I love my Zink hAppy printer

During the lost years of trips up to NJ to help take care of my mom, a great friend gave me a great gift in 2013--a Zink hAppy printer:

Printing photobooth strips from Pocketbooth app

As a scrapbooker, I was often yearning for instant gratification of the photos I took with my iPhone, which made it so easy to take photos of everything: food, friends, moments. Like I said in this post, I love my Instax cameras but there is an unpredictability that is both its charm and weakness--there is definitely magic about the moment you captured but every once in a while, you know the pic that you want in your hands and can't necessarily keep capture with an Instax the way you can with a smartphone.  I was craving a portable photo printer that was compatible with an iPhone and my wish was granted with the production of the Zink hAppy printer.  Some apps, like Pocketbooth, are instantly compatible and I can print my photostrips directly from the app.  For other apps, I can save pix to my camera roll and just use AirPrint to print out pix.

Compared to printing at home, my Zink hAppy prints a little lighter than it looks on my iPhone while my printer at home prints them a bit darker compare to my iPhone:

On top are Zink hAppy prints, on bottom are printer prints

But overall, I'm happy with the prints.  Here's one of the pix from my phone for comparison:

Another detail is that the largest roll a Zink hAppy prints is 2 inches.  So maximum width is 2 inches.  Zink offers a free app, Zink Big, where one can print out a big picture by printing it out in 2 inch tiles.  But for my needs, 2 inch width pictures are not a limitation at all.  On top of that, I LOVE that the Zink rolls are adhesive so when I scrap or craft with the pictures, no glue or tape needed.  I get the 2 inch rolls (for printing out pix, including Instagram pix) and 1 inch rolls (for photobooth pix).  My only quibble is that the rechargeable battery pack that makes it completely portable (like "drop it in your bag and print wherever you want" portable) is available as an accessory and I feel like it should be included with the printer.

I know that there is an Instax Instant Film printer that recently came out, which frankly I totally dig (I love Instax!).  Both are portable and print directly from an iPhone but the film required for the Instax Instant Film printer is usually about $1 per print.  Zink rolls are about $30 for a 19 foot roll--so depending if printing a 2x2 Instagram pic or a regular portrait pic (2x2.75) comes out to 25-40 cents per print.  And bonus, they are adhesive!

I've been really enjoying re-discovering my Zink hAppy--printing out pix and maybe even some crafting will be happening!

Favorite Productivity apps: DropBox and Genius Scan

Being here in NJ helping my mom with her medical issues and appointments has definitely been a team act with my sister and I have really come to rely on a couple of great productivity apps: Dropbox and Genius Scan, both of which are currently free and are not limited to the iPhone.

Dropbox is a mobile server where I can load up files (documents, photos, mp3s, pdfs, etc.) from my iPhone or PC that I can access from either of them or share links to those files.  It's great to load up say, the French Macaron primer pdf and be able to access it at home on the laptop or at a friends house on the iPhone.  This example shows I obviously have not fully utilized all the efficiencies that this app has to offer but the possibilities are fairly clear.

I came to really put Dropbox to use in conjuction with Genius Scan on this trip. Genius Scan allows me to "scan" documents with my iPhone camera and save them as pdfs in my Dropbox.  As my sister and I were sharing some of the appointment and follow-up duties, it was handy that I scanned some lab reports (she took the originals with her to fax) with Genius Scan and saved them in my Dropbox.  I was able to e-mail the lab reports and expedite some appointments.  Between the two apps, I'm able to scan and save records and paper work that I'd like to keep a copy of and not have to find a copier to make copies and then carry around a bunch of paper files.  Upgrading to Genius Scan+ (for $2.99) gives you direct upload choices to Dropbox, EverNote, etc., but so far the free version just has the extra step of hitting the "other apps" icon and then selecting Dropbox, Evernote, etc. from there, so I'm totally happy staying with the free version.

Currently you get 2GB of memory on Dropbox for free and you can pay a monthly fee for more space.  Or they offer incentives that earn you more space, like referring friends to Dropbox.  So on that note, if you are interested in Dropbox, help this girl out and use this link: http://db.tt/cJyBd4A  We'll both get an additional 250MB of space if you get it.

Anyhoo, whether personal or for work, both these free apps are pretty handy and easily applicable to a variety of situations.  I highly recommend both--especially since they're both free!

Pic Collage app

Another app that I've been playing around with is the free (currently) Pic Collage app:

What a great way to use a bunch of pix, especially when you can't decide which one is the best (or cutest). So easy to pull in, move, and re-size pictures, though I would thoroughly appreciate it if I could pull in multiple pictures in at a time (rather than one at a time which can get tedious with a lot of pictures I want to include or a camera roll as large as mine) The text feature offers a variety of fonts and colors and there are a variety of background and seasonal "stickers" as well, though I would admit the selection is somewhat limited.

