Welcome back for this week's installment of Friday Props, the only props you'll ever need! Here in Vermont we are beginning to feel the chill in the air as fall muscles its way across the green mountains. In many ways, this changing of the seasons is a welcome change and brings with it the familiar sights, smells, sounds, tastes and opportunities for creativity. No, we won't feature foliage shots or the latest pumpkin-based beer, but a few things that signal the coming of fall for us. The World's Largest QR Code I'm not one to hem and haw about an inclusion into the Guinness Book of World Records. That institution is so out of whack and overblown I'm surprised that my cat doesn't have a world record for SOMETHING. On the other hand, it does inspire creativity in a myriad of forms. Combining the digital and natural worlds makes my heart melt all the more! Therefore, the first Friday Prop goes to the Kraay family of Lacombe, Alberta, Canada for their corn-formed QR code.The code covers 7 of the 15 acres designed by the family and, if you can hold your smart phone up high enough, the code will bring up the [....] Read More >>

Cyndi here this week. I watched the conclusion of the Democratic Convention last night with a 19 year old and the discussion we had after left me cogniscent how the scope of some of the problems we face as a nation and as a world can lead to feelings of powerlessness--the problems are so big that is seems one individual can't make a dent in them. But the truth is that creativity, thinking outside the box, and a "can do" attitude can make for surprising solutions for even the largest of problems. This weeks props go out to inventors who think on a small and local scale about how to solve big global problems. And yes--I know this truly granola crunching hippe save the world kinda stuff...but that is a part of who I am. Clean Water From Almost Anything  Wet--The Slingshot  Dean Kamen, best known for his inventon of the Segway, a personal transportation favorite of Ed's grandfather "Pops", is busy working on several other inventions including the Slingshot Water Purification System. Clean water is a huge problem for much of the world. Kamen's invention uses distillation to produce clean water for about 100 people a day from a machine that costs [....] Read More >>

On the eve of the Labor Day festivities, welcome to another edition of Friday Props, another way to bend your mind closer to the weekend. Last week I visited a friend of mine who lives in the flatlands of Minnesota, taking in its foreign cultural landscape and an accent thoroughly entrenched in the letter 'O.' Spectacularly different from Vermont, I spent most of my time bug-eyed wandering around Minneapolis-St. Paul and think that I owe the cities a bit more respect than I had before. First props go to the Skyways of Minneapolis. Constructed to help pedestrians navigate through the city through the winter, the Skyway links 69 city blocks using 2nd and 3rd-story bridges over the streets throughout the city. The climate-controlled walkways make it possible to travel practically throughout the entire city without ever stepping outside and boast restaurants and shops. ELEVEN MILES of walking. Yup.   On the food scene, Minneapolis and the Minnesota State Fair were playgrounds for my stomach. I could rave about the amazing Bloody Mary's, the bratwurst and the Pork Chop on a Stick, but the best culinary innovation I experienced was the Juicy Lucy. There's no dispute on what eatery invented the Lucy, but as [....] Read More >>

Ed is coding away on a tight deadline and Phil is on vacation, so I get to do Friday Props this week. I was "noodling" (as Ed would say) what my theme could be when I saw a Facebook post by Ed's son, Addison, about "liking" all the colors of the rainbow. I completely understand that. When someone asks "what color is your favorite?" all I can think is "how in the world do I answer that?" It's like asking which of your children is your favorite. None--each is uniquely themselves--perfect as they are. OK, to be fair there are a few colors I prefer less, but overall color and me--we have a love affair. Soothing greens, energizing reds, happy making yellows--well let's just say I am "for them." So here is my Friday Props going out to big, bold, fantastic, daring, exuberant COLOR!!! First--let's start with an architect who is after my heart.: Emmanuelle Moureaux. Here's just a couple of photos of her work. Check out her website and you will see why I am enamoured; she brings fun into her spaces with her use of vibrant color!     Every Christmas for years my fabulous sister-in-law, Cathy, has presented one family member [....] Read More >>

