That black and white thingy is called a QR code. QR means queef reflex.

Just kidding! It means quick response. If you have a fancy pants smart phone, you can upload a QR scanning app. It’s basically like taking a photo of an image and the image immediately takes you to the corresponding site that was assigned to the image.

IN SHORT: that thingy takes you to a website on your phone.

It’s amazing! It’s like smart computer people came together with magic and quickness and created the future!

If you haven’t started seeing them yet, you will. On the pages of magazines, on business cards, on T-shirts, even on my forehead. Yep.  I’m getting a tattoo of one on my big ol’ white forehead. Just kidding! That would not be attractive. And besides, there wouldn’t be room on my head because I already have a large wheel of cheese there.

I think this is just the beginning of people getting really creative with their codes. New technology is always a lot more fun when it:

a) works well

b) is not BORING AS HELL

Which is why I created a bunch of codes that lead to joy on the internet that make me emit happy noise from  my mouth. I intended on printing them on address labels with the help of these HP instructions but due to circumstances, (like scrambling around trying to get ready for our BlogHer party) that idea didn’t come to fruition.

Here are some that I included in the QR mix o’ fun:

Feel free to use any of these. Or be brave and cutting edge and make some of your own with your choice of magical internet sites.

If you really want to get fancy, go here for more tool and ideas on how you can simply and easily get all fancy with your queef reflex. I mean quick response.

(If you don’t have a smartphone or if you’re reading this ON your smartphone, you won’t know what the hell those codes link to. Here’s some links for ya).

Whatever you do, do not miss this one. 

I am a cat lover and I like to run.

I pity the gilled fool

I hope you get this 

At last count, we had seven digital cameras in our house.  We’ve got a digital SLR, two point-and-shoots, two iPhones, a Flip video camera, and another little Kodak video camera.  There are defensible reasons for owning all of these, so it might seem outrageous.  But hold on there, judgey: before you judge me, maybe you should just count up your own image-making devices.

Anyway, before our twins were born two years ago, we had around 2,000 pictures on various computers, discs, and hard drives.  Since their birth, we have added probably another five or six thousand to that.

What we don’t have many of are actual physical versions of these images that we can hold in our hands, pass around to our friends, or let our kids thumb through.

It’s nice to have all these pictures on the computer if we feel like looking through them, but it would be pretty cool to have them out where people could see them without having to turn on a machine.  Kind of like those old–what do you call ‘em–photo albums.

We have a couple photo albums that we keep on our coffee table.  The pages are yellowed and brittle, and the most recent photos are from 2001, the year my wife and I got married.  Our guests love them, and our kids look at them every day.  But the idea of printing out photos from digital cameras and sticking them behind plastic film in a book just seems a little…perverse.  The old school photo album was kind of a lame attempt at making something like a real book out of your snapshots.  In the digital age, there’s no reason not to make an actual book instead.

No reason, that is, except for not getting around to it.  We have meant to make photo books–the kind you put together online and have printed and sent to your house–for years now.

But this time, I actually went through with it.  Using HP’s Photo Creations software, which you can download for free, I put together a 30-page book that documents the evolution of the house we’ve been living in for the last eight years.  Just like our family, the house has doubled in size during that timespan, and gone through a lot of other changes as well.

As I do every freaking time I try something new on the computer, I cussed and shook my fist at the monitor as I learned how to use the program.  Nothing seemed intuitive to me, I spent a few hours just to get started, and at one point I lost all the data I had uploaded into the program.  That’s all par for the course for me, and doesn’t reflect on the software at all.

At some point though, it all clicked.  It’s almost like the features of the program came into focus.  After that, I never ran into another glitch.  I was laying out pictures, cropping them, adjusting their sizes, picking different background colors and patterns, and adding all kinds of text.  Once I figured it out, everything made sense, and all of the options were right where I wanted them to be.

I appreciated that I could tinker with the photos while they were already laid out on the page, rather than having to adjust them in iPhoto and import them again.  I was also able to import more photos from both my computer and online sources like Facebook and Snapfish when I needed to, or when it occurred to me that a picture existed that would fit well in a certain series.  It really ended up being…dare I say it?…fun.  I mean, I probably spent a good twelve hours on the damn thing, but the process was surprisingly satisfying.

In putting together this book, I felt like I was not just organizing photos, but actually making some sense of the last eight years, using our house as the common thread that held together all the plot twists in our story.

The last three years were especially chaotic, since they included the discovery that we were going to have twins, and the mad dash to convert our 800 square foot bungalow with no central heat, AC, or foundation, into something that a family of four could comfortably live in.  During that time, I quit working outside the home almost entirely, and devoted my time first to building the addition on our house, and then, when my wife’s maternity leave was up, to taking care of the children.

