Today is Papa‘s birthday and yesterday to celebrate we got a flooded basement. Well, it was only partially flooded but all of Papa’s rooms — office, woodshop, theatre — were at least somewhat flooded. The worst was the theatre which is still under construction but has carpet — very waterlogged carpet. Actually, it’s not waterlogged anymore, I got a good workout using the steam cleaner to suck it up. Now we have all kinds of fans and de-humidifiers going down there.
So back to the birthday. While I was sucking up gross water from the carpet and Stefan was having a total freak-out I was thinking Boy, I’m glad I got Papa a good birthday gift. The kids and I gave him a new camera but it won’t actually be available until April/May. I decided that maybe Katie and I could make him a camera out of cardboard and wrap it so he would at least have something to open. A quick search led me to a pattern for a very cool pinhole camera that was published in 1979 in Czechoslovakia. This is not a project to attempt with an almost four-year-old. The cutting and putting together requires some serious fine motor skills but was really fun and now he has a new low-tech toy to keep him occupied until the new high-tech one arrives. Now, we just need to find some film…
I’m so sorry about your flood! All the snow we’ve gotten here has led to some flood warnings, so I can commisserate. I hope everything dries out ok! Tell the Papa Happy Birthday!
So cool!
but darn it, now I have to go make one too, and I have way too many other things I should be doing…..
Oooooo… cool!
Lucky Papa.
eek! flooded basements are such a pain… but really creative twist with the paper camera standin
That is awesome. And wow… he’s a lucky man.
All the empathy in the world for your back, which has to be aching today.
That is the coolest thing! Sorry about the water damage, no fun I’m sure.