by Stephanie H, Sprague Branch One of the best parts of winter is that citrus fruits are in season. A dried citrus garland is an inexpensive way to spruce up your decor and bring some sunshine to the gray winter months. I made this garland with 2 oranges and a grapefruit. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees, do not go any higher than this because you will end up burning your fruit. First you will need to slice your fruit, about ¼ of an inch, you can just eyeball it. Thicker slices will not end up dehydrating all the way. Arrange your slices on a baking sheet and put them in the oven. The key to getting the oranges dehydrated is to be patient, this will take a few hours. After the fruit has been in the oven for an hour, take them out, flip them, and put them back in for another 2 hours. Make sure to check on them occasionally to make sure they do not burn. Burnt slices will take on a brownish color and will feel brittle. After the final two hours, take the slices out of the oven and place them on a cooling rack (if you have it, if not, just leave them on the cookie sheet) The fruit will need to rest for a few hours or over night.
To string the oranges, I cut a hole in the fruit and tied it to a long string. The oranges should last through the winter and then you can compost or toss them after!
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by Lexi, Day-Riverside Branch Every October I want to spend way too much money on Halloween decorations, especially on window clings! They are such an excellent way to communicate a commitment to spookiness to the outside world! This year I decided to make my own! It was very cheap and made a good, fun mess of my kitchen. Watch this video for a quick tutorial on how to make your own bloody handprint clings! If bloody handprints seem too gory, you can also make spooky green alien hands! Cada octubre quiero gastar demasiado dinero en decoraciones de Halloween, ¡especialmente en adornos para ventanas! ¡Son una manera excelente de comunicar al mundo exterior mi dedicación al terror! ¡Este año decidí crear unas en casa ! Era barato e hizo un grande y divertido desastre en mi cocina. ¡Mire este video para obtener un tutorial rápido sobre cómo hacer sus propias huellas de manos sangrientas! Si las huellas de manos ensangrentadas parecen demasiado espantoso, ¡también puedes hacer unas manos alienígenas verdes espeluznantes! If you’d like a book to read while you’re waiting for your handprints to dry, check out these 5 horror novels by diverse authors. They will make your toes curl!
by McKelle, Day-Riverside Branch So, you’ve decided you want to try your hand at playing Dungeons and Dragons. You’ve gathered a group of stalwart, adventuring friends, you’ve learned the rules, you have your campaign ready to go… Now what? Now, you build a character. Before you can begin playing D&D, you need to create or select a character as your adventurer. Characters are a combination of game statistics, role playing hooks, and imagination. In D&D a character's class and race drives many of the interactions and decisions made to resolve encounters and combat. If you’re new to character creation, figuring out how to build a first level character can be overwhelming and intimidating. Trying to figure out which stats should be a priority, which skills and spells you should invest in and how to get the numbers on the sheet so you can get playing can be a bit of a juggling act. If building a character from scratch sounds too overwhelming for your first time, there are many fun pre-made character sheets you can use to start out with. But if creating a character sounds like half of the fun, then here’s an easy step by step guide to help you build your own D&D adventurer! Step 1: Choose Race, Class, and Background Choose a Race Race is your character's species. Your character's race helps determine your physical look as well as giving you natural talents. Racial traits include the following: Ability Score Increase, Age, Alignment, Size, Speed, Languages, and Subraces. You can read the first few paragraphs of each race's section to get an idea of what each of them are. Choose one of the following races:
Choose a Class Class is your character's profession, and determines what actions your character can perform. Your character gains some special class features and proficiencies centered around their chosen vocation. You can read the first few paragraphs of each class's section to get an idea of what each of them are. There are 12 basic classes in D&D: barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, fighter, monk, paladin, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, warlock and wizard. Reading through all of their entries in the Player’s Handbook is the only way to make sure you won’t have buyer’s remorse. Choose Background Your character also needs a name and personality. Spend a few minutes thinking about the character’s behavior and looks. You will also need to choose a Background for your character. Your character's background is simply your character's history. Where do they come from and what were they doing prior to the game you are about to play. They provide additional