Yonanas Soft Serve Maker

I love trying new things, especially those that relate to food. So I jumped at the chance to review the Yonanas Soft Serve Maker here on my blog (affiliate link). I hadn't heard of Yonanas before the manufacturer contacted me, but apparently I've been living under a rock because it's been around well over a decade. If you already know and use Yonanas, feel free to ignore today's post. If, like me, Yonanas is new to you, read on!

 

Yonanas is an easy-to-use machine that turns frozen fruit into a treat with the consistency of soft-serve ice cream. But here's the important thing: it does this with no added ingredients. You're not adding milk or yogurt or anything else. You put in fruit, then you get out that exact same fruit but with a different texture.

My Yonanas came with a 63-page recipe book of delicious-sounding desserts. I stuck with the basics for now. The first time I used my Yonanas, I used strawberries and bananas. The second time, blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries. You turn on the machine, drop the frozen fruit into the chute, then slowly press the contents down toward the blade using the plunger. The pressed fruit comes right out the bottom into your container. 

  

Yonanas is not a blender, nor a food processor, nor a smoothie maker. Rather than shred the fruit, it squishes it, which gives a different texture than you'd get in another type of machine. 

I was afraid the Yonanas machine would be a pain to wash, but it's not. It has five removable, washable parts in addition to the base; cleaning them is surprisingly easy. But before you wash anything, use a spoon to scrape off as much of the fruit as possible so that you don't waste it! Quite a bit stays behind in the machine.

Big thanks to Yonanas for providing me with a media sample! So far, I'm happy with my Yonanas and I'm eager to try different fruits. Next time, I'm going to try pineapple. And then maybe mango. Yum! 

Dallas - Fort Worth

We spent the last few days of spring break 2023 in Texas, exploring Fort Worth and Dallas. We packed our days with activities and, as always, it was difficult to select a small number of photos to represent our time there. I settled on 9: the Texas flag, the longhorn cattle drive, solving the Quest in Fort Worth, the headquarters of the Boy Scouts of America, the Fort Worth Stockyard, the Dallas trolley tour, Dealey Plaza with Xs in the road, the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, and the Perot.    

DFW (affiliate link)

I started by putting my nine photos into a grid, my favorite way to do travel layouts. I left a horizontal strip below the first set of photos, which would need to hold my title and my journaling. I struggled with how to do that, and eventually decided to treat that horizontal strip as three more spots in the grid. 

I'd planned to use this sticker sheet for embellishing. 

 

3D Texas Stickers - $3.00

Retail Price: $3.99

You Save: $0.99

Rather than sprinkling the stickers into a visual triangle, I grouped a bunch of stickers together in the righthand spot. I added a title in the center and finished by writing my journaling on the left. I don't love this layout, but I'm glad that it's in the album. 

My Favorite States

After yesterday's post establishing that California is the best state, I thought you might be interested in hearing about my favorite states. When thinking back on our time in each of the 50 states, there are five that rise to the top for me. Same disclaimers as yesterday. 

My Favorite States

I have to start my list with Hawaii, which is my second favorite state after California. First and foremost, Hawaii is beautiful. I love Hawaii's natural vegetation and its gorgeous beaches, rivers, and waterfalls. I love the volcanos and the trees and the flowers. I love that pineapple is on the menu for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I love the culture and the language of the Hawaiian people. Hawaii is magical. 

Alaska is magical as well. How can you not love a place with so much natural beauty and open space? You hardly even have to make an effort to see wildlife. Bald eagles are as common as pigeons are in other states. In Alaska, I've seen moose, puffins, bears, and beavers in the wild, as well as many marine mammals. The culture of the native Alaskan people is so rich and interesting, and I absolutely love their art. Alaska is home to 8 of our 63 National Parks, second only to California. Alaska is majestic and so special. 

I'm giving the next spot to Vermont. It is the perfect mix of the things that I love: natural beauty, abundant wildlife, a rich history, good food, and lots of opportunities to learn. I love Vermont's small towns and kind people and the slower pace of life.    

The next spot on my list goes to New Mexico. I didn't expect to love it nearly as much as I did, but New Mexico won me over immediately. New Mexico is unlike anywhere else I've been, and I think that's so much of what I love about it. The unique Puebloan architecture with its blue doors, the ristras hanging along fences and patios, the flavorful food, the pottery, and the deep blue skies... there's nowhere else quite like it. I love the petroglyphs and the impact the native cultures have on every aspect of life. 

