Reviewed • 29th September 2023

5 after school fitness tips for kids

Learning to take care of your body is a life-long process that many adults haven’t entirely mastered, and setting your kids up with good habits to start with is the easiest way to make sure they continue to take good care of themselves.

You make sure they wear sunscreen when they go outside, you taught them how to brush their teeth, and to look both ways before they cross the street. Now...

Reviewed • 18th September 2023

Reima snowsuits kept my kids warm through 5-foot snow drifts and slush

My son just threw a shovelful of snow all over his twin sister’s neck and back, and not only did she not throw a tantrum, she didn’t even notice.

That’s thanks to Reima Lappi
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, a waterproof head-to-ankle one piece snowsuit with a voluminous fur-lined hood and a gorge...

Reviewed • 28th April 2023

Here's the best way I know to tote around my twins — or my gardening tools

The two words any parent dreads hearing a few minutes into an outdoor walk are “Carry me.” This is particularly true if you’ve got more than one child in tow, which is why the Radio Flyer 3-in-1 EZ Folding Wagon is a frequent companion on my family's excursions outside.

$89 at Amazon

Designed for two kids — perfect for me, since I have...

Reviewed • 27th April 2023

My kids can't stop playing with this double-sided art easel—it's actually a genius toy

For two people who don’t earn money and can’t read, my twin toddlers have accumulated a noteworthy amount of stuff. From the baby doll stroller that they broke in twenty minutes to multiple bean bag chairs, there are kids items across every room of the house. One item that never gets put away is our Fat Brain Toys easel.

$75 at Amazon

A...

Reviewed • 25th April 2022

The Best Cat Litter Mats of 2024

No matter how much you love your cat, you probably don’t love stepping in scattered litter that they kick out of the box. Even the staunchest cat lover likely employs a cat litter box mat to help trap bits that escape whenever the kitty exits the box. And while there is no best cat litter mat in existence that’ll collect every grain of litter, there are some cat litter mats that are much, much better at the job than others.

The main goal of a cat litter mat is to get your cat to walk across it...

Reviewed • 9th April 2018

The Best Sound Machines of 2024

Whether you have trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or like to block out the sounds of passing vehicles, you might be in the market for a sound machine. Offering nature sounds, ambient noise, and other high-tech features, a good sound machine (or white noise machine) will make your nighttime routine less of a nightmare. . Our favorite, the Sound & Sleep by Adaptive Sound
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Engadget • 8th July 2021

The best high-tech gear for babies

Planning to bring home a new baby is like planning for a tiny cyclone to live in your house. You’re not sure when it will arrive or how much bedlam will come with it. All you can do is stock up on supplies and batten down the hatches. And when it comes to babies, there are so, so many supplies, from the obvious (diapers, a crib) to the unexpected (snot suckers, no-scratch mittens). Fortunately, babies need very little in the way of gadgets, but the devices you do need in your nursery have to be...

29th September 2020

Owlet's new baby smart sock is finicky yet adorable (like my twins)

My twins spent a little over 100 days in the NICU after they were born. One of the many things I became accustomed to when I visited was flicking my eyes to their monitors whenever the noises changed tone or frequency. “Beep beep booooonk” was someone’s pulse ox dipping below 90 percent. A frantic “beepbeepbeep” meant tachycardia or bradycardia.

11th March 2021

The best white noise machines for babies

There’s a lot to learn when you have a child in the NICU, and one tip I picked up from the nursing staff was the importance of having a white noise machine at home. Babies often find white (or brown or pink) noise soothing as it recreates some of the ambient sounds they heard in the womb.

24th August 2020

Hatch Rest is the perfect all-in-one night light for my kids

To be entirely honest, I wasn’t really looking for the $60 Hatch Rest. When I bought it, I thought I was getting a touch activated night light that used battery power. Instead, what arrived was a device that relied on AC wall power, but it would also act as a night light, white noise machine and backup alarm all in one.

8th April 2021

The best baby monitors for your home nursery

There is nothing more disorienting or surreal than bringing home your first baby. It’s a heady combination of critical responsibility and an uneasy panic of not having any idea what you’re doing. There’s a picture of me with my son asleep on my chest on the first night he came home and my expression reads what do we do now?

5th March 2021

Owlet Dream Lab review: Can a sleep coaching program help my kids?

By 5:41am I can already tell it’s going to be a bad day, mostly because my twins have taken turns waking me up every 20 minutes since 3:17am. I alternate between the two babies until 5am when I’m able to get almost a whole half hour of rest before they wake again.

11th August 2022

The best backpacks of 2022 for high school and college students

Between classes, jobs, extracurricular activities and everything else, high school and college students in 2022 need backpacks that won't let them down. And they need to hold a ton of stuff — think laptops, textbooks, gym clothes, water bottles, uniforms, Doritos and so much more. But all that stuff can get heavy:

Broke Ass Stuart's San Francisco Website • 4th October 2012

DIY Book Page Art

I’ve long held the belief that books have the edge on e-readers in a number of ways, at least as far as DIY goes – after all you can repurpose a book into other neat items, like bookshelves or safes. Likewise, the pages inside the book are incredibly valuable because they can be used in a hella long list of crafts. It’s just repurposing print, y’all. We’ve discussed the infinite possibilities before. However, one of the ways to upgrade print that we haven’t yet covered is book page art, like so:...

