I’m also thinking that these activities might last through dusk and possibly into the evening. And if it does, I have a terrific way to shed some light on the activities. Make luminaries!

These luminaries are exceptionally easy to make. If you have already pre-washed your jars, it will only take about 10 minutes to make them.

Grandsons and granddaughters can easily make them. (Grandsons might prefer a more masculine tissue paper than what I used here.) Making your luminaries can be part of your evening’s activities.

First, round up some empty, clean jars, some tissue paper, scissors, ribbons, and battery powered tea lights. (Battery powered tea lights are lots safer when grandchildren are making the luminaries.)

Measure the width and height of the jar. Cut out a piece of tissue paper with those measurements.

Roll up the piece of tissue paper into a tube shape so that you can slide it into the jar.



Use a pencil (that has an eraser on the end) to help push the paper against the inside of the jar.



Tie a bow around the top of the jar. Turn on the tea light and drop it into the jar — and you are done! See. I told you this was exceptionally easy!



You can line your front steps and sidewalk with the luminaries. Or put them on the table where you are serving your hot dogs/S’mores/homemade ice cream.

Stay tuned because I’m going to share more ‘light’ activities over the next week or two.

So, when I came across a couple of cool fonts the other day, I just HAD to download them. (Since there were only 4 fonts, they didn’t crash my computer. Phew!)

I want to spread the font-joy and happiness with you, Dear Reader. It’s nice to have something else  to choose from instead of settling for the regular, boring fonts that come installed on computers.

Here is the Lemondrop Font. (Since lemon drops are yellow, I wanted to make this sample yellow but that made it too hard to read on the webpage. Sigh.) This is my favorite font.

This is the King Cool Font.

Hey, me laddies. This is the Tartan Cabaret font. A plaid font. How cool is that?

This is the Snipple Font. (Who ever came up with the name of Snipple?!?) Even though this has a wack-o name, it is my second favorite font.

You can download the Snipple and Tartan Cabaret font from Chank Fonts! You can get the lemondrop font from Font Space. Get King Cool font from dafont.com.

It’s easy to install fonts on your computer. Merely click on the Download button on the website.  On a Windows based machine, the font will be saved in your Download folder.  Right-click on the zipped file that you downloaded and select Extract All. Follow the simple directions for unzipping the file.

Here are directions for installing fonts if you have Windows 7 on your computer. Here are directions for those who have Windows XP on your computer.

On a Mac, the zipped file will be saved to your Download folder.  Double click on the file.  That will unzip the file.  Double click on the name of the file.  This will open up the Font Book program. Click on Install. Your font will automatically be installed for you. Sweet.

Think of all of the fun things that you and your grandchildren can use these cool fonts for:

• In your e-mails to your grandkids
• As invitations to a sleep over, tea party, or a day of spa treatments at grandma’s home
• On posters announcing wondrous events such as an alfresco movie night at grandma’s
• Gift tags for gifts to your grandchildren
• Labels on jars of homemade face scrub or lip gloss that you make with your granddaughters
• Birthday cards that you make and send to grandkids
• A to-do list of summer activities to do with grandkids
• Flyers reminding grandkids of upcoming fun-er-oo activities with grandma (going to a water park, going on a hike or picnic)
• Making scrapbooking pages with your granddaughters
• When you make a cookbook of grandma’s recipes
• On graphics for your website
• On the sign for a lemonade stand that your grandkids have in front of your house
• Bookmarks for your grand-chickabiddies
• Thanksgiving place setting cards

I’m sure all of you creative grandmothers can think of all sorts of great ways to use these fabulous fonts.  Have fun!

The site is Unitag. (Be forewarned that this site does not work well in Firefox on a Mac. Rats! But, it works great in Safari.)

Here is a code that I created with an image of a flag in it. You can tell there’s a flag if you look really, really close. (FYI: If your graphic won’t work, you might want to re-size it so it’s smaller.)

You might need to adjust the opacity and/or brightness, too. Make sure you test your code before you download it. It wouldn’t be fun to have a code that didn’t work.

