Snowy Day...Week 33 by Liimu

I've never been the type of mom that gets all down and dirty playing with her girls. In fact, I'm SO not that mom, my girls know to always give me the role of "the queen who lays in the lounge chair and watches her princesses play." but something about snow brings out the hands-on mom in me.

When we woke up yesterday to full-blown snowfall, I knew we had a situation on our hands. When it took me 35 minutes to make the normally 5-minute drive to my daughter's day care, I knew the situation was serious. When, more than an hour later, I arrived at the elementary school my two older daughters attend to find that NONE of the buses had yet arrived, I knew it was time to take the situation into my own hands. I packed those girls up and brought them right home again.

School didn't dismiss until 2 pm yesterday, but we had a ball. I got a lot of work done, yet somehow, we also managed to make princess cupcakes and play Wii. And today, in addition to reading time, watching American Idol and playing Just Dance 2 for long enough to break a decent sweat (not long, I have to admit), we are just about to finish decorating fairy cupcakes.

Add to that the fact that I have also attended several meetings (virtually, of course), turned in several key deliverables and send enough e-mails to make everyone else in my work sphere feel like they're the ones who are slacking off, and I pretty much feel like I've got it going on. OK, granted, at week 33, I have gained the same amount of weight I gained with my last pregnancy all totaled, but still...I am ROCKIN' this whole balancing act of motherhood and working. At least, for today I am. Tomorrow could be a whole different story.

GUEST BLOG POST: Free Craft Project: Boomerangs from Boxes by David Erik Nelson, author, Snip, Burn, Solder, Shred: Seriously Geeky Stuff to Make with Your Kids

Winter time--with its inclement weather keeping kids indoors, and scads of newly emptied boxes cluttering up the back hall from the holidays --is the perfect boomerang-building season. Cheap styrofoam toy-store boomerangs have given generations of American children the mistaken impression that building and throwing boomerangs is very difficult. This flies in the face of reason: Using less-than-ideal materials, human beings have been building, throwing, and catching boomerangs for more than 11,600 years. Boomerangs are absurdly easy to make--this is an ideal project to keep kids busy in a pinch. Learning to throw one is just a little tricky, but most of the trick is in properly tuning the boomerang.

The easiest boomerangs for beginners to craft and throw are quad-bladers. Project 18 from my book, Snip, Burn, Solder, Shred includes two quad-blade designs. The first is a poster-board fast-catch boomerang. Fast-catch boomerangs usually have more than three wings and are characterized by a tight flight pattern and quick return. This boomerang can be made from an old cereal box, department store clothes box, or similarly stiff poster-board. It's ideal for indoor boomerang play, and also good for juggling (catching and tossing two boomerangs in sequence so that one is aloft at all times). The second design is a slightly heartier cardboard cross-stick boomerang, made from light corrugated cardboard (i.e., a pizza box) and suitable for outdoor use. Cross-sticks, as the name suggests, are made from two separate wings connected at the hub, rather than being cut from a single piece.

Either boomerang just takes a few minutes to make; more importantly, the downloadable project includes clear, detailed instructions on tuning and throwing the boomerangs.

1) Download the free project: http://www.nostarch.com/download/SnipBurn_project18.pdf

2) Make the crafting go even faster with these downloadable print-n-trace boomerang templates: http://www.davideriknelson.com/sbsb/2010/11/printnsnip_boomerang_template.html

3) Questions? Get help online at the Snip, Burn, Solder Blog: http://www.davideriknelson.com/sbsb/

4) If you like this project, then check out my book Snip, Burn, Solder, Shred: Seriously Geeky Stuff to Make with Your Kids http://nostarch.com/snipburn.htm