There was a lot of upheaval during that time.  And although I’m deliriously happy doing what I do now, I never really processed the transition from my old life to my current one.  I was surprised at how much sorting through these images helped me make a tidy narrative of the wild state of flux we were in during the earliest phase of parenthood.  And now, instead of trying to describe that process to people, I can just pass them a beautifully bound, glossy, professional-looking photo book and let them see it for themselves.

Someone hold me.

In previous years, I’ve gone to the nearest paper store and filled up my basket with coloring, activity and sticker books galore but after choking on my tongue at the price of these throw away items, that, let’s face it, will only end up on the floor after a few minutes, I decided to try something new.  This year I’m attacking our road trips like a General heading into battle by putting together an arsenal of car kits with items we already have at home and activities I can print out for free from HP Creative Studio.

Traveling with kids is war, people.  And war is hell.  Best bring the best ammunition you can and hope everyone makes it out alive.

*cue “Ride of the Valkyries“*

There are so many activities on the HP Creative Studio page.

SO MANY TO TRY!  My kids think they’ll be watching nonstop movies on our six hour (one way *snurffle*) car trip.  I don’t think so, my little chickadees.  Mommy is old school.  You will learn and create and you will not zone out to a Phineas and Ferb marathon and YOU WILL LIKE IT.

Go to the “Project Types” pull down tab and select “Games and Activities” and voila!  Word searches and coloring pages and car bingo! Oh my!  Most in bright colors that might take your little one’s attention off the fact that they’re seat belted into a large metal can for hours on end when they’d much rather be eating dirt or something equally fun.

Print out the desired activities (they even have stickers! WEEEEEE.), staple them together to make your own activity book and have them ready for when the little knee biters start whining, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there…”

Armed with this and constant snacking, you might make it to your destination in one piece.  At the very least, you’ve saved some money on things for the kids that you can now put toward the liquid sanity juice you’ll no doubt be hiding in a flask in your luggage.

I love the smell of HP in the morning.  It smells like… victory.

They are obviously crazy.

Give me sleek and smooth over junky and clunky.

Dark and mysterious over gray and bumpy.

Energy, sophistication and whispery smooth function over da-dhunk-dhunk-thunk….whrrr….

I’m talking about printers.  Not men.

Okay, maybe both.

Once upon a time, a printer was just a printer.  All it did… was print.  Go figure.

The multitasking zeitgeist of the late 90s and 2000s did not leave the computer printer untouched, though.  Soon, printers became more than just printers… they became scanners, faxers, photo booths, and oh, yeah… they printed, too.

Unfortunately, the scanner, printer, faxer, photobooth printer, aesthetically speaking, often leaves much to be desired.

Case in point:

I gave you the best years of my life, you BITCH!

While this printer served me well, I mean, just look at it.  It’s huge.  It requires an entire office of its own, really.  Plus?  It doesn’t even print photos.

But.

Wait.

This story is not over.

Look at this:

Come here, gorgeous, let me rub your feet while I print up some photos in a jiffy.

That’s my new printer, the HP Envy 100 e-All-in-One.

It prints, scans, e-mails, connects to the Internet wirelessly and prints wirelessly, but dudes.look.at.it.

Is it a state of the art sound system?

NOPE. It’s a printer.

A top of the line Blu-Ray player or whatever crap they’re going to make us buy next so we can just watch some damned movies at home?

NOPE. A printer.

A ultra high tech gadget that indicates the owner is savvy and techie impressive?

NOPE… well, yep.  Anyway.  It’s a… you guessed it… a printer.

WAIT!

IS IT A TIME TRAVELING DEVICE THAT WILL ALLOW YOU TO BEND THE LAWS OF PHYSICS BY ALLOWING YOU TO TRAVEL FIVE MINUTES IN TO THE PAST SO YOU CAN STOP YOUR TWO YEAR OLD FROM SCRIBBLING ON YOUR CREME COLORED SOFAS WITH PERMANENT PURPLE MARKER WHILE YOU WROTE THIS POST?!!

That would be very cool…  but, nope, it’s a printer.

Though the functionality is certainly impressive, with features such as Internet connectivity, high quality photo printing and scanner feature, the factor that most contributed me to relegating my old printer to the First Wives Club of printers was looks.

The HP Envy 100 e-All-in-One can be placed anywhere in your house, it’s sleek style causes it to blend in like a stylish little ninja printer who brings home roses every day and rubs your feet while you watch reruns of “Angel” for three hours.

I put it in my living room.

Because, come on, that’s where roses bearing, feet rubbing ninjas who love David Boreanaz belong.

P.S.  The first photo is of some famous South Korean actor.  South Korea is clearly awesome.

Magnetic Paper for the HP printer? Wrestling Dude Can't Believe it Either!

You know what? I really was wondering what else could I possibly print on using my Fancy Schmancy Printer (i.e. My Magical HP All-in-One 7500A), so I started using my crafty friend Ms. Google and she pointed me towards magnetic paper.