I would really love a way (or template even) to get all pix evenly and neatly laid out (in, uh, a non-collagy way) for those times I do want the whole pictures in. It's kind of difficult to do it by hand on the iPhone screen and definitely looks laid out and re-sized manually:

For a free app, I love it for being a way to share multiple pictures or share the highlights from an event without clicking and sending actual multiple picture files. And in a collage format, you can highlight the meat of the pix by the collage arrangement. If any of this appeals to you, I highly recommend it--it's one of my new favorite apps.

Five Guys Burgers

My sister came down for a packed 24 hours to help with appointments with our mom. On the way to the train station, she was really craving a burger so we decided to try the Five Guys Burgers that opened up in our town recently. I didn't try the burger but gladly helped with the fries, which were good and crispy. My sister definitely enjoyed the burger and I think we both agreed that Five Guys offers a great value for loaded burgers and good fries. For a regular order of fries, it was a portion that bested most other chains' "large" portion that, despite my efforts on portion control, got the thumbs up from me. And my sister liked the generous variety of toppings (that are all free) for the solid burger.  So thumbs up from the both of us!

Ink joy

I was wandering Target on errands and these new Ink Joy pens by Paper Mate caught my eye. They were about $3.50 for each package:

First, the name--Ink Joy--grabbed me alone. As a crafter and scrapper, those two words together just made me want to scribble with them. Second, the ink is smooov. When I tested it out at Target, it was a like a Segway in my hand, the pen just glided across the paper. That said, when I got mine home and started just writing with it, it's almost too smooth and fast. My handwriting can get hard to read if I write too fast. So generally, my handwriting actually benefits from a stickier ink because it forces me to write more deliberately. But I certainly loved the feel of the smooth ink. Guess I should work on my penmanship. Finally, I loved the availability of colors. To find all these colors in ball point (rather than markers) was such fun find for me and the colors are satisfyingly saturated.

The numbers, like the 700RTs and the 300RTs above, stand for the style.  The higher the number, the higher (or fancier, e.g. cushioned grip) the style. RT stands for retractable, which I always prefer to pen and cap (because I inevitably lose the cap).  So far, they've become my new precious pen along with my Seven Year Mustache pen.

They even inspired me to do a little smashing on a plain blank page:

I used all the colors to make my own pattern paper:

Added this cute instax of Velina and Augie together:

A little washi tape and tiny letter stickers to frame them:

And some other tiny embellishments, some journaling, and accenting of some of the hearts with my black 700RT:

A really basic page, but I heart it.

Mifi

Spending more time than I planned in my mom's technology-deficient house (though I just put in some new cordless phones--welcome to the 90s, Mom), I needed a way to log into work. And I figured I'll be visiting my mom more so I made the leap/investment into a mobile hotspot, aka, a Verizon Wireless MiFi:

I was trying to decide between an aircard and a mobile hotspot. I was attracted to the mobile hotspot for its versatility--in theory, I could hook up to 5 devices to it and it wasn't limited to just a laptop, so something like my iPad could be mobile now. But the reviews online of this MiFi were across the spectrum with the worst issue for me being connectivity inconsistency. And since I plan on using this for work, that's a huge issue and I went to VZW leaning towards an aircard (which would plug into a single laptop via USB), which seem to have consistent connectivity.

But the salesperson there suggested the MiFi. She said connectivity issues are more likely to come up for those using data streaming (e.g., videos, music, etc.) and those out of the 4G range (connectivity will bounce between 3G and 4G). Looking at the map, it seems the main areas I plan on using this had 4G coverage and streaming videos and music are not priority.

So I'm giving it a go--I've got 14 days to try it out and return it if it doesn't work. So far, after a night of voraciously checking out the craft blogs that I haven't read in nearly 2 weeks, it's been dynamite. Keeping my fingers crossed that this little guy is a keeper.

Netflix

Once again, I am late to the party. I joined NetFlix in December (of 2010)--opting for the magical streaming and 1 DVD-out option for the rate of $11/month that everyone raved about. I had been wanting to see a bunch of movies and I've been talking with a friend who watches movies voraciously and has seen dozens of arthouse and foreign films and another friend who I managed to watch the entire first season of "Dexter" with (through her Netflix). In terms of my streaming use and as someone who loves films, I'm disappointed in myself that I haven't watched a single streamed movie completely and have been watching more tv shows. And as much as I'd like to say I've finally seen all the Ken Burns documentaries or caught up on "Lost", or "24", I have to confess that my streaming history reveals episodes of "South Park", "Family Guy", and the "David Chappelle Show" instead.

