MyQ Universal Smartphone Garage Door Controller

No compensation was received for this post. Complimentary product was provided for this review. All opinions expressed are my own or that of my family.
It seems that every time we leave home, we get a block down the road and my husband asks if we remembered to put down the garage door. Most of the time, we are close enough that we take a trip around the block in order to drive by the house to make sure it is down and other times, we text or call our neighbor to ask them to check. So, when I learned about the MyQ Smartphone Garage Door Controllers from Chamberlain, I knew it was a product that would be perfect for our house.

The MyQ Smartphone Garage Door Controller works with a number of garage door openers and allows you to both check the status of your garage door from anywhere on your Smartphone and to operate it remotely too. So, with the MyQ we can now log in to the app on our phone and see whether the door is up or down. It also tells you how long it has been open or closed, a great feature that lets you confirm that your child has arrived home. Having a repairman coming to the house? You can easily use the app to open the door for them when they arrive - no need to give them a garage door code or a key to your house.

The set up of the MyQ is fairly straight-forward. There is a bracket that mounts to your ceiling, next to your garage door operator that is used to attach the WiFi hub. A door sensor is installed next to your garage door. The third step is to connect the WiFi Hub to the home network - with an iPhone or iPod, you use the BlueTooth feature and then launch the app to complete the set up and with other devices you use the web browser to set up the MyQ.

There are several models of garage door openers that the MyQ works with and you can find a list of them here. Turns out (after a good amount of effort and reading the help on the website) that although our manufacturer was listed, we had an opener that the MyQ couldn't learn to operate. We could still use the monitoring aspect of the device/app and were able to see if the door was open or closed and how long it had been there, but if we were away and the garage door was open, we wouldn't have been able to close it. In order to allow us to experience the MyQ Smartphone Garage Door Controller, the group at Chamberlain offered us a new garage door opener - all we had to do was install it.

Once the new garage door opener was installed (more about that here - Chamberlain HD930EV Garage Door Opener), we were able to start testing out the MyQ Garage. We learned a few things early (that we wish we had learned earlier) and put it through the paces.

You can install the app on multiple devices and can put a security code on the app, so that others can't operate your garage door. I like this added level of security. What we didn't know right away is that there can only be one account per device. My husband had initially set it up with his e-mail, but once we found out that we could only have one account, we decided to change it to our joint e-mail account. Unfortunately, we were not able to find a way to do this on the website and had to delete his account. This meant having to reset up the device with the new log in - not a big deal, but it did take some time. A nice benefit of this feature is that in order to add the app to their device and use it, someone would need to know your username and password.

We tested the app near and far. When my husband was away from home and on another WiFi network, he sent me a message and then tested that he could operate the door from there. When I was further from home at work, and on a WiFi network, I tested that I could operate the door from there. We also tested it on 3G, near and far. We had some challenges with the 3G operation being consistent. If the 3G signal was not strong, I wasn't always able to connect to the opener to operate it but once my signal strength returned it worked. We also had an issue when I tried to open it and immediately close it. Normal operation wouldn't typically find you opening and closing within a few seconds and I didn't have the same problem when I allowed time between operation, so I wasn't too worried. I don't really know what didn't work, but my guess is that once operated, the system needed a minute to return to 'steady' state.

A good thing to note is that when you operate the opener to close it from the app, it sounds a beep and flashes a blue light before it begins to operate. I like this safety feature, in case someone would be in the garage when you close it they would have a warning.

Overall, we are very pleased with the MyQ Smartphone Garage Door Controller. We like the added security of being able to check that our garage door is closed. It is nice to know that if we need to let someone in to the house, that we can operate the door from elsewhere rather than giving out our security code for the external keypad. I also like that if I am out with friends, I don't have to worry about taking keys or fumbling in the rain or cold with the external keypad...I can use my phone to open my door when I arrive home.

If you are looking for a home automation product to allow you to monitor and operate your garage door, then I would recommend checking out the MyQ Smartphone Garage Door Controller.

No compensation was received for this post. Chamberlain provided the MyQ Universal Smartphone Garage Door Controller, so that we could share our experience with the product. All opinions expressed are my own or that of my family.

