diy

(DISCLOSURE: I’ve partnered with BOSEbuild and Life of Dad for this article. I was compensated and provided product, but opinions, words, photos and video are all my own.)

I can’t imagine my life without music. I bring speakers everywhere. I keep one in my bag as part of my everyday carry. I have a speaker I keep in the kitchen for when I’m doing dishes. I even have a speaker I bring outside for when I’m grilling. And I connect to these speakers wherever and whenever I want to make music of my own – through apps or with gadgets. My son loves music too – he goes to bed listening to a streaming station and we’ll oftentimes choose a station while doing homework together.

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So you’re at your folk’s house for Christmas or Hanukkah and you guys all finished opening presents and now are moving into the coffee-and-relax portion of the night. But people are excited to play with their new stuff, and it’s not that easy. It’s never that easy. Especially if your kid is the one hammering you to get their new toy operational.

“Bug-out bags” are kits people make to survive in the wilderness for a couple of days. They have little items you need to survive the elements, and if there’s one element you need to survive for the next week, it’s holiday family gift exchanges. Also, bear attacks.

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There’s no shortage of science project books for parents and kids. Anyone can tell you how to make your own rock candy crystals or rockets powered by Mentos and Coke. But – call it nepotism or playing 8Bit favorites – I really like Mike Adamick’s Dad’s Book of Awesome Science Experiments. It was released almost one year ago – ICYMI – and answers all the tough science questions kids tend to ask.

Mike had sent me his first book, Dad’s Book of Awesome Projects, which had a bunch of sweet do-it-yourself projects, like superhero capes and those books where you open up the cover and there’s a hidey-box inside. It also had a handful of daunting projects, like building rope swings, teeter-totters and old fashioned fruit crate scooters. Fo’ real. You can see that Mike loves DIY more than anyone, and even talked about my nerdy perler projects in an article on Parade. No shame here. My favorites game is fierce.

This book, Dad’s Book of Awesome Science Experiments, will teach you rad stuff – even how to make Mentos/Coke rockets and candy crystals. My favorite thing about the book is that it answers the perennial kid question, “why?”

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One of the best parts of being a this-generation parent is doing nerdy stuff with your kids. And it’s just a bonus when you get to nerd-out with your kids while revisiting an old summer camp craft.

The most awesome of all summer-camp-crafts-turned-nerd-craft has to be Perler beads. These things basically look like pixels, so you know where I’m going with this (also, you saw the header image and you, dear readers, are not stupid).

Perler beads give you the opportunity to revisit some super-rad 8-bit classics while doing crafts with your kids. I’ll show you how to make a simple goomba from Super Mario Bros. 1 that you can stick on the fridge or wall. And just think – if you get the hang of this, you can create your own retro video game scene on your kid’s wall and be the envy of…well…me, at least.

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You put a train set in your kid’s room? That’s cute.

Laurent Aigon, French dude and handy guy totally out-classes all the DIY dads out there by finishing a 5 year build on a Boeing 737 cockpit – in his kid’s bedroom.

Though the original story on French site Sud Ouest is dated “28/09/2012” – that’s 9/28/2012 to us Americans – this story just landed on the likes of Gizmodo and then The Huffington Post. And 8BitDad. See how that works?

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