The final position in My Top 5 (excluding California) Favorite States goes to Louisiana. When you're in Louisiana, you know you're in Louisiana. You're not going to mistake it for any other place. Even beyond New Orleans, there is a Louisiana-ness that is present everywhere you go. I love that. The swamps, the architecture, the food, the music, the history, the culture, and the vibrancy all make Louisiana a wonderful place to visit. 

It is hard to stop here, as there are so many other states that I love. Oregon and Washington, for example. In a way, both feel like bonus Californias. Feel free to poke around my US Travel page and read about all the things we discovered and loved about each of the other 44 states. And then leave me a comment telling me which states are your favorites!

The Best State Is....

For years, whenever people found out we had plans to visit all 50 states they asked me, "Which state is your favorite so far?" That question has morphed into, "Now that you've been to all 50 states, which one is the best?" I've heard the question so often in the last month that I realized it needs a dedicated blog post. 

First, I'll get my disclaimers out of the way. 

• "Best" is extremely subjective. 
• I haven't been to every part of every state. I can only judge on what I've experienced. 
• For the majority of the states, I've only visited during one season. Many states are dramatically different in the summer and the winter. I try not to let the weather influence my opinion of a state, but that can be hard to do.   
• I visited some of the states with a toddler and others with a teenager. The experience is completely different. Trevor's age has had a major impact on what we do when we travel, which in turn influences my opinion of the state. 
• This is my opinion. Yours may differ, and you're welcome to tell me if it does, but you're not going to convince me that I'm wrong about my own opinion.

So which state is the best? Actually, that's really easy to answer.   

California is the best state. 

California has everything. California is the most diverse state and the most visited state, both by Americans and the rest of the world. It has some of the best food and wine in the world. No matter what climate you like, you can find it somewhere in California. There is so much natural beauty; in fact, California has more national parks (9) than any other state. (Alaska, which is four times bigger than California, is #2 with 8 national parks.) You can famously ski and surf at world class locations on the same day in California; it's the only state to have hosted both the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics. I could go on and on, filling pages with superlatives about the Golden State. California is a great place to visit and an even better place to live.

In My Sketchbook: Friend Want Ad

This is the latest project in my sketchbook. I call it a "Friend Want Ad" because it highlights all the characteristics I most appreciate in a friend. 

As you can see, I'm always on the lookout for happy, thoughtful, ethical, generous, honest, smart, funny, creative people to add to my group of friends. And, apparently, I'm looking for neat, curious, practical people. I accidentally put all three of those words twice. 

This is a fun project to do with kids because it's so interesting to see what words they choose. You may be thinking that everyone wants friends who are fun, kind, and nice, but once you look closer, you start to see words that don't appear on everyone's list. For example, I included the words careful, calm, and practical. Spending too much time with daredevils or highly energetic or impractical people both stresses me out and exhausts me. I want to spend time with interesting, responsible, well-read people. On someone else's Friend Want Ad, you might find words like active, social, outgoing, crazy, spontaneous, athletic, brave, wild, mysterious, trendy, extroverted, imaginative, rustic, solemn, or zany. All positive attributes, but not the best fit for me. 

This project actually started when I was reorganizing my paint storage shelves to include the newest colors from Plaid. I ended up with a fun mix of colors on my desk and used them to paint random swatches in my sketchbook. At this point, I had no idea what I'd be doing with this spread.

And then, the Freehand Lettering Guidebook (affiliate link) showed up in the mail. They'd contacted me about reviewing it back in June; I'd forgotten about it by the time it arrived. But it turned out to be just the inspiration I needed to do something with the paint swatches. 

The Guidebook starts with an introduction to hand lettering, with tips about the various media and substrates used for lettering. The first two chapters provide examples of alphabets written with fine, medium, and broad pens. Chapter 3 has examples of open face letters and Chapter 4 has script letters. Chapter 5 is all about setting, transforming, arranging, and decorating text. 

After reading the introduction and flipping through the rest of the Guidebook, I grabbed some colored pencils and jumped in with adding words to my painted pages. Each word is inspired by a different alphabet from the book. I had different levels of success drawing them with colored pencil over paint. And I didn't plan out any of the words in advance, which explains any wonky spacing and repeated words. All part of the charm, right? 

This was a fun project to do. I can see myself playing around with both the Friend Want Ad concept as well as the many alphabets in the Freehand Lettering Guidebook!