Santa's Bag is Loaded with Christmas Apps for Kids

I have been downloading apps for about a week that have a Christmas holiday theme. There are some pretty cute ones that will keep most little ones entertained.

What kid doesn't enjoy decorating a gingerbread house, cookies or snowman or an elf? Check out the following apps: Dress a Elf, Build a Gingerbread House, Cookies for Santa or Snowman Maker Plus.

For the older kids that enjoy games, check out OvenBreak where you help the Gingerbread boy by nabbing jelly beans, jumping over gaps and sliding and swinging on Candy canes. Santa's Christmas Word Search is fun for finding all the holiday related words, while listening to Christmas carols and viewing the animated tree. You can also throw snowballs at the Beserk Elves. Letter Blocks 3D Christmas (game FREE) is a good word game for children and is available in several languages as well. My favorite is probably Charmed Xmas a holiday themed version of Charmed which is one of the match three type games. Although I must admit the one that I know will be a hit with my grandkids is Cut the Robe: Holiday gift. It is a hit with me as well and will keep adults entertained as well.

If you have children who like to draw or color or paint, there is a lot of coloring apps available with Christmas themes, as well as a lot of animated stories and Christmas carols available. Just search the iTunes store by typing in 'Christmas' and see what is available. Many were free throughout the season, but have now gone to 99 cents. This is certainly a nice and inexpensive way to thrill little ones. Tweet

Happy Halloween

Back from a visit with the kids on the coast. Enjoyed Orcas Island and Seaside. Made a spook house with granddaughters and saw our newest family member - grandson. Husband managed to get two bags of salt water taffy.

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t-Shirt dress

t-Shirt dress
Originally uploaded by jheitzeb1

Been thinking about showing some love to family for Valentine's Day. As a person gets older it is often hard to do some of the things, you did when younger. I used to sew clothes for my entire family in my earlier days.

I had some Valentine's print fabric that I had purchased a year ago to make a twirly skirt for my granddaughters. As time was running short again this year, I decided to try a quick t-shirt dress. I purchased a t-shirt from Target and added two rows of gathered layers of different material to the bottom of the t-shirt.

Presto Magic! A nice dress for the little one. It was considerably faster to make and actually allowed me to design my own pattern and utilize some creativity. The older granddaughter has passed the age of 'fancy', so I purchased something for her that was not 'pink' or 'fancy'. Alas, they grow up so fast and days of wearing dresses soon pass for convenience and comfort.

It was also nice to use the high tech sewing machine that I purchased several years ago.  I had made a couple of personalized, monogrammed computer laptop bags, several purses, and fun stuff after first purchasing it.   Having a machine that threads itself, a convenient bobbin winder, and numerous built in stitches and so many extras, not available on my 'old Singer' of days gone by, has been a joy to use.  Ah, technology ... don't you love it ... progress ... Tweet

Sending iPhone Size Greeting Cards

I stumbled upon a cool site created by persons from Stanford University, Microsoft, Google and various Bay Area startups.  The site http://www.ecardlets.com  features user-generated ecards for the iPhone.  Users can add and send their own designs to iPhones.

I first tried using the ecardlets featured on the site and sent several using the options to email or send as SMS.  Both worked fine.   You can also send to Facebook and other sites.  Below is an example of the card I retrieved on my iPhone.  (note: the frames as I flicked the card open)

Then I decided it would be fun to bookmark the site on my iPhone and check out the interface to the site via my iPhone.  They have done an excellent job interfacing the ability to send a card from your iPhone.  The first screen allowed me to view the 'Categories' of cards available online to send.

I selected 'Get Well' and then proceeded to select a card.

Once the card was selected, a screen that allowed me to enter the recipient's email or phone number, senders name, senders email and message.    The card could be sent on its way via email or SMS to the recipient, by clicking the sent button.

These 3 dimensional ecards take advantage of the iPhone user interface, allowing the recepient to open and close the card with their fingers.  Quite a clever application and can see that it may become a popular site for us iPhone addicts.

Information for creating your own custom card designs is available as well at http://www.ecardlets.com/personal/  Tweet

Cooking Class at Hotel California - Baja - Todos Santos

I spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Mexico with some of my family members.  We had a great time snorkeling with sea pups, surfing on Cerritos Beach near Todos Santos on the Baja penisula, and taking in a great cooking class at the Hotel California with Chef Dany.

Before the cooking class we were treated to a great visit to Punta Lobos, the sweeping Pacific beach where the local fishermen of Todos Santos launch their boats each morning and bring in the daily catch each afternoon.  We were able to see the various catch of the day as well as marvel at the young juvenile pelicans that waited for their daily handouts.  It is amazing to see the boats come in from their day at sea, plowing up on the beach at full throttle.

We were also given a tour of  a local organic farm in the small town of El Pescadero, where many of the herbs and greens we used for our cooking class were grown.   The guide also provided a nice history of this area of Mexico and the Baja penisula. 

Before the cooking class we also helped the bartender make a jamaica margarita which had a mild syrup of jamaica juice (somewhat like cranberry), and another syrup of jalepeno.  The combination was mild and not too spicy, but with just a kick and difference to make it a wonderful starter.

