I am pretty sure that if you combined MacGyver, DiVinci, Paul Bunyan, and a healthy dash of Jesus you would end up with this man:

Norm has not one, but two shows. He has his own show, The New Yankee Workshop, where he builds the coolest everything. He also is on This Old House. The man can do anything and his shop must have required divine intervention to become so amazing. He also has the advantage of owning every tool, clamp and gadget ever needed. It's almost like on the 8th day God created tools and on the 9th day he created Norm to name them and watch over them and use them.

Eli and I both love watching his shows. He can't stop yelling “DRILL, DRILL” or “BIG SAW!!!.”

If you want to also stalk Norm he provides a camera in the shop for just that.

Kevin Callan has a cool link on his blog. Cottage Life mag. has paddle themed Christmas gift tags on their site. They are free to download in PDF format and can be printed on label sheets and stuck on gifts, or printed on paper/card stock and taped/tied on.

I'm not sure how well this fits into the whole “green” thing, but you could reuse them every year, or at least print them on recycled paper.

Eli had a blast today. Not only did we get our first significant snow, but we also put up the Christmas tree. Eli also thinks that advent wreaths are awesome: he loves candles.

Amelia couldn't care less.

From Snow!

I remember mountains of wrapping paper strewn about the house Christmas morning, but hopefully my kids won't. Christmas generates enough packaging anyway that we don't need to put one more disposable layer on it. Bridgit's family has used fabric bags for some time, but for the past few years we have been using straight-up fabric. It is fun and we have developed a good stockpile of fabric and ribbon to use.
It started a while back when I discovered the art of Furoshiki which is kinda like origami, but for wrapping things. The Japanese Government has a handy PDF to show you how to wrap what shapes.
While we sometimes use those techniques, I usually do the standard paper techniques, but with fabric.
There are some tricks to making it look good:

• Don't use a blanket to wrap a book. The fabric pieces should be close to the size you need, anything more then twice the size you need can be difficult.
  
• Fold the fabric to the size you need it before you start wrapping. It doesn't need to be complete in-half folds; folding over a few inches to get the right size works well.
  
• Feel free to use pins or tape to keep the fabric taught.
  
• Disposable ribbon works well with cloth, too.
  
• Scrounge fabric from people who sew: my mother has an entire closet filled with fabric. Or check out the “remnants” at your local cloth 'n craft joint.

Bonus: cleanup is super easy.

UPDATE:Here are some photos of presents last year.

We were getting ready to start the bedtime routine tonight and Eli ran into the other room. We were doing other stuff, so we let him go. A few moments later we hear a whump… “hehehe -ow- hehehe.” It was pretty funny.

I was thinking today about our new President and all the usual jazz about the historic-ocity of the moment. This morning I told Amelia (who is 4 months old today) that she would get to grow up under an Obama presidency and she smiled and giggled at me. This evening I was thinking back to the first time I heard of this guy with a funny name. It was at the 2004 Democratic Convention. I still remember the feeling I got from listening to him; it was awe inspiring. The first thing that came to mind was JFK. I'm not sure if it was the youth and energy, or the inspiring language. In his speech he introduced the US and the world to Barack Obama. I recall talking with friends about how amazing this person is and that he should be President. Now he is.

Part 1

Part2

On Friday night we ditched the kids with grandma and grandpa and went to see Margret Garner at the opera house in Detroit. Once I adjusted from a movie mentality to a music mentality I enjoyed it much more.

The story is kinda really depressing, but that usually makes for good opera.

Check out this cool eyeball test. It can be addicting. You have to do things like find the center of a circle or make right angles.

Today the cell phone is 25 years old.

Happy Birthday

I have watched or listened to both of them and I have one question: Where is the debating? All I saw was alternating stump speeches.

Yes I debated in High School and I wouldn't expect regular people to even be able to follow one of those debates. The participants speak at breakneck speeds attempting to get the most information out in the alloted time. In these debates you are actually supposed to use evidence to back up what you say. I know it's crazy, but you actually had to use FACTS to prove that you were right, and then the other side had to use more facts to prove that your plan isn't a good idea.

We carried huge tubs of information regarding the topic at hand. It can't be that hard to have a slip of paper that says how many troops were in Iraq at various times. That way when Palin claims that we are back at pre-surge levels Biden could say, “no we still have 13,000 more then we did pre-surge.” Or Palin could tell Biden that McCain didn't refuse to sit down with the government of Spain, he just didn't commit to anything. Would that be so hard?

Sure we can go to places like FactCheck.org and get a summary of what information was correct and what wasn't, but most people don't. People just hear the soundbytes.

The first debate between Obama and McCain was supposed to involve the candidates addressing each other. Jim Lehrer, the moderator kept trying to get them to do that, but they both went back to the camera.