Paper Strongbad!

I followed a link on MAKE:blog to Foldskool Heroes Marshall Alexander's website. I fell in love with the idea of a printable paper toy! Wow! Some of these are so intricate and detailed. I immediately had to try one. I chose Limi-ted. So clever. I finished it yesterday. Rather than taking another bad photo using photobooth here is the official photo from the website.

Trust me, it is just as cute in person! Anyway, this morning I decided to check out the links to other toy designers and found Cubecraft. The design is brilliant because it allows for so much of the character to be in the illustrations, and they did a great job with capturing the essence of each of those characters. I printed and cut out Strongbad (from homestarrunner.com). He is now sitting next to me watching me write this post. I suppose he would have a snide comment about now, but I can't think of any. All I have to say is, "Strongbad are you making out with a piece of looooseleaf?"

There are so many other toy designers with templates to download. I can't wait to post more paper toy experiments. Let me know if any of you decide to try.

tangerine menorah for hannukah

I seem to be in holiday spirits today given my thanksgiving post earlier today.

Well, actually, i was not, but am getting there. I was feeling sort of sad that Hanukah had just crept up on me, and we were not doing anything special other then lighting candles, but I was going through articles in googlereader, and came across an article on Apartment Therapy for clementine candles. This may not be the sort of thing that puts you in the holiday spirit, but it perked me up thanks to a conversation at dinner on Friday night about what you could use to build your own oil menorah. Beets, potatoes, turnips, and of course CLEMENTINES! were suggested. I decided to try it out, and hopefully use a clementine menorah for next Friday, when the candles need to burn a bit longer than the standard boxed candles typically burn.

My first attempt was very pretty, but the edges of the star shape started to burn. I tried cutting the wick down to create a smaller flame and propping it up so that the hole was more directly over the flame. I even tried a second clementine with a smaller wick, but eventually that ended up being burnt too.


A couple of people wrote comments about this problem, but none gave a good solution, and given that you need to leave the candles (or oil as in this case) to burn until it burns itself out this didn't seem like a very safe way of lighting the 6 candles I wanted for next Friday night.

In the end I think I will just use the bottom half of the clementine. It is pretty and holds the oil well. I will do a test run tonight when I only need one candle.


The results are pictured about with the abandoned attempts in the background. It is still pretty, will do quite nicely, and has a nice cheery orange glow, just the sort of thing you need to get into the holiday mood...

Happy Hanukkah to all who will begin celebrating tonight!

thanksgiving wrap up

I know at this point these are a month old, but i just finally loaded the photos onto my computer, so here is the story of our thanksgiving weekend...


We drove up on Wednesday night, and got there pretty late. The rest of the gang arrived EARLY the next morning. M, R, Little J and Brandy. This picture above is Samwise (Sam). He was there the whole time, even came to sleep with us on Saturday night. You can see J and R playing with a new toy in the background.

Mr. SD and I baked some challah on Thursday before the big dinner (we were planning on skiing on Friday) They came out very pretty.

There was a big giant (40 people!) dinner at friends who have a super nice wood log house with giant green plants all over the place and high ceilings, and an open kitchen with a giant island. I really like their house. Mr. SD's dad made a chickpea curry and there was lots of other vegetarian food and pumpkin pie for dessert. Yum. Did I mention the TWO vegetarian stuffings?!

Decided there were not enough trails open on Friday, so we went for a hike instead. Hiking through snow is hard, and I am terribly out of shape, so it wasn't a long hike, but it was pretty.

Mr. SD attempted to sign us into the trial, but the sign in book was full! (and had been for a quite sometime) and then at the end of the trail looking all rugged with our dirty subaru :)

Somewhat relaxing and quiet Saturday with fresh chocolate chip cookies and Kung Fu Panda late Saturday night. Nothing really beats fresh chocolate chip cookies and a nice big glass of milk :)


*Picture above not actual cookies baked over Thanksgiving weekend. Photo from Nestle Tollhouse.

sometimes it might be nice to hide inside a wall...

and sometimes it might be nice to watch the reactions of the people passing by. I just really liked this image and wanted to share, but I just checked out the artist's website and it is pretty awesome. Some of the images are very sad, but some of them are ridiculously funny.

I think one of the designers interviewed for the documentary Helvetica said that when you see something and wish that you had done that .... well, that is saying something. Anyway, I feel that way about some of these photographs. Check out his website. I am sure you can figure out which ones I am talking about.

(via designobserver)

ninja magnets!

I know it has been a while since I have posted and there are lots of other things to report on ,but how cool is this? It fits perfectly with my gmail ninja theme! (from core77 gift guide)