Semper-Fi, Last Boy Scout

Cross posted from A Boy, A Man, and a Father

written by Judgebrix

At 8 years old you are at an age where you have to learn the hard way. I don’t mean that you have to get bruised, but that some experiences can only be taught by actually trying them.

Basically, every boy have to attempt certain Dirty Sanchez /Jackass stunts, just to prove that they are older and braver than the rest … or perhaps just brainless.

What am I talking about?  I’m talking about joining the boy scouts.

How to Eat a Monkey

This timely and informative article is based on the ehow wiki, how to buy a monkey

Cute as monkeys are, buying one to keep as a pet  and then consume should only be done after a lot of research. Not only should you be sure you are buying from a reputable breeder, you also need to familiarize yourself with the behavior of monkeys and decide which recipe you will want to use. I also suggest considering carefully which friends to invite to your monkey feast, and which co-workers to let in on the fact that those delicious looking leftovers are monkey flesh. Follow these steps to make your monkey dinner a success.

Difficulty: Moderate to Difficult

5 Reasons I Hate Crafts

Cross Posted from ironicmom.com

I hate crafts. This is a problem given that my daughter is her own craft production factory. Thanks to her, we are first rate recyclers: paper, toilet paper rolls, and cereal boxes rotate from the craft table to the recycling bin with amazing fluidity. It might be cute if you’re a scrapbook person; if you’re not, it’s a nightmare.
Below, then, are 5 reasons I hate crafts.

Special Feature: Author Ashley English Talks About the Birds and Bees of Expectant Parents

tips for expecting fathers, from their expecting partners: 

-feed us. really. we're hungrier than we've ever been in our lives. we'd love it if you whipped us up meals. nothing needs to be elaborate, but when we're low on energy, knowing someone else will be doing the cooking is an absolute godsend. snacks are especially good, too. 

-in a similar vein, we'd love help with the grocery shopping. our tastes will be highly variable and immensely fickle right now, so don't balk if we used to adore feta and olives and are now repulsed by them. the pendulum will again swing in that direction, but, for now, just see what we'd like and help us shop for that. 

-be open minded, in the event that our food preferences should experience a profound change. i picked up eating poultry during my pregnancy after a 14 year hiatus. it was what my body told me it needed and nothing satisfied me until i had it again. talk openly about our dietary changes as we experience them, but try to do so with an open mind, especially if we're craving something that you don't eat yourself. 

-if we're the ones that customarily do the laundry, wash the dishes, clean the bathroom, sweep the floors, vacuum, empty the cat's litter box, etc., we'd love a helping hand. 

-reading a pregnancy book for dads makes us feel like you're really on board. while we'll be the one's doing the actual carrying, laboring, and delivery, we want you to know what's going on inside of us, as well. 

-plan a co-ed baby shower with us. baby's aren't just for the mom, after all; they're literal family affairs. 

-when you can, come with us doctor/nurse/midwife appointments. every visit, or test, is new (especially for first time moms) and we'd love a little reassurance from a familiar face. 

-allow us to vent when we need to vent. sometimes we're just uncomfortable and need to vocalize. we're not looking for you to make things better, we're just blowing off steam. a little bit of diffusing along the way goes far towards keeping major blowouts from happening.

http://small-measure.blogspot.com/
http://designspongeonline.com/category/ashley-english
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Husband hack #279: Romantic Crossword Puzzle

Out in the daddy blogosphere there seems to be no end to the wringing of hands over the loss of sexy time that having a baby may cause. My advice is to respond by growing out your mustache, slicking back your hair, putting on your bow tie and mixing up a cocktail of one part understanding and two parts extra effort. Here's something that's both geeky and romantic. The kind of relationship advice I'd like to think Joss Weeden would give.

Make a personalized crossword puzzle!

How:

Step 1. Write down ten to fifteen of the insider information about your relationship. Things about your first date, inside jokes, places that are special to you, and pet names.

Step 2. You will need to take this and turn each one into a clue and an answer.

Step 3. Visit a site that will automatically generate a crossword puzzle like this one here:
crosswordpuzzlegames.com

Presto! You have a meaningful gift that cost you nothing. Now part two is to stop being such an insensitive ass in all other areas of your relationship and help out a little more around the house. We guarantee this will get you laid!

Review: The Faith Of A Child by Stefan Lanfer

BY 

CHRIS SINGER

Cross posted from His fantastic blog: http://bookdads.com/

About Stefan Lanfer – Stefan Lanfer is a dad, husband, master (woof woof!) blogger,author,playwright, foundation strategy guy, twitterer, and catcher of flying babies. He lives with Ashley, James, Maya and Scout the Dog in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. You can learn more about Stefan Lanfer, the dad and husband, from his blog Dad Today. The Faith of a Child is his first book.

About the book

(from www.stefanlanfer.com)

Preparing for fatherhood? Freaked out? Help is here.

When a woman prepares for motherhood, other women guide her on her way. Not so a dad-to-be, who gets pats on the back, corny jokes, or vague assurances he’ll do fine. Until now, his best hope was by-moms-for-moms baby books–a gap filled by Stefan Lanfer’s The Faith of a Child and other Stories of Becoming and Being Dad.

According to Lanfer, when his wife was pregnant, “I was STRESSED out, and the guys around me no help—until, just in time, I hosted a group of dads at our home. I fed them dinner. They fed me their stories.” As he listened, says Lanfer, “I got inside the dad head space. Finally, I felt ready.”

To pay forward this gift, Lanfer shares his stories in The Faith of a Child, which tracks tracks Lanfer’s journey to – and into fatherhood.  To dads-to-be, Lanfer says, “If you want tips, tactics, and advice for childbirth and parenting, you’ve got dozens of choices. But, if you want real stories that actually let you picture fatherhood, The Faith of a Child is for you.”

