DIY Life

You probably spent Thanksgiving with your family and friends. If you were lucky enough to find time between cooking and serving, you enjoyed some meaningful conversation and reflected on how grateful you are to have such a wonderful group to gather with. Monday morning rolls around and the people you are closest to have driven back to their houses and you all start another regular week with the people you share less significant relationships with.

You'll find yourself standing in line tomorrow morning at the coffee shop, riding the elevator to your office, getting on with your day, lingering in the lunch room, chatting about work, the weather and how busy the malls are. You might start to miss the evocative conversations you had with close friends and family over the weekend. This doesn't have to stop when you get back to the daily grind. You can have meaningful interactions anywhere.

There is something special about toys that talk. I guess the whole idea of personifying a toy is exciting to many of us. Your fascination probably started with that doll that could be programmed to say your name, or your talking remote control car. If you're like me, the fascination probably didn't go away. This new book is sure to get you excited.

Making things talk by Oriel, publisher of MAKE magazine, is a book lots of DIY'ers can't wait to get their hands on. It's full of DIY projects for making toys that talk. I'm sold! I agree with Daniel Terdiman, in Making Things Talk - DIY projects that communicate, most of these projects are probably beyond me.

I'm sure that many of you readers are far more experienced with this sort of project than I am. How many of you are ordering the book? We'd love to hear about the projects you tackle and the cool talking toys you create.