How many times have you tried to grab your baby’s attention by desperately waving your hands in the air while making kooky sounds? I know I’ve had plenty of those moments. I even had Greg stand behind me making funny faces to get Boogie to look at the camera. The ShutterBuddy is an innovative products used to grab an infant’s attention during a photoshoot. It’s checkboard pattern grabs and holds an infant’s attention long enough to capture the perfect shot. The ShutterBuddy works well with infants up to 9 months of age and fits over the lens of most digital cameras. On DSLRs, the fit may be tight. Here’s what the ShutterBuddy looks like on my 50mm lens.
As you can see, it is obstructing the built in flash. Since I use the Lightscoop to bounce the flash backwards, it isn’t an issue. The ShutterBuddy is a great addition to my collection of camera equipment. It will definitely come in handy when photographing babies.
She fullfilled her her mandatory entry:
New comment on your post #3058 “We’re giving away an HP TouchSmart 600. Just sayin’.” Author: lisa Comment: I love the HD as well as the 2 Duo processor. I wold love to own this computer.
She won with her daily tweet:
Win an HP TouchSmart 600 from @mommydaddyblog and @hpdirect ! http://tinyurl.com/yf82wld #hp #computers #gadgets
When I first got my smart phone, I became so used to touching the screen that I would accidentally touch the screen on my laptop. This happened a few times in public and I felt like an idiot. The thought of being able to navigate through my personal computer by touching the monitor was a sweet idea, I thought. Unfortunately, HP beat me to bringing that idea to life with their the HP TouchSmart 600 PC.
The HP TouchSmart 600 is definitely on my wishlist. I’m all about space saving. I hate clunky items. The HP TouchSmart provides everything that would be housed in a traditional tower in what is about the size of a flat panel monitor. The sleek design and the ability to get rid of my mouse instantly won me over. There are lots of features I’d love to try out, like Windows 7 and the touch enabled entertainment apps all in HD quality, or even taking a stab at illustrating since I could draw directly on the monitor. Since I have yet to try out the HP TouchSmart 600, I’ll let HP do the rest of the talking!
Giveaway
The very generous folks at HP have provided us with an HP TouchSmart 600 to give away to one Mommy Daddy Blog reader! Yes, you read right, we are giving away an HP Touchsmart 600 computer to one of YOU! Lets proceed to the rules!
Mandatory Entry: Learn about the HP TouchSmart 600 and leave a comment stating a feature that makes you drool.
Extra Entry (worth 1 entry): Grab the button and place it on your blog. Leave a comment letting me know that you’ve done so.
Extra Entry (worth 1 entry):Follow @hp_pc on Twitter. Leave an additional comment with your Twitter name letting me know that you’ve done so.
Extra Entry (worth 1 entry): Become a fan of HP for Home (United States) on Facebook. Be sure to post on their wall letting them know that Mommy Daddy Blog sent you!
Extra Entry (worth 1 entry):Follow @mommydaddyblog on Twitter. Leave an additional comment with your twitter name letting me know that you’ve done so.
Extra Entry (worth 1 entry): Become a fan of Mommy Daddy Blog on Facebook. Leave a comment with your Facebook name or URL.
Extra Entry (worth 1 entry): Subscribe to our Buzz feed. Leave a separate comment letting me know that you have done so.
Extra Entry (worth 1 entry): Tweet about this giveaway and leave an additional comment linking to your tweet (how to link directly to a tweet). You can write whatever you’d like or you can copy and paste the text provided below. You can do this once a day, just make sure you come back and leave a comment to your tweet each time you tweet!
This giveaway will run until December 15th, 2009 at 7PM CST.
Don’t forget to enter our Big Holiday Giveaway To Help Needy Families! We’re giving away an Epson Artisan 810 printer, toys from Hasbro and Playskool as well as some other awesome prizes!
Help Us Feed Needy Families!
This year, we are using our Holiday Gift Guide to help raise money for our Libby’s Virtual Canned Food Drive. This is something new that we are doing, so we’ve started our goal at $500. Hopefully we can meet that goal or even surpass it! It is our hope that through this giveaway, we can bring awareness to the food drive and you’ll be inclined to donate. We’d like to offer something in return, but legally we cannot. We hope that knowing that you are helping provide food to families in need is sufficient . Can you believe that by donating $5, you would be providing 35 meals to needy families?!
Donations $5 or More
For donations of $5 or more, please donate directly to our Libby’s Virtual Canned Food Drive. You can choose to donate more than $5, but there is an option to donate a minimum of $5. Simply select to help provide as many meals for hungry families as possible and type in $5.00. Anything less won’t go through, we already tried, which is why we are presenting another option below.
Donations Less Than $5
For donations less than $5, please donate to our Chipin Virtual Canned Food Drive. You don’t have to have a Paypal account to donate; there is an option to donate via credit/debit above the card logos.
I’ve always avoided taking pictures in low light situations because they’d always turn out disastrous. I try my hardest to not use the built in flash because I get hot spots, shadows, and hideous glares. When I don’t use my flash, I hike up my ISO to the highest setting which results in lots of noise, blur, and not so sharp subjects. Because of this, I added a $300 external flash to my wishlist hoping it wold solve my problem. For a year I’ve been trying to work up the courage to make the purchase. Needless to say, that external flash has been sitting on my wishlist for, hmmm, a year? I am so glad that I waited because I found the perfect solution, the Lightscoop.
