Make your own skylights

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Okay, this is pretty cool. A guy in Brazil figured out how to make a skylight out of used pop bottles.

It sounds a little crazy, and maybe looks a little ghetto, but the results are actually amazing. Each plastic bottle gives as much light as a 50 watt light bulb. Don’t believe me? Watch this video until the end, when they take the buckets off the water bottles. It will blow your mind.

The quality of light from the skylights is so much better than from the regular light bulbs she had on before that. And the whole idea is pretty great: they’re essentially made from trash (plastic bottle, film canister and a little bleach), and they have zero electricity cost to run. They might not give you light all the time when you would need it (at night for example), but even if they could keep you from using lights during the day, they’d be a pretty significant cost saver.

I’m not saying we should all be installing these, but they do have a time and a place. Obviously the people in the video seem pretty happy with them!

Link via Sara

Quotes Monday reminisces about the past

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Evie: “We should get a pet.”
Sara: “We have a pet.”
Evie: “No, for pretend! For my pretend family. I’m pretending I’m not part of this family.”
Sara: “Probably not for the last time.”

Sara, pointing to their matching shirts: “Hey, we match today.”
Evie: “You’re right, we both have necks!”

Me: “And you know how you can tell your parents love you very much? Because they make such good food for you to eat!”
Evie: “But how can I tell that you love me?”

Alright, alright, I should make supper more often!

Evie: “This is a true story, from when I was a little kid…”

Me: “Be patient please!”
Evie: “I had to be patient once, when I was two.”

Bacon Alarm Clock

/ Shane / 2 Comments

You know how you’re always saying, “Someone should totally make a…” and then someone totally makes it? I know that I’ve asked for this item before, but I couldn’t find it on the blog anywhere.

I give you the Wake’n Bacon, the real bacon alarm clock:

Before you go to bed, you put a frozen piece of bacon in the tray. 10 minutes before you want to wake up, the alarm switches on a heat lamp, so you wake up to the smell and sound of frying bacon. What could possibly be better than that?

And how cute is it that it looks like a pig? Some sort of cannibal-monster pig that fries up pieces of itself for your consumption. Yes sir, it would be hard to improve on this product.

Link via Brian Belloli.

Everything I know about kung-fu, I learned by raising kids

/ Shane / Leave a comment
  1. Stay on the balls of your feet – You gotta be ready to move. The second you’re caught off balance and flat footed, disaster is going to strike.
  2. Control the hips – It’s all about the core; you can’t trust the extremities. If you’re holding an arm or a leg or something, you might as well not be holding on at all. I learned this one during diaper changes. If you want a struggling kid / slippery eel not to move, you gotta hold on to the hips.
  3. It is important to center yourself before conflict – If you’re not zen going into a situation, then things are going to go bad fast. This isn’t just for physical conflict either, it’s doubly true for head-to-head power struggles with your toddler. Your mental health is a tenuous balance at best when you have small kids, but it’s important to hold it together as much as you can, or everything else is going to suffer.
  4. The best defense is a good offense – Get out of the house! Don’t put yourself in a position to fail. Occupy your kids before they get a chance to even think of mischief. Sometimes it might seem easier to just sit back and handle things as they come, but you always end up regretting it.
  5. The bigger you think you are, the harder you’re going to fall.Enough said.

Quick Hits

/ Shane / Leave a comment
  • These days, Evie insists on have tights sticking out of her drawer with her drawer closed, so it looks like legs sticking out. Those legs represent the Wicked Witch of the West.*
  • Nothing makes me feel less manly than having the alarm go off in the night. I guess I should feel the opposite, like big strong protector of the household, but really I’m just reluctantly jabbing a stick into dark rooms to startle anybody in there, ready to run at the first sign of trouble.
  • Although Oliver can’t walk yet, we discovered he can open the front and back doors. We have lever handles, and it turns out those handles are just a little lower than the rest of the doors in the house, so he can reach and pull if he really tries.
  • Babies are generally very good at getting you what you want, but a baby with sunglasses on is irresistible. I forgot about this since Evie was a baby, but it never fails. It’s like the atomic bomb of cuteness.

* EDIT: It has been pointed out that the legs would more correctly represent the Wicked Witch of the East, which is true. But come on guys, she’s three!