Home and Kitchen

News, reviews and articles about home and kitchen products.

Going brighter and saving money with CREE bulbs #sponsored

cree 2

Every few months my power company Duke Energy sends me a letter that shows how my home’s energy usage compares to other houses in my area. It’s like getting a report card from the electric company and let’s just say that my grade point average hasn’t been too good for awhile now.  So in an […]

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SlatePro Special Edition desk has a place for everything

slatepro special edition 2

About a year after introducing the SlatePro desk, iSkelter is introducing the SlatePro Special Edition – Personal TechDesk.  This desk can be customized to make it your perfect workstation.  You can choose to have ventilation holes drilled in the desktop to help your laptop stay cool.  It has an optional flush-mounted mouse pad and docks

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Keep your beer chilled – winter or summer – without using electricity or ice

ecool beer cooler

If you always want to have up to 24 cold beers on hand, dig a hole in your yard and plant a eCool beer cooler.  The eCool was invented by four guys from Mors, a small island in northern Denmark, and each cooler is hand-assembled there, too.  The eCool is about 44.5″ long and 8.7″-13″ in

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Turn a Mason canning jar into an emergency solar light

solar lid light

Replace the lid of a normal Mason canning jar with a Solar Lid Light, and you’ll have an emergency lantern you can use indoors or outdoors.  The lid has a water-resistant solar panel and rechargeable (and replaceable) batteries to power the bright LED lights.  They are available in either silver or rustic brown.  The Solar

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Your original Dropcam is going to stop working on April 15th

dropcam pro 1

I almost freaked out when I found an email from Dropcam in my inbox yesterday afternoon telling me that as an owner of an original Dropcam or Dropcam Echo, that my camera was no longer going to be supported and will stop working on April 15th. That was the bad news, but the good news is that Dropcam is

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Turn a standard CFL or LED bulb into a color-changing bulb without breaking the bank

moodies lightbulb color changer 2

I have several Philips Hue bulbs in my house that started with a Christmas gift last year and has grown over the year since then.  I love the ability to change the mood of my room by varying the intensity and the color of the lights, but it is an expensive setup.  The starter hub

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Your sitting desk can change to a standing desk with the push of a button

ikea bekant convertible desk

Have you thought about using a standing desk for all those health benefits you’ve read about, but you don’t want to completely give up the option of sitting?  What if you could have one desk that functions as both a sitting and a standing desk?  And what if it’s priced low enough that it won’t destroy

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Automate your plantation shutters with ShutterEaze

shuttereaze shutter controller

We told you about Tilt My Blinds, a device that attaches to and automates your existing horizontal blinds.  But what if you have plantation shutters instead of blinds?  Well, there’s a way to automate them, too.  A Kickstarter campaign has been successfully funded, and ShutterEaze is currently production phase.  ShutterEaze requires you to mount the AA

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Fool potential intruders into thinking you’re home watching TV, even when you aren’t

hammacher schlemmer tv mimic

A couple of years ago, I reviewed the FakeTV FTV-11 Extra Bright Burglar Deterrent.  It was a small device filled with LEDs that mimicked the flicker, glow, fading, and swelling of a TV screen as seen through a curtained window.  I used it and liked it, but I found that its own timer system didn’t

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This temperature-controlled butter dish promises perfectly spreadable butter all the time

afille butter warmer dish

The Alfille Temperature Controlled Butter Dish promises to keep butter at your perfect spreading temperature.  It plugs in to a wall socket and is intended to operate 24/7.  It comes with a pre-set spreading temperature, but you can adjust it if you prefer your butter a bit softer or firmer.  It’s designed to keep butter

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New Dyson Cinetic Big Ball vacuum is so efficient that it doesn’t need a filter

dyson cinetic

When I reviewed the Dyson Animal vacuum a year ago, I was impressed by its suction and overall cleaning ability. Dyson is well known for their convenient bagless design, but now they’ve improved things even more by ditching the filter. In other sweepers filters can clog if not cleaned regularly, which causes a loss of

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Keep a eye on what’s happening at your front door with the Kuna lighting fixture

kuna wifi security light 2

Kuna isn’t just a lighting fixture, of course.  This outdoor fixture also has a WiFi camera and intercom system built in.  You connect the Kuna fixture to an app on your Android or Apple phone, and Kuna can send you alerts whenever someone is at your door.  You can customize the app to notify you

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Portable, convenient ultrasonic humidifier

vaporb ultrasonic humidifier

Winter is here with a vengeance, and you may be plagued with dry skin and static shocks as a result of the dry air the extreme cold brings.  The VapOrb USB Ultrasonic Humidifier can moisten your air and reduce your discomfort.  Best of all, it’s only 2″ in diameter, so you can take it with

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Throw away your dustpan and use Eye Vac instead

eyevac stationary vacuum

Getting all the dirt you’ve swept up into the dustpan is like a line approaching an asymptote – it never actually happens.  The Eye Vac Professional stationary vacuum gets rid of the dustpan and sucks up all the dirt when you just sweep everything in front of the vacuum.  I’ve seen similar vacuums built in

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Incipio announces their line of Apple HomeKit-compatible Home Automation products

incipio home automation products

I use both Philips Hue and Belkin WeMo products to automate the lighting in my house.  I have to use two separate apps to control the products, so I was happy to hear about Apple’s HomeKit, which promised to be a single, centralized solution to control all your home automation products.  Well, happy until I

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Build your own custom desk or organize your closets – or your entire house – at a big savings

elfa sale

I’ve shown you pictures of my desk that I custom designed from Elfa components at the Container Store.  I designed a perfect desk for myself, and then I was able to easily turn that one person desk into a two-person desk when my husband wished he had a new desk, too.  That desk was built

Build your own custom desk or organize your closets – or your entire house – at a big savings Read More

Make your existing smoke and carbon monoxide detectors smart with Roost Smart Batteries

You want to have a smarter home – one that can notify you of events happening at home through your mobile device – but you don’t have purchasing all new equipment in your budget.  You can make your current carbon monoxide and fire detectors smarter just by using a smart battery from Roost.  They say:

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