Odd

As with many parts of this fine country, the weather has got me singing to "But baby it's cold outside" to my very restless 3 year old daughter. It's simply unacceptable to her that she can't have what she wants (outdoor fun). She's stir crazy which means I'm also stir crazy.

Check out some video and photos of crooked Lombard Street in San Francisco being converted into a life-size version of the children’s board game Candyland, in honor of Candyland’s 60th anniversary.

Uber-cool illustrator/designer Lotta Bruhn has generously posted some free downloable cutie-pie stickers. Print and stash in your summertime bag of tricks. A sweet sticker treat for your mini space-ace.

(via One Crafty Place)

This Weekend Project for making a one-string, electric bass guitar from MAKE is a pretty sweet DIY for a parent and his teenager to tackle and bond over. Using PVC, wood and a few other guitar related components easily picked up from your local music store the finished guitar plays and sounds like a bass. You'll get your kid back for a weekend.

Curbly member DIY Maven points us in the direction of a site offering free downloadable PDfs for graph and grid paper. Something to keep in mind when your middle school student comes home from school with a math homework needing to be completed on graph paper which he forgot in class. And because I prefer my Field Notes notebooks have graph paper.

Instructables' member Kiteman has posted directions for making a super-charged, crazy-kooky rubber band powered butterfly. Made with very accessible materials you have around the house you and your kids can put them together fast. Then, get outside and test fly your new butterflies on a beautiful spring day.

With over 41,000 hits and counting, seven featured Instructables, one of which went "popular" and three virtual "Newsletter" patches we're proud of what we've achieved on Instructables.com! Tickled by this we thought it would be fun to list our Instructables. Check us out, rate us, comment even try a few:

How to make a ribbon stick for your junior gymnast

WREXlabs is everything that is right with parents today. This awesome site crafted by a father son team, Tim and Declan, is a forum for curiosity encouraging kids and parents alike to take stuff apart and see how they work.

Cracked.com (I used to read that mag when I was a kid, it seemed so much cooler than MAD) has a list of wacky cartoon-esque devices that actually exist.

Cracked: "This is a tribute to the brave dreamers and engineers who are working hard to bring to market the kind of products previously only found in cartoons and ACME catalogs."

Such as:

1. The Suction Cup Wall-Climbing Apparatus

2. Gas-Powered Rollerblades

3. The Helicopter Suicide Pack

4. The Tom and Jerry-Style Mouse-Killing Chamber

5. The Giant Space Slingshot

Funny stuff...

A local council in western Sweden has withdrawn its written warning against a pre-school teacher who encouraged children in her class to eat cat food earlier this year.

Say what?

The teacher gave the children cat food to taste when the class was working on a project about cats in February.

Local media reported at the time that it was not the first time the teacher had encouraged the children to taste feline feed.

One of the children's parents complained to the principal, Cecilia Knutsson, who decided to take action and warn the teacher.