Flickr fun
If you’ve got a Flickr account and you want to add a little ‘festive’ to it, add a note to a photo and type “ho ho ho hat” or “ho ho ho beard” and you’ll get a Santa hat or beard added to your image that you can scale and place (unfortunately you can’t rotate it though).
(Found via Lifehacker).
Where all the good toys are
This will only matter to the small sub-set of blog wanderers who a) have kids AND b) live in the Ottawa area. We’ve just made a discovery that left us a little overwhelmed: Less than 1km from our home is a giant, unadvertised “teacher supply store” called All About Kids. (Be forewarned that their site isn’t pretty, nor very functional since it relies on large pdf files for their catalog).
It’s full of all the sorts of toys that we prefer that Jack play with — that is, toys that don’t require batteries. Or more specifically, toys that encourage imaginative play, that help teach some sort of concept (like counting for example), or help him develop his fine motor skills. If we were the sort of parents that spoiled him (and I’d like to think that we’re not), they have giant castle building block sets, tricycles, sand-box toys and wooden puzzles. Their inventory is dizzying.
We walked away with merely a pack of flash cards and a sheet of stickers. He’s on a sticker-kick right now. The “number” flash cards are to help him count beyond 10, and hopefully start to recognize numbers. When asked, he’ll usually enthusiastically tell us a number is “three!”
Muppet Whatnot?
We’ve been going through a muppet stage around here. For most toddler-families, that would involve copious amounts of Sesame Street. But alas, not for us. Or at least, not yet anyway. We’ve been watching lots of the first season of the Muppet Show, and Bear in the Big Blue House on DVD. I highly recommend both — especially since the “Brush Brush Bree” song on Bear in the Big Blue House has helped us wrangle Jack into brushing his teeth.
Now if it weren’t for a crappy economy, this would be a lovely, over-extravagant gift, from FAO Schwarz: the Muppet Whatnot for $130 US (it doesn’t launch until February 15 though). See the video for what a whatnot is:
It’s amazing what you can find on the Internet
If you go to this guy’s YouTube page, he’s got many videos of himself playing instruments that he’s made himself — all the ones we’ve watched so far are made out of produce.
The videos keep both Jack and Eric amused. This one is him playing “Angels We Have Heard on High” on a Big Broccoli. Helps to get you in the festive spirit.
Oh speaking of festive, go check out our store — there’s a 24-hour sale on that ends tonight at 11:59:59pm EST.
Black Friday sale
Happy Thanksgiving to our American friends!
If you’re looking to save some money this holiday season (and who isn’t), — we’re having our Black Friday 24-hour sale starting at the stroke of midnight on Friday, November 28 and ending at 11:59:59pm (EST).
Sale prices will be almost 30% off and if you join our newsletter by 11:30pm today, you’ll get a coupon code for an additional savings of $20 off orders of $100 ore more. The code is good until the end of the year on everything in store (except for our Metal for Monsters series — our effort for raising money for UNICEF).
Also note that Friday, November 28 is the order deadline for using our free shipping method for Christmas orders to arrive in time. For a full listing of our holiday shipping deadlines, see our FAQ here.
Classics in Lego
At one point or another, Eric bookmarked this flickr set for me called “Classics in Lego“. Basically, the photographer has taken the time and effort to re-create classic photographs with Lego. It’s pretty awesome.
My favorite is Bigfoot (because of the appropriate use of a Star Wars mini-figure), side by side with the original image:
For the full flickr set of some classic images recreated with Lego see here.
Tired of the scheming, scamming and spamming
Inevitably, when you hang out your virtual shingle on the internet, you’ll subject yourself to people (or their bots) who think it’s great fun to fill your inbox with garbage.
In the last 24 hours, we’ve received about a dozen emails full of gibberish on our contact form. These make me chuckle at least, since I call them “IP removal requests”. (Our contact form lets us know the IP of the originating contact person for just such occasions!). These are pretty innocuous, since it’s just spam. There’s no viruses, but I seriously have to wonder what the purpose of it is. There’s even fake “links” with just strings of letters and ending in .com. So it’s not even trying to get me to go to some lewd site or anything, or try and trick me into submitting credit card info. I’m sure some day when an alien species does some techno-archeological dig, they too will scratch their heads and wonder, “WTF?”
In the last 24 hours we’ve also had a “personal shipping”/”money mule” scam. This is the third time in as many months that someone has tried this on us. It’s rather annoying since we do answer every customer email we get, and the poor English of the first email always makes my spammy-senses tingle, but I do appreciate that not everyone takes the time to write in perfect English. Thus, it usually takes a second email for me to block their IP :P
What is a “money mule” scam you ask? (Well, I actually had to ask too). This link and this one have some good info.
- Basically, someone wants to buy something from you online, and they ask you in really poor English.
- I’ve found that the person usually uses a very common sounding name, like “Joe” and “Janet” and/or “Jane”. In this most recent incarnation, the first emails were signed “Janet” and then switched to “Jane”. They don’t care if you make mistakes on their name, since well, it’s not really their name.
- They always insist that they use their own “personal shipper”. This mystery shipper also cannot be contacted by you directly.
- They refuse to call you, (in the case where we were privately selling a car online, but locally). They also refuse to meet with you.
- I just wonder what the real side of these operations look like. Are they like call centers, but the people are huddled at computers trying to do their little bit of scheming to launder money?
In any event, be forewarned, internet. This was the first time they hit our business website, but the other two “inquiries” were for listings on Kijiji and one on “Used Ottawa”. Oh, and I just remembered this link details a similar scam regarding the online buying of hay bales (! - really? you can buy hay bales online?!). I <3 the internet for quick answers on scams :)
A couple of cool images
This first one is the “Real-World” photoshop. There’s a Flickr set of how they put this image of the Photoshop interface using real-life objects:
(via BoingBoing. See the full-size image here).
The second one is a great illustration by Patrick Moberg:
(via Drawn! See Patrick Moberg’s blog here).
New in the store: Rings and “Make Your Own” Metal for Monster
Hey, check it out — we added stainless steel rings with some lovely inlays to the store:
They’re good for both men and women (as both Eric and I have worn them), and are available in sizes 5-10 in half-size increments.
Also, we just added “Make Your Own” Metal for Monsters pendants (in both wide and tall orientations).
We know there are plenty of creative types out there: people who doodle, or people who have kids that make wonderful drawings that parents would love to show off, or perhaps you just want to make your Roscharch/palm print ink blot masterpiece.
Whatever the case, you can do it on our ’small canvas for a big cause’. To make your own Metal for Monster pendant, just download this PDF, create, and send it back to us either by email or fax (full instructions are on the PDF). You can sign it on the back, or write a special message, or even put another little doodle. We’ll send you back a mock-up for your review before it gets produced, and then you’ll get your very own completely custom, laser-etched stainless steel pendant. All that, and $16 from the sale price will still go to UNICEF. Pretty cool, eh? :)
A winner for our “One fan = One dollar in merchandise” giveaway
Well, our giveaway closed on October 31, and after compiling our list of 312 fans, we randomly drew a name and came up with Gayle B. Gayle B. wins $312 in Blend Creations merchandise! :)
Oh and psst — we’ve got a newsletter subscriber-only coupon code floating out there that’s good for 25% off your next order of $50 or more. Make sure to join our newsletter and we’ll pass along the coupon to you.
