It's the Hollerdays, that special time of year: Time to oppress your friends and family with photos through the mail is here.  If you pick the right picture you impress your friends with the "photo" version of your life, if you don't, you will be ridiculed for an entire year-- choose carefully!

NOTE: Do NOT use planking pictures for your holiday cards:


Here is a great site that I'm considering using to generate our holiday cards:  Tiny Prints - Check out their Hanukkah card example:

Remember, card placement in your house is a decision not to made lightly.  Do you want to create the Picture Collage on your fridge?  Or throw them randomly into the tree?  Or create a "Special" Menorah that somehow incorporates your favorite received pictures (what???).  Get crackin!  If you are just getting around to taking that family photo with matching Christmas Sweaters you may already be too late!

I was recently asked to be a pinch-hitting Shofar Blower at our Temple (the Oak Park Temple) for one of the High Holiday services. I hadn't done this type of thing before, and while I was learning, I started a Shofar for Newbies site. Check it!

My Kids Making Microwave Brownies!

Here are my kids doing their best kitchen demo of Microwave Brownies - Yum.

Our New Puppy!

We just received our new puppy, Roxy, a retired racing Greyhound! She is really sweet and wonderful and we're all getting along really well. The kids are over the moon about our new girl! Her original racing name is Go Bon Rock Me and her mom was Go Bon Pure Evil. Nice! She is a rescue from the Flordia race tracks, who have a whole lot more dogs who need homes. Check out this link which has a picture of Roxy before we received her. Also look at the Sunburst Project for more info about what is happening to these Greyhounds (the rescue of them).

Phosphates: Getting my Dishes Clean. Finally

We have a dishwasher that we purchased a couple of years ago.  Not the best, mind you, but somewhere in the middle of the Consumer Reports ranges.  Fact:  dishes were filmy and sometimes outright dirty after running it with the highest quality dish soap (also tried powders, powerballs, etc etc).  We completely pre-washed the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher.  This sucked.

Turns out that Dishwasher cleanser companies have removed Phosphates from the cleansers, better for the fishes and environment, bad for our plates and glasses and bad because now there is 20 minutes of wasted water in the sink for the pre-wash wash phase.

I heard about re-adding the phosphates back to the dishwasher detergent.  Yeah, I'm an environment abuser, but it works and I save a couple of gallons of water each time.

Put just a bit of this powder http://goo.gl/SqqGL (available at Amazon, Home Depot, Lowes) at the bottom of the detergent holder, fill the rest up with detergent and VOILA, dishes are clean after a wash now!  No measuring needed.  Just dust the bottom of the holder, fill the rest with detergent.

CLEAN DISHES, no residue!

AC/DC Schooling

Every morning I take the kids to school, I have a quick under-10-minute drive.  Being an old school heavy-metal enthusiast (think Crue, Van Halen (with David Lee Roth ONLY)) I subject them (boy age 10, girl age 6) to all manner of the ROCK.

In addition, I'm a trivia and minutiae junky, so the drive includes a quick discourse on whatever song I'm playing, sometimes it is lightning-quick quiz time, sometimes it is more subjective: "Who is the best rock drummer EVAH?"

AC/DC has proved to be the most agile ROCK subject, complete with sordid history of debauchery, death, Hell, love, etc.  Two lead singers marking two distinct eras, the band coming back from the edge of dissolution by recruiting a new singer and creating one of the most listen-able and money-making albums of all time, Back in Black.

My favorite quick quiz for AC/DC is, guess which guitar player is starting the song - Angus or Malcom Young - I make them listen for the tone and pattern of each of their very-distinctive guitar rigs.  Also on the agenda is "How does Phil Rudd make so much from so little?"

At the end of this, they just like to yell "HELLS BELLS" at the top of their lungs all the way to school.

Foisting my kid pictures upon you with Shutterfly!

I can’t wait to order our holiday cards this year - we just received some awesome pictures of the kiddies.  I don’t like the cutsy red-green cards, but I love the Hanukkah cards or generic Seasons Greetings, etc type cards.  That being said - I’M LATE with getting the cards set up.  I am checking out Shutterfly.com right now - this one : http://goo.gl/1PlEJ is pretty good, also this one: http://goo.gl/KcwN1.  There are a bunch of other designs for the holiday cards here, also I like the Wall Calendars - we give our kids a calendar every year.  Also saw some cool birthday cards.  At least Hanukkah is early this year, a generic holiday card of the kids will be ready just in time!  I might have to spring for the quick shipping though.  I really like the Shutterfly designs because, let’s face it, I got a C-minus in grade-school art and design and I NEED THE HELP. (And no, I don't know "The Cohen Family")