Family Alive

Brian, Kristine, Analise, and Josiah Toone

Shopping deals… without leaving the couch!

26th November 2009

Ok, there are too many of these that are too good not to share!  Surely you’ve got some photos you can use for these deals…

  • The iPhone Blog notes that a great password app, 1Password, is FREE until December 1st.
  • Freebies 4 Mom has a code for 50 free photo cards from SeeHere.com … I’m making ours right now with today’s family pictures!  This code expires at midnight on Nov. 30th.
  • Freebies 4 Mom also has info about a free photobook from Photoworks.com, courtesy of The Bonnie Hunt Show.  Photobooks can be tedious to create online, and comments on the post show that the website has been slow.  There are only 25,000 free books available, and you can’t know if you’ll get it for free until you go to checkout with the promo code.  With all those disclosures aside, I’ve used Photoworks.com before, and I’m always impressed with their high quality and excellent service.  I’m going to try to create mine tonight.  And shipping is free, too!  I’ve made several photobooks recently, and it’s getting me a bit more caught up on archiving our many family memories!
  • Canvas People is offering a free 8×10 canvas (pay shipping, $15) or $55 off any other size canvas.
  • I’m about ready to click “Buy” on an Amazon shopping cart with about 80% of the Christmas gifts I need to buy.  Another 10% are already bought.  The last 10% aren’t figured out yet.  Maybe I’d better browse a bit more… The deals at Amazon are great, though!  No need to head to the store where I’d surely find more to buy than I needed to!

Posted in iPhone | 1 Comment »

On the Road! The South Carolina Beach

8th June 2009

We’ve just figured out how to post to our blog from the iPhone, so you can look forward to more blog updates while we’re on the road. And they’ll be short and sweet with the finger-typing, and probably include photos from my handy little camera phone. Yeah for the iPhone Worsdress app!

We were in SC this weekend for, of course, bike races, as well as a side trip to see Brian’s grandmother today. Brian got second in Sunday’s rainy road race (after winning last weekend’s road race in Dahlonega, GA! See details and photos at his Toone Cycling blog!). We also squeezed in an afternoon at the beautiful Hunting Island Beach yesterday. Here’s a couple pics from our time there.

Posted in Adventure, iPhone, Travel | 1 Comment »

So I got…

9th May 2009

an iPhone 🙂  I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, because I really DON’T want to “keep up with the Jones'”.  But we’ve mulled it over for a very long time, and finally took the plunge.  We have never had internet on our phones before, so that is the REAL exciting part.  I can tell lost of pre-iPhone stories about pulling off the Interstate to find a hotel with wi-fi, digging out our huge laptop, hoping the battery wasn’t dead, trying to find an email or look something up online.  We’ve always joked about how there needed to be an “internet superhighway” that we could connect to while driving.  Lo and behold, we’ve finally found the Internet Superhighway with our iPhone.

It’s already proved itself invaluable to me.  On my recent trip to Indiana, I lugged my laptop along, but aside from my family checking their email, I didn’t really use it.  My mail and the internet were right in my plam, and man, was that nice!  And on our recent trip to Athens, GA, we didn’t even bother to take the laptop (which is unheard of for us!) because we knew Brian wasn’t going to work, and we were able to do everything we wanted on the phone.  I particularly like being able to find restaurants and Starbucks that are close to wherever we are AND get turn-by-turn directions from our exact location.  Last weekend was plagued with really bad weather, and I was able to keep close tabs on the storms, and we ducked into a restaurant just as the worst of things passed over us.  Simple pleasures 🙂

I’ll skip the technical review except to say that I love it.  The kids love it too, and they’ve very quickly learned how to play their favorite apps that I’ve downloaded.  Analise said to me on one of the first days we had it, “Mommy, can you load-down some more games?  I’m bored.”  And when they’re playing on it, it’s very difficult to get it back.  But it’s served us well at the doctor’s office and waiting at restaurants with games and videos.

I have a few links I wanted to post, in case you’ve got an iPhone, too…  I’ll probably check back in and review my favorite apps, too.

Posted in iPhone | 1 Comment »