Parmesan-Crusted Tilapia, Roasted Asparagus with Parmesan and Twice-Baked Potatoes - Cooking Planit review

Tonight for dinner, we tried out some new recipes. Not only did we try new recipes, I tried this really cool website/app called Cooking Planit. You may recall that a few months ago that I shared about Cooking Planit and you may recall that soon I will be hosting a T-Fal Cookware giveaway courtesy of Cooking Planit (the full list of participating blogs is located below, so you can check it out and enter to win on several blogs). Tonight though, I want to share with you about my experience with Cooking Planit.

What is Cooking Planit?

Cooking Planit has a website featuring many recipes and meals (the photography is great and makes me want to try a lot of the recipes). Cooking Planit is also available as a free app for your iPad or iPhone, so you can plan on the run - who hasn't been at the store trying to make an adjustment to the meal plan because there is a great deal on something. Think of Cooking Planit as your very own Personal Kitchen Assistant! Cooking Planit is an app perfect for a home cook at any skill level. Cooking Planit walks you through the whole cooking process and keeps you on track so dinner get’s on the table on time!

• Simplified Meal Planning - choose 'pre-set' meals or choose a few recipes that you want to try.
• Build your menu and it will put together your shopping list.
• Guided Cooking Steps, it even helps align all of your dishes so that they finish at the same time (I know I could use that when I host a Thanksgiving or other group meal)
• Cloud Sync – Sync your account across the web, your iPhone and iPad

I started by setting up an account on Cooking Planit's website and then downloaded the app for the iPhone and the iPad.

As I sat on my sofa watching TV one evening, I was browsing through the pre-set meals on the iPad. I bookmarked a couple of the meals as I scanned and then switched over to scanning and marking some of the recipes. I decided that to really check it out Cooking Planit and all it has to offer, I wanted to go with my own custom meal.

So, yesterday, as I was planning my menu for the week, I sat down at my computer and did some additional searches, bookmarking more recipes. Then, I looked over the recipes that I had bookmarked to decide what would go best together and what was different than what we normally ate. I decided on Parmesan-Crusted Tilapia, Roasted Asparagus with Parmesan and Twice-Baked Potatoes.

After building the meal and saving it, I decided to check out one of the features of Cooking Planit - I created my shopping list for my meal.

I love that I was able to create and save my meal on my computer and then access my account from my phone to create a portable shopping list. After the grocery list is generated, you can add additional items to your list, indicating section of the store and get a complete grocery list. In addition, you can mark off the items that you have and update the list to only show those that you don't have. I did that and then also used the check boxes to mark the groceries as I moved through the store.

Fast forward to tonight, it was time to prepare my dinner. I pulled the app up on my iPad and set it upon the easel in the kitchen. I then selected my meal on the app and it pulled up on the screen, ready to go.

Once on my screen, it gave me a list of ingredients and tools that were needed, some information about prepping and cook time (mine was actually shorter...I cheated and microwaved the potatoes to prep them and used ready bacon!). I really like how it lists out the ingredient and tools. The ingredients are the total amount needed for all of the recipes and the tools let you know what type of equipment (measuring spoons, slotted spoon, baking sheet), appliances (oven and stove top), and supplies will be used (paper towels). When you select start, the app asks how many servings you would like to prepare - 2, 4 or 6. Of course, if you choose an alternate number of servings the ingredients you had seen on the first page are no longer what you need. Never fear though, because the next page will tell you the ingredients you need to gather for prepping and the quantities for each recipe. Then, it steps you through the preparation of your recipes, so that they all finish at the same time.

On each step, it lets you know what ingredients you will need and what to do. You can either swipe you finger to advance pages or put it on audio controls, allowing you to use your voice to flip the pages. As you step through, you have the option to see the next few steps - I found that looking ahead gave me perspective of what was coming and allowed me to adjust where I needed (you know for the microwave or the ready bacon). When you get to a step where there is time until you start the next step, it suggests things such as clean up a little or (my favorite) enjoy a glass of wine or your favorite beverage. When there are cooking or sauteing steps, when you advance the page, it automatically starts a little timer that will pop up on the screen when it is complete and have you check that the item is done - if it is, you dismiss the timer, if not, you can select adjust and it will run a timer for a few additional minutes.

Everything made its way into the oven and soon it was dinner time:

My family very much so enjoyed the meal that I had prepared. It was full of flavor and yet, part of the beauty, to me, was the simplicity of the meal. There were few ingredients, but they paired well.

