Creative, Crafty and Cool

Just stumbled upon The Creative Maven – wow! What a great resource! She is creative and a maven, as advertised, and she writes well and she is funny, too. I am fascinated with How to Re-Upholster a Wingback Chair.  I may not (okay – full disclosure – will never) attempt this particular project but there are some smaller (hopefully easier) chairs that I would like to try.

Great DIY tips – The Maven patches jeans, makes a painted umbrella stand  and she gives tutorials on the stuff she does so you can actually attempt them with a hope of success.

I found this site through Today’s Creative Blog which is moving to from Blogger to WordPress so may be down but back up soon.

Then, ‘cuz I am such a computer whiz, I also found ModPodgeRocks which it does. Rock, I mean.Great decoupage projects and I just bought a giant container of the stuff. Love it. I have only decoupaged a table and the inside of a cabinet –

but would willingly decoupage almost anything. Maybe I should go look at this site for ideas first before I completely cover our house in decoupaged items.

smart phones and apps

My day begins with a cup of tea, a glance at the Boston Globe (the Sox won) then an email check (maybe some on-line dawdling, I mean social media) and then getting kids off to camp, lunches, carpool and all. It does not (yet) involve a smart phone but I think that is about to change. Hiawatha Bray, the great tech columnist for the Globe (he was introduced to our school group during a tour of the Globe last year and is very funny, too), has a column in today’s Globe about smart phones and Google’s Android operating system. Basically you can either get an iPhone (but with service only through A T & T) or any other smart phone (Samsung and Dell are featured) through any other carrier. Read more here.

Then, in my inbox was an email from a friend (okay, I was messing around with her iPhone yesterday) about a site called MomswithApps.com. Great site for developers of apps and families who want good family friendly apps.

From the site :  In November of 2009, four moms (who connected over Twitter) got on the phone to talk about their apps, how they were marketing them, and how they could work together to help spread the word. They decided to form a Google Group, and invited other mom developers to join. It quickly became a discussion, brainstorming and marketing forum about family-friendly apps. How do you successfully launch an app? What should you price it? How are you making your app compatible with iPad? You get the drill.

Besides the moms, there were also dads, aunts, grandmas and reviewers who came on board. With critical mass they launched the Moms With Apps blog, which focuses on articles about kids, technology, developers, and weekly featured apps. Over the last 9 months (no pun intended) the group has attracted over 100 parent and family-friendly developers, in addition to app reviewers and industry specialists.

There are apps for reading, apps for learning, apps for travel ( I am playing with MomMaps this morning), apps for parents, apps for fun & creativity, and apps for special needs. On Friday, they feature an app that anyone – you don’t have to be a developer – can submit – so send them your favorite app. Here is the email address: momswithapps@gmail.com. A great site – well organized and thoughtful with cool age appropriate apps.

BlogCatalog

I just was adding my blog to blog directories – and this popped up as a post. Since I really wasn’t planning on writing about this I will just refer you to this blog Thomas Shea http://8k53d.th8.us/ where I got the directories to list my blog in…bloggapedia, blog catalog, bloghub and blogarama. It is a good idea to do this and they are free – you can pay for an upgrade, too, and one or two (I forget, it was late) work as sites to connect with other bloggers. I will let you know more when I figure it out.

It is Camp Mom week and today we cleaned Mommy Car ( I am the best Mom ever!), bought a vacuum (more tremendous fun), had pizza at The Upper Crust (getting better), went to a (double) swim birthday party (decidedly better), had a terrific dinner from Whole Foods – the fresh pasta bar in Dedham at Legacy Place – watered all of the plants we said we would water for friends, walked the dog three or more times. I did do some work tonight – cleaned up twitter and messed with some social media.

What I did not do: choose a computer (mac or pc? desktop or laptop…suggestions welcome), buy a car or in any way darken the door of a car dealership, move my blog to wordpress.org…no change for you, dear reader,  but it is a big deal for me.

Anyway, that’s all.

Update: I wrote this assuming that I had posted Epic Fail – a post I started a few days ago.

get your tone right and go to a meetup for mashable

Here are some new things to check out:

A computer add-on or app that makes sure you are not too – em, inappropriate in your emails – http://www.tonecheck.com/

A Mashable meet-up on Lansdowne Street  tonight – Social media types – get going! http://www.meetup.com/mashable

Have fun – I will be harvesting vegetables and trying to come up with a good recipe using stuff I did not choose…