The squarish design in the three corners are the ‘eyes’ of the code. You can have different shape of eyes. You can also have the external part of the eyes be different colors than the internal eye color and different than the rest of the code. (Notice below that the eye color in the three eyes are different.)

NOTE: be careful of the intensity (or lack thereof) of the colors that you select. There needs to be a high contrast between the background color (white in this case) and the color of the code. If you use pastel colors, your QR reader won’t be able to read the code.

So much fun!

Thank you, Jason, for sharing this site!

Changing colors, and eye shapes, and eye colors, and having robot sounding QR codes are fine and dandy. But don’t stop there. Take QR codes to an even higher level.

Make a QR code that is a recording of YOUR voice! How cool is that?

However, Dear Reader, this is not for the faint of heart — nor those lacking technical skill and know-how. This is advanced. Quite advanced. Ready? Great. Let’s go.

To make a code with your own voice, you will need some way to record your voice and a place to save it online.

Here’s what you do. First, use the recording app on your smart phone to record your message. That will work fine and is the easiest.  If you don’t have a smart phone, you can download Audacity which is a free audio recording/editing program that works on both a Mac and a Windows machine. (If you use Audacity and need some help, e-mail me at nina (at) grandma ideas (dot) com and let me know.)

After you make the recording on your phone, you’ll have to e-mail it to yourself. That is how you’ll get a copy off your phone so you can upload it.

Now, you need to upload it so it is online. Your best bet would be to use space that your Internet provider gives you or use the space that you get with the company that hosts your personal website.

Uploading your voice file will give you a URL for your voice QR code. You need that URL to create the code.

Go to Unitag. Select the option to create a code using a URL and follow the steps to create the code. Ta Da! You now have a QR code that is personalized with your own voice.

When you’ve got your QR code, download it. Then, you can print it up and snail mail it or e-mail it to a grandchild.

Remember the suggestions that I gave you in QR Codes on Steroids? You can use your voice QR code for any of those suggestions.

If you feel that you would like more specific directions for recording your voice on an iPhone and uploading it, e-mail me and I will make a tutorial for you.

Well, are you ready to take QR codes yet another step higher? I hope so!

You know that QR codes can be plain text, a URL, a phone number, an e-mail address, a telephone number, or a link to YouTube videos. Stuff like that.

But did you know that you can have a ‘voice’ QR code?

That’s right, folks. A voice QR code.

Non-speaking QR codes are so last year. Wait. Didn’t I say that about black codes? Yup. I did. So, black, non-speaking codes are very, very out-of-date.

These codes are easy to create. Can you type?  Of course you can! Then you can easily make a voice QR code.

Remember how I mentioned that you could tell your grandkids jokes via QR codes? Well, here’s a knock knock joke as a QR code.

Who’s there? your grandchild responds.

Orange who?

You’ll probably notice that the voice on these codes is rather mechanical. Rather.

That adds to the ‘charm’ of these codes.

I can envision an activity with grandkids where they create a robot ‘body’ out of cardboard to wear. And there is a voice QR code printed out and glued to the body — like the robot’s name. I can see grandchildren walking around stiffly talking in robot-ese and eating Butterfinger Bites (or any other candy that would represent ‘batteries’ that they need for energy). Great imaginative fun, eh?

Or, you could write funny limericks — or any other type of poems — with your grandchildren and turn them (the limericks — not your grandchildren) into voice QR codes. Or, you could create a funny goodnight message for a grandchild, a ransom note (when you ‘kidnap’ a grandchild’s stuffed animal), write a spooky Halloween message, or do some of the ideas that I wrote about in the first part of this series.

So, in 28 word (or less), here’s how you make your voice QR code.

Go to QR Voice. Type your message in the text box. Click the QR ‘button” to the right side of the text box. Voila! There’s your code.

Right click on the image and save it. Then, you can print it up or e-mail it to your grandchildren or use it in any of the many creative ways that you can come up with.

If you are really ambitious, you can open that black and white code in Photoshop or other similar photo editing software and change that boring black color into something more lively and vibrant. Like this.

I hope you have lots of fun with your grandchildren making and using voice QR codes.

And stay tune for Part 3 — the last in the series where I share the ultimate in QR codes!