I’m Getting Rid of All of My Bottles

(cross posted from www.civil3drocks.com)

While I try to be sensitive to chemicals and such in my house by using natural cleaners and buying organic food when it makes sense, I haven’t been panicked about the whole BPA in Baby Bottles thing yet. Until a few weeks ago when Canada took action. When babies are small, I don’t use too many bottles at my house, but lately he’s been drinking four or more 6 oz bottles per day, and he starts daycare next month.

I’ve read up. I’ve done my thinking, and I’ve decided to clean house and buy a small quantity of BPA free bottles BPA-free Bottles, Sippy Cups and Otherwise.

For all of you geeky parents out there, there is a fun photo pool on Flickr for reuse ideas for all of these BPA bottles. It’s been mentioned on a few of my favorite geek parent sites including Baby Toolkit and GeekDad. These bottles tend to stack up nicely, are almost unbreakable, take a sharpie well, and are otherwise a great container for all kinds of little things (as long as they don’t wind up in your belly.)

Here are my ideas:

I always try to grab a few crayons for restaurant use, but the ziplock baggy and Rubbermaid containers tend to get crushed. These bottles are the perfect size for a handful.

Most of you who know me know that I travel with a stash of staedtlers, HB, rubberbands, paperclips, staples, binder clips, USB devices, mouse adapters, earbuds, you get the idea.

Other ideas: Change for the vending machine; odd buttons; spare keys; matches; camping odds and ends that usually wind up wet; a mini-first aid kit with band-aids; ointment, etc.; dry dog treats for the park; metal bits in your carry on luggage that you want to keep together and throw in the bin; crushable liquid containers for your carry-on; and so much more.

Using Internet Tools to Share Photos: Part I, Picasa

When my daughter was born, we were so excited that we could send photographs through email later that day when my husband went home with the digital camera. (When my son was born a few months ago, relatives and friends had photos in their hands within a few minutes. I had set up a mailing list on my pocketpc and took a picture with its camera feature.)

Once we got home and settled with our first baby, the weaknesses of sharing photographs by email became apparent. First of all, you have to know everyone’s email address. My relatives seem to move and change emails all the time, and I am pretty bad about updating my contacts list. Another thing is that you have to resize your photos to be small enough to send, and pick and choose only a few. Even then, Aunt Susie who is still on dial up might have a problem getting your files. Also, you have to figure out which ones of your friends and family actually want to get pictures from you. Most relatives wouldn’t mind seeing the kid a few times a month, but a daily picture email would make their eyes roll. But then you get the grandparents who wouldn’t mind checking out new photos hourly if possible. I needed another solution.

Photo organizing and sharing services come in a few flavors. Some are geared primarily for sharing photographs, some are gear primarily towards making prints and photo products.

Over the next week or so, I will post some instructions on how to use three photo services: Picasa, Flickr and . All of these services are free (though both Google/Picasa and Flickr can be upgraded with extra features for a small fee.) I’ll give you the skinny on ease of use, sharing, privacy, features and my recommendations for which one might be right for you. Later on, I’ll talk about how to use blogs as a way to record your family stories and add photos from these services to your blog.

In brief, I like Flickr for sharing photographs and Shutterfly for making prints. We’ll talk about Flickr later, but the main reason I chose it is because when I started my personal photosharing, it was the only service in town that didn’t require a password for people to view my images. If I was starting it today, I would probably use Picasa.

Let’s start with Picasa. Picasa is a Google tool. Google tools are typically extremely easy to use and very intuitive. Picasa is different from most photo services in that there is a little program you need to download. The Picasa program is extremely handy, and even if you decide not to use the online tools, you’ll like having Picasa on your computer. I like using the online tools as well for ease of sharing and as a backup.

Click below to keep reading…

Read more…

Our Shutteryfly Calendars are Here!

While I prefer Flickr for photosharing (more on that later), I adore  for things like Photo Christmas Cards, Birth Announcements, Calendars, mugs, etc. They have a lot to choose from, easy editing tools and very, very fast turn around. Our Christmas gift calendars to the family came out very cute. I was able to add birthdays, photos, special occasions and any other date I could remember (of course I forget Prospector’s birthday though!)

Birth announcement cards, personalized baby Photo Books, and more at Shutterfly.