The cooking class took place in the restaurant's kitchen with hands on preparation by the four members of our group.  Each member was given a recipe and special instruction by the Chef or kitchen staff in preparing his or her recipe.  The meal consisted of 5 courses:  an ahi tuna appetizer, organic green salad with special crostini, shrimp on rosemary skewers, flank steak marinated in sauce and served with a special salsa made with a molcajete (a mortar and pestle lava stone tool), and a banana pineapple flambe over ice cream.    The ingredients in each of the dishes added a touch of spice giving them a Mexican flair.    The chef joined us for a marvelous meal.  We learned so much about the cooking and experienced a little part of the culture as well.  It was a great experience and highly recommend taking a class when visiting Todos Santos.  Tweet

Holiday Mailouts - Using Address Book to Print Labels

As Thanksgiving approaches, I am reminded of my cousin who methodically addresses Christmas cards and sends them out during this holiday.  Every year without fail, I receive a card from my dear cousin first.  I was thinking today, that for some of us, the printing of labels is a major task.   So I decided to blog about the ability of the Address Book application on the Macintosh.  Did you know that hidden within the print feature of Address Book is the ability to print labels?

If you have most of your contacts, family and friends in your address book, you can use the 'group' feature to put them into a 'Holiday List'.  Once this has been done, which is fairly easy to accomplish by merely, selecting 'New Group' from the 'File' menubar options and giving it a name say, 'Holiday List'.   Then select 'All Contacts' and drag and drop each that you wish to include in this Holiday List into the group icon in the left hand column.

Once you have all your contacts listed within the 'Holiday List' group, then select this group and then using the 'Print' option from the 'File' menubar or the command P key shortcut, to bring up the print dialog box.  The print dialog box may default to a window similar to the one below:

To the right of your printer name, you will see a down arrow, click on this arrow to bring up more options, similar to below and click on the pop-down 'address book' and select 'printer settings'.  Then click on  'media type' options to select 'label'.

As you explore the many options, you will see pop-down menus that allow you to select the order of printing the labels (postal code or alphabetical),  whether to print home/work/or other address, whether to include an image, set a color or font. 

Then click on the 'Layout' tab and choose a label type from the 'Page' pop down menu.   To set the page margins and gutter space between labels, and how many labels to print on a page, choose 'Define Custom'.

 

You can then preview the page of addresses using the 'pdf' pop down option to view in preview first.

As the holidays approach I am wondering will I get the cards and well wishes out on time or will I be sending out Valentine wishes instead?  Let me be the first to wish everyone a very Happy Holiday season and Happy New Year!

Note:   Whitepages.com offers a new holiday list manager and label printer. If you wish to search for an address or cross-check current listings from whitepages.com online, this would be a great way to fill in the missing addresses and contact information.  If you have not built a contact list in address book, using whitepages to find the info and create a list and print the list is another great solution!

Whitepages.com Holiday List Manager

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Back from Tahiti - Tips for Traveling with iPhone

I just returned from a two week cruise around French Polynesia. Basically it looks like paradise, colorful people, lovely scenery, and the bluest water in the world. In fact, it is probably one of the most beautiful places to visit, however, it is very HOT and HUMID. I found that it was amazing that I could sweat while walking in the rain. I would also say that it has some amazing snorkeling and diving opportunities around the lesser populated atolls. I even saw a shark!

I had the foresight to download some excellent podcasts to listen to in the cabin of the cruise ship (which does not have TV). My husband and I enjoyed listening to these podcasts from the iPhone and it was very much like having talk radio available to us.  One of the great things about traveling with an iPhone is that you can preload 'podcasts' from your favorite RSS subscriptions or online bloggers.

Originally I was a little frightened by the acronym 'RSS' ... imagining a great technological knowledge was needed to subscribe to a podcast. But, it sounds complicated and tricky, but actually pretty seamless to use if you are capturing the podcast in iTunes. Apple has made that category in iTunes fairly easy to setup. Normally, one would click on a subscription link or RSS feed link for audio podcast using a browser and these podcasts would appear within the podcast category of iTunes. ITunes also keeps track of the different podcasts that you subscribe to, in an organized manner with episodes, time, release date, description and artist ...  ITunes also uses an indicator (circle) to designate whether you have listened to a podcast in entirety or partially.

There are many interesting podcasts on the internet and also via the Apple iTunes store. Some popular ones might talk about technology, travel, or even be a course on learning languages. I find that downloading language podcasts to iTunes to use while traveling to foreign countries an excellent way to learn a few phrases for my trips.

Once the podcasts are located in iTunes, you can hook up your iPhone and use the 'Podcasts' tab to select podcasts to store on your iPhone. You can also selectively choose the number of episodes from a podcast or select only ones you wish to download to the iPhone. If you download these prior to arriving in a foreign country, you will have access to them from your iPhone while in 'Airplane Mode'. You will not need to download while on the trip and have WIFI connection.

 One other tip, when you are in another part of the world, it is easy to use the clock on the iPhone to set the correct 'world time zone' (general setting ... date and time option).   We found the ability to not only listen to music, play game apps and take video/photos with the camera, but also use the alarm clock app, a great asset ... all in one small and useful device.

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Editing Old Halloween Photo with Picasa

The application that is available through Picasa allows me to do so many cool things with old photos. I just took this photo and cleaned up some spots on the photo using the 'retouch' option in the photo editing pallette. It does a nice job of removing those spots on old photos. The nice thing about Picasa is the ability to undo many editing techniques as you check results and change your mind.

There are auto color, auto contrast options that can fix a photo in one click in some cases. With this photo, I applied the 'auto color' adjustment and then 'cropped' some off the left side of the photo to give it more balance.

Another option that is available is to automatically 'Blog This'. I was able to select these two photos, the before and after from Picasa window and click on the 'Blog This' to instantly put these photos onto my eblogger with text.

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