Tag Archive for ‘Christmas’ at Groovy Kid Stuff

Tag Archive for 'Christmas'

Santa’s Bag o’ Video Games Part 3: Xbox and Gamecube

Published by Scott on December 25, 2007 in Holidays and Video Games. 0 Comments

Okay, here’s the last post of this year’s surfeit of video games for Christmas. I scored a bunch of these at Blockbuster of all places. I must have stumbled upon some sort of clearance sale of former rentals because usually the store I go to doesn’t have a very good selection.

Xbox

Sega GT 2000 / Jet Set Radio Future
Two bucks for two games? Count me in! I love racing games and Sega GT 2000 is supposed to be decent. That was a throw-in though because I was really after Jet Set Radio Future, which is an urban adventure that has something to do with graffiti tagging. Sounds promising.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance
Dashiell and Ray love to play co-op games so I know they’re going to be into this. It’s a beat ‘em up featuring the full stable of Marvel heroes. It got great reviews.

Psychonauts
I’ve read that some of the content on this one is inappropriate for the younger set so it’ll be for me. From what I understand it’s a platformer of sorts with clever writing and a cult following.

Need For Speed Underground 2
Another racer, this time of the illegal street variety. I’ve never played any from the Need For Speed series but for two bucks I couldn’t pass it up.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
I cannot wait to play this game! It’s a role-playing action adventure set in the Star Wars universe. I’m actually just as excited about this one as I am about finally playing my Dreamcast.

Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu
Another co-op superhero beat ‘em up. The lads are going to dig it.

Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter
Still more co-op play, this time a Star Wars space shooter that’s supposed to be less difficult than Rogue Squadron.

Gamecube

Viewtiful Joe
A classic Gamecube title that I’ve been interested in for awhile but never got around to buying. It’s a 2D beat ‘em up with a time shifting element.

Kirby Airride
Avatar: The Last Airbender
We already gave these to the boys for their birthdays. They played Kirby at a friend’s a few weeks ago and had been talking about it ever since. They’ve been having a blast with it for the past few days. Even Hazel plays. It doesn’t really appeal to me but whatever. They’re into it. They haven’t given Avatar much more than a few minutes but they’ll get to it eventually. We’re all huge fans of the show.

Reminder- NORAD Santa Tracker

Published by Scott on December 24, 2007 in Holidays. 0 Comments

Last year I wrote about the NORAD Santa Tracker. Well, it’s that time again. Looks like they updated it to work in conjunction with Google Earth. Pretty cool! Check out the 2007 tracker here and spy on Santa as he makes his way around the world.

Santa’s Bag o’ Video Games Part 2: Dreamcast

Published by Scott on December 24, 2007 in Shopping and Video Games. 5 Comments

I’m really excited to officially break out the Dreamcast tomorrow. I already had a sizable stash of games to go with it but I’ve picked up a few more since then. One title I really wanted to get was Sonic Adventure. I got it but what an ordeal! I took a chance at half.com and bought it from the person that had it listed cheapest. This seller only had feedback from four people, but all were positive. Turns out he is selling bootleg copies of games and trying to pawn them off as discs sent to reviewers.

The Sega Dreamcast can play cd-r’s but all of their games were released on the unconventional gd-rom format, which can hold up to 1.2 GB of information. The disc I got from this shady dealer was most definitely a cd-r. It says so right on the transparent ring in the middle! I know from poking around an underground game sharing network that Sonic Adventure is too large to fit on a regular cd-r. I could have downloaded the same free copy this person did, with deleted cut scenes, music downsampled from stereo to mono, and who knows what else hacked out. That’s not what I wanted and I certainly wasn’t going to pay for it. I didn’t call the guy on his bullshit but did tell him I thought I was buying the official release and requested a refund. He gave me my money back without argument and I soon found a “Buy It Now” deal for the real thing on eBay for about the same price.

I read about a similar scenario on the racketboy forums, did some sleuthing, and discovered they were talking about the same fellow. He’s got lots of rare Dreamcast games listed for cheap on both half.com and Amazon. So buyer beware! Here’s a comparison of the copy (left) and the official Sega release:

I had a much happier experience purchasing a lot of Dreamcast sports games on eBay. I was looking to buy one of the 2K hockey games, which go for next to nothing by themselves. For twenty bucks (including shipping) I found not only that game, but seven more titles plus two VMU memory packs. That was an excellent deal, especially considering that the VMU packs normally sell for around $6-8 each plus shipping. The games came with their instruction manuals and jewel case inserts too. Score!