I'm ready to build another meal and try out even more of the recipes that Cooking Planit has to offer.

You can sign up for Cooking Planit on their website or you can down load their app at iTunes. There are both free and paid versions of the app, so you can try it risk free and then upgrade for even more features.

Don't forget to check out the matrix of bloggers participating in the giveaway and be sure to come back tomorrow, when my giveaway goes live!

Here is the matrix of participating blogs and information on when they go live:

THE COOKING PLANIT AND T-FAL 2013 GIVEAWAY
Start	End	Flight 1	Flight 2
8/19/13	8/25/13	Baby Boomster	Mrs. Schwartz’s Kitchen
8/20/13	8/26/13	CopyKat Recipes	Daily Dish Recipes
8/21/13	8/27/13	Lisa Cooking	Lark’s Country Heart
8/22/13	8/28/13	ME Redone	Hot Eats and Cool Reads
8/23/13	8/29/13	Mother Would Know	The Two Bite Club
8/24/13	8/30/13	Sophistishe	Citron Limette
8/25/13	8/31/13	Kitchen Concoctions	Cupcakes and Kale Chips
8/26/13	9/1/13	I Can Cook That	Leave a Happy Plate
8/27/13	9/2/13	Peaches & Cake	i love my disorganized life
8/28/13	9/3/13	Diddles & Dumplings	Yates Yummies
8/29/13	9/4/13	basilmomma	Cooking With Libby
8/30/13	9/5/13	Persnickety Plates	Creole Contessa
8/31/13	9/6/13	Ancestral Chef	Bite Sized Blog
9/1/13	9/7/13	The Staten Island Family	Mamal Diane
9/2/13	9/8/13	Food Fash	Recipes For My Boys
9/3/13	9/9/13	The Wicked Noodle	Hungry Little Girl
9/4/13	9/10/13	Unorganized Mommy of 3	The Tasty Fork
9/5/13	9/11/13	Yi Reservation	Dixie Chik Cooks
9/6/13	9/12/13	Chicago Foodie Sisters	The Fountain Avenue Kitchen
9/7/13	9/13/13	Cooking from a SAHM	FoodThoughtsOfaChefWannabe
9/8/13	9/14/13	Bobbi’s Kozy Kitchen	Rants from My Crazy Kitchen
9/9/13	9/15/13	What Jew Wanna Eat	Sumptuous Spoonfuls
9/10/13	9/16/13	The Mama Report	A Busy Mom of Two
9/11/13	9/17/13	Culicurious	Huppie Mama
9/12/13	9/18/13	Three Diets. One Dinner.	Spice’s Bites

No compensation was received for this post. As a participant in the Cooking Planit T-fal Giveaway, I was provided with a set of pans to use and share my experience with my readers. All opinions expressed are my own or that of my family.

Cooking Planit T-fal Giveaway #CookingPlanit

50 BLOGGERS ARE GIVING AWAY 50 SETS OF T-FAL COOKWARE OVER THE NEXT 30 DAYS!

I am excited to share this giveaway with all of my readers. I am partnering with Cooking Planit and joining 49 other bloggers in giving away a 12-piece set of T-fal Cookware. You can watch for my giveaway to go live on September 10th, but in the meantime, you really should check out all of the participating blogs and enter for a chance to win. You can only win once, but your odds will certainly be better the more that you enter. That's 50 chances to win.

Here is the matrix of participating blogs and information on when they go live:

