Jolly Rancher Cotton Candy

The Red is Cherry Jolly Rancher and the Pink is watermelon Jolly Rancher

I have always loved cotton candy. It was one of my favorite treats as a child. I would always get it at fairs. I used to not like Cinnabon, shocking I know, but when my mom and sister would get Cinnabon at the mall I would always get cotton candy. Since it was the mall where my grandparents lived, I would ask them for cotton candy too whenever we went to their mall.  My favorite thing was when Walmart had the people selling cotton candy for Riley hospital. I would always buy a few bags. Of course you can buy prepacked cotton candy, but it’s not fluffy. It’s dense and packed in. I ended up buying a cotton candy maker a couple years ago. I loved using it and it was so easy to use. Fresh cotton candy whenever I want? Sign me up. I ended up storing it in the box in a locked cabinet on my balcony. I went to use it once and it was covered in ants. I didn’t want to chance having cotton candy like on the movie Shrek so I threw it away. I figured I would just get a new one because they weren’t very expensive. 

I learned about the hard candy cotton candy makers, at first I thought it was a sugar free cotton candy maker. That sounded gross to me. After not being able to find the exact same one I had, I finally looked in to it more and saw that you can really use hard candy. You can also use sugar floss. I bought some sugar floss on clearance this past summer in anticipation of having a new cotton candy maker. I started thinking about what kinds of hard candies I would use. I love Jolly Ranchers, especially the watermelon and cherry ones. So, I started dreaming of Jolly Rancher cotton candy.

I asked my mom for the Nostalgia Electrics Hard Candy Cotton Candy Maker for Christmas. She had a really hard time finding it, even though it had been in the stores for months. That was a must have gift this year I guess. She went to like ten different stores. I was able to find it on Target.com so I ordered it. I knew it wasn’t going to be there in time, which was fine. My mom wrapped up a package of cotton balls with a little chocolate bar taped on.  I was so excited when it arrived. 

  

My first attempt of making both flavors was not good. It was crunchy, I realized I was holding the sticks wrong. I immediately tested the sugars I had to see if it was the candy. Once I figured out how to hold the sticks again everything was great. I had already ate a bunch of cotton candy by this time so I didn’t want to attempt the Jolly Rancher cotton candy again that night. I decided to try again tonight using the proper extraction method.  It’s important for it to heat up in the directions. If you stop for a few minutes to take pictures between flavors, you should preheat it again for a bit. Maybe not the whole five minutes but you want it to be hot or it will not work properly. It worked and it’s so delicious! I need to buy some bulk Jolly Ranchers on Amazon. Just the cherry and watermelon. Jolly Rancher cotton candy is the best thing ever!

You are supposed to use two hard candies each time.  I did each flavor twice so this is four Jolly Ranchers worth. 

What is your favorite flavor of cotton candy? What's your favorite Jolly Rancher flavor.

Early Cyber Bullying

Cyber bullying is an awful thing. People, not just kids have been bullied in person for centuries. Now that we have the internet, most people are bullied online. Cyber bullying has only been made a big deal in the last ten years though. What people don’t know is cyberbullying has been going on a lot longer than that. Usually it wasn’t people you knew, it was people bullying others in chat rooms or via instant message. I have been online since I was in the fifth grade. I am now 33. That is a really long time considering the internet was not nearly as popular as it is now. I started on Prodigy when it was just message boards and you paid by the minute.  I didn’t know that, and got in trouble a few times for being on there a lot. I got AOL when I was in jr. high. They had chat rooms. Being a naïve girl who grew up in a really nice area, I was intrigued. I could talk instantly to strangers. I wasn’t stupid enough to give out my information or meet anyone but that’s when I started seeing cyber bullying.  People would talk about each other and say really hurtful things. 

When they introduced local chat rooms it just got worse. People would meet each other in the chat and become friends. They would gang up on others. Sometimes there were threats and people’s addresses and phone numbers were posted. AOL did nothing really. Unless someone was cussing they didn’t really do much. There was instances where people were scared to even leave their homes or didn’t feel safe at home. If AOL did something, they would just get a new screen name and come right back. They didn’t block IP addresses. If someone who knew you didn’t like you, they would go in to the chat and talk about you and then the whole chat room would be out to get you.

