One More Creation

I showed RD the draft of my latest blog post which had his snake cube creations.  He gave it the stamp of approval so I hit PUBLISH.   However he felt that I had missed something.  I told him that I published all the pictures I had taken.  

"There is something missing."   That is what I would have heard if I could read minds.

True enough, in a couple of minutes, he came over with a creation he had shown me the night before while we were watching the Australian Open game between Federer and Nadal.   This particular one was a two-piece creation which started off with two identical pieces which could be connected by simply flipping over a part of one of the toys.

Here are the two pieces ...

They are identical. 

This is what it looks like on the other side.

Flip the end of one of the toys

And connect the two pieces together.

   

This is what the final product looks like. 

AWESOME!

Go Retro!

Do you remember this toy?

It's called the Rubik's Snake Puzzle.

We had brought two of these from back home.  They were in the one of the plastic crates that held the children's toys.  When I was looking for things to donate last year, I rediscovered them and deemed only one of them to be in decent condition for donating (the other one had too many missing pieces).  I donated the good one and set the other one aside. 

When RD saw the other one, he picked up the toy and started playing with it.  He pulled out the rest of the coloured pieces and was left with the bare toy. Over the next couple of days, he could be seen twisting and turning the toy while he was in front of his PC. 

Eventually his creativity was limited by the fact that he only had one toy.  He asked if we had a second one.  Sadly, I had to tell him that I had donated the other one.  

I didn't think much of it because I figured it was just one of those toy phases and that in a couple of days the toy would be gathering dust again.

However as the weeks passed, I kept seeing the toy in his hands.   I decided having two toys to play with would greatly improve the fun factor for RD.  I checked eBay and asked MacGyver to complete the purchase.  If we were lucky, the toy would come in time for his birthday.

The package did not come until the New Year but it was surely worth the wait.  We asked RD to open up the package and when he was what was inside, his face just lit up.

Here are some of his two-piece creations.

These two are made using two identical shapes that can "volt in."

(1)

(2)

This heart-like wonder has one piece fitting into the other.

I Won! I Won!

By the time we moved into Northern Views, we had been able to inherit a dining table, two lounge chairs, a refrigerator, a rice cooker, a sandwich maker, 2 14" TVs, a queen bed, 2 single beds (plus one more coming), a box of plastic containers, a couple of frying pans and other useful items for the house. This was augmented by our introduction into the FreeCycle yahoogroups (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreecycleSydneyNW/) which enabled us to acquire a table, a shelf, some speakers, some plates and other household items for free.

However, in spite all the generous hearts we encountered, we were still in dire need of a washing machine and chairs. So these were the items we would look for when we visited garage sales and logged on to eBay.

Though I failed to win the washing machine, I continued to try my luck at other things in eBay, adding odds and ends to my WATCHING list.

(Everyone knows women LOVE to shop for bargains.)

After a bit of window shopping, or should I say 'eBay surfing', I finally won some things.

These are some of the items I got for the house.

I wanted desperately to get this particular vacuum cleaner model.

It was being auctioned off by someone in Perth. Perth is a long way away from Sydney. It is so far, in fact, that it is in a different time zone from us (same time zone as Manila). But I really wanted this model that I went so far as to email a good friend in Perth to bid for this item on my behalf. Unfortunately, someone had placed an automatic bid much higher than my approved budget plus the fact my budget was slashed by the estimated postage to ship the thing from Perth to New South Wales.

Oh, well, you win some, you lose some.

So focusing on what we'd won, here they are in their new home. The table cloth is actually a Qantas blanket we bought at the Wesley church garage sale while the "rug" is likewise a blanket I got from Vinnies. The beautiful tulip placemats and cork hot plates were passed on to us by relatives of relatives. The tile trivets in the middle were part of odds and ends we got from a FreeCycler who passed on amps, speakers, clothes and some other household items we are now using.