Put This in Your Ears Project: 2013 Mixes so Far

The Put This in Your Ears Project is proceeding apace, and I’m focusing on songs that came out in 2012-2013 so follow along if you’d like to add some new music to your collection. Here are the finished mixes so far, and the June mix is almost complete too.

Also, I use re/spin to repost finished playlists on Rdio. It takes like 15 seconds, and I cannot recommend it enough.

May 2013 on Spotify
May 2013 on Rdio

April 2013 on Spotify
April 2013 on Rdio

March 2013 on Spotify
March 2013 on Rdio

Sketch Tuesdays in San Francisco

Last night, Tess suggested we go to Sketch Tuesdays, a monthly event at 111 Minna, so we could draw while we caught up over cocktails. I’d never heard of it, but it was so much fun.

They have a central table set up for featured local artists, and when one of the finishes a piece, they tack it to the wall with a price sticker on it. The art is super reasonably priced — our night it was anywhere from $1-$25 per piece.

Everyone else sits wherever with their sketchbooks. I haven’t drawn ever really, but I figured out a workaround.

Go do this. Fun.

Paint Fight! Five Simple Steps

This post is brought to you by The New Santa Fe from Hyundai.

Some of my best childhood memories are messy. Playing in the mud, cracking the eggs myself when we were baking, shaving cream beards — and no one chasing me around with a Wet Wipe or a spit-soaked tissue. Awww, MOM.

So hosting this paint-fight at the Epic Playdate was nostalgic for my inner kid, and troublesome for my outer parent. How would we convince everyone to play along? What about staining, and overzealous kids, and staining? The answer is, shhh. This will be fine.

Here’s how to put everything together.

1. PREPARE YOUR AMMUNITION.
Use water-soluble tempura paint, like the kind you’d find in a preschool classroom, and then mix with water. You’re essentially making brightly colored water. Offer three different ammo options:

Sponges
Fill paint trays with your water-paint solution, and then cut up colorful sponges. Kids can grab them by the handful and throw, or squeeze them over each others’ heads, or squeeze and flick the paint off, then re-dip in the trays.

Balloons
Use an eye-dropper or turkey baster to squeeze in a little paint, then fill and tie as usual and shake them up to mix the paint in.

Squirt Guns
We had mini squirt phasers, which were the most appealing options to the kids. However, we filled them way beforehand, so the paint dried a bit and clogged most of them. If I were to do it over, I’d use those plastic squeezeable squirt guns, which you can find in animal shapes. Just fill a bucket with a paint/water ratio that suits your level of messiness and fill beforehand, and then keep buckets on hand for refills.

2. OUTFIT YOUR TEAM.
Warn everyone beforehand that they’ll want to wear their scrubby clothes and non-stainable shoes like flip flops. Then pass out disposable ponchos or garbage bags with holes cut in the top and sides, so heads and arms can poke out. You might also want to ask guests to bring swim or snow goggles or cheapie sunglasses.

4. OUTLINE THE GAME PLAN.
Once everyone is ponchoed up, clap a few times until you have everyone’s attention, and then use your authoritative big-person voice to explain exactly how things will go down. Tell everyone what types of ammo are available, where to go for paint refills, and how much time they’ll have. Speaking of which…

4. MAKE IT SHORT AND FIERCE.
If you have little ones in the mix, you’ll want this to last about five minutes. You can blow a whistle to start. Yell instructions and encouragement as the fight goes on, reminding kids where to soak their sponges and refill their water guns. Yell when you’re a minute out from wrapping it, and then blow the whistle again to stop before you have any criers in the mix.

5. KEEP IT CLEAN.
Once the fight is over, ideally you’ll have a garden hose on hand to rinse everyones faces, shins and forearms. But if you don’t, remember what I said about no one chasing you around with Wet Wipes? Well, forget that. If you keep water to paint ratios sane, wet wipes will suffice if you don’t have ready access to a hose.

This is so easy and fun, I hope you attempt it this summer. And if you’re feeling less ambitious about the mess factor, remember you can host exactly the same event with all water and zero paint. No judgement. Coward.

If you liked this post, you might also like:

Epic Playdate: Yeah. It was OK, I guess.
How to Host an Outdoor Movie Theater Party
Movie Night at the Barn

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Rhetoric

-I feel terrible. Woke up with a low-grade flu or something. Wanted to let you know so you’re prepared if things worsen to the “I cannot move” point.

