Coconut Water

posted by Aaron

So coconut water is a thing that, in my life is getting harder to ignore despite my best efforts. Lately I find myself searching it out in grocery stores and buying cases of the stuff on Amazon. My wife loves to drink it after a yoga or swimming workout and swears by it as a recovery drink.
Here are the basics...

Nutrition:                             
Calories: 46
Calories from fat: 4
Fat: 0g
Carbs: 09g
Sodium: 256 mg

Production: As best I can tell by the price, before being juice these coconuts are massaged every day like Kobe beef and watered with unicorn tears.

Purchase: The best coconut water brands are One and Vita Coconut. Do not be fooled into buying the Goya brand that Walmart carries. Your wife will be angry and you will literally vomit when you try to drink it. You can find cases of the good stuff here: (Vita Coco 100% Pure Coconut Water, 11.2-Ounce Containers (Pack of 12).)

Announcing Amazon Dad

It turns out Amazon didn't drop the ball with dads on the Amazon Mom service, they are just being more realistic:

Dads: Amazon doesn't want your money

Ahh dads, kicked to the curb again by the multi national corporations behind the consumer baby-buying frenzy. Amazon just released this ad campaign targeting mothers called "amazon moms".

I can just imagine the scene at Sterling Cooper now:

Don: Peggy, Kinsey, pitch me diapers.

Kinsey: How about instead I just wave my pipe around and stroke my beard like a huge douche canoe?

Peggy: What about a campaign that recognizes that it is counter productive to divide moms and dads into separate marketing groups? Why don't we run a campaign that recognizes that it's families that make decisions about products based on recommendations from their friends and social circle and that we will only piss them off if we alienate fathers?

Don: (throwing his scotch across the room just missing peggy's head) Shut up bitch! Give me a baby with bear ears and send the message that we don't want any dads shopping here!



Also check out this one below. Notice anything funny? No? Anything? Does the word "Cruisers" have a kind of sleazy "looking for sex in a park" connotation to anyone else?

Amazon Music Deals

Good music at a better price


Illinoise - $5 - In the years after (and maybe before, I don't know) Sufjan Stevens released his two albums that were supposed to kick off a 50 album tour of the US he has become some kind of Indie Pop phenomenon / darling. And while his latest seems to have derailed from the state tour (maybe he got stuck in Indiana?) it continues the multi layered instrumentation and laid back vocals that make Illinoise a great album. The album is worth it alone for the finest song on the album, that also just happens to be about John Wayne Gacy, Jr.

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.

Cloth Diapering - One year in

rockin' the cloth

We decided about mid through my wife's pregnancy (I'll never say OUR pregnancy, I didn't have to push the kid out) that we were going to cloth diaper. You tell someone who had to cloth diaper back in the day that you're thinking about doing it and they'll probably look at you like you're a complete idiot from then on. 

Trading Places & Daddy Takes Over: Day 2

Written by guest daddy blogger DaddyYoDude

Cross posted from http://www.thedaddyyoblog.com

So many words come to mind when I think about how Day 2 of being the at home parent went. But only one word will suffice as the lead off to this post: TRYING! If there was ever a specific day that I could say my highest and total respect for at home parents was given, it was today. I'm just going to say it: I don't think I could ever be the at home parent (unless absolutely had to) and I really have to give it up for my wife and the incredible job she does as a SAHM. Couldn't ask for a better mommy for my kiddos. Now, to continue, here is the recap of Day 2.

Thredup.com Review

posted by Kristen

When my husband recently told me to check out a new website he'd stumbled across, thredUP.com, I was intrigued. I've been stocking up on baby clothes for our son, due in early October, at our local Once Upon A Child. The thredUP concept seemed like a great idea; basically like a big, online, multi-family clothing swap. I signed up for an account and, a few days later, received a pack of USPS flat-rate Priority shipping boxes in the mail, to be used for sending out clothes that I wanted to get rid of. The next step was choosing a box. Aaron and I sat down together and searched under the criteria we needed: boys newborn fall/winter. We found a list of boxes with brief descriptions of the contents. In some cases, when the person listing the box had already sent out previous boxes, there was a rating given by the receivers to indicate the quality of the sender. We ended up choosing a box filled with newborn and 0-3 size pajamas. All we had to do was pay shipping through Paypal, and the lister was notified to send the box our way.