proficiencies, languages, and skills. You can read up on the many types of backgrounds here. Step 2: Stat Blocks and Ability Scores Now comes the complicated part. Once you have determined your character’s appearance, personality, and background, you have to figure out how they will interact with dice play. The stat block is the main portion of the sheet that influences the “game” part of the role-playing game. This block consists of your proficiency modifier, your ability scores and modifiers, and your skill modifiers. Each of a creature's abilities has a score, a number that defines the magnitude of that ability. An ability score is not just a measure of innate capabilities, but also encompasses a creature's training and competence in activities related to that ability. Much of what your character does relies on six abilities: Strength, measuring physical power, Dexterity, measuring agility, Constitution, measuring endurance, Intelligence, measuring reasoning and memory, Wisdom, measuring perception and insight, and Charisma, measuring force of personality. You can print and download a free blank character sheet, and then use D&D guides to help you feel out each stat black. Step 3: Review and come together! Go over your character sheet and share it with your campaign team! D&D characters don’t work alone. Each character plays a role within a party, a group of adventurers working together for a common purpose. Talk to your fellow players and your DM to decide whether your characters know one another, how they met, and what sorts of quests the group might undertake. Once you’re all on the same page, then it’s time to have fun and enjoy your adventure! by Stephanie H., Sprague Branch Do you and your friends want urban jungles but lack the funds to buy tons of new plants? Never fear, I can teach you how to create more plants from the plants you already have! There are a few plants that will create babies for you. First up is the Spider plant (Chlorophytum comosum) that grow babies on the end of long stems. When these tiny plants get to grow roots, you can snip them off their stem and plant them in potting soil or, if you are lazy like me, sit them in a jar of water. Next up is the Pilea peperomioides, also known as the Chinese Money plant. Pileas grow tiny plantlets around the base of their stem. Once they are a few inches tall, you can cut the baby plant from the mother by snipping the connecting root that is a few inches under the soil. Plant the baby in potting soil and you are good to go! Many plants can be easily propagated from stem cuttings. This is the method I use most often. When you take a cutting, make sure to cut just below a leaf, this is where growth hormones that make new roots are concentrated. Make sure that you use a clean, sanitized knife or scissors and that you make a diagonal cut. Diagonal cuts heal faster than horizontal cuts. Next, plop the stem in some water, and change the water weekly. In about 3-4 weeks your plant stem should have roots. At this point you can transfer the stem to soil. Again, I am lazy and just keep the plants growing in water, it is also fun to see the root systems develop. I have had lots of fun experimenting with propagating different plants in water, and most of them have been very successful. When you and your friends have a few cuttings, get together and have a plant swap! by McKelle, Day-Riverside Branch First, what is D&D? Dungeons and Dragons is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG). One of the great things about D&D is that you only really need a copy of the rules (which has been made available online for free for new players), some pencils and paper, a set of dice, and your imagination. D&D allows each player to create their own character to play, and these characters embark upon imaginary adventures within a fantasy setting. A Dungeon Master (DM) serves as the game's referee and storyteller, while maintaining the setting in which the adventures occur, and playing the role of the inhabitants of the game world. The characters form a party and they interact with the setting's inhabitants and each other. Together they solve dilemmas, engage in battles, explore, and gather treasure and knowledge. In the process, the characters earn experience points (XP) in order to rise in levels, and become increasingly powerful over a series of separate gaming sessions. D&D famously uses a bunch of weird-looking dice, which some players collect like they’re Pokémon cards. For most people, a standard set of polyhedral dice works just as well. There are premade character sheets available (though you often have to purchase them), but if you want to create a character from scratch, you can do that too. The website D&D Beyond offers a character creator tool that can help. Once you have everything you need, you’re ready to play! Traditionally, D&D is played on . . . you guessed it, a tabletop. But the internet has now made it remarkably easy to play a D&D campaign with your friends online—which is also useful when you’re trying to social distance. Knowing how to play D&D online is also a low-effort way of getting into Dungeons and Dragons for the first time. It's easy, and