Fun with Sara - The Activities

I told you about making a cartoon book for my friend, Sara. After I finished making Sara's cartoons I thought about the fact that she was really BORED, and yet she couldn't concentrate on anything very complicated because she had just had surgery and was taking pain meds and wasn't talking like the intelligent Harvard graduate that she is. So I decided to add some activities to the cartoons, like the activity books I used to have when I was little. When I make stuff like this, people invariably say, "You MADE that? That's AMAZING," because they think I made it all from scratch -- that I drew the maze by hand and carefully constructed and drew the crossword and word search. The fact is, it's not amazing at all and even my sister Norah who has a PhD can do this because the secret is that there are a ton of sites online where you can make custom puzzles.

How I made it

Who doesn't love potty humor?

I used puzzle-maker.com to make the word search and the crossword puzzle and mazegenerator.net to make the maze. For the crossword, I used words and clues that included the names of her children, menopause and some political humor unique to her views. The word search is x-rated and includes 25 different words for a man's anatomy (I had to google that).

I made the word search a little raunchy.

Finally, I organized all the images and activities on landscape 8 1/2" x 11" paper, side by side, then folded it down the middle to make a book 8 1/2" tall and 5 1/2" wide. It's tricky because you have to think about what is on the front and back of each page. The hardest part was stapling it down the spine because I don't have the right kind of stapler, so I opened my stapler up and stapled the fold on top of a cardboard box, then used a letter opener to force the staple closed which was not the easiest thing to do. I'm thinking I might order the Sparco Long Reach Stapler from Amazon which is only $10.77. But then it will come and I probably won't use it for another year. And when I do want to use it I either won't be able to find it, or will have forgotten I ever bought it in the first place. But every time I make a booklet of some kind I always wish I had one.