Secondary Income: Selling at a Farmer's Market, part 1: Setup

Eight Dollars. Exactly the amount of profit, not including my time, that I made in my first week selling at a Farmer's Market.


This is the first part in a series relaying what I've learned in my first year of selling fruit at our local Farmer's Market. We've got a small garden, but don't grow hardly enough for our family let alone selling any of it off. We're going to be reselling. Doesn't this go against what the Market is all about, shouldn't it be farmers selling what they grow? Probably, but do you really think the guy selling red tomatoes March 1st or ripe bunches of bananas at any time of the year actually grew them? Most likely not.


Or, as Prop Joe puts it: "Shit is just business, String. Buy for a dollar, sell for two"

What The Current Means for the Internet and Your Family

What The Current Means for the Internet
At a time when old media in the form of radio, network television, and newspapers are on the run, one public radio station is thriving. What the Current represents in an example of an institution that correctly answers the question posed by CUNY professor Jeff Jarvis, What Would Google Do?  The answer is simple, but astonishing in its foresight. The Current knows that  it operates in an economy of abundance rather than scarcity. Rather than erecting a paywall, the station gives away it's service in as many creative formats as possible, knowing that the more happy and dedicated listeners they have the better. Access points for the Current include twitter, facebook, an iphone app, and live streaming. Astonishing considering that it is an affiliate of National Public Radio, lightyears ahead of the competition.

What The Current Means for Your Family
One of the things I love about our home is that we always have music playing. The service that makes that possible is a public radio station out of Minneapolis, the Current. The Current is place to listen to awesome music that we here at fatherfolk love including the artists we posted about in this post. There are many good options out there to listen to music on the web including Pandora, LastFM, etc. What sets the Current apart is the real live DJ's who bring a love of music, an incredible base of knowledge about the artists, and good old Minnesota flavor.

Secondary Income: Buy Low, Sell High

image from wikimedia.org

This may be the simplest truth of economics, however it is told and heard so very often that I think it gets lost in the noise of pundits and horn blowers. Put simply, Buy Low and Sell High. This applies to many of life's financial situations, well beyond the world of wall street stock exchanges and pork belly futures.

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.

Reflection On Charitable Giving and the Question of Universal Justice

image via Wikipedia

This evening, two stories caught my attention. Forty U.S. billionaires including Bill Gates, George Lucas, Mike Bloomberg, and Warren Buffett have made a pledge to donate at least half of their wealth to non-profits and charitable organizations. Could this amount of money flowing into the coffers of NGOs and non-profits change the course of politics, economics and the arts? Civilizations have flourished or ground to a halt on less. Elections, earthquakes, and even a bunch of upper middle class colonists bitching about taxes have influenced the course of empires. If this fortune is directed toward organizations that promote self-sufficiency and sustainability in the spirit of E.F. Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, it could make a difference in the lives of the people who have sweated to put the billionaires of the world in a position to be so generous.

How I convinced my wife that mint.com wouldn't ruin us

Personal finance made easy

Some quick history About two years ago I read about this great free personal money management site mint.com. I immediately punched in all our bank login information, setup budgets, etc. I showed my wife my accomplishments with a big grin and got only a stern "What the hell are you thinking, that's ALL of our financial information in ONE place!" in return. Cancel, Delete, Remove account. 


On to Quicken and it's boring interface and crappy reports (mac version, it really is terrible). Then 6 months ago I dropped my wallet in a parking lot, the good samaritan that found it took my debit card to the same gas station and rang up nearly $900 in charges for... something. With the realization that perhaps paying for everything out of our checking account wasn't the best idea we decided to move to credit cards for daily expenses. Aha, an opening! Now we could sign back up for Mint and only give it access to our credit accounts, giving some distance between our immediate funds and any potential for online theft. I just had to convince my wife. 

Amazon Music Deals

Good music at a better price



The Suburbs - $3.99 - Arcade Fire's latest is being touted as their best, that's quite an accomplishment



Sigh No More - $5 - Sigh No More my friends, Mumford and Sons for just 5 bucks



Mines - $7.99 with a $4 credit for Amazon's Video on Demand Service - Menomena's track Evil Bee from their 2007 album Friend and Foe was one of my favorites that year; Oh to be a machine, Oh to be wanted and useful.



This Is Happening - $5 - LCD Soundsystem



Veckatimest - $5 - Grizzly Bear



Noble Beast - $5 - My favorite effort from Andrew Bird so far

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