The other day we made My First Squiggle Bot (see, sometimes we make  things other than books over here!), a doodle-happy recycled robot from 62 Projects to Make With a Dead Computer by Randy Sarafan. This jittery little doodler is made using a fan pulled from an expired computer in the office IT closet (plus a battery, a connector, some rubber bands, and a handful of markers). Office Squiggle Bot wowed in a publicity meeting earlier in the week, then had a brilliant encore when Mattie and his dad, 10-Minute Puppet author Noel MacNeal, visited Workman last week.

After construction (pages 131-133 in the book), we simply attached red wire to red wire to activate and…look Ma, no hands! Squiggle Bot churns out masterpiece after masterpiece…

Now that we have two Squiggle Bots in the office, it’s time for a showdown! Will Squiggle Bot Beta take down Squiggle Bot 1.0? Or will they doodle happily together into the sunset? Remove your pen caps and start your engines, gentle-bots. And the rest of you, go ahead and place your bets, because it doesn’t get much more exciting than this.

I could probably write a book about thrifty mistakes, but I’ll start by breaking the topic down into two categories. (That’s how you know things are serious, people. Categories.) Let’s call category one The Execution Mistake. You’re trying to be thrifty and you buy all this rice. You screw up the cooking time and end up throwing bad rice and good money down the drain. Or worse, you try to hem your brand-new pants and you end up with brand-new too-short pants that make you look like a nerd. (Don’t get me started on pants.) Basically, the stuff of tragedy.

Behind door number two lies The Personal Taste Mistake. That’s when you buy something to be thrifty and then find out you just don’t like that thing. You either have to try to act thrifty and suck it up and use the thing (whether it’s an unflattering shirt or a new type of grain), or you have to throw it, and your money, down the drain. Neither option is particularly appealing, so sometimes it pays to give an initially despicable purchase a little bit of time to grow on you.

Which brings me to Campari. Let me stock a bar, I thought, because Pia and Califia told me this was thrifty. I will entertain my friends at home, and we will drink delicious thrifty drinks from my at-home bar.

Turns out Campari is one of those things I only think I like (because it’s all sophisticated and bitter) but really ewwww I totally don’t at all.

I felt guilty about that now totally unthrifty bottle of Campari, so every once in a while I would try having some with soda. Yuck. Then one night, I made an amazing discovery . . .

Gin + Tonic + Loads of Lime + Splash of Campari = TOTALLY DELICIOUS

Adding a sprig of mint = I’M A MIXOLOGIST

Emboldened, I added a splash of Campari to a glass of iced tea. Too subtle. What did it need? Shockingly, MORE CAMPARI. At which point it became totally delicious.

A happy ending to a thrifty tragedy. Clink!

There’s no power like a kid’s imagination (just ask a parent who’s trying to interrupt a game of pretend to get a child to come to the dinner table or brush her teeth!). And when that imagination is channeled into creative problem-solving, magic can happen. Look at the results of a brief session with a third-grade Brownie troop, a copy of Suzy Becker’s write-in journal for kids, The Kids Make It Better Book, and the promise that no idea is too silly or outrageous:

What should we do about all the garbage? Elise, age 9, suggests: “Make a litter machine that can find who littered just by the litter…and make them sit in a garbage can all day.”

How would you fix a broken heart? Avery, age 8, says: “I’d make them swallow love glue.”

What would you do to help countries stop fighting and get along? 8-year old Zoe’s idea: “Astronauts should build a reunion place in outer space big enough for everyone in the entire world, and we could work everything out.”

Will a kid’s imaginative answer to a bad economy really be useful in solving the problem? Maybe not. But is it useful to ask them to think of ideas? You bet! A kid who’s encouraged to think about the world’s problems, and to dream up creative ways to make the world better, has a good chance of growing up to be a person who dreams big and makes a difference. And based on the kids I saw thinking, and dreaming, and solving, I think the future’s looking pretty bright indeed.

Learn a fun wager from the Amazing Book of Cards with this video from Joshua Jay–it could earn you a free drink, or at least a round of laughter!

There are about four piles of untouched work sitting in various places in my apartment, eight or so long articles hanging around in the “Read me!” bookmark on my laptop, and countless stalled projects vying for space inside my head, but I’m in my kitchen, scrubbing my pots with baking soda and steel wool. Removing tarnish from the outside of my pots certainly isn’t high on my to-do list, but it somehow feels like a small step toward reclaiming my free time from the leaky overflow of office work.

Scrub-athon as instant vacation? Sounds like the good-old exfoliating spa treatment/tall glass of cucumber water combo. Which is exactly where I’m headed with this. Somehow we (and by “we” I mean a certain urban, work-centric population) have come to think of the massage, the overpriced cocktail, the shopping spree, as our reward for spending the bulk of our time at work. To put it plainly: My notion of taking care of myself has often involved springing for things I can’t afford. The phrase “I deserve it” has been known to run through my head.

But what is it exactly I think I deserve? I guess it’s been my belief (and I don’t think I’m alone), that at the end of the workday, it’s my god-given right to phone in the delivery order, prop my feet up, and take the proverbial load off. In other words, the notion of coming home and doing more “work” has not sat well with me.

As a side-effect of working on BE THRIFTY, though, over the past year I’ve been trying on another version of self-care. Saying no to that ten dollar cocktail, which I totally deserve, when I’m out with my girlfriends. Taking pleasure in filling my refrigerator with foods I’ve cooked or will cook myself, and in restoring my shabby apartment to a state of livability.

The mantra that runs through my head as I scrub isn’t necessarily “Thrift on, soldier,” but something closer to “Go ahead: You deserve it.”

It feels pretty good. And—necessity being the mother of invention—it’s even led to the creation of  a couple of highly delicious (and totally proprietary!) cocktails. Thirsty? Check back in next week.

Card tricks have the ability to endlessly entertain. They are the ultimate party icebreaker and can make you the superhero of any awkward social situation. Joshua Jay’s Amazing Book of Cards is packed with 52 amazing things to do with a deck of cards. Catch a glimpse of them in the video trailer below!

“One father is more than a hundred Schoolmasters.”
– George Herbert

Did you go to the prom? If the answer is yes, then chances are you could strike gold at the “Worst Prom Story” contest, part of the next literary matchmaking mixer on June 17 hosted by WORD, an excellent bookstore located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Workman’s own literary date-disaster historian Virginia Vitzthum, author of My Blind Date Went Blind! will be on hand to help pick a winner and join in the revelry at The Diamond Bar (43 Franklin Street). Come for the drink specials, the DJ, and the oh-so-attractive and intelligent members of WORD’s “Between the Covers” matchmaking board. And hey, if it doesn’t work out, you can cry on Virginia’s shoulder afterwards. After all, as Faulkner said, “Between grief and nothing I will take grief.”

To enter the contest, send your Worst Prom Story to info@wordbrooklyn.com by June 15th. (Subject line: PROM STORY).

Facebook RSVP suggested, but not required (and neither is your prom outfit). Come as you are!

Frank Falcinelli and Frank Castronovo talk about the inspiration behind their Hellmanns mayonnaise Caesar salad from their new book, The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual.

A visual missive courtesy of Califia Suntree, one of the authors of BE THRIFTY: HOW TO LIVE BETTER WITH LESS . . .

Nothing like a dose of old timey propaganda to get you pinching pennies. “Beans are bullets”?! This is serious, people.

Want more? Check out this exhibit of war-era food posters.

Want to make something thrifty to eat? Check out the book.