Carl Pettit
Carl Pettit is a columnist, editor and writer working for an array of colorful publications. He specializes in cultural and social issues, as well as East Asia, politics and satire.
If you want to get your kids outside, away from their Xbox or Wii, and interested in some of your backyard garden projects, you’ll probably need to be somewhat inventive with your gardening ideas. Pulling weeds and planting flowerbeds just won’t cut it for most of children. Think incentive here.
We have some ideas.
Dogs, as the saying goes, are man’s best friend, so it's only right and logical that we might want to spend some quality time with our buds. Walks in the park and tossing the Frisbee on the beach are great, but if you really want to engage the human-canine relationship—and have a really good time while you’re at it—you might want to think about setting up a dog agility course in your backyard or garden.
Sure, you could take the easy route and head on over to Ikea or your local lawn-and-garden shop and pick up a few pieces of outdoor furniture for your backyard. But if you really want to impress your friends and indulge your creative flair, you might want to consider some of these more unusual options:
Sometimes gardens are for growing things, and sometimes gardens are for constructing massive playgrounds for you and your friends.
You can add a lot more to your backyard garden than border stones, flower beds and creatively shaped patches of lawn. If you really want to transform your outdoor sanctuary into something special, why not turn it into a mancave paradise?
Man is widely considered to be the deadliest animal on the planet, mostly because it's hard to match the killing power of our guns and nuclear bombs. Even so, there are plenty of lethal predators out there that are more than willing to take us on and, if fortune favors these creates in battle, rip a chunk out of our flesh, or even end our lives.
There are a lot of wild jobs out there for the adventurous set. Sure, you could aspire to the lofty position of astronaut or Air Force Raptor pilot, but there aren’t many slots open in those exclusive fields
This winter, when the snow is piled high outside your doorway, or in the mountains nearby, you could head out into the cold and build a snowman or have an epic snowball fight. Those are some time-honored winter traditions, yet when the temperature drops, there’s so much more you can do.
Christmastime should be about family, generosity and good cheer, but sometimes there are a few baddies lurking about to spoil everyone’s fun. We’re talking about nasty Christmas villains here. Thankfully most of them are merely figments of some storyteller’s imagination. But not all of them. There are always a few real life Yuletide rogues out there just waiting to make a mess of the winter holidays.
Christmas is almost upon us, but that doesn’t mean you still can’t have some fun with your holiday decorations. Maybe you’re the kind of person who waits until the last minute to set up your tree, or perhaps you’ve noticed some bare spots on the limbs just crying out for a few more ornaments. Or maybe you need a last minute activity to keep the kids busy while they wait for the impending arrival of Santa Claus. Nothing is more maddening for a child than the last few days leading up to Christmas, before all of their holiday loot arrives.
Most people are familiar with the massive, and very impressive, Christmas tree that graces New York City’s Rockefeller Center every year. This tree has come to symbolize the holiday season for millions of people, and is something of national icon, appearing as a backdrop in countless movies and television specials.