Whether it’s April Fools’ Day or just an ordinary Tuesday, playing a harmless prank on your unsuspecting sister can provide a laughter boost and a moment of bonding for the whole family. Avoid cruel practical jokes that cause embarrassment, anger or property damage and end in punishment for you. Instead, devise puzzling, surprising pranks that let your sister in on the laughs and lead to compliments for your cleverness. Remember, your sister’s more likely to laugh along if you’ve taken her schedule into consideration, so no beef-bullion-cube showers before school, work or a big date.

Give your sister the gift of, well, everything: wrap up all she owns (or all she doesn't mind you touching, at least) in festive holiday paper. Horde and hide used gift wrap and ribbons from family celebrations, or use up leftover scraps. Wrap up everything, including the bed and the dresser, or go for detail and wrap even the tiniest items, such as pens and individual earrings. If gift wrap isn’t available, consider plastic wrap, tin foil or even paper bags. If you're under Mom and Dad's roof, make sure to get permission before doing this -- wrapping materials can be expensive.

Nothing is quite so puzzling as walking into a room and finding it’s suddenly some other room in the house. Pull this prank on your sister by swapping rooms while she’s out, or even replacing her bedroom things with the living room sofa and television. If you’re a night owl and your sister is a heavy sleeper, pull the switcheroo at night so she’ll be flummoxed when she wakes. Or skip the heavy lifting and enlist siblings or parents to help move your heavily sleeping sister into a different room than the one she went to sleep in.

Perhaps one of the easiest pranks to pull -- the classic closet prank -- involves nothing more than stuffing your sister’s closet full of some harmless item, such as balls, balloons, sponges or packing peanuts. Keep the balloons in place while you fill by using cardboard to block the majority of the closet, leaving just a small space at the top to fill through. Once it’s full, close the door, slip the cardboard out and wait. The moment she opens the door, your closet surprise will come flooding out.

In order to pull some of these off, you just might have to invest a week or two fetching not-tampered-with snacks for your sister so she’s not suspicious about accepting food from you on prank day. Once she’s lulled into eating anything you hand her, serve her up a faux grilled cheese made out of pound cake and yellow frosting, red gelatin set into a glass to resemble fruit punch or breakfast cereal in frozen milk. To toy with her taste buds, serve up a faux orange drink out of powdered cheese flavoring, or coat an onion in caramel for a fake caramel apple.