How does it work? Your kid makes art. You post it to the Kid Art Auction Flickr pool. And you tell all you know about it so that they can go and bid on the lovely pieces our kids have made. When bidding closes, the parent ships the art to the highest bidder. Simple and fun, yes? All proceeds go to We Can Solve It, a project from the Alliance for Climate Protection.
Family overseas, sorry, but the bidding is only open to those in North America. But friends with kids under 17 in Canada and the US? Get those kiddie fingers busy.
Here is Tau’s first effort with scissors, markers and glue. Isn’t Happypillar sweet?
I don’t believe it! I’m standing by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who said, “The road uphill and the road downhill are one and the same!”
We had a wonderful time in Palm Springs for my 40th birthday this past weekend. Dave rented a gorgeous place with a pool and a hot tub, and we spent the weekend relaxing, sleeping in, going for coffee and yes, the three of us ate a whole birthday cake! It was mostly fruit and sponge cake, or so I keep telling myself.
Also, I have been wanting to buy a digital SLR camera for a long time now and with birthday contributions from various family members (thanks again all!), I was able to order my Canon Rebel XTi and a 50mm lens last week. It arrived in time to take away with us.
Thanks for your lovely cards, calls and flowers all!
For the last I-shudder-to-tell-you-how-many months I’ve been dreaming up a new venture. A nichey social networking blog for South-African women, both in the old country and living all around the world. A site that brings the sweets of the Internet to South-African women and a bit of Southern Africa to the rest of the world. You like the idea?
It’s been slow and painful at times. I’m no graphic artist or web designer but I can poke my way around PhotoShop and cascading style sheets when I have to. And truth be told, mucking around with web stuff is one of my favorite things to do. As you know, there’s not a whole lot of free time in our household, so most of it has been done in little bursts of effort. Half an hour here, 15 minutes there. Baby blogging steps that finally get you there. (more…)
Today I wanted two photographs printed. ASAP. Within reason.
So I went online at lunch time and logged into my Shutterfly account. I ordered the two prints I wanted, grumbling all the while that I was going to have to pay the base shipping rate for TWO measly prints.
Why? Because I am too lazy to burn them to a disc (keep meaning to get one of those mini-USB thingies) then drive to a photo finisher, drop them off and then have to go back tomorrow to get them.
When I clicked Check Out, Shutterfly asked whether I wanted the pictures shipped or whether I’d like to pick them up in an hour at the Target store closest to me.
Uh, the one right across the road from daycare? Where I need to drive to pick up my kid this afternoon anyway?
Peter and Ritsu blog from Italy about raising their sweet boy Julius. We discovered nacken.com when we were searching YouTube for clips of cute babies to show Tau when he was really little. This one has remained a favorite but as Tau has grown we’ve moved on to videos of Julius riding his bike and brushing his teeth (the power of peer pressure works wonders).
Part parenting, photo, food and travel blog, there is a little something for everyone. Pictures and video clips of the family’s travels and Julius’s antics are definitely a cut above average. Very entertaining and well worth a visit. Peter really does a great job!
Dancing is a BIG thing at daycare. Often when I drop Tau off or Dave picks him up, the music is cranked, the kids are tricked out in floppy hats, sunglasses and all kinds of dress-up gear, and they are getting down! A big favorite is Disney Radio’s Move It! CD, especially the Cha-Cha Slide song (check out the sound clips on the Amazon page).
That my 22-month-old knows what a cha cha is (well, sort of) blows my mind.
Tau’s teachers have tried to catch “cha cha” on camera for us a couple times but no luck. As soon as the boy sees the camera, he loses interest. The one clip we did get included a couple of the other kids and I don’t feel cool posting movies of other peoples’ kids without their permission.
Yesterday evening, after a very short (45 min.) nap, which came after a very long afternoon of trying to coax him to sleep (just too hot in our place), he asked Dave for music to “dahse.” Since the laptop was on, Dave fired up Cha-Cha Slide on YouTube.
Apologies for the bad light and quality of the clip. And the wobbles and general goofiness are due to the fact that he’d just woken up, still tired, after resisting sleep all afternoon!
Yes, he does get lots of “good” music at home too — whatever that is! One of the new favorite words is “jazz.”
We recently moved all of our old Yahoo! Photo albums over to Flickr. The albums transferred nicely as sets though I had to go in and mark all of the pics public and do a bit of clean up.
I also herded some of the sets into two collections, one for recent travel photos and another for pictures of Tau.
So it seems picking away at my air guitar over here in my little corner of the Internet is paying off, because while I was out taking a bloggy vacation last week, Aimee over at the stunningly redesigned Greeblemonkey bestowed on me the Rockin’ Girl Blogger award.
