While I’m off traversing the world, in search of great ice cream, I’ve decided to re-post items from my previous blog, “Good. Wholesome. Fun.”  Some of you have transferred over, and already read this, and some of you will find this new and exciting.

I chose this post because: 1. It’s fun and 2. I will probably be making Starburst dinosaurs during my long trip.

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While at a Girl Scout conference for adult volunteers, a bounty of Starbursts were piled in the center of our table, along with sticky-lizards, and chocolate.  Most adult volunteers are still kids deep down inside, so the sticky lizards ended up on the ceiling, walls, name-tags, and in ornate Busby Berkeley designs on the table.  The Starbursts, however, remained unused and only eaten.

So, I decided to make a dinosaur.

My siblings and I discovered the wonders of using Starbursts as a form of clay during one of many long trips across the Mojave desert in a car with no air conditioning.  When you’re in a car for a gajillion hours trekking between California and Utah, Colorado, Yellowstone, Canada, and other wondrous places, you become creative very quickly.  We would create Starburst dinosaurs, spaceships, ponies, faces, and people.  This was followed by epic battles, dramatic melodramas, and exhilarating adventures.  Ultimately, with our hands incredibly sticky, we’d eat them.

For one sister’s 30th birthday, I made a cake and decorated it with a candy-pastoral setting, with Starburst ponies standing on sprinkle-grass under a rainbow made of skittles.  The ponies were round and plump, much like the classic 80’s style My Little Ponies.  I also added a circle of portable lights and a portable music player so it lit up and played music.  It was magnificent.

The dinosaur pictured here was made out of four Starbursts.  The first step is to heat up the Starbursts enough that they are malleable.  The easiest way to do this is to leave it in your pocket for five minutes or so.  Another method is to just start working with it until it’s warmed up enough to be molded.  I combined two orange Starbursts, rolled them into a ball and then molded that into the body.  The third orange Starburst was then rolled into a long snake, which then became the head, neck, and tail.  A yellow Starburst was then broken apart and rolled into little balls for the toes, and then larger dots for the spots.  What’s not to love about a spotted dinosaur?

I actually made a mangled Tyrannosaurus Rex before this, but ate it before taking a picture.  The Apatosaurus (otherwise called Long Neck in The Land Before Time) was made upon request from one of the guest speakers.

The conference was designed to teach us how to make our trainings more participant and/or girl lead, and to encourage exploration in the sciences.  Maybe I did it to apply these principles.  I used my own choices and creativity to make a dinosaur, and dinosaurs were discovered through science.  Or, to paraphrase the eleventh Doctor, I did it because, “Dinosaurs are cool.”

Later that night at the S’mores station, my mom and I created these:

Marshmallow people are cool, too.

Why eat your food when you can play with it?

Anyone else make candy creations?  How do you keep your hands busy during a long meeting?  What is it about dinosaurs that make them so cool?