wishing you a...

What my smartphone does for me...

Before I begin,

I want to wish all of you a very Happy New Year!

May your new year be filled with heath, joy and happiness!!!

What does my smartphone do for me you may ask.  Well....

How about lessen the load that I carry around each day to and from work!

This is what I used to carry around every single day and I tell you, if you felt how heavy my bag was you'd say I was crazy LOL  A book to read, a notebook, a planner, a checkbook - all essentials that I can't leave home without.  I first made the switch from regular books to a Kindle with I loved, but I swore I would never give up my planner or making lists in my notebook or keeping a traditional checkbook.

Well I've now replaced all the above with this...

My new lightweight Samsung Galaxy 2II and some awesome apps that I'd love to share with you all.

{these are all Android apps}

Cozi Family Organizer

Free shared calendar and lists. Voted #1 Practical App for Moms by Babble.

Cozi makes your phone the ultimate family organizer with a centralized calendar, shopping lists, to do lists and a family journal the whole family can share on the go.

I love this and I never thought I would.  You can set up a calendar for each person in your family and all the information is shared between each family member.

Kindle for Android

Kindle books on your phone including thousands of free books. No Kindle required.

Read books on your phone, including thousands of free Kindle books. The Kindle app puts over a million books at your fingertips. It’s the app for every reader, whether you’re a book reader, magazine reader, or newspaper reader—and you don’t need to own a Kindle to use it. Choose from over a million Kindle books from the Kindle Store or enjoy popular magazines like The Economist and Reader’s Digest with high-resolution color images.

My old Kindle got messed up, something must have pressed up against it and it has lines running thru the top.  I was contemplating getting the new Kindle Fire, but my girlfriend got it and found out it has no 3G service like our old one had.  So I decided to upgrade to the Galaxy and I download the Kindle app. It syncs right up to my account so I'm able to access all my old books.  It's awesome, especially with the big screen.

Zinio

Zinio is the premier app for magazines on Android, giving readers immediate access to thousands of global titles. Read and download single issues or subscriptions of your favorite magazines and sync your library to your home computer, smart phone and tablet seamlessly. Keep up with trending topics and stories from magazines like Rolling Stone, The Economist, Hello!, US Weekly, T3, Macworld, Travel + Leisure and many more.

I signed up and got 5 free mazagines plus $25 to spend in the store, which I used for a copy of Cloth Paper Scissors Pages and ScrapBook Inspirations-Ideas Book 2nd Edition.  I have to say I'm not that crazy about magazines anymore and I think this app would be better with a tablet instead of on the phone, just because of the size of the screen.  You have to zoom in and out but it serves it's purpose.

Checkbook (free)

Stay on top of your finances from anywhere using your mobile device.

Enter in your withdrawals and credits and it adds and subtracts your balance automatically.

Mini Paper Widget

This app puts a yellow sticky note on your phone, you can add lists of what you need at the store - anything really.

Camera Apps

There are so many that I like,

Paper Camera

Pixlr-o-Matic

Camera Effects

Lightbox

Vingette

Oh and I heard that Instagram is coming to Android!!!!

I'm so excited!



Have an awesome holiday weekend.  I'm so glad it's a three day weekend.

Hugs, Marlene

December Daily 2011 completed

Yeah I finally finished my December Daily 2011 album.

If you'd like to see my album in more detail click here

Hugs, Marlene

Christmas is over already???

Hello!!!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas holiday.

I can't believe it's over already, after all the planning, wrapping and cooking LOL

My family and I had a wonderful Christmas.

I love all the presents I received, my whole family spoiled me silly.

But most importantly I'm so grateful for all the blessings in my life.

I know a lot of people are struggling financially and I'm so grateful for my job and the genorosity of my bosses and company and also that my family is healthy and holding their own.

This is my family - don't we all look crazy LOL

Every year we always take turns wearing the reindeer antlers, it's so fun!!!

Wishing you...

and your family a very

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday filled with joy and cheer!

December Daily 2011: Days 14 to 20

Well hello again!

I'm here to share some more DD pages, so here we go...

Day 14: sharing my love of eggnog :)

Day 15: I was home that day and we got all the house cleaning done.

Day 16: I was home again {using up my vacation days}.  Spent almost the entire day wrapping gifts.

Days 17 & 18: the weekend was so busy and fun.  Had dinner at Charlie Browns to celebrate my Dad's birthday with my sister's family.

Day 19: Max got to go on a trip to Michael's school today!  The figure was cut out from a Trader Joe's bag.