How the road warrior dad can stay connected

I'm lucky enough to spend most of my time as a work-at-home-dad, but on occasion work threatens to cut off the faucet if I don't make an appearance for at least a few days. That doesn't mean I can't stay connected to my family, even spending dinner time together.

Selling at a Farmer's Market, part 2: The Sell

"White Tees. One for three, two for five." - Bubbles

courtesy SweetHomeOrganics.com

In our first part of my year of lessons learned selling at a farmers market we went over the basics of getting a table, who to contact, and figuring out what we could sell as non farmers. Now we're going to talk about the most important aspect of putting together an eye catching booth and how to track our expenses and, if any, profit.


First, Where Are We? Doing well. We're covering all of our costs and on a weekly pay out of profit. The rest is going in the market coffer and building slowly.

Fatherfolk on Band of SAHD

Tonight I had the great pleasure of joining Chris and James from Band of SAHD to talk beer on their radio show live. We talked both THC and family friendly beers.
Give a listen....

Listen to internet radio with Band_Of_SAHD on Blog Talk Radio

Creating Block Prints: Where Your Next Scar is Coming From

Want to teach your children about the folk art of block prints AND get a chance to show them the emergency room? Consider Lino-block printing as your next art activity. I first got interested in block prints because of this old book that my mother had on the shelf when I was growing up about an artist that sells his soul to the devil. It had no words and totally fascinated me.

The Little One's Art

Home brew is easy and good, Part 2 - The Bottling

In the first part of our how to brew we brewed up a 5 gallon batch of Peach and Cardamom Cream Ale, tweaking a brewing kit from Northern Brewer available here: NB Cream Ale. It's been about two weeks and our air lock stopped bubbling a few days ago. A quick peak in our fermenting bucket shows the foam that rises from yeast gas has fallen back down onto the peaches, time to bottle!

Home brew is easy and good, Part 1 - The Brew

We're going to show just how easy it is to brew up a great batch of craft beer, right in your own kitchen. For this round we are using a Cream Ale kit from Northern Brewer, available here. We've used a few Northern Brewer kits, including St. Paul Porter and American Wheat with excellent results. Each kit brews 5 gallons of beer which usually yields 54 12oz bottles. For the Cream Ale Kit we're using that works out to just under $.50 a bottle, you can't beat that!

Kids' wall quote

Inspired by an item on Etsy featuring a quote by Shel Silverstein and unwilling to fork over the dough for a few vinyl letters, I decided to replicate the effect myself. First, the quote I used:

"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be."

You'll notice that I got a few apostrophes incorrect in the finished product, lets just hope the kid is better at grammar than I.


What we're going to do is create a wall sized print of the quote, cut out the letters, tape it to the wall and sponge paint the quote on. NOTE: If you want something that looks perfect, look elsewhere (like Etsy) and let someone else do your work for you.

Words on Trees

Recently my family has transitioned to doing most of our non-book reading online. We used to get the Sunday paper, Rolling Stone, and Living but now between the New York Times online and Google Reader we keep up with the news and interesting blogs for free. Its a mixed bag because what we gain in savings we lose in the intangible value of being able to hold a magazine and flip pages. If any folks out there are interested in meeting the problem in the middle by getting a paper copy of your favorite rag for less money, this item just showed up in my reader. Throughout August, Amazon is offering two years of magazine subscription for the price of one HERE. So if you're willing to make a two year commitment and bet that we won't be living in some post apocalyptic nuclear wasteland by then, or just want something soft to line your thunder dome than get your deal before the end of the month.

Grow Basil

Fresh herbs are expensive, growing herbs is easy with Sweet Basil being among the simplest. So why not grow your own?

Basil cutting ready for transplant

Where / When to Grow Basil is a tender annual anywhere that it gets cold enough to wear a jacket. Even a slight overnight chill will turn a bunch of beautiful green basil brown and crumbly. See here if you want to squeeze the most harvest time out of your garden. Otherwise just wait until it's hot out. Any garden plot will work for Basil, but to get the most you'll need a spot that most other herbs prefer; well-drained soil and a lot of light. Basil also works well as a tomato companion. Fertilizer is not generally needed, and may be detrimental as it will promote a lot of leaves, but not flavor.

Lawn Cherry - 1 week in

It's suppose to bottle condition for two weeks, but how can you resist not checking the progress? I can't. No head yet but I'm not sure I've had a wheat beer with head. Cherries are giving it this sour punch that's just nuts. This one's just going to get better.

It's stupid how good this is already compared to how easy it is to brew. One kit from Norther Brewer (here) and about 4 cups of sour cherries boiled and strained. Going to enjoy this one all summer, if it lasts.

Kombucha

image via wikipedia

posted by Aaron
I've been brewing kombucha for about four months now, ever since our midwife suggested that my wife consume more fermented foods (obviously beer was out). I got my starting culture from the boyfriend of the barista of my favorite coffee shop, ate two gallons of banana peppers to empty out a jar big enough to brew in, and was good to go. If you look up Kombucha on the web you will find claims ranging from a miracle cure for baldness to a dangerous poison. My experience is that it is a tasty drink (acquired) that has no obvious miraculous side effects. Here are the basics. Kombucha is tea (good old Camellia Sinensis, no herbals) fermented by a "mother" organism called a SCOBY that is a mixture of bacteria and yeasts. As the SCOBY grows it produces a beneficial blend of probiotics and acids. It ends up tasting like effervescent cider, or vinegar depending on how long you let it ferment. I suggest adding fruit juice or an herbal tea for flavor if you need it. Every batch produces a new SCOBY, so don't fall for the online sellers, you can usually find one for free on craigslist or at your local health food store. If you are interested in reading more, the fermentation bible is Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods. Enjoy!

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