Time To Play Magazine is holding a contest to make your own toy commercial. Make it no longer than 30 seconds and feature your favorite toy. The winner gets a $500 gift certificate to Toys R Us! Check out all the official details below. The deadline is June 15th. I’d love for you to send me links to your entries, even if you don’t win. I’ll feature them here! Make Your Own Toy Commercial Contest
My wife was slightly horrified at this video, so she made an instructional on how to Make Baby Food at Home (for real) to be a counter-point to this video. Om Nom Nom bib now available! This is a classic from 08 that I resurrected for April Fool’s Day
I’m starting a new series where I provide tips and suggestions for pimping out your diaper bag. And if you haven’t seen the video that started it all, here’s the How to Make Your Own Manly Diaper Bag for $20 tutorial. Here is our first tip:
My son is only 19 months old, but he loves coloring on the placemats at restaurants. Most of these establishments give us crayons (with their label on them) and I’ve been keeping them. We’ve got so many, at this rate we’ll never need to buy crayons again. Anyway, I keep a handful in my diaper bag for places that don’t give us crayons, but they keep getting crushed. So I bought a $.99 snap tight travel soap case at Wal*Mart (Sorry, Walmart * ), and that’s been working great. Free crayons, under a dollar for the case? What’s next?
Thanks to Real Simple magazine via Consumerist.com. (Who recommended a soap case for keeping your small digital camera safe.
One of our gems from last year…Ah the truest symbol of your love… your baby. Better than jewelry or chocolate, when it comes to Valentine’s Day gifts, pictures of your little one are a definate winner. Follow my simple video How-To below, and in under 3 and a half minutes I’ll show you how you can photograph your kid to look like Cupid for Valentine’s Day. I’ll show you both easy camera techniques, and a few tricks in photoshop to make something nice for the honey.
Today I took my 13 month old son on a new adventure. We travelled down to Arlington VA to Aladdin’s Lamp, children’s book store, to attend a book signing from David Carter.
If you’ve been to the children’s section of a book store, you probably have seen some of Mr. Carter’s books, including One Red Dot and Big Bug Book. He does some amazing pop-up books with very intricate paper engineering, and always surprises even the likes of me (I go to Toy Fair every year, it is very difficult to wow me, sorry but it’s true.) But my son is a big fan of the Feely Bugs book. This is not a pop up book, but a texture book, each page has a new bug (puffy bug, crinkly bug) which is perfect for his little hands. He loves turning the pages and then spending time getting acquainted with each texture. We particularly like “sticky bugs” which is the backside of a sticker. We still have one bug “un covered” to maintain its stickyness as long as possible.
Anyway, I carry this book everywhere in my manly diaper bag to give to my son whenever he needs a little help focusing on not being fussy. So when I saw that David would be signing books and holding a pop up book workshop at Aladdin’s Lamp, we made the trek. David was very nice and signed not only my son’s well-worn copy of Feely Bugs, but also a new pop-up book I bought, Alpha Bugs (a pop up books going over the alphabet). My little guy was a little young for doing the workshop (elementary school age kids were loving it) so hopefully he’ll come back to the area in a few years.
I have to point you to Mr. Carter’s web site. Just like how I offer all kinds of DIY projects and books you can download, David has pop-up templates you can download and assemble with your children. Fantastic! Check out his official site Pop Up Books.com for lots of fun.
The experts and pundits keep saying that it’s impossible to have a total economic collapse… but you can’t help but wonder… what if the economy did fall apart?, What would happen is suddenly the global market says “We don’t want your money” and then everybody starts thinking “this money is no good” Once the electric company or the beer store decide that money is no good, you’re pretty screwed… Read the rest of this entry »
In honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day we put together this demo of how to make a simple pirate ship (perfect for the little scallywags) out of a refrigerator box. We’ve long been fans of Mr. McGroovey’s pirate ship plans (with box rivets), but we needed something we could build with one refrigerator box (get one for free from a local large appliance store) and a 12 pack of beer. So here is our streamlined “dinghy. ARRRRRRR BABY!
In honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day tomorrow, I just reviewed the new Playmobil Pirate sets. For all price ranges and needs, playmobil contiunes to impress, with all new toys. Addressing both collectors and young pirates alike, you’re bound to find a set that’s perfect for your swashbuckling jones.
And I made a free Pirate Map you can download and print out and give to your little pirate. Ok better get cracking, there are tons of pictures to get through.Playmobil Pirate Sets review
And click below to listen to me discuss these sets on Magic 106.5‘s morning show this morning. Read the rest of this entry »
