services

Habitica App

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

When I spotted this Habitica App from my Evernote newsletter a little while back, I just had to try this out! It speaks to my GTD kind of personality. I thought my teenagers might like it enough to use it and maybe remove the need for me to “nag” so much!

I downloaded, installed, and registered with this app on Android earlier today. The app is lovely, easy to use, the tour is cute without babying, and the website interface is spectacular. I can see this being a lot of fun (AND productive) for the teens. If I were more of a gamer personality, I would probably really enjoy this myself!

One caution: I wouldn’t recommend this for younger than teenagers since there are chat rooms (taverns) and the like. Here’s more info on the app from Common Sense Media. I’m curious to see if Bark.us* is able to monitor this platform.

New Web Host

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been a member of WPMUDev.org since 2014! I love their blog, their forums, knowledgebase, customer service, and, of course, their plugins and services. Not long ago they started offering dedicated WordPress web hosting. Exciting!! Well, I finally got the chance to give it a test drive. Naturally, this little guinea pig blog is now officially hosted by WPMUDev. So far so good.

I did the site migration manually rather than by automatic means mostly because I wanted all my content, but not necessarily all of the other stuff that I’ve been experimenting with (plugins and the like). Clean slate time!

Because of this decision, I started to receive SPAM comments again! I have a list somewhere of all my standard plugins and Anti-spam Reloaded is one of those. It’s a quiet little plugin that chugs away and keeps me from having to do extra work. I highly recommend it.

Now, I need to go find that list!

Kindle Fire HD 8 MoKo Cases

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

To help with our educational goals (and make use of my giant Kindle library), I purchased 3 Kindle Fire HD 8 tablets on Prime day for the children. I also got these MoKo cases. Both products are great!

My Review of the cases on Amazon:

We got three of these cases. The cases are sturdy, fit well, the kids love them, and they’re pretty. Who could ask for anything more?

Incidentally, my giant Kindle library is largely due to a BookBub subscription. That service is brilliant!

Discovered Ravelry

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

I discovered ravelry.com yesterday, and I got kind of addicted. I never considered organizing my crochet projects. I just picked up some yarn, some hooks and stitched along at whim. I sat down last night crocheting, and my husband asked what I’m making. I replied, “Nothing, I’m just playing.” I had just finished a large Crazy Blanket for my sister and hadn’t really chosen another project just yet.

I picked up crochet a few years ago on a whim. I loved doing counted cross-stitch, but I felt compelled to give it up for something with larger needles (or no needles) with my 3 kids being 3 years old and under. This decision was solidified when I had to tear apart a Thomas the Train pillow to find the needle my son hid in it!

Crochet is fun and fast and I absolutely love it! My grandmother tried to teach me years ago, and more recently I picked up a sample granny square and hook from a friend giving me pointers on how to start. In just a few short years, I taught myself to crochet and have made way more stuff than I thought!

On Ravelry, I’m tripping down memory lane adding my projects and discovering that the yarn I have stashed everywhere in my house is more than I realized!

By the way – while I fiddled with some yarn, I made up my next project: A Granny Square Throw:

I have 5 squares already completed… of course, I stayed up entirely too late! I couldn’t help it. I was on a roll and catching up on old Star Trek Voyager episodes on Netflix. lol – The fifth square I finished up this morning:

I’m not 100% sure what the pattern will be yet, but it will be these two yarns – the solid blue and the “Banana Berry Print” variegated yarn.