In another regard, I must be NetFlix's dream customer. I have had the same DVD for months--and if I wanted to follow the rules of rounding, it'd be more accurate to say I've had it for almost a year. And of course, there was the infamous rate hike.

It made big news this summer that NetFlix would start charging $7.99 each for streaming and for 1-DVD-out, raising my current set up to $15.98.  Apparently they're separating the two services into two separate bodies, and will rename the DVD-out entity as "Qwikster".  Yeesh, nothing like actual dollars to make me move my butt and actually watch the DVD that would have been a better value to purchase brand new at Best Buy and then donate it to Goodwill. Twice.

So I've decided to switch to streaming only and maybe when I actually watch more than a movie a month, I'll treat myself and get the 1-DVD-out service as well. But for now, I've got the rest of this month to watch the one DVD I have out now. Don't worry, it's on my to-do list.

Note to self: No more of this peanut spread

This is AWFUL:

Do not ever buy or ingest it again. It tasted like all those special ingredients that scientist warn will cause cancer. The texture was what you imagine termite vomit might be like. Yes, you think Walden Farms caramel sauce isn't too bad but this is NOT that sauce. Additionally, if someone recommends this, make a mental note not to trust that person's taste in food ever again. They have obviously lost all taste bud faculties.

I think I can recommend this shredder

Now that I don't have access to an office shredder, I wanted to order a little home-sized (and home-priced) shredder for all the occasional mail, documents, and expired credit cards, that should be shredded as well as the box of stuff I was overdue on shredding:

I found this Aurora AS810SD model for less than $30 on Amazon (free shipping--hooray!):

It went through that box of stuff pretty quickly, without any jams:

I know that I was supposed to get the kind of shredder that does the cross-cut but they were pricier, larger, and louder. And this was definitely a step up from my previous identity theft prevention measure: tearing up a document and putting the various hand-torn pieces in different garbage receptacles in the house.

But I did add this measure:

Adding coffee grinds and other garbage juice to marinate my shreds.

On a side note, for those that are wondering why I'm not recycling the shreds--our recycling system resembles a big unlidded plastic tub where everything (specific plastics, glass, and paper) goes. One reason I don't put these shreds in the bin is that they just might fly out of the tub, littering the neighborhood. Another is adding the annoying task, of pulling the paper shreds off the plastic and glass, to the recycling driver who sorts all the glass, plastic, and paper by hand into the separate bins on his truck. And finally, in the big, practiced scheme of things, it will be very onesie-twosie each week--just enough shredding to cling to a bottle and annoy the recycler.

Anyhoo, unless this thing craps out or spontaneously combusts soon, I give this shredder a B+. Great value, great size for home use--just wished it cross-cut.

Salt Water Cleanse

A friend at work has been encouraging me to try a salt water cleanse for a while. It's basically drinking a quart of salt water and it's supposed to clean out your system and all the junk in it as it passes (and EXITS) through your digestive system. She gave me the right amount of sea salt and instructions and I decided to give it a go last night after ice cream.

First of all, drinking this salt water was disgustingly hard. You know that scene in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" when Harry (under Dumbledore's instruction) is forcing Dumbledore to drink that crappy liquid when they're in that scary cave and Dumbledore is begging him to stop? That's what it was like. I had to pour out this quart of water into a drinking glass, forcing myself to finish it, then pour another glass. Multiple times. It felt like endless punishment.

When I finished I waited. My friend and others who tried it said it took about an hour before I'd feel the need to go to the bathroom and let the salt water work its cleansing magic.

Unfortunately, it appears I have a high enough tolerance to salt water where, except for a few tummy gurgles, I never hit that peak and that explosive purge of all the junk in my system never came. I went to sleep pretty disappointed.

Worse, waking up I realized that my tolerance to salt water wasn't high enough to extinguish my crazy thirst when I woke up as I literally was drinking out of my bathroom faucet when I woke up. And even worse, it did not diminish my ability to retain water and bloat up. I woke up this morning looking like I spent the night crying while eating bacon and potato chips. Now I'm off to find the loosest pants and hope I can squeeze my puffy feet into my shoes.

Salt Water Cleanse (for me): EPIC fail.

These Crunchy Curls

were disappointing.

Not sure what possessed me to think that a food distinctly described as a "lentil and potato snack" would be awesome accompanying late night tv watching. I thought tasty and healthy? I can't lose!