Yes. Magnetic paper. I ordered some online (HP doesn’t sell it, boo) and within a few days, I was ready to write up some words of wisdom for my little family on the fridge. The big joke in the family is to see how long it takes our son to recognize something different. Hair cut? Hours before my husband. New picture on a wall? Within seconds. I wondered how long it would take him to see the little messages.

I spent a few minutes coming up with messages from the refrigerator because The Fridge (Or Our Temperamental Ice Box as we like to call her) has a mind of her own. She makes noises, cuts off randomly (they blame it on the wi-fi) and has had at least 3 repair calls since we got her 2 short years ago.

It was just like printing on paper but it was MAGNETIC paper, so really, no difference. I did select the matte paper setting because the paper seemed really matte-ish and it worked great.

So, what does our fridge say?

The Fridge Speaks

The printing was easy and awesome, but the cutting? I’m not so much for the straight line, huh? And yes, the son noticed the second he walked into the kitchen.

The magnetic side of our fridge

It’s kind of incredible how much stuff I learned from doing this simple little project.  Mostly stuff about technology, child psychology, metallurgy, and…um…paperlurgy.

Let me explain the project first.  It’s totally simple. In theory.

You can read about it on the HP Creative Studio website; but I’ll summarize it for you here.  It’s called “Rotating Refrigerator Snapshot Gallery,” and here’s how you do it:

1) Print some of your favorite photos

2) Stick them on the fridge

3) Pretend you are the curator of a photo gallery!

Don’t let the humbleness of your display space keep you from taking the aesthetics of your project seriously! Let the kids get involved!  For real–that’s the whole thing.

I figured I could do that pretty easily, even considering my technological ineptitude.

So after struggling and cussing at the machine to try and make it do what I wanted it to, I had a brief, pleasant conversation with tech support, who explained how to print stuff from iPhoto and make the printer realize that it’s supposed to use the paper in the photo tray instead of the main tray.

That’s where I learned about technology.  What I learned is that, even though the HP Photosmart Plus printer I have is pretty cool, few people will ever be as happy and relaxed while trying to figure out how to work it as the people in the little video on the HP website are.  Most people will probably be happier than I was, and will even figure it out without calling a professional, but no one will ever enjoy it as much as the older woman in the video who gazes at the printer as if it is a delightfully cooing granddaughter.

That’s when I also learned about photo paper.  The last time I printed photos on this machine, I used some old paper I found in a drawer in our office/guest room/junkroom annex, and they came out kinda okay, pretty much.  This time I used the HP Advanced photo paper, and damned if those prints didn’t look like they just came out of the darkroom.  I was really impressed.

Then I went to start arranging my beautiful prints on the fridge, and that’s when I learned about metallurgy.  I knew that magnets didn’t stick on the stainless steel front of my fridge because after we first got it, our magnetic poetry kept ending up on the floor.  But I didn’t know why.  So I used the internets and found out that stainless steel is an alloy, or a variety of alloys, that have different amounts of metals like chromium and nickel in them.  Sometimes stainless steel is magnetic, but varieties that contain more nickel are not.  I don’t know about you, but to me that was highly gratifying to learn.

Luckily, one of the non-stainless steel sides of my fridge is exposed, so I got busy arranging my awesome new prints there.  I did this while my 2-year old twins were sleeping, thinking that it would be a nice surprise for them to see a bunch of their friends and relatives in the kitchen when they came to breakfast.  And it was.  They started pointing and identifying faces. “Grandma,” they said, and, “Aunt Shanny.”  Also, “Skateboard,” and “Cupcake.”

That’s when I learned some stuff about child psychology: Whereas adults like you and me would be satisfied just to gaze upon photos of our loved ones, 2-year olds want to hold and caress the prints.  They also like to bend, fold, spindle, and mutilate photos, and any other kind of fine art.

So I had to fend them off for a while, until I was able to impress upon them the idea that they should not eat or otherwise destroy these lovely pictures.  This didn’t keep them from trying to hold the pictures though, so we played a little game where the kids would pull the pictures down, then we would talk about where we should put them back up, and I would pretend that  we were having a perfectly reasonable discussion in which I was fully honoring their artistic autonomy, and then I would stick the picture back on the fridge wherever I wanted to.

So really, this project ended up being like a speed-dating version of the “Rotating Refrigerator Snapshot Gallery” as described on the HP website.  They had probably envisioned moving photos around to accommodate new ones, and leisurely shuffling the existing array to create new juxtapositions and perspectives at the whim of the “curators.”  In our version, the kids yanked the photos down, and I tried to get them safely back to the fridge before they were dissolved into pulp by baby slobber.