– Ok! I’ll send over a PDF of my pre-cambrian soil-borne bacteriology diet just to be safe. I’ve never felt sick since I started it, and I’m recommending it to all of my friends.

– I’ve been a fool. Think of all the cheese I’ve consumed this week alone.

– cheese = disease.

– Preach

– It’s true because they rhyme.

ScholarMatch Update and Our Big Winnah

In the last two days, we’ve raised $240 of our $1,200 for our ScholarMatch project in partnership with Rivet & Sway. Will you please help us put some kids through college this fall by making a donation? If you can, tell us in comments so we can keep track.

Here’s what the team has done so far:

Kimberly is donating 25 percent from her next two weeks of Nottene sales. Your purchase comes with her hand-drawn sketch of your item. What the rad? Please let her know in comments that you’d like to support ScholarMatch.

Jen is donating 20 percent of sales from Cultivating Me through the end of June, plus matching those proceeds with her own cash. Her stuff is very reasonably priced, so have a look.

Lauren offered 10 percent of her proceeds from The Little Donkey for the next three weeks, so go stock up on baby shower gifts.

Huge thanks to Amber, Jen Bruntlett, Sonia Gustafson, and Kim for their donations. Thanks also to @JennyStockton, who you may remember from her Go Mighty bakesale, for lending her megaphone. And thanks to @cultivatingme, @kellytirman,@miametro, and @jackiewolven for the RTs.

And finally, hooray for our Elaine (comment 243) our Rivet & Sway giveaway winner! Elaine, get your vision checked and then check your email for info on how to claim your Punchline Neopolitans from Rivet & Sway.

Again, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help with this, guys. You are good eggs. Thank you.

Life List: Help someone through college.

Thanks to Rivet & Sway for sponsoring this post, supplying the resources to do something nice, and being so cool to work with.

What I Did

I mentioned last week that I got my first pair of glasses when I was in college. What I didn’t mention is that my childhood before that point was kind of rough. A bad situation became untenable a few months before I was set to leave for school, and nearby relatives took me in so I could attend high school graduation with my class. Still, I had to reassess my plans.

No one in my immediate family had graduated from college, and most of my extended family hadn’t either. Though I always knew I would get a degree, now I had no idea how I would pay for it. I delayed my college acceptance, switched to a less expensive school, and applied for jobs, grants, loans, and credit cards. The combination got me through, along with help from an incredibly generous family friend who let me stay with her for a couple of years. Still, there were plenty of tears and sleepless nights over money.

What I’m Doing

When I think of that time, I worry for kids trying to pull themselves up. Education is the most straightforward way to improve your situation, and it scares me how daunting tuition can be for a kid with no money.

As part of their “Find Your Joy” campaign on Go Mighty, Rivet & Sway offered to fund an item on my Life List. I thought helping someone through college would be cool in partnership with an eyewear company. We support intellect! We are pro-nerdiness! We encourage our offspring to seek mates who exhibit global curiosity! And so forth.

So we decided to donate $1,000 to ScholarMatch, which is like a Kickstarter for college tuition. They use a crowdfunding model to pair you with a student who matches your criteria for support.

I’m hoping that together we can add another $1,200 to the Rivet & Sway advertising dollars, because ScholarMatch says it costs $1,100 to put a kid through one year of a two-year college. ScholarMatch also has a $50,000 tuition gap they need to fund before August so all of their students can afford to attend school in the Fall. They’ve raised about $38,000 so far.

What You Can Do

If you’d like to help, will you please:

1. Donate to ScholarMatch.

Choose the criteria for the student you’d like to support, and use PayPal or a credit card to make a donation here. Please leave a comment telling us how much you donated, so we know when to celebrate. Honor system, so you can be anonymous if you prefer.

2. Donate your time, or lend your megaphone.

If you make something or sell your services, and are willing to donate over 10 percent of your proceeds over the next three weeks, please leave a comment with a link to your site and the percentage you’re willing to donate. I’ll do a roundup of vendors early next week.

If you have a blog or are active on Facebook or Twitter and can help rally friends to chip in, that would be awesome.

3. Support Rivet & Sway’s decision to spend ad dollars this way.

If you’d like to see more of this type of campaign, let Rivet & Sway know. You can do that by entering the giveaway, for yourself or a geeky pal. You can also just visit the site and have a look around, to say, “Hey, thanks for not blowing that $1,000 on brochures.”

Thanks, guys. I’m excited to kickstart summer by checking this one off together.