The Lightscoop is a simple device that creates natural light by redirecting the flash to the ceiling or wall. It attaches to the hot shoe of most DSLR cameras. By setting up your camera using the easy to follow instructions, you can shoot in low light situations in minutes! The Lightscoop works best in neutral-colored ceilings no higher than 8-12 feet or walls no farther than 3-4 feet from the camera. So if you’re needing to shoot in an open church or gymnasism, then the Lightscoop may not be for you. I am so grateful for this product. You guys just don’t know, I am a sap when it comes to my photography. Now, I can stop chasing the sun for natural light everyday and I can spend that $300 on a new lens and other photography goodies I’ve been wishing for!
Do you want to win a Lightscoop? Click here to enter to win a Lightscoop and other awesome prizes!
Labelers have surely come a long way. The last labeler that I used was a manual Dymo labeler. With that, I had to crank a wheel to each letter and then I had to squeeze a handle to imprint each letter on to the label tape. I’m feeling a little old here. Had Brother not nudged me to review their new P-touch Labeling System, I would still probably be oblivious to electronic labelers. I’m not a hardcore labeler, so I don’t keep up with the latest labeling systems.
There’s one thing that I have trouble doing, and that’s staying organized. Life would be so much easier if I was organized and having the P-touch labeler around is motivation to get on the ball. Since we moved a few weeks ago, the house isn’t 100% how we’d like it. We’re still in the planning stages of our journey to organization. We have some ideas of how we want to put the P-touch to use.
Ideas we plan on using the P-touch for:
Labelling Boogie’s dressers drawers by underwear, cloth diapers, shirts, pants, and pjs.
Setting up a recipe box and sorting the recipes by breakfast, lunch, dinner, and desserts.
Replacing the handwritten labels in our file box.
I took the P-touch on a few test runs. I had a minor set back since it takes a whopping 6 AAA batteries which aren’t included. I grabbed some from the store and have since replaced them with Energizer rechargeables. Once I got passed the battery issue, I was able to proceed with testing the P-touch Labelling System. It was very simple to use. You don’t even need the instructions unless you want to get fancy. I love using the Bohemia font with frames. The leaf frame is my absolute favorite. I enjoyed creating labels especially when I discovered the frames, each label took less than a minute to create and print. I had to stop myself before I became addicted! Here are some labels that I’ve created so far.
Product Specifications:
Estimated Street Price: $39.99 (may vary)
15 Deco Mode Patterns to create extra-stylish and decorative labels
2 Professional Fonts
Prints labels up to 1/2″ wide on laminated indoor/outdoor “TZ” series tapes
Easy-view, 15-character LCD display
Professional Deco Mode layouts accommodate two rows of text
Prints 1 or 2 lines of crisp text
6 Auto Formats and 7 Framing Options
Built-in memory, saves up to 9 of your favorite labels
Automatically adjusts text size based on tape width
Giveaway
Brother would like to give one Mommy Daddy Blog reader a chance to win a P-touch Labeling System!
Mandatory Entry: To enter, leave a comment telling me what you’d label with your P-touch Labeling System!
Extra Entry (worth 1 entry): Subscribe to our Buzz feed. Leave a separate comment letting me know that you have done so.
Extra Entry (worth 1 entry): Tweet about this giveaway and leave an additional comment linking to your tweet (how to link directly to a tweet). You can write whatever you’d like or you can copy and paste the text provided below.
This giveaway will run until October 6th 2009 7PM CST!
This is a review written by my dear friend 1stopmom.
When I look at gadgets my eyes tend to gloss over. I love anything that can make my life easier. The idea of trying an email only device really appeals to me. I can easily get distracted with other things on the internet, which makes going through my email such a long task.
Through Sheena of Mommy Daddy Blog and Peek, I was able to give the black Peek a test run. It turned out to be much smaller and more lightweight than I thought, in fact. It fit very comfortably in the palm of my hand and it is much lighter than my cell phone. The system was pretty quick to set up. I was able to set up my hotmail account and download all of my contacts with no hiccups. I didn’t even need to pull out the instructions which is always nice.
The Peek has a nice sized screen that is clear, crisp and bright, even outdoors. A cute little envelope in the left hand corner flashes whenever an email is delivered to the device. Emails and settings are all accessed simply by using the scrolling wheel on the right side of The Peek. Though, I would prefer arrows because sometimes the wheel doesn’t “catch”. I absolutely love the keyboard. It is a full keyboard that glows. I was able to type emails with out my fingers cramping or having to constantly press the shift key.
I prefer using The Peek for checking my email but not for texting. I am not comfortable with the format and the message delivery isn’t instant. This type of texting is through email and I am not a big fan of it.
The battery life is pretty good. The Peek stays powered on without being plugged up to the charger for a couple of days, more less if you receive a lot of email. While using the Peek while out and about, I experienced a few bouts of signal issues, but not so much where it would be a problem for me.
The Peek is definitely a good alternative for someone that wants to stay in touch through email but doesn’t need a lot of bells and whistles.
. Can you believe that by donating $5, you would be providing 35 meals to needy families?!
