Saturday, June 30, 2012

Entering the connected world

The weekend before we went on vacation, I finally gave in, retired my poor exhausted basic Razor cell phone and bought an IPhone. 

To be totally truthful, I've been a bit scared to make this leap to the connected world. I really don't want to get caught up in the texting hoopla. My life is already ultra busy enough. I'm sure there are parts of it that will come in handy at times but you won't find me shackled to it all day long like so many others that I see.

A few months ago I saw on someone's blog a link to a company called Zazzle that sells cute cases including cased you can design yourself or quilting themed ones. Of course, that was what I was going to get for my new baby. Right?

Wrong! I hunted around their site for 2 days, had about a dozen choices held in my shopping cart and ultimately settled on this beauty.

OMG I so love it! It is so ME. Bright. Loaded with color. Rainbow hues of course! Even the thin white lines in between the "blocks". How could I choose anything else. My insides get all giggly every time I look at it. I definitely see a new quilt to match this in my future.
A friend who is starting to venture into quilting, thanks to me of course, saw this yesterday and said it suited me perfectly and she can definitely see why I picked it. Yes it is embarassing to have my 5 1/2 year old and even my 3 1/2 year old know more about how these smart phones work than I do but I will figure it out in time.  Just don't laugh at my stumbling for a bit, please.

If you have any terrific apps to share, both ones that I would like and ones my kidlets would love, please share. I have yet to venture to the app store and the only ones on this at the moment are the same ones hubs has on his and the IPod Touch for the kidlets. The intimidation factor in trying to find great apps amongst the thousands available is big and I could use all the help I could get here. Cheap would be nice, free is even better.

3 of you added your own colorful comments:

Melinda said...

I still have a dumb phone so you are two steps ahead of me. My MIL has an app on her iPhone I'd love to have. I'll have to ask what it's called but, you know all those reward cards or discount cards you get that hang on your key chain or stuff your wallet with? You can store them all in your phone. I looked online and found a few; one called Key Ring Reward Cards and one called Cardstar.

edyB said...

Welcome to the iPhone world. Couldn't do without mine! It keeps me connected and I can find so much info and there are a zillion free apps...

Rachell said...

oooh! Lots of fun! I have really enjoyed having my iPhone for the past four months! Of course, my little guys enjoy it too....and I've downloaded so many games that the smaller guy thinks it's his phone too ("my games, my games, mom, Where the red?")--my phone is encased in a bright red Otterbox Defender.
And, most apps, if you sync your phone with your computer with iTunes store/player, you can share these games with another person's iPhone for free (for example, my husband and I share an iTunes account, and each phone can sync separately to the same iTunes, then you can select to upload certain apps to each other's phones that the other has but you want...thereby not needing to buy separately and pay for the same games/apps on two different phones.)

Ready for my list? Most of these are free or within the $3.00 range (some are free, and have add-on packs for .99 to 2.99 for each pack, or buy a "full version" for about $3.00)

Kneebouncers Volumes 1, 2, 3, 4.
Starfall ABCs
Color Drops
Thomas and Friends Engine Activities
Magic Match
ABC Phonics (Free)
Memory Match
Car Colors
Fisher Price "Where's Baby" and "Shapes and Colors" and "Let's Count"
Signing Time
Potty Time (by Signing Time--free app to go with their new DVD for potty training. includes sticker charts and motivations)
"Camera Catch" and "Dinosaur Eggspress" by Dinosaur Train (PBS Kids and Jim Hensen).
Disney Junior: "Jake and the Neverland Pirates--Pirate School", and "Handy Manny's Workshop"

AND for ME: Bejeweled, Mahjong, and Solitare, and IMDb Movie Database.
Quilting Apps: JoAnn Stores, Etsy, Keepsake QUilting, Robert Kaufman's QuiltCalc, and Quilter's Club of America directory of "Quilt Shops"--can include quilters with longarm services or sells their own patterns/blogs, by state or zipcode.
FREE Blogger app! A short version of Blogger than you can add/edit posts on the go! I have really used this one a lot since I found it!