Ugh. They really need to take out the word "tasty". These curls were unbelievably bland for something described as a "snack". They needed...oh, I don't know, salt, seasoning, and flavor.

Bummer. Treader Joe's rarely lets me down.

Two Boots

I happened to be in Target for Easter candy shopping and I came across their Liberty of London line. I love, love, LOVE the graphics. They have some clothes which I adored but were made for bodies more mature than my daughter's and a lot less heavier than mine. So I settled on some rain boots:

I think they make the outfit much more fetching, right?

And yes, I got a pair for myself:

And we wore them yesterday, the one "rainy" April day (or at least it was forecasted) here in Southern California.

Is it just me?

Or does this Kay Jewelers commercial really miss the mark?



Where to begin? How about the setup? The commercial opens up on a crack of lightning as it reveals a lonely abode in the middle of the woods. Sound familiar? Maybe because it's reminiscent of the opening of Scream. Anyone else smelling the burning Jiffy Pop on the stove? Anyone else yelling Run, girl, run! at the screen? It doesn't help that the man's low vocal tones read more creepy crank caller than soothing sweetheart.

The kicker of course is, after another crack of lightning, the frightened female reactively clings to the man. He slyly chuckles, I'm right here. And on a dime, he drops his smile and tone, and channeling a voice better suited for a character dubbed "The Collector" or "The Obsessed One", menacingly murmurs, And I always will be.

OMG! Girl, why aren't you running? Grab a flaming log, throw it behind you and run down those stairs and into the woods!

What is it with this commercial? Does our obsessed kidnapper need to shave? Or is it the tight angle that does him no favors? I guess the angle is meant to capture her reaction but of course, coupled with his dark tone, her face reads as nervous trepidation. And I know it's not just me because even the guy who posted the commercial dubs it "Every Kiss Begins with...STAB!"

The only thing that briefly relieves us is the canned footage of the Kay jewelers store in some milquetoast mall coupled with the catalog page of the featured necklace, somewhat ironically entitled "Love's Embrace". Why don't they just ice this cake and call it "Love's Lock" or "Love's Grip" at this point? When she responds, Don't let go...ever, is anyone else thinking Stockholm syndrome?

Run, girl, run.

Ech. Good luck with the sales on this one, Kay.

iTunes - can I enter the clubhouse?

Last spring, I lucked out and got an iPhone through work. I have yet to load songs on to it because God help me, iTunes is a b!tch. I'll take the blame and say I must have done something wrong on this uber "user-friendly" application, but right now, I'm pretty sure I want to wipe that smug smile off Justin Long's face on those Mac commercials.

I thought all I had to do was install iTunes and go through their steps to put the music currently on my computer into the iTunes library. For some reason, some of my songs were put on their twice--I'd open an album and each song was literally listed two times. Plus I've got a number of songs with exclamation points saying I've got to point them to the song's location and when I do--it disappears from the album (yet starts playing).

And I still haven't gotten the songs on my iPhone yet--because it says I've got 34 GB of music (when I originally had 18). So now I'm combing through each album and deleting duplicate files from my iTunes library. And by the way--it's listing a lot of single songs as an album, which adds an extra step. Isn't there an option to sort these by album, artist, or song instead of simply just "music"?

Look I am ready to heart Apple (mad love for the other features on my iPhone), but iTunes won't let me. It's like I'm missing some steps or passwords.

I want in! So if anybody has insight on my user errors, I'm all ears.

Good & Fiery

One of my fave, fave candies is Good & Plenty. So I was game when Paul found a new addition to the family, Good & Fiery:

Now he's more of a Hot Tamale fan than me, but I thought the makers of Good & Plenty couldn't go wrong.

Ech, I was wrong. I'm apparently not the niche target they were planning on marketing this to. The combo of the artificial fruit flavors with spicy fire felt like a mistake. Like accidentally ingesting Lemon Pledge while eating a stale cinnamon tic tac. And it wasn't just me. I brought the rest of the box to work and I saw a number of folks try them, only to see their faces scrunch up while they pawed their mouths, like dogs do when they're forced to wear silly hats by their owners.

So unfortunately, despite a promising idea, I have to give Good & Fiery a C-.

