this year, my brothers tom & anton and i¹ did something special to spread the christmas joy:

for the higher quality version (recommended!), click here and then “watch in high quality”.

update #1: i’ve added the making-of video.

update #2: mom took some photos during our performance for the family. they’re online now.

update #3: there’s another clip of our christmas caroling on december 24th.

[view photos: spreading the christmas joy with nose recorders]

we wish you all a merry christmas, and some calm and peaceful holidays.

i first started this as a joke, but have realized that there are several advantages to “markus style” gift wrapping:

efficient gift wrapping, markus style

rumple a piece of wrapping paper, making sure it gets lots of irregular foldings and wrinkles.
find a way to cover your entire gift, try to keep the ends slightly overlapping on the upside.
use two or three small pieces of sticky tape to fasten the corners of paper together.

doing it this way, you can

• save time
• recycle (reuse old wrapping paper, nobody’s going to notice)
• save on sticky tape (just fasten the corners, everything else should stay in place)
• say “i did it myself!” proudly when handing it over, and most people should get the joke.

something else that goes very well with these gifts: self-made toddler-style invitation cards (use the hand you don’t usually use for writing, hold pens making a fist, insert silly spelling mistakes).

if you don’t know what this is about, read the introductory text first.

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When my son was 4 in England, (…) he was in the nativity play. (…)
You know the bit where the three kings come in. They come in bearing gifts, and they bring gold, frankincense and myrrh. (…)
Anyway, the three boys came in, little 4-year-olds with tea towels on their heads, and they put these boxes down, and the first boy said, “I bring you gold.”
The second boy said, “I bring you myrrh.”
And the third boy said, “Frank sent this.”
– Ken Robinson at TED

if you’re interested in ken robinson’s TED speech about creativity (and how schools destroy it), you can watch it here: [more...]

if you don’t know what this is about, read the introductory text first.

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just in time for christmas, here’s our christmas tree from last year.
actually, the video shows my mom decorating it, fast forward.

the ornament stars you can see in the video are home-crocheted, as are the golden balls.

if you’d rather download a file to your computer, there you go: [more...]

if you don’t know what this is about, read the introductory text first.

please ignore the visual part of the video.
the only other version i could find was this one.

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