Yep, plates tell stories. Especially fancy plates. A few months ago, a woman came up to me after one of my speaking programs to talk about her experience cleaning out her mother's home after her passing. The woman and her siblings found a box of fine china, each piece carefully wrapped just as it was when it was gifted to their parents on their wedding day. The mother was married for over fifty years. She had four kids. Thirteen grandkids. And the china was still in the box, unused. Although muffled by cardboard and packing paper, these plates told a clear story: There is no occasion …
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What You Can Learn from a Lincoln Log
Are you Hall of Fame material? Go ahead, think about it. Are you? While you’re mulling that over, let me ask you another question: Did you know that there is a National Toy Hall of Fame? It’s true. As you might imagine, it features things like Lincoln Logs, the Hula Hoop, the Slinky, and even the multi-talented cardboard box. What makes a toy Hall of Fame worthy? Well, it turns out there are four criteria: …
The Secret Ingredient to a Stress-Free Holiday Season
It's a busy time of year. Most of us are knee-deep in the holiday frenzy. There are trees to trim, decorations to put up, gifts to purchase, cards to send, office parties to attend, cookies to bake, crowds to navigate, presents to wrap, miles to be traversed, groceries to buy, meals to prepare, snow to shovel, rooms to clean, in-laws to suffer, and to-do lists to be tackled. Prime feeding ground for Adultitis, especially if you take it all too seriously. Please don't forget there are also memories to be made, cookies to be eaten, jokes to tell, ho ho ho's to be hollered, bells to …
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How to Build Tree Swings, Teepees, and Sweet Watermelon Homesteads
Even though kids are starting to go back to school, summer is still hanging on for a bit longer, and watermelons are still being sold at the supermarket. I love this watermelon homestead, carved up by the Dahls and featured on their site Builtbykids.com. I especially LOVE the mission behind their site: …
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Chase That Happy with Ze Frank
Ze Frank is an intense and insanely creative dude. In this episode of his web show, he shares a number of awesome ideas for fun having. Such as: …
Caine’s Arcade Will Make Your Day
What happens when kids are allowed to be bored, without any organized extracurricular activities and without access to iPods, iPhones or video games? What happens when parents encourage their kids' creativity, even if it makes a mess? What happens when one person is unafraid to let his inner child to come out and play when everyone else is too busy, inhibited, or just too "adult?" What happens when hundreds of people do something simple to make the day of a child? Magic, that's what. This video is the story of a 9-year-old boy who built an elaborate cardboard arcade inside his …
The Best Christmas Present Is…
A while back, I ran across this dad who draws on paper bags for his kids during his lunch break. Pretty neat stuff. But he's also used his creativity (and a box cutter) to elevate the humble cardboard box into an even more awesome structure of play. …
Don’t Bother Looking For This
You won’t find it in a crossword puzzle. You won’t find it looking through a microscope (or a telescope). You won’t find it in the back of your fridge next to the leftovers-turned-science experiment. …
A Quick Thought on Toys
If you still have some shopping left to do this holiday season, let me offer up something to think about. When it's garage sale time, and people go to purge all the old stuff their kids used to play with, what's the first thing to go? All the loud, spinning, whizzing, battery-operated, brightly colored, one trick pony plastic crap. And the stuff that gets saved and passed down? The classic, high quality handmade stuff made from natural materials like wood and fabric. Well-constructed doll houses. Sturdy, smooth, hand-stained block sets. Super soft teddy bears. …
Be The Free Prize
When I was a kid, my favorite cereal of the moment was usually ranked based on two very important criteria: total sugar content and desirability of the free prize inside. Once in a while, the prize inside was so valuable, you had to save up UPC labels from multiple boxes of cereal and send away for it. And once in a while, my mom let me do just that. I remember one instance when I sent away for a limited edition Emperor Palpatine figurine from the then newly released Star Wars movie, Return of the Jedi. I think I started checking the mailbox the very day we sent out the hand-written …