It's it

Last Saturday, on my most recent free day, I finally gave in and tried the famous It's It ice cream cookie sandwich. Various folks have strongly recommended it so I finally gave it a try as it was on sale at the grocery store. I tried both the original vanilla:

And the mint:

Both versions are ice cream sandwiched between two oatmeal cookies (no raisins or nuts--thank you!) and thinly enrobed in dark chocolate. A key issue I have with cookie ice cream sandwiches is the cookie must be soft enough to receive a good bite with out squishing out all the ice cream. It's It passed this important test. After that, I enjoyed the taste. What definitely works in their favor is that since I've been eating like a monk for the previous six days, anything desserty or extra carby or fatty seems fabulously decadent and foodgasmic. At first I didn't think the mint would be a good mix with the oatmeal cookie, but it turned out to be an interesting combination that amused the palate. I thoroughly enjoyed the classic combo of the vanilla ice cream and oatmeal cookie with the thin (not overwhelming) coating of dark chocolate.

Overall, I'd give It's It 3 out of 4 stars. It was very good but to be four stars good, I'd pretty much want to eat this every free day and I see myself eyeing other desserts for my next precious free day.

One Dollar Book Store

Over the weekend, I explored the One Dollar Bookstore in Orange with my mother-in-law (aka Nana). She's a pretty voracious reader and I love going to book stores, though I'm drawn more to non-fiction and reference books. She heard some good buzz about this store where each book, whether hardback or softcover, bestseller or not, was one dollar each. It turns out a lot of Yelp reviewers were accurate in describing it like an abandoned grocery store filled with bookcases:

It was a bit overwhelming. I don't know if you can make out the sign that says "Mixed Books" over these shelves, but that says it all:

A lot of reviewers complained that a lot of the books were old (guide to Word 2.0, anyone?) and that you really have to dig around. Again, pretty accurate. Though there were some attempts at having sections, like a brief Computer section and Children's area, for the most part everything was "Mixed Books".

This was one of the better groupings as this was all fiction in the last decade (for the most part):

But going through the rest of the shelves was kind of a mental challenge. As my eye scanned the spines, the titles would jump from "The Lovely Bones" to "Introducing Microwave Cookery" to "Funk and Wagnall's Encyclopedia Volume 24" to "This is the Cocker Spaniel" right after each other. One book was titled "Come Out Fighting". Was this a book on the history of say, boxing? Or a professional fighter's biography? A witty novel? Or an exercise book? Turns out it was a book about coming out as a gay/lesbian.

In the end, I scored a couple of old crafting books as well as this retro school book (I'm totally drawn to these illustrations):

Overall, Nana and I were glad to have fed our curiosity but we're not dying to go back. Our favorite used book store right now is Bookman in Orange--the books cost more but they are really well organized. After the trip to this place, we appreciate that even more.

Save-A-Blade

Until someone pointed it out, I didn't realize that we've bought a lot of stuff off tv. As in "As seen on TV!" stuff.

To our credit we haven't bought everything but enough that folks who visit have remarked on it, like the Table-Mate IIs we have constantly out in the living room. Or the Magic Bullet that we use practically everyday. When I read between the lines of some comments, I hear, I was curious about that product, but I didn't want to be one the suckers who actually bought it.

So I thought, for the benefit of the curious, that I'd try to deliver some reviews of stuff we've bought. As seen on TV!

To kick it off, our most recent purchase: Save-A-Blade.


I didn't realize how much razor blade refills cost until I had to buy them so regularly for Paul (I actually don't use razors myself as I prefer the masochistic options: threading, tweezing, epilating, and occasionally waxing). Anyhoo, it's been eye-opening that these refills cost about (or over!) a dollar each. If it's a brand name refill, Paul says he can get 2 shaves out of 1 refill. Cha-ching! So when I saw the ad for Save-A-Blade, it totally got my attention. At $20, it wouldn't take long for it to make back its money so we tried it out.

The good news is that Paul was pleased that he was able to use a twin blade refill 12 times before he felt it wasn't staying sharp for the amount of time he was running it in the Save-A-Blade. The caveat is they claim you need to start with a new blade and maintain its sharpness rather than try to revive old, dull ones. Paul admits that he was a bit tentative and didn't run the Save-A-Blade as long as he should have in the beginning, but now he feels more comfortable letting it run for a solid 5 seconds as recommended. He does it right after shaving while it's rinsed clean and still wet (as prescribed by the instructions) and I can hear the loud whizzing as he runs the Save-A-Blade on it. Paul also noticed you have to run the Save-A-Blade longer as you try to squeeze more uses out of a refill so he thought 12 was a good point to start with a new refill (got enough re-uses balanced against extra time it was requiring in the Save-A-Blade). He's going to try it next on a refill that has about 5 blades. I'll update if he gets more shaves with this refill, but if we can continue getting 12 shaves per refill, you can color me pleased.

So overall, I give this product a thumbs up. I don't know if one can actually get the "200 shaves from one" refill as promised by the ad, but at the rate we're going, the Save-A-Blade will be earning its keep.