(Sorry for the scary faceless children. Privacy reasons, y’know.)
My chop saw is broken, and I think that maybe God had a hand in it.
Here’s the roundabout story. A new catalog came from Discount School Supply, and there was a picture in there that reminded me that I wanted to make some People Dolls for the block area.
See how cool those are? Photos stuck onto blocks! Since I learned the laser-printer-packing-tape method of transferring words and images, I thought this would be fun to do with the children. I took their photos (mostly in groups of 2 or 3 children, but this is just an example), then erased the background so I wouldn’t waste printer toner.
… but we ran out of toner before I could get started. Dang it. I cropped the picture to be 4×6 and sent them to Wal*Mart instead. I had a board in the basement that I was going to chop up into 2-inch-by-4-inch blocks…. but then I remembered that in reality, 1×4’s are actually smaller in all dimensions, which meant my carefully cropped 4-inch-tall children were going to need to have their feet chopped off. Dang it.
Oh, well. In my experience feet are expendable. I went to cut a sample block from the board and… my saw was broken. Dang it! Well, not broken, but the blade needs to be tightened since it’s spinning wonky, so it might as well just be thrown out. Right?
Dang it. I wracked my brain for some other thing to tape/glue the photos to. Toilet paper tubes? Cardboard? Plastic cups like Teeny Little Super Guy?
Wait. I just happen to have a bunch of Baby Soda Bottles from a science grant (from years ago). What are Baby Soda Bottles?
They are what 2-liter bottles are made from. Think of them like bottle seeds. You plant one in the ground and harvest a Pepsi later. That’s pure science – don’t bother fact-checking it.
Anyway, I just put the pictures inside the bottles, and they’re perfect! They stand up (mostly), I wrote their names on the backside (go, literacy!) and now I just need some kind of holder so they can be on display when not in use.
I am so, so happy my saw is broken.