I also bought a VGA cable from the racketboy store so I can plug the Dreamcast directly into a computer monitor. I haven’t tested it out yet but it’s supposed to offer a clear, crisp picture. And finally, I found a third party light gun for a couple of bucks from Goodwill so I can blast some zombies in House of the Dead 2.

Santa’s Bag o’ Video Games Part 1: SNES and N64

Published by Scott on December 23, 2007 in Shopping and Video Games. 0 Comments

I’ve been stockpiling games for about three months now and have to admit the Christmas haul is ridiculously large. We’ll have enough “new” retro titles to occupy us for a long, long time. Here are the Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 games that will be under the tree and some brief thoughts about each:

SNES

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Yoshi’s Island
We have both of these fantastic games for the Gameboy Advance. It will be fun to play them on the big screen.

Super Mario All-Stars - I talked about this one in a recent post.

Super Star Wars
Spider-man & Venom: Maximum Carnage
These are both supposed to be difficult but very good.

Street Fighter II: Turbo
Mortal Kombat II
Final Fight
I have been a Street Fighter II: The World Warrior junkie for the past couple of weeks. I’d never been a fan of fighting games before but all of a sudden I’ve developed an appreciation for the genre.

Shadowrun - A highly regard role playing adventure.

Donkey Kong Country - Platformer with everyone’s favorite oversized video game gorilla.

Starfox - I’m curious to see how this series began. I know they put in an extra chip for this game to push the graphics of the SNES to the limit.

Uniracers
Stunt Race FX
These arcade trick/racing games look fun. There’s a good review for Uniracer at racketboy.

Mega Man X - I have never played any of the Mega Man titles so I’m looking forward to checking one out.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles In Time - From what I’ve read this is a good co-op beat ‘em up. Ray especially likes those kinds of games.

Super Game Boy - Not a game but an adapter cartridge that allows you to play Game Boy and Game Boy Color games on TV through the Super Nintendo. We only have a few of those games but I thought it’d be worth checking out.

N64

Starfox 64 - I was really excited to find this at Goodwill. I was seriously considering buying it online before it magically turned up last Saturday. It’s an on-the-rails flying space shooter, just like the best parts of the two Starfox games we have for the Gamecube. Unlike in those games though, he stays in his ship the whole time.

Pokemon Stadium - We have Pokemon Colosseum for Gamecube and I expect this is probably pretty similar. It wasn’t well received during its release but I couldn’t pass it up. We love Pokemon!

Diddy Kong Racing - Gamespot describes it as “a cross between Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64.” They don’t score it very well but it sounds promising. I’m sure it’s at least three dollars worth of entertainment.

Star Wars Episode I: Racer - The pod racing sequence was kind of lame in the movie but I’ll bet it’s fun as a game.

Leftovers-

Published by Helen on December 18, 2007 in Crafts and Holidays. 2 Comments

Yesterday I helped the kids and the neighbors make stained glass cookies - sugar cookies that have holes cut in them and you put crushed jolly rancher candy in the spaces and it melts and looks like glass.

The kids stuck around for the first round of cutting and filling, and Hazel helped me out for a couple more rounds, but before too long I was left with a pile of dough, 5 bowls of crushed candy, and not a lot of motivation. (I personally think these cookies are kind of gross, but I let each of the kids choose a cookie to make this year and this was what D wanted to make.)

I realized that I should try to make something that used up as much dough and candy as possible and came up with this:

I balanced it on a window ledge this morning and now I really like it.

Cinnamon Ornaments

Published by Helen on December 14, 2007 in Crafts and Holidays. 2 Comments

I searched for a link to the article online but couldn’t find it, so I ‘ll just say that I got the recipe for these from an old issue of Martha Stewart - Dec. 2003 - in which they made bird ornaments and coated them with glitter. Really nice, but I don’t have bird cookie cutters, cutting out templates takes too long, and I’d need about 15 colors of glitter and I only have 3. . .

Anyway, here is my version:

As you can see I used oak leaf and acorn cookie cutters and made them into ornaments and gift tags - and a few other things I’ll share in the next couple days. The recipe is 1 cup cinnamon, 1/2 cup white glue, 1/4 cup applesauce, all mixed together, bagged or wrapped up and left to sit for at least an hour. It sounds like a good recipe for kids, and I started out doing these as a kid project, but this dough is really hard to mix up and the frustration (their issue) and mess (my issue) factors had me sending the kids away while I did most of the mixing. (I’ve actually made these twice now, and the second time I had a better idea of how things worked and what the kids could help with so they were more involved.)

