Hip to be Mom» Gadgets & geekery

Sunday Shopping – Valentine’s Day gifts for the tech-toting teen or woman

Clairity — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:55:35 +0000

Be&D Turnlock Flap Ipad Case – Canvas (Lemongrass)
Love, love, love this color and design.

Budd Leather Small Lizard Calf Cell Phone Wristlet
Very cute and practical. Perfect for the pink lover.

cinda b eTablet Cover (Roundabout Red)
Very striking colors.

Lodis Vegas SmartPhone Case (Vegas Lime)
This is my absolute favorite. Thinking of getting one for my new iPhone 4S.

Lodis Siren E-Reader Envelope (Siren Ruby)
Fits the Kindle, Kobo, nook, Sony Reader and select other e-readers and tablets. Doubles as a sleek envelope clutch too.

For a limited time only, save on cases for iPad, Kindle and Kindle Fire.

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Where’ve I been?

Clairity — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:38:09 +0000

If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been, I’ve been, um, under the hood, so to speak. A couple of my blogs broke while I was moving them around so I had to dive in. A return to my geeky past. I manage everything myself so when something, anything breaks, I’m the one to fix it.

If time had permitted, I would’ve used the opportunity to get my girls to get their hands dirty. A little ~~grease~~ geek never hurt, especially if you’re a girl. Well, maybe next time. It’s been a while since I’ve had to get geeky myself. I’ve missed rolling up my sleeves and getting elbow-deep in code, DNS and IPs. It’s hard to describe but how about this?

6 reasons to be excited and 1 not to be

Clairity — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 13:17:41 +0000

First, the good news. This morning, I looked out the window and all the stars were aligned in the dawn sky. Tis the perfect day to head to the gym with Raine. We worked our butts off (literally), came home, rolled up our sleeves and started baking.

Within an hour and a half, we had the first 4 reasons to be excited. We were done baking 2 loaves of wholemeal bread and 1 carrot cake, and making the batter for pumpkin pancakes. Easy-peasy, right?

Oh, a friend brought us practically half a fresh produce sectionful of seasonal fruits and veggies from his farm. What were we going to do with all those carrots?

But apparently the carrot power was just a little too much for my fingernail and IT BROKE!! *sobs* That’s the bad news.

I hate, hate, hate breaking my nails, grrr! I had to rush upstairs, remove my nail polish right away and cut all my other nails short to match. Bummer! On the brighter side, surely that must mean I’m now qualified for the handicap parking spot (Reason #5 maybe)?

They say that everything happens for a reason. So I’m thinking maybe, just maybe, breaking my nail might have something to do with my spanking new iPhone 4S. Since I got it last weekend, I’ve wasted a few hours of my life rekeying all my phone contacts from scratch.

In the process, I’ve noticed how my long nail was getting in the way because now I have to use my fingertip instead of my fingernail to type. Yup, I’m sure that’s how I weakened my nail causing it to break today. Oh well!! Sometimes you ask for an orange and life gives you an Apple *shrug*.

Incidentally, these incredibly clear food pix were taken with my new phone (Reason #6) which looks like the billion other iPhones out there that a billion of you already have. So I’m late to the party again, huh?

Phones, Puck and clackers

Clairity — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 15:09:25 +0000

After an entire afternoon of biscotti baking adventures with my girls, the oxygen level in my brain is pretty low right now. This probably isn’t the best time to be writing posts because I tend to ramble when I’m tired and then I’ll start going on about gifts for boys when I’m supposed to be commenting on some news I’ve just come across.

1. iPhone commits suicide on a Qantas flight? You’re kidding me, right? As you know, I’ve been toying around with which smartphone to buy since my beloved pocket PC is cranking up. So now should I rightly be thinking twice about that iPhone, you think?

2. Finally some chef person, Wolfgang Puck, I think is his name, has come out and said he doesn’t care for Starbucks coffee. Now that’s some guts, I tell ya, going against the grain like that. I mean there are so many popular names out there that I really don’t care for but if I’d been the one to come out and say that, I’d have people on my back bashing me up.

3. Funny as this may sound, some folks I know are still in typewriter mode. For some strange reason, they think Microsoft Word is the latest model typewriter. Um, sorry to bust your bubble but Word can do a ton, and I mean a ton, of stuff that your regular old clacker can’t. So listen up, you gotta roll with the times, peeps!

Of dead phones, French movies and writing late into the night

Clairity — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:11:16 +0000

I’m not one for numbers but 11.11.11 does look pretty cool… and just for the heck of it, I’m going to post this at 11.11 o’clock since this date only rolls around once every 100 years. As for what’s been happening in the days leading up to today, read on.

First off, my pocket PC decided to give up the ghost. It crashed once, twice, a few more times and that’s it, pretty much! So I’m officially disconnected from the whole world. Have been since last Friday. What a lonely place to be! Never thought I’d say this but hee-lp, I need a new phone – bad – considering the amount of texting that goes back and forth to synchronize our (Raine’s and mine) college schedules.

And that new phone I’m looking for -right now, it’s a toss-up between the iPhone 4S and the Samsung Galaxy S (which phone do you have and what do you like about it?), both of which are, by the way, out of stock right now.

What a bummer! To sweeten things up, the girls and I stayed up one night to watch a French movie. It wasn’t supposed to be a funny movie but it cracked us up so much the neighbors must’ve thought we’d gone completely off our rockers. I’ve not laughed so hard – in a long time. We couldn’t understand a single word of it but the incredibly stupid subtitles (which made no sense whatsoever) sent us ROTFLMOAO. Watched a foreign movie lately?

Oh, remember I mentioned I won’t be attempting NaNoWriMo this year? Well, guess what? My girls have ganged up and sweet-talked me into joining them, and after 3 days, I’ve only managed to crank out a measly 1,038 words. Raine has raced ahead to 21,855 and Skye has 5,738 words to her credit. I know, I’m in trouble . My story isn’t even much of anything right now. Expect me to be sitting here into the wee hours of the morning (aka 10:30pm) trying to cough something ~~intelligible~~ out.

Tracfone for the family that needs to stay in touch

Clairity — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 13:16:16 +0000

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of TracFone for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

With 3 teens in the house, I’m constantly in search of an ever more affordable cell phone plan with ever better features. Yup, whatever saves me money and keeps the teens happy is what makes me happy.

So when Tracfone came out with these fabulous phone plans with no contracts, no credit checks and no activation or cancelation fees, I was going, hey, maybe somebody finally heard me! They have feature-packed phones with everything I want my teens to have on a phone for as low as $29.99.

As for the monthly plans, you can either pay as you go or grab a card from most retail stores around, and the rates really work out to be affordable. They also offer the only wireless service that allows you to connect internationally for the same price as a regular call.

Since we do travel quite a bit and have family spread out across the globe, I love the fact that we can call 60+ global destinations at no extra cost. Well, there are�So many features with these phone plans it’s going to take me a while to digest them all.

Go check out the video below to find out what Real TracFone customers, most of them parents, have to say about how TracFone has worked for their families.