Disconnect Days: Update #1 (a.k.a. Why I think T.V. is unnecessary & how I feel about art)

Remember a when we declared Sunday's "Disconnect Days"? (Read Here if you don't). Well it's been exactly one month since then and I figured now was a good time to do a update on how it's been going. It''s been going very very well! In addition to our once a week no phone thing we have took the leap into a NO-T.V. household. I don't mean we tell Sierra "NO! NO!" when she goes near it - I mean last week we sold it and got it out of our house entirely. This may sound a bit extreme but let me explain. We barely ever watched the thing anyway. I watched soccer once or twice a week and Lauren was known to get her weekly Teen Mom & Criminal Minds fix after the baby had fallen asleep from time to time. We were paying for cable, our TV was a 15 year old big screen MONSTER that weighed 100 pounds and took up an entire corner of our living room. So in addition to not having the allure of the T.V. we also are saving money on cable & gained about 5 feet of our living room back.

The corner now houses a beautiful painting by artist Ann Marie Rebola,our stereo and a baby photo of Sierra. 

We have been discussing removing the T.V. from our home for awhile now, Disconnect Day just helped speed up the process. The reasons the NO-T.V. thing was even on the table for discussion was that according to the American Association of Pediatricians children gain nothing from watching T.V. (or any screened media) before two (not to mention Lauren and I's book intake started to dip when we realized we had HBO). Well Sierra is turning two tomorrow so now what do we do? When friends and family looked at us funny when we said "Oh Sierra doesn't watch Sesame Street" or when she didn't recognize Mickey Mouse for anything but a plain ol' mouse we could always fall back on the "Well actually according to the AAP...". But now what? I'm sure people will be saying "Well NOW she's two so let her watch a damn movie for God's sake!" or "Come on! Didn't you love the Lion King as a kid?!". Lauren and I haven't REALLY discussed where we stand on the "Now thats she's 2" topic yet but I can tell you where I stand. Who cares? Sierra has never watched any T.V. and she is just as smart as any Elmo & Mickey loving toddler on the playground. She loves books, playing, drawing and painting and is VERY active. I see no need to introduce a product that will get in the way of being active and activities that I feel are a better stimulate and learning tool in the first place. Also for people who think I'm talking out of my ass - I am a licensed art teacher and hold a degree in Art Education so bite it! Art > T.V. in this house hold.

Now that I've gone on my holier than most art is the end all be all of life rant - Let me be entirely serious. Will I introduce (educational and appropriate) T.V. shows & movies into Sierra's life? Yes - just not this second. I'm personally not ready and have a lot of research to do before I feel comfortable with what she watches as every piece of media a person, especially a small child, consumes can and does influence them, so I want to make sure these are positive influences. I also feel Sierra doesn't care at this point anyway. She's never once asked to watch T.V. even when it was the 'big elephant in the room'. She wasn't stupid she knew what 'the big black box' was for, she even knew how to turn it on if she wanted to. Most of her friends we have play dates with aren't huge on T.V. either so there's never been the "Why does she get to and I don't?" issue. Even when we are at a friend's house who has the T.V. on we have never had an issue where Sierra wanted to sit and watch, she's is always much happier to explore their house or terrorize their pets. So I guess my answer to when will we let Sierra watch T.V. is when we're both ready. When it's appropriate and best for us we will introduce it into our families life but as of now no one seems to want or miss it and thats just fine with me. Any questions, feedback or what you and your family do please feel free to comment below as I'm always interested in other people's opinions whether they agree or disagree. Thanks. -Craig

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Happy Friday Everyone!

Michael and I have just been VERY busy lately and it's turned us into bad bloggers. Today makes a week without anything new (our longest stretch since starting!) and for that we're very sorry. Sierra's birthday is this weekend and Lauren and I have been swamped with cleaning our apartment, buying supplies, making cupcakes and all that other fun parenting stuff so it's been hard to find the time to get on here and write anything. I can hardly believe she's turning two! I will write a nice big post on that after the party which I'm sure will reduce me to tears (she's SO big now!!). The party is this Sunday and if you haven't seen my first post on it check here: http://goo.gl/xHeZm. So enough with the excuses and let me share some photos with you to hold you over until I can put some time together this weekend to write a real post!


A poster I made using my new favorite font. TGIF:

Some instagrams of our apartment:

Sierra and hendrix are destined to be married I swear (photo on the left by Just By Living!)

OK real post coming soon promise <3 -Craig

Product Review & OUR AUGUST GIVEAWAY!! Baby Bonkie Swaddles!

When Sierra was a teeny tiny baby all those (2) years ago she would ONLY sleep if she was swaddled. Needless to say, I got pretty damn good at swaddling her using little soft blankets. At that time I was unaware of 'swaddlers' which are pre-made wraps with velcro that are specifically designed to swaddle your baby and cut out all the messy origami techniques normally required to learn when trying to wrap your baby up nice and cozy. Although my toddler is much too big for swaddling now I am still interested in these products and often 'ooooooh' and 'aaaahhh' at my friends who have them. My favorite brand of this product is the Baby Bonkie Swaddler! Not only does it have the coolest name ever but the product is unparallelled in quality and style. If you are looking for the softest, most well made, durable and comfortable swaddler for your infant - look no further, these are the best I assure you.

