Make your own Halloween Treat Bags

By Christina VanGinkel

Making crafts around the holidays is always a fun activity for the young and old alike. One of my favorites for Halloween are Treat Bags that are easy to make, fun to fill, and kids love to get them instead of the traditional piece of candy or small treat. Make up a few to give to your favorite Trick or Treaters or to bring to work and decorate your desk with.

Materials needed to make one Halloween Treat Bag include (Multiply by how many you want to make):

Six to eight inch cut circle of Halloween themed or appropriate colored cotton fabric
Fabric can be substituted with orange, black, or white organza, tulle, or other similar fabric
Eight-inch piece of black, white, or orange yarn, four ply
Large round paper wrapped sucker
Assorted bits and pieces of yarn, crafting felt, sequins, pipe cleaners, etc.
Craft glue
Assorted Halloween themed candy (Most important item of all!)

The actual bag part of these is easy to make. Take a circle of fabric and lay out on flat surface. Pile the center of the circle with candy. Fold up all the sides and pick up, so that the bag part is formed around the candy. Give the top a twist or two so that the candy filling is not going to so easily spill out. Holding in one hand, pick up the piece of yarn and tie the bag of candy closed. Set aside.

Next, it is time to decorate the sucker to fit your Halloween themed bag as a topper.

Witch

Witches are my favorite. When you are creating your witch, keep in mind that the sucker is going to be the head of the witch, and size your pieces accordingly. Cut a small black felt circle for the bottom part of your Witches' hat, and set aside. Then take a small scrap of black felt, roll to look like a pointed hat top, running a bit of glue along one edge. One end of the roll will be pointed, while the other will be wider. Once the seam is dry, run a bead of glue around the bottom and stick to the bottom part of the hat, centered as best you can, and let dry. Once the hat is very dry, you can leave as is, or if you have a sharp pair of scissors, cut out the inside of the assembled hat so that it will fit down onto the sucker and not just set on top of it.

Cut some small pieces of green or orange yarn for your witches' hair. Glue these to the side of the sucker. Arrange to look like hair. Glue the hat in place over the hair. Once this is all dry, tuck the sucker's stick handle into the bag. Retie the bag if needed so that it is closed tightly around the stick of the sucker. You can leave as is at this point, or continue to decorate. I always like to add a tiny wand made of nothing more than a toothpick dipped in glue and glitter, but if you will be giving these to young children, skip this part.

Ghost

For a ghost bag, use white fabric or organza. Wrap the sucker in white fabric to match the bag and tie the pieces of fabric both on the bag and around the sucker with white yarn. Make a small hat for the ghost to wear if you wish to give him a bit of character. The hat could be made from just about any colored scraps of fabric you might have. Felt will work best because it will keep its shape. If you wish, take a felt tip marker, fine point, and draw eyes and mouth. You can also make a little sign from a white painted Popsicle stick and stencil or pen on the word Boo!

Use your imagination when creating these Halloween Treat Bags. Create a Frankenstein, bat, or vampire, whatever your imagination leads you to create. If kids are constructing them, provide them with various scraps, supplies, and fabrics and just let them go. As long as the main construction is assembled correctly, they are sure to please, as the candy inside is the most important part of them at this time of the year!

Run Like You Mean It

In the city of Cincinnati, there are a number of races that are hosted through out the city. Most are hosted in hopes to raise money for a charitable cause or event. Some of the more popular races in the area are the Reggae Run that takes place in Hyde Park and the Racing to Read Run hosted by the Kenton County Public Library in Covington KY. Neither of these races can take the place of the two most popular Cincinnati races, which are the Flying Pig, and the Thanksgiving Day Race. I have run all of the aforementioned 5k races and have learned a few things that I want to share with you so that you can perform your best the next time that you race.

First and fore most, as with any test, weather it is a test of brain power or a test of will, you are going to have to practice. Practice makes perfect, and in this case, practice makes you a lot better. You cannot expect to complete a 5K race in any reasonable time if you have never even walked that distance before. You are going to want to start training at least 30 days before the race. Earlier, depending on your physical condition.

If you hear a gun shot on the street, the first thing that comes to your mind is to run away from the sound of the shot as fast as you can. This would be great way to start a race if you were only running a one hundred meter dash, but you are running over 20 times that length. You do not want to start out sprinting. When you hear the gun shot, indicating the beginning of the race, start off at a trot and gradually work your way up to a comfortable pace.

Once you have just achieved your comfortable pace, you are half way there. You are in a race, remember? Since this is a race that you are in, your ultimate goal should be to finish the race before anyone else. One way to do that is to pass the person in front of you. Because not every one of us can be as fast as we want to be, let us keep our goals small, at first. When running the race, make it your short term goals to pass the person in that is just ahead of you. Once you have passed that person, set your sites on the next person.

