Have you seen these Kanye West “Monster” videos… featuring actual monsters? (By actual, we mean Cookie and Grover and their ilk) The editing is stellar and matches up nearly perfectly with Kanye’s song, but we’d still rather see the monsters actually singing the song like they did for “Bohemian Rhapsody:”
Warning: Like the Kanye video, these mash-ups are of the original songs, which means some songs contain explicit freaking lyrics. Miss Piggy as Peaches is genius, though. Read more...
As you might have noticed, we’re big vegetable fans here. So much so, we get rather peeved when someone tries to hide them away. That’s why we were delighted to see George Ball of the Wall Street Journaldeclare 2011 to be the Year of the Vegetable! Ball takes his cue from Michelle Obama and her Let’s Move! initiative. In order to fight childhood obesity, Ball says we need to teach by example — adults also need to eat more vegetables and the tomato slice on a burger doesn’t count. Interestingly (but not surprisingly) he says that kids get pretty excited about the vegetables they grown themselves. His answer: more community gardens! Now where is Margaret Atwood? Read more...
Did you know that the adorable Jorge and Alexa Magnetic Zeros video isn’t the only awesome video we came across yesterday? I know right? There’s also this Star Wars PSA — how to introduce your kids to Star Wars. Well, some of it is pretty common sense, “There’s no question that you should star with A New Hope,” but we can see how it might be nice to get other parents’ opinions on how to explain the Force and midichlorians and such.
So long as the end results stay this awesome, we’d be happy to see these video invitations become a trend. Who doesn’t want to go to Tad and Elijah’s knight-themed party? (via ohdeedoh)
Have you heard of the Canadian Family Robinson? They’re a “homeschooling, RV-living, green-minded, traveling, happy family of 7 living their lives in the best way they can for themselves and the earth!” Follow their adventures and monitor the progress on their house. We can’t wait to hear from their 5-year-old, Ocean, who is described as a “mermaid scientist.” (Mermaid Scientist sounds like a superexcellent Saturday morning cartoon and/or graphic novel. We now wonder if this family has that phrase trademarked…) Read more...
Ah, the second last day of the year. Time for some retrospection! Let’s kick things off with BuzzFeed’s 50 Funniest Headlines of the Year. If you’re reading this at work, be sure to have a sweater or scarf handy to stifle your giggles. We think the very last one might be our favourite: “DUI Checkpoint nabs 3 drunk drivers and a goat.”
More retrospection: Jonathan Liu at GeekDad looks back, not on the year, but on his life as a stay-at-home-dad. He wants to know if there are others like him. Are you a stay-at-home dad? Read more...
On Salon, writer Kate Haas waxes sentimental about the box of fugly retro maternity wear her mother shipped to her. At first she hems and haws over the collection of unwearable items — like a “thick yellow cotton dress with black buttons and piping (for that pregnant bumblebee look)” — she eventually realizes how meaningful her mother’s gift is.
When one of the Bunchland editors was a kid, she wrote a short story called “The Boy Who Ate a Crayon.” Predictably, it was about a boy who ate a crayon and the resulting aftermath. Several years later, the eating of crayons is close to being an everyday thing. Boing Boing reports on edible crayons made with fruits, nuts, seeds and dried veggies. I think a sequel to the original short story is in order: “The Boy Who Ate a Crayon…And It Was Delicious!” Read more...
We found this Adam Kodord illustration on BoingBoing and are just so entertained by it.
Speaking of the Naughty List, have you been misusing the Comic Sans font? You might be a Comic Sans Criminal. Take the pledge and set the correct tone for all your printed materials forever more. Please.
Do you stare hard at the nutrition facts on boxes of cereal, debating which product is best? (We do this with cereal, bread, toothpaste and shampoo) Globe and Mail health columnist Leslie Beck has a few tips for choosing the right way to start your day. Spoiler: Look for whole grains to be listed as the first ingredient. Read more...
Our jaws dropped when we watched this video on Gawker of a kid unwrapping a gift of books and declaring his present “poo.” As if! Call us old-fashioned, but we were taught to politely accept every gift, no matter who it was from or what it was. Kids today! (We’ve also mystified by the reaction his freakout elicits from his parents. Laughing, people? Really? Way to encourage his crummy behaviour.)
TIME.com‘s gorgeous photo galleries never fail to amaze and delight, and their “Around the World Via a Day’s Worth of Food” gallery is no exception. Catch a glimpse of the daily meals of a Himba tribeswoman, an obese former bus driver from Tennessee, a model from New York and bike messenger from Japan. The pictures and descriptions are excerpted from What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio. Read more...
Do non-Christians feel excluded by Christmas trees? One Simon Fraser researcher thinks so. Also, perhaps the trees make those with Christian backgrounds feel guilt and stress.
If you want a boost in making Santa more believable, download this Elf Cam app for iphone/itouch. If you point your phone towards the North Pole, you can hear what’s going on in Santa’s workshop! And you can capture Santa in night-vision. No wonder this app is so cool, it was made by elves. (via BoingBoing)
If you’ve been humming Tchaikovsky in the recent weeks and days, you might be interested in this brief history of nutcrackers on Slate. Here’s an excerpt:
The dolls symbolize good luck in German tradition—one popular origin myth, related by Rittenhouse, holds that a wealthy but lonely farmer who found the process of cracking nuts to be detrimental to his productivity (efficiency even pervades German folklore!) offered a reward to whoever could come up with the best solution. Each villager drew on his own professional expertise—a carpenter advocating sawing them open, a soldier shooting the suckers. But it was the puppetmaker—a profession that seems to loom large in European tall tales—who won the day, building a strong-jawed, lever-mouthed doll. Read more...
Where would wannabe videographers be without pregnancy and babies? What would they shoot, without the existence of such prime fodder for many a home movie? In the interests of making us alternately cry and cringe, Parent Central has rounded up the best and worst pregnancy and baby videos on the web. From the good (a tastefully-shot B&W depiction of a water birth) to the funny (a clip from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life) to the offensive (a labour day vid from YouTube stars the Shaytards, who refer to their youngest as “Babytard”), Parent Central’s post cuts through all the baby-related video clutter out there.
Ohdeedoh, you’re killing us with your Christmas craft ideas. The latest one threatening to send us into a cuteness coma is their DIY mistletoe kissing ball, which takes only fabric, pompoms and glue to make. We like how they acknowledge the fun for kids lies in running around avoiding the ball so that they don’t have to pucker up. (Grownups can still stand under the ball and smooch away.) Read more...
Are you our Facebook fan? If you’re not, you missed out on our discovery of Awkward Pregnancy Photos. Pregnant Chicken curated this awesome, awesome gallery from Awkward Family Photos. We decided it was so good we had to post it again on the website. But join our Facebook group so you don’t miss any more fabulous internet finds!
Do you want parenting advice from Whitney Houston? Of course you do!! Babble collected nuggets of parenting wisdom from 25 celebrities, including Tina Fey, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Hugh Jackman. Angelina’s advice was disappointingly sensible. And Ms. Houston’s – “I think it’s a very important thing to allow our children to express themselves.”
Huffington Post blogger Jeanne Ponessa Fratello, has five tips to keep your kids eating healthy over the holidays. She advocates for routine and an abundance of parent-approved foods while not being militant about it at all. So… gingerbread + royal icing + smarties ≠balanced meal? Read more...