The dough was easy to roll out later, but I had to add a little water to it to get a good consistency. I rolled it out on parchment paper and cut the shapes out and used a skewer to poke a hole for threading. I left them on the parchment paper to dry out. The first batch was made during Thanksgiving week and I’d just slide the trays into the oven after something else was done cooking, between that and the heat being on they dried out in a couple days. The second batch I put in the oven at 200 degrees for several hours - small ones dried out in a couple hours (flip ‘em every hour or so) and the big ones took more like 4 hours.

Here’s a picture of the second batch, cut out and about to go in the oven:

We painted most of the second batch - and used gingerbread men, stars, and tree cookie cutters - or cookie punches as Hazel called them.

A word of waring if you attempt these - it makes a huge amount. For second batch I made a double recipe and I was pretty sick of cutting them out and flipping them over by the time I was done. And the dough looks like it would be yummy, but I was told that D and H licked some of the first batch but they weren’t good (LOL!) and Hazel actually put a small piece of the second batch in her mouth and promptly spit it out.

These made our house smell great while we were making and baking them, and whenever the heat comes on and blows over them.

St. Lucia dolls

Published by Helen on December 13, 2007 in Crafts and Holidays. 2 Comments

Hazel saw these dolls at Posie one day - she loves to sit on my lap while I read blogs because she loves the pictures - and asked me to make her some. I was thinking about buying the doll making kit she was selling, but they sold out before I was done thinking so I had to get my supplies at Hobby Lobby. The kit calls for pinking shears to keep the edges of the fabric from fraying, and I don’t have any so I glued felt along the edges - I started with red bias tape but it was incredibly frustrating so there are only 2 done that way.

Most of them are made to look like girls we know - Hazel is the one on the upper left. I sent a few - including the one that looks like her - to Hazel’s cousin Rebecca, I hope she gets them today!

Pictures of the stockings-

Published by Helen on December 12, 2007 in Crafts and Holidays. 0 Comments

I made these out of felted wool sweaters. I did blanket stitch around the edges and made the poinsettias out of wool felt pieces.

And now hold on to your eyeballs - the light on this table in the afternoon is just right for pictures, but this combination is a bit much . . .

Wool sweaters again - with a little extra embroidery for fun.

Get Dressed, Santa! - Tomie dePaola (1996)

Published by Scott on December 21, 2006 in Chatter and Fiction. 0 Comments

Tomie dePaola has written some great books for children, most notably the Strega Nona series. This board book begins with the narrator urging Santa to hurry up and get ready to deliver toys on Christmas Eve. The jolly fat elf finally dresses and heads out to his sleigh when wouldn’t you know it, he’s got to GO! Santa hightails it back to the bathroom in the St. Nick of time. Fortunately he’s able to take care of business and get back to work without too much delay. Get Dressed, Santa! is cute and funny with some mild pre-K potty humor.

Santa

Published by Scott on December 20, 2006 in Chatter. 0 Comments

We took the kids to The Mall to see Santa this morning. Dashiell and Ray turn eight today and tomorrow but are still firm believers. Although they’ve begun to question the many inconsistencies of the myth (”If magic isn’t real how can Santa do all of that stuff?”), they still buy into it. They had been a little stressed out about not having seen him yet so now they will be able to rest easy. Hazel, who is two, was interested but there was no way she was getting out of my arms to climb onto some strange man’s lap. Smart girl.

Last year it was awesome because Santa came to visit our local Kroger. Talk about convenient! We missed him there this time so had to head over to Stonecrest. In the past they let you take a picture of your kids with Santa. That didn’t fly this time unless you also purchased one of their pictures. The cheapest package was thirteen bucks for one 5×7″ print so we passed. Our mission was to talk to Santa and that was good enough.

On a related note, my class participated in the annual Santa debate, which goes something like this: “He’s not real.” “Yes he is!” “It’s your parents.” “No it’s not!” Repeat ad infinitum. It’s the same thing every year. Most of my current second graders are pretty street smart so I was surprised to find there were only a couple of nonbelievers. As usual they asked me to weigh in and I gave them my standard non-answer: “If you don’t believe in him, he doesn’t come to your house.” That response satisfied both parties.

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