One way for you to most efficiently run the race is to breathe I know that this may be a silly thing to remember because we all know that one can not live without breathing. I should be more specific. You want to make sure that your breathing is controlled. When we start to exert ourselves, our body begins to need more oxygen. Sometimes, your brain over compensates and makes you breathe harder than you really need to. If you consciously control your breathing, your body will process the oxygen more efficiently helping you to run the race easier and maybe faster.

The aforementioned four steps should take you more than three quarters of the way though the race. Once this goal is reached, it should literally be all down hill from there. In most races, you should now be able to actually see the finish line. This is where some people let their adrenaline take over. This is great if you are in tip top shape, but for those of use who are novices, letting our adrenaline get the best of us could result in nothing more than a pulled muscle.

So before you let it all out towards the end of the race, make sure you consciously think of all of the elements that have been mentioned. After you have made to you gliding pace, instead of settling for just passing one person at a time, you are going to want to step up your drive and pass two people at a time. All the while making sure that you regulate your breathing so that you do not let your brain take over and try to take in more air than your body needs. Now you should be less then two hundred meters from the finish. You can now hear the band playing and the crowd cheering you on. Oh what the heck, this is when you can let it all out and sprint the rest of the way until you reach the finish line. Finish hard or go home!

Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-H5 Digital Camera

By Jessica Takach

Last year, I was on a quest for the perfect digital camera. I spent nearly six months reading reviews, longingly carressing camera cases and memory cards in Best Buy, and interrogating family and friends on their own digital cameras. I wanted something with some power--I was tired of having a little camera with limited possibilities.

My most desired feature was zoom. I wanted lots of zoom since, living in Maine, there is quite a lot of wildlife to photograph. But with my old camera the animals usually just looked like a pin point on the horizon. I was also interested in megapixels, although frankly I think they are overrated. Unless you plan on making large posters regularly with your photos, a higher megapixel is not really necessary.

So, I finally decided on the Sony Cyber Shot DSC-H5 Digital Camera. And I am loving it. I took it on a trip up to northern Maine this past summer and was able to take FANTASTIC photos of moose from all the way across a lake. They came out as though I were standing right next to them. The camera has a 12x optical zoom with image stabilization.

This camera also has the option of using the controls manually, which I admit I haven't really progressed to yet. But this is a good testament to the fact that you can use this camera very much like a point and shoot, but it can take some very classy photographs.

I rarely ever have blurry photos, thanks to the image stabilization. The only time this really happens is in very low light at night, and that can be a real pain. But it does have a night time setting, as well as many others like: action for sports, candlelight, portrait, and quite a few others.

Another nice feature is that you can get lots of accessories! If you want to spend even more money, you can get different lenses and filters to put on the end of this camera. Again, I haven't experimented much with this due primarily to the money factor, but it is nice to know that if I get to that level I can go there.

I have taken photos of birds that are 30 feet away or so, and I can zoom in on their individual feathers. It is truly an amazing experience. It is also great for catching candids of your friends.

This is an absolutely perfect camera for someone who is a beginner, but intends to go farther with their abilities as a photographer. You can use this simply as a point and shoot, or for more professional photos. There is a great 2.5 inch display screen on the back, so you can view your photos with ease.

Another nice feature is that the camera takes video. Depending on the size of your memory card (I would recommend at least a 1GB) you can take quite a lot of video time. It works quite well for being mostly a still photo camera, although I have noticed that sometimes it has trouble focusing and will blur a little. But I have gotten some really great video (for instance, in Hawaii, of dolphins) when otherwise I wouldn't have been able to.

Complaints:
My only complaint is something that is really quite uncontrolable and no fault of Sony's. It is too large to fit in a small handbag for going out at night -- and regardless, I probably wouldn't want to risk taking it out with me anyway. But this is simply a limitation of the technology. The camera is incredibly powerful, therefore it has to be a bit bigger than other cameras to contain the larger lens. One day hopefully the technology will get to the point that I can fit a camera this great into my clutch! Until that day, I'll just have to use a bigger bag.

Other than that, one thing to note is that this camera takes rechargable AA batteries. I thought this would be a good thing, but it has turned out to be a MAJOR pain. You constantly have to be recharging batteries and have a back up supply with you at all times. I've lost my recharger, so I have been using regular AA batteries which die very fast. So, just make sure you keep track of your charger and you should be fine, but in the future I will probably try and find a camera with a regular long lasting camera battery.

Overall rating: A-