Star Wars | Force Friday II

Last updated on November 9th, 2020 at 11:55 pm

At some point in their childhood, just about every kid wants to be part of the Star Wars universe! Either they see themselves piloting an X-Wing or being one with the Force—with a bevvy of movies, cartoons and video games to its name, Star Wars has something everyone can learn from its expansive world!

And it’s not slowing down—the start of this September brought us Force Friday II, a global event celebrating the upcoming release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi with new toys, collectables, books and more to mark the occasion!

Let me tell you all about it!

Star Wars | I Am Your Father’s Day

Last updated on November 5th, 2020 at 08:41 am

“Your father? I am your father.”

Darth Vader’s classic line from The Empire Strikes Back has been quoted, misquoted, and referenced every which way since its first utterance in 1980.

But you’ve never seen a take on it quite like this—taking a fatherhood reveal that makes Maury Povich’s look like Page 6 news and turning it into something more… symbolic.

Star Wars Celebrates Dads with an I Am Your Father's Day Greeting—Chasing in the Woods

Any Dad who was still young enough to know how to have fun in the ’70s and ’80s grew up knowing how awesome Star Wars is. We used broomsticks as toy lightsabers. We treated the Force as a power we expected to wield in play—not something of imagination alone. And now that we’re Dads ourselves, it’s our turn to pass something down to our kids from our childhoods… and that’s why the folks at Disney and Star Wars want to wish you a Happy “I Am Your Father”‘s Day!

No Country for Young Men

Last updated on April 24th, 2021 at 11:56 pm

The problem with being Dad to some of, perhaps, the youngest children I’ve seen featured in the world of parent blogging is that I can’t always align the ever-expansive industry of children’s toys and entertainment with their interests. While I love getting invites to Legoland and cool things to do over “March Break” and the “summer holidays”, with kids as young as mine, these are completely foreign concepts to my family as we struggle to get through each day without a temper tantrum or sleep regression!

And that’s exactly the issue I had for a while as a member of the Netflix Stream Team.

Too Young for TV/Why My Kids Won’t Get the Most From Netflix Until They’re Old Enough to Know How Much Their Friends are Watching at School1.

My kids don’t watch a lot of TV: it’s on some mornings, keeping our toddler entertained with tales of Ryder and his team of pups, but he usually plays with his toys or enjoys the backyard—we’re not about to become “those parents” with their kids’ eyes glued firmly to the screen. (To be fair, my childhood saw a steady consumption of TV, video games and the Internet, so it’d be hypocritical to call screen time the root of all evil—but who am I to put my kids at an automatic disadvantage, amirite?)

That said, when it does come to kids’ programming, we’re thrilled to have Netflix on hand. While it doesn’t have everything (yet), it has plenty of shows that meet our needs, including the new Word Party released in July, a show designed to help wee ones with their vocabulary through songs and a variety of adventures.

But no—it’s Sarah and me who do the bulk of the household Netflix consumption, and I doubt that’ll change anytime soon. And it’s a good thing they added account profiles when they did so we could have our own viewing habits—I’m pretty sure she failed to appreciate the recommendations that came with my Star Wars: Clone Wars marathons when she was looking for her next rom-com.

So when Netflix Canada asked me to write about Netflix siblings playlists or the important life lessons my kids were learning while watching Netflix, it was hard to make it ring true.

The 2016 100

Last updated on April 5th, 2021 at 10:39 pm

I can’t even lie, guys—coming up with a list of 100 goals for the fourth year in a row was hardridiculously so. I’m a very different me than I was when The 2013 100 came out, back when free time was still an abundant commodity I didn’t even know I was taking for granted, trying to fill it with countless things that’d keep life interesting.

A problem I most definitely don’t have in 2016!

As I work at surviving the upcoming year—especially with our second child’s imminent arrival—I needed to make the list a lot more realistic; I’m all too skilled at chasing ambitions that exceed my lifestyle’s capacity, and I’ll need to keep wary of that in 2016 if I want to see myself make it out the other side!

So without further ado, The 2016 100. It took a couple of days to polish off after recovering from the gauntlet that was 2015, but I feel like it’s a list that will really make waves in this life o’ mine should I see it finished!

But hey—that’s what I say every year 😂

Thanks for reading!


1) Write an amazing series for Black History Month
2) Win a vacation for my dry cleaner
3) Watch Creed; Mad Max: Fury Road; The Martian; Ant-Man
4) Take Eric to a sporting event so he can stop complaining about getting left from sporting events
5) Phase my old 3.5″ hard drive out
6) Get rid of my old electronics
7) Stop biting my nails
8) Get rid of the wedding thank you cards I never sent
9) Clean out the basement crawl space
10) Build shelves into the crawl space
11) Give my FWD Powershot 2 to my old manager the hockey coach
12) Do the CN Tower Edgewalk
13) Sort out my old TD employee RSP
14) Consolidate everything down to a single notepad

Though a chiropractor I started seeing late into 2015 told me I’d developed some mild sciatica in my back, I didn’t need him to tell me I carry too much STUFF. In a digital age where we can pack mountains of information into a single device, there’s really NO NEED for me to carry all the draft posts and note that I do—save the fact that working from hard copy’s the way my brain’s WIRED.

In 2016, I need a little more focus to keep all my ideas stored in one place so I’m not constantly carrying EVERYTHING in my house made of paper, knowing that I probably scribbled SOMETHING on ALL of ’em.

15) Sort out the Internet situation at home so I can stop relying on tethering to LTE data
16) Learn enough Spanish to understand my sister-in-law’s Mexican wedding in May
17) Find time for date nights, which will involve finding someone who wants to babysit two kids… how about we just find more awesome things to do at home, just in case?
18) Try Uncle Tetsu’s cheesecake
19) Get to 0 drafts on CaseyPalmer.com by converting everything into live posts
20) Install the growth chart for my kids that we got at my office baby shower
21) Update all the old content on CaseyPalmer.com
22) Upgrade the site infrastructure to better support contest traffic
23) Redesign the heck out of the blog (Twenty Sixteen, what up)
24) Find the time to pack more lunches for work
25) Clean up and optimize my Pinterest account (I still have that copy of Pinterest Savvy lying around somewhere)
26) Shave more regularly
27) Hand out my remaining business “cep” cards so I can put in a new order (wait—do we still do business cards?)
28) Clear out the bookshelves to prepare for Baby #2
29) Replace the lost key to our 2011 Ford Edge
30) Figure out what I ACTUALLY need to run my site and invest in THAT.
31) Replace our bathroom sink
32) Meet with the people who I never seemed to schedule in through 2015 (Aaron, Emma, Ria, Adrienne, Dianna)
33) Get a Brookhaven Computer Cabinet

The 1% of the Casa de Palmer workspace I use to do all the things isn’t the best—in fact, it’s falling apart. As I get older and start formalizing my #BloggerLife, Sarah and I agree that my workspace should evolve to show that. It’ll take some saving to make it happen, but it’d be a nice addition to the home.

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