Awhile back I found this old copy of Scrabble. The pieces weren’t all there, so the person who had it was going to throw it away.
I already had a copy of the game, but I’m a huge fan of Scrabble, and also of words/letters in general, so I figured I could probably do something with the pieces that were left.
Last week, my wife finally asked, “Are you going to do something with this Scrabble stuff or not?”
So I got to work.
On week one of Kyle Makes Things, I posted this picture of the majestic Bananacorn.
The next week, I added to my cryptozoological portfolio with this post about the elusive Cornicorn.
This week I’m back with my THIRD mythological creature. To be honest, I think I may have missed my calling here, guys. This just comes so naturally to me.
I’m a motivational speaker by trade, so I’m a little biased… but I really believe that words can have a huge impact on our lives. That’s why I’ve made an effort to surround myself with words that either make me laugh, make me think, or motivate me to do more.
Today’s project was an effort to do even more of that.
As someone with an unconventional job, I find myself working in coffee shops a lot. And when you work in coffee shops, you get to witness a lot of people trying to talk their friends into signing up for some multi-level marketing scam (think Amway or GenesisPure or something similar).
And because I’m an entrepreneurial guy with a decent network of other entrepreneurial friends, I get pitched on this stuff all the time. It’s gotten to be annoying enough that I decided to do something about it.
When I was in 5th grade, I took trumpet lessons from a guy named Ned. Ned had memorized a song that listed all the countries of the world. That’s impressive enough in and of itself, but what’s even more impressive is that this was before the internet was widespread, so Ned had to watch TV until the song came on (it was on a show called Animaniacs which, if you haven’t seen it, you should drop everything and go track down an episode on Youtube), then record the song to VHS, then watch it over and over again until he could write down all the lyrics.
After I saw Ned sing the song one time, I knew I had to memorize it. So I had him write down all the words for me, and over the course of 3 days I memorized the entire thing.
I listen to a ton of podcasts, especially while I’m working. But the speaker on my phone isn’t loud enough to project across the room by itself.
I had seen several passive iPhone amplifiers online (I’d even made one myself a few years ago, but I gave it away), and I knew they worked pretty well. But I wanted to see if you could accomplish the same thing with cardboard.
This past weekend was my son’s 5th birthday. Like a lot of little boys, he is REALLY into LEGOs.
In fact, he specifically requested a LEGO-themed party. And since I’m a huge fan of LEGOs too, I wasn’t going to say no.
When it came to the piñata, Wes wanted a LEGO man full of candy. Initially my wife was going to make the whole thing, but when we got down to the wire, she just had too many other party planning things on her plate, so I jumped in and took over.
Today is my son’s 5th birthday, so I figured I’d post something Wesley-related.
A few weeks ago I was looking for ideas of something to build, and Wes said, “Why don’t you make a trap to catch bad guys? Then we can put it in my room at night to protect me and Lucy.”
That seemed like a great idea, so I got right to work.
