Tired of invisible print on buttons? Silver Sharpie to the rescue!
As you all know, Sharpies kind of rock our world. We've used them on medicine bottles and our kids. I fixed scratches on our coffee table with them. We've even handed them out as business cards at conventions.
I'm back to teaching after over a decade away, so there's not much time to spare. Scout and I were halfway through this hack before I thought to grab a camera.
As I'm sure I'll soon be telling my students, better late than never.
This hack video represents Scout's first blog appearance as a camerawoman. Not bad for a 6-year-old.
We hope everyone's back to school is going well! ***Baby Toolkit is a production of the geeky, over-committed Jones family in the middle Midwest. We're Amazon affiliates, so if you buy through our Amazon links, we'll get a small percentage that we'll promptly squander on board games or domain name fees or Sharpies or paperclips. We are in no way affiliated with Sharpie or their makers, though we would have a long history of Sharpie love. We also podcast about board game groups and board games at GreatBigTable.com. Thanks for reading the small print. This commendable behavior would surely get you bonus points in my class; how about a gold star?
*NSFV= Not Safe For Vegetarians- although Jim thinks we could do this with a veggie dog, I suspect it only works with the extraordinary snout count in hot dogs.
When I was a wee child, there used to be a chain of Sir Beef Restaurants. As far as I know, there is only one left in this universe. This is a tragedy for two reasons:
The jokes.
They used to make these flowers out of hot dogs that boggled my wee mind. A picky eater like me could turn my nose up herds of hot dogs (or is that just one?), but a hot dog flower still gets me every time.
My dad, being an engineer, had to figure out how to make them at home. His efforts turned out much better than our flaming attempts at DIY microwave popcorn. It's not hard at all, and it's fun to watch if you don't mind cleaning the wurst spatter out of the microwave later.
If you like this hack or need a vegetarian palate-cleanser, check out how we slice apples.
***This is the independent, unsolicited opinion of the geek parents at Baby Toolkit, (c) 2008.
Ranger loves water. Maybe I swam too much during his pregnancy, but he's always pulling a chair over to "help" whenever I'm washing dishes. The wash water is too hot, so he's not allowed to help.
Yesterday he pulled a chair over when I was just finishing up, so I let him run a sink of cool water to "SPLASH!"
In past attempts at sink play, I have given him a cup and lived to regret it. When his enthusiasm for pouring outmatched his aim he created minor floods encompassing the floor, wooden chair, cabinet fronts, and counters.
To lessen his munitions without diminishing his enjoyment, I substituted intentionally leaky vessels for his normal cup and spoon. He showed no signs of disappointment at receiving a pot scrubber, a slotted spoon, an egg separator, a potato masher, and half a tea ball.
He played for over half an hour and much less than the normal thirty gallons escaped the sink. Good times were had by all. Next time we'll probably add a colander to the mix.
***This is the independent opinion of the geek parents at Baby Toolkit and should be taken with a grain of salt. Baby Toolkit, (c) 2008
Jim and I didn't own a Christmas tree the first year of our married life. His mom thought that was a travesty and bought us a 2' tall artificial tree. This little tree was our primary tree for years. We liked to load it down with comically large ornaments or decorate it with only lights and keep it on the bathroom counter (I smirk to think of this, even though I have no idea why).
At some point we bought a 6' artificial tree which we suspect is made of plastic and standard grade pipe cleaners. I'm sure we got it on clearance. Its weak boughs can't support an ornament of much weight. Every year we get motivated enough to put it up (which is something like 1:3) we swear we will buy a new one next year.
As we're not very invested in tradition, we decided to try this year to make the decorations as toddler-friendly as possible.
When a friend mentioned that he was wiring all his gaming figurines to hang as holiday decorations, it struck me that we might not need ornaments or wire ornament hangers at all. With yarn or ribbon and the versatile lark's head knot almost anything can become an ornament (and you can jettison those silly wire ornament hangers for good).
Thus, the first Baby Toolkit video was born! Learn to make a lark's head knot:
Sorry about the off-screen portions, I shot the video alone while Ranger napped, so there was no time for a retake. I promise I'll do better with framing in future videos, but I will probably always sound like total tool.
We hung our lighted tree primarily with Barrel-of-Monkeys monkeys (again, Parent Hacks inspired) and linking letters. We also put up some other small toys that Ranger generally tends to ignore most of the time. We didn't put anything very tempting on the tree because we didn't want to torture the kid or inspire him to take up indoor tree climbing.
When it's time to put the tree in the closet, I'm getting all the old ornaments out. The ones without sentimental value (which is most of them) are headed to a local thrift shop.
Recast toys or other objects you already own as ornaments reduces decorating costs and required storage space for those other 11 months of the year.
There will be no more talk of replacing the tree. It finally looks like it actually belongs in our house.