We had a great response to our Friday props request from Jeanelle Achee. Enjoy! So I heard that Ed Rooney likes fish tacos. I guess that spending time in California will do that to you... Anyway, it seemed like a great Friday Props! I just recently returned from Alaska where I learned how to make traditional Mexican tortillas (it's actually pretty darn easy, it involves two ingredients...) and to place inside the newly formed tortillas we made beer battered fish. Here's how to make fish tacos: 1. Buy a boat load of tilapia 2. Cut that tilapia up into strips 3. Mix fish batter and beer and dip the tilapia into it and let it soak 4. Buy a vat of peanut oil and deep fry that shiz 5. Put into a corn tortilla, add lettuce, mexican creme, fresh salsa and limes 6. Stuff your face (and if you are of age, 21 in the United States, add some tequila) It looks something like this when you are done: Another way to do it is you can just catch them in the wild... like this: That seems way more reasonable to me, but whatever. They wanted to do it the traditional way. It seemed important to learn a little about Mexican culture since [....] Read More >>

Tag! You're It! This week we're asking you to hand out the Friday Props either here in the comments on the blog or over on our Facebook page   Read More >>

Eggplant. Who doesn't love a little  Solanum melongena now and again? In this, our twelfth week of Friday Props, we're looking at eggplant. What a strange thing to be handing out props for, yes? Yes. But hold onto your hats because I promise you'll fully like what we have in store for you this week. Cooking up Color Love You might think we're going to look at recipes (and the thought did cross our minds), but instead we're handing out props to one of our favorite spots on the web to get inspiration for color schemes. Colour Lovers is a spot to create, share and use color schemes contributed by a community of users. The aubergine flower to the left was made with a color palette we liked named ... wait for it .... eggplant       Vermont Style Gardening We all know there are no better gardeners than those who manage to bring forth in our short growing season enough bounty to get a family through the winter. Well here's a garden in Rochester, Vermont where the bounty is so rich and the heart behind growing it so generous that we just had to hand out Props. (We don't actually know if there is any eggplant in [....] Read More >>

For our eleventh installment of Friday Props I was going to start out with a tribute to space exploration and specifically to the Mars Curiosity rover en route and nearly arrived, but it got me thinking about the spirit of exploration in general. That then led me to thinking about the boundless potential of childhood and childhood dreams. So this week we are giving out Props for people and things in some way related to the wonder of childhood. Super Heroes The window washers at the London Children's Hospital dress in super hero costumes for the kids. This is just plain awesome. You can imagine how it might lift the spirits of some kids who could really use it. Major Props going out for these guys - a super hero thing to do. Moonrise Kingdom We won't be handing out Props too often for movies, but this movie is just too good to ignore. It's a sweet, silly, random story of childhood love and wanderings set in the fictional New England island of "New Penzance". The casting, the dialogue, the hillarity  ... it's all so much worth seeing. Props going out to Wes Anderson for his film. Watch the trailer below, check out the [....] Read More >>

It's another Friday making it time for another round of Friday Props. I'm back in the drivers seat for this week so we'll be steering clear of the crazy things Phil presented the last couple weeks. Let's dig right in! Let it Rain! Musical Rain Gutters In the student district of Desden, Germany there is a building fitted with rain gutters that are so whimsical and creative as to deserve Props. The Kunsthofpassage Funnel Wall actually plays music when it rains. They are not only designed to look like instruments, they are instruments. How cool is that!?   Parallax to the Max There is a new trend in web design called parallax design. The idea is to provide the illusion of depth to a web page by taking advantage of the parallax effect. According to Wikipedia: Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight, and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines.  The term is derived from the Greek ?????????? (parallaxis), meaning "alteration". Nearby objects have a larger parallax than more distant objects when observed from different positions, so parallax can be used to determine distances. We've been spending a fair amount of time recently [....] Read More >>

Ed is still hunkered down behind the four computer screens in his office while I gaze longingly through the windows at the beautiful blue skies....FREE ME FROM MY CHAINS! Since all my work is done, I get the honor of giving you this week's edition of Friday Props, brought to you by the friendly interwebs, Where All Good Things Happen. For our first prop, I will add this disclaimer: I don't understand Spanish very well. OK, yeah, I used to work with a whole lot of guys from El Salvador, but most of our conversation revolved around food so my vocabulary is almost useless outside a grocery store or kitchen. Don't worry if you don't know Spanish. It won't take you too long to figure out how this invention works and how it will improve society:   Speaking of commercialization that helps improve the world, Rhett and Link have made an art of making low budget commercials for local businesses. This came out three years ago but its so campy, it makes me chuckle everytime I see it because it is so ridiculous. If every TV commercial was this interesting, I would watch TV for the commercials. What gets the Props here is not [....] Read More >>