It's Pinewood Derby Time!

Ah, Pinewood Derby time. That magical time of year when you and your child spend hours in your workshop turning a plain block of wood and four plastic wheels into a lean, mean, racing machine.

    

Only sometimes the end product doesn't actually come out to be so lean. Or mean. And sometimes it doesn't win. If you can't bear to see that look of disappointment on junior's face, how about ponying up for a little help this year in the form of these two cool, officially licensed Pinewood Derby books?

Pinewood Derby Designs and Patterns: The Ultimate Guide to Creating the Coolest Car gives you gorgeous full-color pictures, measured drawings, patterns, and step-by-step instructions (with a picture for every single little step) for 34 different designs — and even ranks the design ideas by beginner, intermediate and advanced builder!

Pinewood Derby Speed Secrets: Design and Build the Ultimate Car is more about building to win the race than for looks. Same kind of gorgeous color pictures, patterns, and step-by-step instructions tell you everything you need to know about the ideal shape, form, weight, alignment, etc., to make your car your child's car SCREAM down that raceway!

These are really great books and I wish we had known of then while my kids were still racing! Yes, my kidlets are beyond their Pinewood Derby days now, but they leafed through these books with me last night and thought there were some really cool ideas.

And I couldn't do a post about Pinewood Derby cars without showing off the racecars of my own offsping! So, for your viewing pleasure, here is one from my son, and one from my daughter. (Gee, can you guess which is which?)

My son's little silver speedster was beat out for the third place trophy by a hairsbreadth — just three-tenths of a second!

My daughter's golden glimmer car didn't win for speed, but did come away with the coveted "Most Dazzling" trophy! (I kid you not!)

Have fun working on those Pinewood Derby cars with your little ones! They get too old for that kind of stuff waaaaay too quickly....