anyone with a mobile device, laptop, or computer can get involved. Because D&D can be a real pick-me-up in times of social distancing, that's no bad thing. Step One: Pick the Right “Virtual Tabletop” for Your Group A virtual tabletop is the software you’ll actually use to do all the planning for your digital campaign, as well as where you’ll gather to roll, play, and role play. D&D is all about immersion and cooperative storytelling, so you have to be able to chat with each other. While there are many modules that you can pay for that might make gameplay easier, it’s not necessary. Basically, if you can hear the voice of another human being you can play D&D. Roll20 Roll20 is an amazing, free to use piece of software that provides interactive and intuitive battlemaps. You can also import tokens and maps from premade modules, if you run them. Tabletop Simulator Tabletop Simulator is a physics engine that allows you to play virtually any board game online. Although it takes a fair bit of work to set up correctly for DnD, it is easily the closest you can get to playing in person. However this one costs money to use, so if you’re short on cash, Roll20 is the way to go. Step Two: Choose a Voice Chat: There are a number of video chat platforms out there, most notably: Zoom - Most reliable, but only free for 40 minutes. Google Hangouts - Can get laggy, but free and user friendly. Discord - The free and favorite option for most gamers, but it doesn’t have a pop-out video panel, which makes it a tough choice for online sessions if you want to see each other. Step Three: Get Digital Copies of Books and Materials This step is not strictly necessary. As we mentioned before, if you’re an experienced RPG player and feel comfortable designing your game and your characters from scratch, that is totally an option. But if you’re more of a newbie, it will be easier to have the handbook and modules to work from. Again, DnD Beyond is the best online resource for everything you might need. Step Four: Have fun and be flexible! There will always be some bumps and hurdles with playing a tabletop game online, but the great thing about RPG is being able to improvise new solutions and roll with the punches (pun intended). Have fun out there, and beware of the smiling dungeon master. by Stephanie H., Sprague Branch I know that many people think bird watching is a hobby only for the elderly, but I have found that it has given me a better appreciation for the natural environment here in Salt Lake City. I also feel more attuned to the changes in the seasons, since Utah is a hotspot for bird migration. You do not have to wake up at sunrise, or travel to the mountains to do bird watching, just taking walks around your neighborhood can be an opportunity to see a huge variety of bird species. Here are a few birds you will probably spot: The Black-billed Magpie (Pica hudsonia) belongs to the Corvidae family along with crows and ravens, which means they are incredibly intelligent. Corvids have shown the ability to create tools and recognize different human faces. They have black heads, white chests and blue-black wings and live in SLC year-round. The American Kestrel (Falco sparverius) is a small Falcon. It is not uncommon to see it perched on fences or wires on the roadside, I once saw one perched on a freeway overpass. One of their favorite foods is grasshoppers, something that we have plenty of here in Salt Lake. They build nests in cavities of trees, so if you have some large trees in your neighborhood, you probably have a kestrel living nearby. Since our winters are not as harsh as in the East, kestrels stay here year-round. Unlike magpies and kestrels, Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedorum) migrate to Utah in the winter. You can usually spot them in trees that have berries on them, they often get drunk off of the older berries on the trees. Cedar waxwings have a tan body with a black eye mask, and red wing tips. Waxwings always travel in large flocks, so instead of spotting one waxwing, you will probably spot a huge group of them. European Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) are one of the most common birds I see around SLC. Unfortunately, starlings are not native to North America, they were brought over from Europe to New York in the late 1800’s. Since then starlings have spread across the entire continent, they are what is known as an invasive species meaning they displace native bird populations. They are a sobering example of the destruction our actions can have on the environment. Starlings have a black body with light brown or white spots. You will see them congregating on power lines in the hundreds. These are only a few examples of the huge variety of birds you can spot in our city. I highly encourage you to download the free app from the Audubon Society that can help you identify birds on the spot. You can also go to the Audubon website at audubon.org for more information about birds, conservation and climate change. You can also check out the Salt Lake Audubon Society, and get involved with bird counts which help scientists track bird populations. |
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