THE COOKING PLANIT AND T-FAL 2013 GIVEAWAY
Start	End	Flight 1	Flight 2
8/19/13	8/25/13	Baby Boomster	Mrs. Schwartz’s Kitchen
8/20/13	8/26/13	CopyKat Recipes	Daily Dish Recipes
8/21/13	8/27/13	Lisa Cooking	Lark’s Country Heart
8/22/13	8/28/13	ME Redone	Hot Eats and Cool Reads
8/23/13	8/29/13	Mother Would Know	The Two Bite Club
8/24/13	8/30/13	Sophistishe	Citron Limette
8/25/13	8/31/13	Kitchen Concoctions	Cupcakes and Kale Chips
8/26/13	9/1/13	I Can Cook That	Leave a Happy Plate
8/27/13	9/2/13	Peaches & Cake	i love my disorganized life
8/28/13	9/3/13	Diddles & Dumplings	Yates Yummies
8/29/13	9/4/13	basilmomma	Cooking With Libby
8/30/13	9/5/13	Persnickety Plates	Creole Contessa
8/31/13	9/6/13	Ancestral Chef	Bite Sized Blog
9/1/13	9/7/13	The Staten Island Family	Mamal Diane
9/2/13	9/8/13	Food Fash	Recipes For My Boys
9/3/13	9/9/13	The Wicked Noodle	Hungry Little Girl
9/4/13	9/10/13	Unorganized Mommy of 3	The Tasty Fork
9/5/13	9/11/13	Yi Reservation	Dixie Chik Cooks
9/6/13	9/12/13	Chicago Foodie Sisters	The Fountain Avenue Kitchen
9/7/13	9/13/13	Cooking from a SAHM	FoodThoughtsOfaChefWannabe
9/8/13	9/14/13	Bobbi’s Kozy Kitchen	Rants from My Crazy Kitchen
9/9/13	9/15/13	What Jew Wanna Eat	Sumptuous Spoonfuls
9/10/13	9/16/13	The Mama Report	A Busy Mom of Two
9/11/13	9/17/13	Culicurious	Huppie Mama
9/12/13	9/18/13	Three Diets. One Dinner.	Spice’s Bites

Stay tuned for further details on how to enter and to learn more about my experience using the T-fal cookware set and the CookingPlanit app. The app is a really neat recipe and meal planning tool that you can test online and/or download the free version HERE. Or you may go to the Apple store and simply search “Cooking Planit.”

DETAILS: Contests open to US only. Limit one-winner per household/per family from the 50 blogs participating in the promotion. If an individual is the winner of more than one giveaway, they will receive only one set of cookware and an alternate winner will be chosen for the other set(s).

No compensation was received for this post. As a participant in the Cooking Planit T-fal Giveaway, I was provided with a set of pans to use and share my experience with my readers. All opinions expressed are my own or that of my family.

Burst.it - review & giveaway

I recently had the chance to check out Burst. What is Burst you ask? Well, according to their FAQ: "Life's Moments - Smartly Shared. Burst is the simple and private way to capture, save and share life's important moments with family and close friends. Burst provides a safe and organized place to access your videos/photos from any internet enabled device. It is easy and mobile- never miss or lose another moment again."

I started exploring Burst, by completing a sign up for a free account on their web page. Then, I downloaded the app to my phone - it's available for both the Droid and the iPhone. Once the app was downloaded, I was able to immediately start capturing pictures and video. I took a few test shots just to check it out and play with the features. Once you take pictures or videos, they are available on your My Moments tab. When you click on the picture, you can choose to view it, which brings it up full screen. You can also select details. The details section allows you to give your image a title and to tag the picture. It has the information on when the pictures was captured, the location and whether it has been shared. It also allows you to delete the moment.

Have something on your calendar? When you go to take a picture, it will ask you if you are at that event. Leave it as yes, and that will be captured in the title for you.

Now, it was time to share.

Using the contact list on my phone, I was able to easily create groups with which I might share different pictures. For each person, you can edit their set up and send it to them by phone (sends a text message) or e-mail, or both. I loved that I didn't have to look anything up, as long as my friends and family are in my phone's contact list I could simply click to add.

Viewing and sharing pictures is simple. When I first started, I was opening the app and taking the pictures/video, but then I noticed this little button at the top of the My Moments page that said Import. This button allows me to select pictures from my camera roll to share with family and friends. Importing was very simple and took almost no time. I will tell you that the captured date for an imported picture is the time when it was imported, not when it was taken.

Once you have pictures that you want to share, simply click on the picture and select share from the menu. Want to share several pictures? There is a button at the top of the screen that when you click it allows you to share several pictures or videos at the same time. You can then select the groups or the individuals you wish to receive the picture or video. When you send, you have the option of adding a message to the picture.

Once you have shared the pictures and videos, your recipients will receive a text message and/or an e-mail with a link that allows them to view the pictures. When they view the pictures, they have the option to leave a comment. You can see them when you click on the picture and select details and then choose the comment tab. Depending on whether you have sent it as an Open or a Closed Burst controls whether others get to see who the picture went to and any comments left by others.

