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Do you like to re-decorate or simply switch things around your home once in a while? The bad thing about that is, it takes time and muscles who may not be so cooperative when you are in the middle of makeover fever. For times like that, perhaps it would be helpful to virtually re-design your home using software. It will let you move things around, change your wall colors to your hearts’ desire without all the hard work and when you do get down to business, you may get better results.

Here are two home design software we found that would work. Thankfully, they are free too.

Sweet Home 3D – this is a downloadable software that is open source and it runs on Windows, Mac, Solaris and Linux. Pretty interesting. Take a look at their video demo it looks quite easy to use.

Autodesk Homestyle – this is a web based home design software so it works on many operating systems that run flash. It is free at time of writing.

There’s been a lot of talk about Facebook privacy changes recently. I think this is the double edged sword about Facebook. Everything they do and will do in the future will be scrutinized for privacy loopholes. As it should. The most recent change about Places really got people worried. How your friends can ‘check you in’ as being present at a place.

I can see where this can turn out to be disastrous. But really, you don’t need Facebook to give your location away. I am not talking about disclosing your location voluntarily via Twitter or Foursquare either. I’m talking about information you may not be aware you are sharing in your photos.

Yes, photos.

• Did you know that many smart phones save the exact location (down to the longitude and latitude) where your pictures are taken?
• And did you know that you could be openly broadcasting this information on photo sharing websites?

With each photo snapped on your smart phone, you could be saving, storing and sharing all this data all over the Internet. This makes it quite easy for anyone to well… stalk us. Here are full details and how to fix this issue on your phone.

Have you seen WordBloom? It is a really neat tool when you’re doing bible study or want to look up words, related words and where they might also appear on the bible.

You can start with a verse and it will pull up the words in that verse and display related words. As you click on each word, you will find other related words and a list of verses that also contain the word. Pretty interesting. I can probably get lost in a tool like that.

I imagine it would be particularly helpful when you’re trying to think of a verse, for educators, and church leaders.

The tool is not free though. It costs $37 a year which is not too bad. If you want to check it out they also have a trial. You’ll want to go to their home page.

Let me know what you think.

On a whim while browsing through Lowes one day, I splurged on a foam soap dispenser from KitchenAid. I’m really not the type to buy anything like that especially something that cost $10. I’m more likely to re-use those dinky plastic dispensers that come with hand soap. But I thought it would save money because it promised to work with a solution of 10% soap to 90% water. Wow. That would be huge long term savings.

I brought it home, loaded it with a 10 to 1 solution and was immediately delighted! It was awesome.

Sadly for me, it didn’t last but one month. I do not know if I got a dud, or whether someone in the family didn’t realize it and filled it with all soap solution or if it’s just a poor quality product. I would certainly get another one if I can get it for a song. In the mean time, back to my dinky plastic dispenser.

So, some people are naturally highly attuned to kids. They are able to get in the kids’ zones and get down with them, play and talk easily. Me, I’m the type of parent who needs more help. In particular, what to talk to the children about.

The good thing is, my kids are so talkative and tend to stretch out their explanation. Yet there are still times of awkward silence at the dinner table I absolutely hate that. Ugh. I can’t stand to eat in silence. Might as well eat alone.

Today this TableTopics thing caught my eye. What a great idea! It’s a box of cards with some conversation starters like:

• Is it more fun to be a parent or a child
• Would you rather live for a week in the past or the future
• What family or school rule would you most like to change

These are awesome! And it can help us really understand our kids at a deeper level too. The cube costs $25. Great for the uninspired (like me).

On the other hand, I suspect this is something that you could also create on your own with a card box and a bunch of index cards. Maybe let the children add their own topics to discuss too.

Links:

TableTopics

Games healthy? Yup. I found Playnormous. It is a really fun site with about 6 games the kids can play. All free. But it’s not just the games. I like what is in the game. I just played Lunch Crunch where you score points for filling the children’s lunch trays with healthier food options. It was pretty fun.

There’s a bunch more games that related to choices of food, exercise and testing their knowledge on staying healthy. You can also purchase the games on CD. I also spotted some recipes the kids can make.

I’m going to put this in our approved games bookmark list for my children. Something good to occupy them during rainy summer days.

Links:

Playnourmous

The hottest (and coldest) months of the year always remind me to look for ways to cut our energy costs. One of the things that my husband and I have always looked forward to is making our own energy. For starters, we just want to power a few key appliances in the house.

Ideally, we’d like to stick it to the power company and say good riddance and live off the grid. But can we? I don’t know, we are so conditioned to buying our power that this idea itself is quite scary. That’s why we hope to be able to start small and see how the land lays from there.

All is not lovely in the land of renewable home energy either. Have you seen the prices of some of these things? Sheesh… I know, I know. You pay a high price but you save in the long run, many times more. I get that. Still… I’m a cheapskate and we’re geeky. We like to make things especially on the cheap.

I found this Home Made Energy guide that shows you how to make your own solar power system and/or wind power system for as low as $100. Going to send it off to hubby to see if I can convince him to give the guide a go.

Have you built your own energy system? How did it go? Any words of advise?