The adorable BabyBonkie logo tag on the swaddler.

Here is how the swaddler looks pre-baby insertion :)

Lucky for us here at The Hipster Dad we got a few of these bad boys int he mail! Even luckier for a few of our friends they have infants! So since our children are a bit too big to be swaddled we decided to share the wealth with our pal Sarah in return for letting us 'borrow' her little 4 month old for a photo shoot! Everyone, meet Max.

Sarah wrapping her little boy Max up nice and snug!

Here is Max happy as a clam in his new cozy swaddler!

Now comes the fun part! Our pal Max got a super sweet & soft Baby Bonkie for free and now it's your turn!!! ITS OUR AUGUST GIVEAWAY! This unisex Swaddler is a beautiful cream and chocolate brown mix with a really gorgeous pattern of plants, trees, swings and little animals! It's gorgeous and would normally run you about $64 but thanks to BabyBonkie and us of course you can now win one for free :). Here is the one we have to give away:

GIVEAWAY DETAILS + HOW TO WIN:

• Winner will be picked at random in two weeks: August 19th, 2011
• You must be a follower of The Hipster Dad to enter (Follow button is to your right)
• You can enter 3 ways:
• Leave a comment on this entry with your name & why you want the swaddle!
• Tweet: "Win a free Baby Bonkie Swaddle from @TheHipsterDad! Enter here: http://goo.gl/Z3M9U"
• Like The Hipster Dad on Facebook and leave a comment with your name & why you want to win!

LINKS AND FACTS ABOUT BABY BONKIE:

• The BabyBonkie Website
• Find a Retailer in your home state

This is what afternoons in our loft look like:

Hendrix Screaming! from TheHipsterDad on Vimeo.

Let me suggest turning the volume down a bit!

Ink & Water Color Paintings

About 6 months ago I started to paint some of Sierra's favorite scenes from her favorite books and I only finished one :-(  I think I'm going to make this my mission for August!

D.I.Y. Birthday Invitations!

Once upon a time I paid $80,000 for about 7 years worth of college, 5 of which ended me up with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Now you may ask what does one do with an 'art degree' and I wouldn't know how to answer really. What I do with mine is make my daughter really cute birthday invitations. Last year (her first birthday) we went with a MONSTER theme. Yes, you heard right a 1 year old MONSTER themed birthday party. It ruled. For this we kicked it old school with brown lunch bags, pipe cleaners, glue, markers & construction paper. It looked AWESOME and it costs a fortune to mail (whoops). These were fun to make and took little to no artistic ability:

This year we decided upon a more classical "girl" birthday theme: A Tea Party. This is not because we were pressured, or trying to 'girly girl' her up or anything - the girl loves tea parties! We are constantly sipping air from mini tea cups and we thought she'd really enjoy having a really big tea party with all her pals. As you could see our invites from last year were pretty bad ass and it is pretty impossible to one up them, but I gave it a shot. For the sake of saving about 40 hours I decided to draw one invite and then have it printed as opposed to hand-making 50 unique ones like last year. I must be getting lazy in my old age? Rather recently I remembered seeing a tea cup tattoo on the FUCK YEAH, TATTOOS! blog and felt inspired to go that route with these. So when Sierra went down for her nap I got out the micron's and sketchpads and got to it:

This was the first initial drawing. (Unfinished)

After I had the drawing finished I got out the lamp and tracing paper and cleaned it up a bit. 

After I was done drawing (and writing) the front and back I scanned them in I tossed them on a fake paper background for Facebook, Emailing, etc.

The next day I took the file over to a local print shop in Downtown Boston and got about 50 of them printed front and back, 25 on gray and 25 on yellow. These are for the physical ones we're mailing out! 

I really love how they came out! They are 5x7"

Here is how they look on a bright yellow!

So the invite is taken care of now just to figure out how to turn our apartment into a tea party palace. Open to ideas so please throw em at me also I'd love to see photos and hear about your kids birthday themes, invitation and decorations! xo -Craig

Cute Rompers and Tees from Adeline's Daddy

One of our favorite fellow daddy-bloggers is Don Naylor a.k.a. Adeline's Daddy. He recently took the leap from workin' for the man to being a completely self sustained work from home Daddy and we couldn't be more jealous! One of the fruits of more time for his personal artwork is his new children's clothing line! When this launched we fell in love with the simplicity and tattoo-esque styled drawing & I scooped up the one that reads "HOMEWARD BOUND". All the artwork for the line is hand drawn by Don and insanely cute! ---> SHOP HERE

Comes in super cute packaging with hand made hang tags! Also ours came with a hand written letter and the original drawing as a thank you for being blog-buddies :) Thanks Don!

Sierra loved her romper! It is super comfy and soft and she kept saying "STROLLER STROLLER STROLLER!" and pointing to her belly :) I died from cuteness!

LINKS:

• Adeline's Daddy: BLOG
• Adeline's Daddy: STORE

Hip Toddler Shoes!