Can't remember if you shared a picture? No problem, as you look in at the pictures in My Moments, there will be a portion of the Burst logo on the bottom right corner of the picture/video. Not sure who you shared it with? Click on the picture and when you look at the details, the second tab tells you who you shared it with - both groups and individuals.

Want to see your pictures online? No problem, the pictures that you take and the pictures that you import are all available online, once synced. You can choose to sync immediately, or to wait until you have a wifi connection.

Want to share your pictures on social media? No problem, from your computer, when you hover over the pictures in your My Moments page, you can select share. From here, you can choose one of the contacts you set up, as well as to share it on Facebook. You will have to log in to Facebook and allow Burst.it to publish to your wall.

My thoughts. Overall, I think this is a great little tool. I like that the pictures are available on my phone and my computer, with no transfer required on my part.

When I talked to my husband about the app and what it could do, he simply said to me Facebook. But, I told him this was different. On Facebook, the pictures are shared with all of your Friends (based on your settings), with this application you can share them with just one person or with a small group of people - allowing for more privacy. In addition, there are people that we know that don't have Facebook or don't use it very often. This allows us to quickly share the pictures with them, too. Since much of our family is not local, this is a great way to let the family 'peek' in on what we are up to.

I like that it allows me to share the pictures/videos through text or through e-mail. There are several people in my life that don't have text messaging on their phone.

I wish there were an easier way to extract the pictures from Burst.It to my computer. So far, the only thing that I have found is to view the picture and then Save As. When I look at the picture properties side by side, the resolution is the same but the size is different. I uploaded one of each version here for comparison, I saved the following image from my phone and from the computer and imported them here as the same size.
From Phone:

From Burst:

I haven't tried to print them to see if there is a difference then.

I like that I can share the pictures with anyone. They don't have to have a smart phone or belong to Burst.It to receive and view the pictures. Of course, they can set up an account if they want to, but it is not required.

I don't like that my imported pictures don't retain their original time stamp. I am sure that is an improvement that can be made.

When you are online, you can only send phone messages to the contacts that you have set up while in the app on your phone. If you haven't set someone up on your phone yet, you can list e-mails to share to. One thing I discovered here is that if you add an e-mail, associated with a contact that you set up on your phone for text message, it will send it to both the e-mail and the phone. On a positive note, if you add an e-mail from your computer, it does become part of your contact list on the app on the phone - you will have to edit it to put a name with it but the e-mail becomes part of your contact list.

Giveaway!
Courtesy of Burst.It through MomSelect, I have the opportunity to give away to one reader a free lifetime storage plan, valued at approximately $60 per year.

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Giveaway will remain open through August 9th. Giveaway is open to residents of the US only. One winner will be selected through Rafflecopter. The winner will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be selected.

No compensation was received for this post. As a participant in this MomSelect program, I received information about the program, as well as a free lifetime storage plan for my use. All opinions expressed are my own or that of my family.

My Favorite Game Apps

I have a new addiction on my phone - Word Feud. Okay, it's not that new, but I still love it. A game in the style of Scrabble, you can play with friends or against random opponents. I am a geek you see. I love to play word games and other mentally challenging games (I really love a "board" game that I have called Mindtrap. My husband doesn't enjoy it, but it is such a great game that causes you to push the limits of normal thinking and think outside the box.)

What is nice is that you don't have to give the game constant attention. You can actually take up to 72 hours after your opponent's turn to play your next word. I have had games with some friends take as long as two weeks to complete.

My son recently got an iPod Touch and now plays games against us and some friends. This can be a great way to build his vocabulary. Whenever someone plays a word that he doesn't know, we have him look it up in the dictionary. I have also asked him to check a word in the dictionary if he is not sure that it is a word before playing. Now, he has attempted to play words adjacent to other words and found some two letter words that are accepted by the game, but not necessarily words that we know or would use.

I know that there is a free version of the app available for iPod, iPhone and the Droid. That is what we have. I have to deal with advertisements, but they don't bother me that much.

Speaking of free games for the Droid, iPad, and iPod, we have another game that we thoroughly enjoy and find challenge in - Unblock Me. In this game, you have a red block that you need to slide out an opening on the side of the board. The other blocks that are blocking it in can either move left and right or up and down depending on their orientation. This is a very spatial type of game that you either love because of the challenge or find frustrating. My kids like to play it a lot - although, my four year old generally asks me for help. She's still learning, so I help her out and have her watch what I am doing.