Broke Ass Stuart's San Francisco Website • 23rd November 2011

DIY: Matchbook Crafts

Out of all the bars, pubs, dives, lounges, saloons and watering holes in San Francisco, my long-time favorite has always been the Zeitgeist. I just dig the vibe of the place from the bloody marys, to the sarcastic tshirts, right down to the nudie girl matches. I actually carry a pack around with me in case any match-related emergencies arise, and my brother always wants me to grab him a pack as well. Which means somewhere in Pasadena, those topless girlies are getting a lot of attention on his c...

Broke Ass Stuart's San Francisco Website • 11th April 2012

DIY: Playing Card Crafts

There was a period in time when I carried a deck of playing cards with me, wherever I went, just looking for an opportunity to practice my skills at rummy, or play solitaire while waiting for friends at the bar. Sadly, the opportunity to play cards rarely presented itself, which is why I still can’t play a decent hand of poker. However, those battered decks can find new life in any number of neat playing card crafts.
Playing cards are great raw material and like any great raw material, are quick...

Broke Ass Stuart's San Francisco Website • 15th February 2012

DIY: Paint Chip Crafts

Despite being born into a family of artists, I have… let’s call it limited artistic talent. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t have any artistic ability, it just means I’m more crafty than classically trained. Case in point: there are plenty of art-inspired DIY projects that don’t require an understanding of composition or contour. My favorite example? Paint chips.
Paint chips can usually be snagged for free at paint and hardware stores – probably nice to ask if you’re snagging a grip of them, i...

Broke Ass Stuart's San Francisco Website • 12th January 2012

DIY: Calendars

So, here we are just days into 2012: a fresh year, a fresh month, a fresh start. What better way to start off the year than with a brand spankin’ new calendar? I mean, sure, there’s an app for that (there’s an app for bloody everything) but that’s not any fun. A few years back, I turned a blank Miss Van notebook into a weekly calendar, complete with collaged art pages and scrapped photos of numbers for the days. Took me for-freaking-ever, but I liked it so much and was so proud of it, that I kep...

Broke Ass Stuart's San Francisco Website • 2nd November 2011

DIY: Day of the Dead

One of the (many) reasons Halloween is the best holiday ever is that the fun continues into the Day of the Dead. Celebrated across two days, November 1 and 2 in connection with All Saints Day and All Souls Day, Day of the Dead is a holiday that pays respect to friends and family who have passed on. It’s also something that is traditionally done in the home, which means it’s DIY all the way.
Since today also happens to be my birthday, I’ll be eating cupcakes and tossing back pints but before I do...

pcgamer • 21st July 2015

Build of the week: Snef's Bloody Angel

Every Monday, Build of the week highlights a unique rig from the web's most dedicated PC building communities.Saying Overclock.net user Snef’s Bloody Angel build is striking is like saying Mount Rushmore is a sculpture—in both cases there is much, much more going on than that. The first of our Build of the weeks to feature watercooling, Snef built the Bloody Angel to be his personal gaming rig inspired by the white CaseLabs Magnum SMA8 case and by the challenge of matching an interesting color t...

Macworld • 5th May 2014

Six helpful apps for cleaning your disgusting house

There are dishes in the sink, the cat is crying to be fed, the light bulb in the hallway has burned out, the trash is overflowing, the floor crunches when you walk on it, and whatever is making that smell in the fridge needs to be exterminated. Oh yeah, and it’s Friday night and you’re hungry and need to fix something—anything—for dinner.Maybe your day-to-day household catastrophes aren’t quite on the scale of mine (embarrassing as it is), but it’s pretty likely that there’s something in your ho...

Macworld • 30th October 2013

Travel happier with TripDeck and Hotel Tonight

Traveling can take a toll on anyone—whether you’re a nervous flyer, a terrible planner, or a n00b at navigating all the various airline deals, there’s a lot to contend with when you want to take a trip. Of course, that old adage “There’s an app for that” certainly applies here as there are scads of apps to help each aspect of a trip. So how do you figure out which ones are most useful to you? Simple, just check out our App Invasion to see what we’re using!On a recent trip to upstate New York, I...

PCWorld • 28th October 2013

5 personal safety apps that watch your back

By the time I was in my mid-20s, I was often chided by my group of friends for being “such a mom” about insisting that upon separating, everyone was expected to text a buddy (generally me) when they’d gotten home safe. There were no smartphones then, just candy-bar Nokias, and it was an imperfect system. People would forget or fall asleep. And we had no plan if someone failed to text with an all-clear, aside from waiting or alerting a roommate.

We can watch out for one another much better now t...

Macworld • 22nd October 2013

Kill hours dead with 8 horribly adorable, totally free Halloween games

So, I’m pretty excited about Halloween. How excited? This excited:And you know you are too because Halloween is the best. What other holiday allows me to claim that the cobwebs in my house are “decorations”? Or that my all-black ensembles and purple hair are “festive” and not “weird”? Or that candy is “dinner”? There’s a lot to like about the last day in October, from
scary movie marathons to haunted amusement parks. In honor of the most haunted holiday, I’ve been spending the witching hour pla...