this board.  I feel like the balls are more randomly placed.

Here's my score so far and I am #1 for now.  Hopefully, my Zuma arch nemesis won't be playing much this week so I can stay #1 :)

~ Zuma Blitz Tips: Hearts and Flowers ~

I broke 2M!!!!!!!!!  Yay!  *GLOAT*  I didn't even play that much last week.  No competition so less legitimate reason to play.  And, all the powers are expensive now!  It's about $6000/game!  Sometimes, it sucks to have such a high level in this game.

This week's Zuma Blitz board is so cute.  Just perfect for Valentine's day with the concentric heart shape tracks and little flowers.

To me, there are 2 tricky parts to this board.  One is where the tracks crisscross near the top.  It's confusing to me.  And once the balls get that far, I get nervous because they will soon reach the skull!  And it blocks the fruits and all the other power balls.  Another trick part is that the track is short!  If I don't use any powers, the balls usually get really close to the skull!  I almost died a few times!

The fruits are not hard to get though.  It's on the upper left and right corners.  If you just have 1 track of ball in front of it, you have plenty of time to knock a hole in the track and get the fruit.

But, if you are slow, then you are screwed!  You see that fruit?  Just dangling in front of your face and you just can't get to it.  Very frustrating!  Though concentric tracks always have the advantage of gap shots.  Just let 1 track go close to the skull then start clearing the balls from the end but leave a few behind to create a big gap.

As with any boards with good fruit position, you should use Epic Fruit.  But, it's an expensive power up.  You can substitute with bombs or Multiplier if you like.  I always play with Tempus Fugit.  And you need some kind of explosives for this board so either bombs or sun frog.  I like sun frog because it's only 1500 Mojo and I can clear the tracks with it.  If you are not good with getting hot frog, stick with the bombs.  By the way, being level 72 sucks!  It takes 6500 Mojo for me to play a decent game!

Here's my score so far, let's see if I can break 2M again this week!  Good luck!

~ Zuma Blitz Tips: Abandoned Paradise ~

I love Dizzy Corals.  I actually scored over 1.8M!!!  And needless to say, I remain a gold medalist this week. It was a close game!  There were many days when I was #2, but at last, I prevailed.

This past week, Zuma Blitz had a little update which include a new break down for the score.  It's really great to analyze if your power ups help you and what you should do more.  Given this information, I determined that clearing a curve gives me a decent amount of points.  So, whenever I get the Hot Frog, I try to focus on one track to clear it.  It was fairly easy to do with Dizzy Corals because of the short inner track.  See the 648K for "Specials"?  Half of that was from clearing the curves.

This week's track is a lot longer than last week's Dizzy Corals!  I named it: Abandoned Paradise.  It reminds me of the anime Origins - Spirits of the Past.  The tracks are long!  They are so long and can be filled with so many balls that one of my laptops slow down when I played it!  Such a pain!  But, the tracks are closed to each other so bombs work well here.  Also, get ready for some gap shots.  Just let focus on 1 track first and let the other fill up.  Then, work on a hole in the track to get the gap shots.

The fruits are in the upper right hand corner and the lower left hand corner.  They are fairly easy to get and bombs will help.

If you are a fast shooter, you may want to use the Sun Frog.  It's fairly easy to clear the curve with 5 fire balls.  Just sweep from right to left for the bottom track and left to right for the top track.  Pretty awesome. 

This is my score so far.  It's a busy week with Chinese New Year and all so I may not play as much.  Unless someone beats my score.  BRING IT :)

~ Zuma Blitz Tips: Dizzy Corals ~

This past week was tough.  Sand and Surf was rough for me and I was #2 for long time.  It wasn't till Friday that I broke 1 million and climbed back to #1!  I ended up using Juicy Fruits instead of bombs because the bombs were not as useful as I thought.

Yes, it's gloating time!  #2 score was only 50K behind me!  I was so worried that he would beat me in the last hour but thankfully, he gave up.

This week's board is very simple.  It has 2 concentric oval track set in the deep blue ocean floor with pretty corals.  It's a very calming color.  Perhaps that will help you with the score.

The difficulty with this board is how short the tracks are!  The first time I played, I almost got chewed up!  The inner track is really short.  And it's easy to neglect the outer track when you are trying to take care of the inner one, like I did here.

The fruits are not too hard to get.  It is a little close to the entrance and you can end up with two tracks of balls between you and the fruit.  That's why I recommend the bombs for this board.  You may think that you don't need it because the tracks are not very close to each other.  But, it really helps because you need it to help you clear the balls.  Otherwise, you'll end up being chewed up.  And it's great to open a hole to the fruits.  So this week, I am sticking with my chrono balls, multiplier and bombs for powerups.  Also, this board is easy because the balls come pretty close to the frog.

This is going to be a high scoring board.  Look at my score now and it's only been 1.5 hours!  I think I am going to stay away from Zuma till someone beats my score.  Yay, maybe I'll finally be productive this week!