• Spaghetti, sans meatballs
• Lightly seasoned (from a pre-mixed and measured baggie of seasoning prepared by someone with a higher culinary IQ than my own, preferably) baked boneless chicken breast
• Deluxe Kraft Mac n Cheese

Problem is, I love food. So, I did the only sensible thing: I married a man who could cook, who loves food as much as I do.

I also happen to have about 25lbs to lose to get back to a healthy weight, and hubby has some poundage to go, too. See the aforementioned amour, and Houston, we have a (big, fat) problem.

I joined Weight Watchers a couple years ago, and found that if I just stuck to more reasonable portions and eliminated adjusted my fast food cooking habits, I could lose some weight and help my family make healthy choices. Win! I’m pretty cheap though, so I stuck with it for a couple of months and didn’t renew.  Before I dropped it, I printed as many recipes as I could and threw them into a three ring binder. It’s served us pretty well, but I am ready to take it up a notch and create a family recipe book.

(pssssst HP! That’s your cue!)

EZPZ Family Recipe Book

Step 1: Find awesome recipes

I took most of mine from WW, but you could pull yours from recipe websites, write up your own Family recipes in a word processing application or even print them directly from your freaking printer, like my HP Envy. I shit you not. Your printer can help you make dinner.

Step 2: Print awesome recipes

This is pretty straightforward.  Many recipe sites have printer-friendly versions, even print buttons that will bring up a dialogue where you can choose your printer and go to town. If you are concerned with aesthetics,  you could use a word processing application to copy, paste, format, etc. the recipes until they look more or less the same. A little advice: try to use pictures, color pics, whenever you can! They will print beautifully and it really helps the dinner selection process.

If you are printing from an HP printer, you will want to use the touch screen to download a recipes app to your printer, then find recipes you want, and print.

Printing tips: use cardstock or another heavyweight paper, pre-punched for a three-ring binder if you can. If you don’t do that,  consider those little plastic sleeves for binders, the kind you slip a couple sheets of paper into. Print the recipes at a higher quality setting, full color, and check the ink levels using the HP print center first.

Step 3: Make a super cool cover and spine for your binder

Books ARE judged by their covers, y’all. Make it good. If you have any graphic design skill, whip it out and print that baby in a nice photo finish on glossy paper. You’ll want to use it more than if you just scribble recipes on the front cover in permanent marker,  trust me.

Step 4: Assembly required

Put the whole thing together.  Painfully simple! Then, go cook something.  If you are feeling ambitious,  you could even add tabbed dividers to split it up into cuisines, meals or main ingredient!

Got a recipe to share? Post one up on your site and let me know here in the comments,  or post your recipe in the comments,  I would love to see what you cook!

My Beloved HP 7500a

Dear HP Fancy Schmancy Printer,

How I love you.

I love you and your bells and your whistles and your super cool scanner and panel thingy that lights up brightly! Even the way you sound is so beautiful…it’s like music to my ever-loving crafty self.

Knowing you means that I don’t have to get dressed to make something. Knowing you means that I don’t have to leave my house to buy a gift because I have all I need in you.

Knowing you also means you owe me a big sorry and maybe flowers!

You failed me!! Twice, you let your head get in the way of my printing!

Maybe you were mad at me for cheating on you with another printer at work, I don’t know. But whatever it was, you upset me.

I almost broke up with you.

I called your bosses at HP support and I told them!

“Hey! It’s not printing right! It’s streaky and blotchy and it sounds like E-ERR-ERRK-EECHE-E-ERR when I am trying to print my very important ‘To Go’ menu! It’s NOT fair!” I went on to say, “Yes! I tried that! Oh that? Yes, even that!”

The people who made you with love decided to send me a replacement head for you (for FREE cause you were new and young).  Much to my happiness, your new head was perfect and worked! You printed again with glee and we were once again a couple in love.

How I loved to touch your sleek, shiny working self again.

But, still,  you would not let me forget you were in CHARGE!

Darn you my beloved printer!

You busted your head again and this time your bosses said they would check on it and get back with me and they didn’t.  I thought that would be the end of us, but I wanted to give you another chance because you mean that much to me.

So I called…again…and after another few days of waiting, I received a box of love from your people.

Much to my delight (and surprise) I was once again printing a well-balanced, blotchy and streaky free paper. I could again print anything I wanted!

I was so relieved because I really do love you, but also because I didn’t want to have to take you to the next electronic recycling day at our local high school. If that second package of love had not delivered a cure for your ailment, you were on your way out.

Also, your people apparently love me MORE than they love you because they were going to replace you really fast!

For FREE!

Won’t you thank them, my love?

Won’t you thank HP Support for making things right between us?

Won’t you tell them I still love you? I know you can tell them…through that crazy Wi-Fi  connection that comes straight out of you.

Promise me you’ll keep working.

Promise me if you quit me again, that we’ll find a way to work it out.

PROMISE ME!

Devoted to you (obviously),

Julia