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Creative Pop Up Cards

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May 092011

I want to use this opportunity to put in a small plug for a website a good friend of mine has started. His name is Rich Chen and he is a very talented fellow. He’s a great engineer, and very clever artist, and he is particularly talented at what would be called “paper arts.”

In particular, he is really good at making pop up cards. He recently started up a website called creativepopupcards.com to showcase some of his talent and his work.

To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, take a look at this youtube video below. You can see the cards he’s made at this website, or at his Youtube channel. He provides examples of his amazing creations as well as detailed information, tutorials, and templates on how to make them yourselves.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnGQlBokkG0

This type of papercrafting is an excellent way to impress your kids, your wives, heck impress anyone really, if you even want to give someone a card. It’s also just a good way to spend some time with your kids making an amazing creation that they’ll be proud of.

GyroBowl

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Jan 062011

With this post, let me introduce a guest contributor. It’s my sister, from all the way in NYC. She’ll be posting under the name abkim and will be providing her point of view on how to be a good dad, both as a woman, as well as a daughter. Here she introduces yet another item that makes me smack my head in another “why didn’t I think of that” moment.

Ladies and gentleman….the Gyro Bowl! It’s supposed to be a spill-proof contraption in the shape of Saturn (the planet), that uses the mechanics of a gyroscope. It’s for kids, but I suppose it’ll be just as good for some adults too! Being the compulsive neat-freak that I am, this would surely put my nerves at ease when I have children (ie: my future nephew) as well as slightly clumsy, haphazardous adults (ie: my brother, my future nephew’s dad and the author of this site – sorry bro, but you are a klutz sometimes!) over at my house. As for the inevitable question – “what about the spillages that occur when items from bowl never make it to the mouth?” Well then, I guess that’s what vacuums are for…

Hey, I’m not that clumsy…much.

Piggyback Rider

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Dec 082010

Do you ever have one of those slap-your-forehead moments when you think “why didn’t I think of that?” Well, I just had yet another one, when I saw this online. It’s called the Piggyback Rider and it basically allows a person to carry a child in a piggyback position as if he was carrying a backpack. The concept is so simple I can’t believe no one (including myself) thought of this before. I was going to write a longer description, but really, it’s sort of self explanatory. Can I say “brilliant”?

The Sing Off

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Dec 062010

OK, this has nothing to do with being a good dad, a bad dad, or an ugly dad, or dad-hood at all. I just wanted to plug a show that I saw recently that I think was amazing.

Last week, I got tickets to an advanced screening to the new acappella singing contest show called “The Sing Off,” here in LA. It’s on NBC, it’s hosted by Nick Lachey, and officially started its second season today. Anyway, although it was just a screening of a pre-recorded show, the singing was, in a word, inspiring. It basically has a number of acappella groups from around the country sing in front of three judges (on this show it’s Ben Folds, Nicole Scherzinger, and Shawn Stockman) and after showcasing their songs, getting feedback from the judges, the groups await the phone-in votes from the viewing public. If you’ve seen Dancing With the Stars, American Idol, etc, then you know the drill.

The reason that this show got me excited is that:

My wife loved it. She used to be in a children’s chorus when she was younger (toured the world several times, too), and she loves singing.
I usually don’t sing. I didn’t even sing along to the radio until recently (amazing what being married to will do to you). But this got me wanting to sing out loud.

That second statement is no small declaration. At least for me. But I hadn’t heard acappella since college, and watching those groups perform brought back memories and just simply energized me. It also got me starting to sing to my baby. But enough about me. Here’s a clip of The Sing Off for you to watch yourself. (And no, NBC didn’t pay me a dime for this endorsement – although I won’t turn any away…NBC are you reading this?)

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