Day 20: a Christmas Countdown :)  I put a little mustache on my gingerbread guy - he's so cute.

Thanks so much for stopping by :)

My word for 2012 is...

{continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition : the action or condition or an instance of persevering : steadfastness }

My word for 2011 was GOAL.  Now that it's December I can't say that I've reached the goals that I set but I did learn a lot of lessons about myself.  My main goal was to loose weight, you may even remember that I was posting about my weight goals throughout the year.  I started the year off great and lost around 20 lbs.  And then I just quit, I can't say why.  Plus on top of that I gained all the weight back.  I do know that I have this tendancy to start out with things really strong and then I just loose steam fast.  But I learned that I can do it, it is possible. 

So that is why I picked my new word for 2012 - Perseverance!

I need to keep continuing in my efforts, even if I fail - I need steadfastness.

On November 30 I started back on Weight Watchers Points Plus program.

I've been eating healthier and journaling my points every day.  I weighed in today and lost 5 lbs so far.

I have 45 more to go.  I think I'm on a good track right now :)

So have you picked out a word for 2012?

Please share!!!

December Daily 2011 Days 9 to 13

Happy Tuesday!!!

I'm back again with some more photos of my December Daily.

Day 9 - took some pictures of Downtown NYC.  I printed these photos with my Polariod Pogo and I have to say I'm not happy with them.  For some reason all the photos get streaks on them if you print lots of prints at a time.  I'll have to look into what I can do to fix it.  Maybe one day I'll get a better portable printer.  So I just had to make due with the crummy print quality until I get to Staples and buy more ink.

Day 10 - SING at PRHS!  It was so much fun, I'm so proud of my son.  They all did such a terrific job.  I added a pocket page to keep the program in. 

Day 11 - my Dad's birthday!  Got some shots with the Polariod Instax of me and the boys.  Max is big into drawing lately, I had to get him a larger sketch pad.

{sorry for the glare}

Day 12 - nothing much going on so I thought I'd do a page on what I'm grateful for :)

Day 13 - I love this picture that Maxwell drew for me.  He's been drawing certain items from around the house and I asked him to draw my nutcracker that I have on my dresser.  I think he did a fab job on it.

Have a great day and thanks for looking! xxx Marlene

December Daily 2011 - Days 6-8

Happy Friday!!!  I'm back again to share three more days from my December Daily.  Oh and quess what?  I found my charger for my Polariod Pogo Printer!!!  I had called up Polariod and to get a new one costs $29.99 plus shipping which is outrageous when the printer itself is around $40.  Well, I'm just happy that I found it.

Day 6 - I've been keeping a list of different ideas that I've found around the web for days when there's nothing special going on.  I glued a tag onto a regular sheet of paper and ran it thru my printer - super easy.

Day 7 - Some of the shows that me and Max have been watching this week.  I can't believe how funny the Grinch movie was, I don't remember it being so funny last year LOL  These tiny pictures were printed with my Polariod Pogo.

Day 8 - another day with nothing going on and I didn't have any special pictures to print.  I've been looking for some new cookie ideas and decided to do a page on that.

Hope you all have a great weekend!  I'm so looking forward to mine.  My oldest son Michael is having his high school musical competition {SING} this weekend.  I can't wait to go see it tomorrow night, he's been working so hard on this. 

If you guys have any favorite cookie recipies please share :)

Hugs, Marlene

December Daily update...

My December Daily album is currently up to date... finally LOL  I've spent this morning getting my last pages finished up and I just love working on this album every year, it's just so much fun.  I'm bummed out cause I went to print pictures last night I saw that my ink is low and my photo paper is almost gone, and was just in Staples this weekend.  I think I'm going to have to use my Instax camera for a couple of days.  Plus I have a Pogo printer but I can't find the charging cord anywhere...ugh.

Anyways, let me share my pages...

I fixed up the cover a little more from the last time I posted.  I added some Dear Lizzie Christmas line ribbons to the rings and the year.  All the papers in this album are Dear Lizzie Christmas and Hambly.

Day 1 - I decorated my desk at work.

Day 2 - my cute little Christmas tree.

Day 3 - full sized photo of the boys.

Day 4 - 25 Days of Christmas schedule included in the pocket page.

Days 3 & 4 - I added a baseball trading card page for extra pictures for both days.

Day 5 - I added the envelope that the stamps came in from the post office and one of our Christmas card for this year with some journaling.

Thanks for taking a peak.  

Are any of you doing December Daily this December?  I'd love to see your albums if you are.

Have a wonderful week! xxx Marlene