When I was in high school, the girl I thought was my best friend wrote me a very hateful email and sent it to me. To add assault to injury, she printed it off and had a bunch of kids write hateful things.  I was heartbroken because the email before that was us making plans to hang out. There was no such thing as “cyber bullying.” Looking back I should have turned everyone who wrote on that piece of paper to the school. She did get in trouble from her parents. I am not sure if it was more that her parents cared about the fact that their kid was a total jerk or because it was sent from her dad’s email address. Her mom has a daycare and has made fun of the kids by giving them mean nicknames like Alien. The boy was a toddler who happened to have a bigger head. He also had some developmental delays. If the child was different, the mom and her family would comment on it and assign a nickname. I felt so bad for the kids.  After my mom found out we went to her house to talk and I stupidly forgave her. That should have been the last straw, but I don’t talk to her anymore now.

Being online gives you a false sense of safety, you think that you can say whatever you want to whoever you want and nothing will happen. That’s not true anymore. Many states have cyber bullying laws that make people own up to their words.  It should have been around a long time ago though. I am sure there are people who could have benefited from cyber bullying laws. Sadly, I bet there are people who committed suicide because of early cyber bullying. People would impersonate people who their victim has a crush on and be extremely cruel. On AOL or Yahoo, it wasn’t like Facebook where you can tell if someone is fake. If someone IMed you and you said who is this? And they responded its George Glass, from Brooktown High, you would take their word for it back then. You would think that you were really talking to the object of your affection, when in reality you are talking to that mean girl who happened to know your screen name. You may share your deep dark secrets with this person thinking it was safe. It can be heartbreaking to find out you are being lied to and George Glass is none the wiser.  Thankfully now it is harder to pretend to be someone else, especially if you know that they have a Facebook account.  You can compare the accounts and the link.

Please don’t cyber bully anyone. If someone is cyber bullying you, tell someone. Don’t let them damage your self-esteem or your self-worth.  Don’t let anyone take your joy away.

The Day with no Heat

It has been really cold everywhere in the US. It’s even cold in Florida. Of course it’s not actually cold but when you are used to the warm weather, your skin thins out. Schools all over the United States are either canceling or delaying school due to the freezing weather and really low wind chills. It’s really important to have a warm place to take refuge from the cold. It’s also important to keep your heat working by doing maintenance on your unit. You can call Halo Heating and Cooling.  My heat had been pretty temperamental lately. I thought that it was just because it was so cold outside. It would get down to about 65 degrees and then kick on. It was trying to light but it wasn’t catching all the time. It would eventually start working so I was trying to hold off on getting it checked. It was a big mistake. I wasn’t really sure if there was really anything wrong honestly. One day this past week it wasn’t turning on no matter how much I tried, whatever tricks and prayers were just not doing the trick. It was so cold that I had no choice to call a heat repair man. It wasn’t safe for us when it was 52 degrees in my home. We spent time cuddling under multiple blankets until the repair tech came. Noah was never really too cold. He’s a little heat box. He sleeps with a fan on regardless of the temperature. He was helping me stay warm. Thankfully it wasn’t too long before they could come out and check it out. I was really nervous because I didn’t know what was wrong with it.

Everything was working but the lighting process. I knew I wasn’t going to need a new one, but after the refrigerator fiasco, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t even know an estimate of how much the repair would have cost before I agreed. My hands were tied though so I had to get it done. I was in contact with my aunt and uncle because I don’t know about heating. I am so glad that I asked him to light my fireplace when they were here. It did help some. Noah was at school so, I was glad that they didn’t cancel school that day. It was a really easy fix, the sensor was dirty, and so he just wiped it a few times. I am so happy it was just a dirty sensor and nothing else was wrong. Listen to me when I say furnace maintenance is really important. Get it checked. I know it’s a pain to wait for someone to come check your furnace and it costs money but if I would have gotten it checked I wouldn’t have had the problem I did. Don’t wait until something goes wrong because it could be a total pain for you. It’s dire for your family’s safety to be warm in the winter. I was honestly scared that we would freeze. The temperature was going down slowly but if I wouldn’t have gotten it fixed, it would have been bad. It’s better to be safe than sorry. You should also always change your filters every three months. They are cheap and easy to install as long as you know which way the air flow is. There may be an arrow on the unit you match up with the filter. With changing your filter every three months and getting your unit tuned up can save you from a very cold day indoors and the cost of repair, plus labor and parts.