Fall is quickly approaching which means the end of sandals and shorts and hello to jeans and sneakers. In preparation for the cooler weather we are on the hunt for a hip, comfortable and affordable pair of sneakers for Sierra who is now a size 5 or 6 depending on the brand.


Up until now she has survived on awesome barely worn hand-me-downs from friends including a pair of Converse's and Nike Dunk Lo-Tops which she loved. We also purchased her a pair of TINY TOMS which she's yet to fully grow into and are more of a spring/summer shoe anyway. So little to no knowledge of the world that is toddler footwear we did what every new-age parent would do; we took to Google, Twitter an Etsy of course.

The first thing we did was to try searching for shoes we liked but in mini sizes so Google searches like "Vans Toddler", "Saucony Toddler" and "Converse Toddler" into Google were very helpful bringing up not only the companies online stores but an array of third party vendors where you can usually save a buck or two. One of these said vendors is everybody's favorite mall shoe store, Journeys, where we found pretty sweet shoes from Converse, Vans and Puma:

CLICK HERE FOR ZEBRA LO TOP (v) <-----> CLICK HERE FOR SOLID HI-TOP (v)

CLICK HERE FOR HELLO KITTY SLIP ON (v) <----->  CLICK HERE FOR PUMA VELCRO

Thanks to a few friends on Twitter we heard of a website called Zappos.com which much like Journey's pulls in shoe's from a ton of different vendors to make it easy to search for and buy shoes in one convenient place without having to go to 40 different websites. Over at Zappos I found the same brands but with even more of an assortment to choose from:

CLICK HERE FOR PURPLE VANS <---> CLICK HERE FOR WATERMELON VANS
CLICK HERE FOR AQUA LACELESS VANS <----> CLICK HERE FOR TEAL CHUCKS

The Last place we checked was Etsy. If you don't know Etsy is an online location for artists and dealers to sell their product online easily and securely. It is an amazing place to search for handmade and vintage goods, INCLUDING SHOES! The only issue w/ Etsy when it comes to clothes (especially the vintage stuff) is it's hit or miss on the sizes available. Our family is big into used / hand-made for a variety of reasons:

• It's cheaper (sometimes)
• It's eco-friendly
• It's nice to support local artists
• You normally find something more unique and interesting than the mall has to offer

We searched through Etsy and look at some of the awesome finds we came up with:

70s Buster Brown's CLICK HERE <--> 70s Crazy Child Oxfords CLICK HERE
Vintage Queen Bee's CLICK HERE <--> 80s Dress Shoe's CLICK HERE

So we havent as of yet made our purchase but I think we're leaning towards those super cute Watermelon Vans or the Teal Chucks. Not sure yet though! Open to any suggestions to a brand, shoe style or website where we could keep looking. Would love to hear your feedback! -Craig


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Double Takes

Our Camping Weekend!

This past weekend we decided to escape the city and head out to a local State Forest with some friends. We packed up our buddy Felicia's truck and headed for Myles Standish State Forest with her lovah-man Alexander. After about 2 hours sitting in Friday Boston traffic we finally arrived to partake in #Camping2K11 which involved three campsites,14 great friends and one toddler.


Now I want to come clean here and announce I whined the whole time we drove there:

• "Look at this damn traffic!"
• "It's 103° out!" (it really was! Highest temp recorded in Boston since 1926!).
• "We're going to melt!"
• "Camping sucks! Let's just get a Motel down the cape!"
• "Ewwwww we're in the middle of nowhere!!"

Yes I'm a whiner. Now you know. After we arrived and set up it was time for a swim to cool down and try to relax about the fact we were in the wilderness. I guess I'm a city slicker at heart even though I go camping twice a summer normally. Will I ever learn? We stayed Friday and Saturday night and then left early Sunday morning. All in all it was a nice weekend that was spent with lots of friends, grilled food, ponds and campfires. I suppose I should complain less?

Here is our campsite and the first campfire of the weekend :)

The next morning the Smoke Monster invaded our site.

Cooling off down near the pond! Left to Right: Xander, Lauren, Sierra, Trevor, Felicia, Will & Myself.
(Pic by Aunty Jill)

One of my favorite photos ever! Sierra digging holes w/ Uncle Trevor!
(Pic by Aunty Jill)

Sierra and I after the pond in some new duds including my V-Neck courtesy of AmericanApparel and her romper from Don Naylor's "Adeline's Daddy" line!

Sierra getting a guitar lesson from Xander!

Sierra eating breakfast / showing off her Adeline's Daddy "Homeward Bound" Romper!

Xander basking in the morning light.

Guerilla Marketing at the campground! YOU KNOW!

Vegan Smorgasbord! Smart Dogs, Veggie Burgers, Vegggie Chick'n and Corn on the Cob.

At night time we got a little silly :)

Our tent is large enough for all of our things, a blow up mattress for Mommy and Daddy and Sierra's Pack N' Play! Sierra is an expert at zippers so she sure as hell let us know when she was awake in the morning! PEEK A BOO!

If you liked the post help a brotha' out and give us a vote on TBB! No sign up just click this, takes 2 seconds, Thanks <3 <3 <3 -Craig