Ahem! (In my best California-Peace-Rocker Chick-ese)
“I’d like to thank my agent … and my mom and dad … and the fans … worldwide … and my wonderful support crew over at WordPress Studios. And of course my baby-child and my husband-and-partner-in-this-glorious-journey-called-life Dave, who gives me the daily strength to go on — LOVE YOU HONEY! Sniff! Excuse me — I don’t often break down like this. And who else? Oh! I should thank the critics, like The Bullog, who after a rocky start seems to be putting his blog to good journalistic use addressing pertinent topics instead of giving bloggers a hard time. This one’s for you, Mr. Bullard, and all the other newbies who stumble, fumbling and strumming their newly found Stratocasters into this fabulous arena. Consider yourself awarded with a Rockin’ Girl …”
Yes, I get to pass on this lovely award to others and since the bloggers I read are either way up there in the rarefied reaches of the blogosphere and therefore a bit above the grassrootsiness of this award or already recipients of a Rockin’ Girl, I’m going to tag some other folks you might not know.
Hey! We’d love your feedback.
So if nothing else, skim down to the indented bullet point below.
Well, dear readers, this is blog post number 101 over here at nobaddays. Can you believe it?
Those who know and love me will tell you what a Luddite I am. I carry the cheapest pay-as-you-go brick of a phone, have a cassette player (you know, with the stretchy tapes that melt in the sun?) in my car, and still haven’t found a good enough reason to sign up for cable.
So, as with many things in my life, I came to blogging late. The first blogs I ever saw were those of my technologically astute friends Erika and Declan. And I remember thinking, “Why mess with all this complicated on-the-fly stuff when you can make a simple HTML page and update it by hand?” Embarrassing, I know.
For all you tech heads this side of the pond, something a little different.
Erik Hersman at White African has been blogging at TEDGlobal , a worldwide technology and design conference currently in Arusha, Tanzania. Take a look at his recent posts for an enthusiastic and interesting look at the proceedings. That and a way cool picture of Bono with Ghanaian economist and scholar George Ayittey.
I usually read White African for Erik’s great tech tips as well as news on how digital solutions are changing daily life in various African countries. I find it interesting how Africans use and adopt technology in very different ways to Europeans or North Americans. Obvious, I know, but the specifics are very interesting.
Erik is also involved with AfriGadget, an organization that highlights mostly low-tech solutions to everyday needs. Check their site for innovations that are a world away from your local Best Buy!
A frenzied air-guitar riff can be heard across the South-African blogosphere. Enough to make your mother come up to your room and tell you to shut the hell up, she can’t hear herself think so stop-that-racket-immediately!
“Most blog sites are the air guitars of journalism. They’re cobbled together by people who wouldn’t stand a hope in hell of getting a job in journalism, mainly because they have very little to say. It’s rather sad how many people think the tedious minutiae of their lives will be of any interest to anyone else.
… The content of their sites is so moronic that even their best friends would disown them if they knew they were the authors. As with most things in life, something that costs nothing is usually worth nothing …“
Bullard’s full article is flawed and myopic but it struck the chord he intended. South-African bloggers got out their picks and started chang-cha-chang-ing like crazy. I got annoyed too at the wild generalizations, the ridiculous comparison between bloggers the world over and the Virginia Tech shooter (of all people). I won’t reiterate what many have already said — read what Vincent Maher had to say for a succinct, well-crafted response — but I feel I can add this.
I am the kind of blogger Bullard belly aches about. The mommy kind who goes on about her teething offspring and the fabulous pad thai her husband whipped up on the weekend. Who posts pictures of her garden and family road trips, and goes off about politics when she is hardly qualified to do so.
I maintain a blog because I can. The Internet is open-mic night at the local coffee shop and I can get up there and strut my stuff. I don’t have to be a professional and I don’t have to be any good at it. I am not a journalist.
We bought this Pencil Tree, along with six or seven other succulents and cacti at the local farmer’s market this Saturday. And so I spent a couple of hours this afternoon potting and arranging them on the patio.
Our tiny garden is coming along nicely and should by pretty lush in a month or so. Dave has worked hard on it — pulling out stuff killed by the frost this past winter and adding plants that will hopefully handle both the heat and cold a bit better.
I’ve started two new sets on our Flickr page: One for pictures taken around the house, including some of the new plants, and one for Tau pics 19 to 24 months. (Yes, I’m a cheapskate — have a free account, which means you can only have three sets at a time. The old sets get deleted but the pictures in those sets are still available in your photostream.)
"We live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principle goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained."
