New Stuff! LG Tone review and other random things I have tried out recently

Here is the real product review that I promised.  I was give an LG Tone (HBS-700) Wireless Stereo Headset from the folks at LG and Active.com to review.  The product was free of charge, in exchange for two reviews on retailer websites as well as any additional social media/networking, so here it goes.  The views expressed are my own.

The LG Tone uses bluetooth to connect with your bluetooth enabled cell phone/mp3 player.  We have bluetooth in our truck with Microsoft Sync to connect my phone, so that is pretty much what I wanted to use this for, but around the house while working in the kitchen or elsewhere in the house doing mommy type duties so that I can be hands free and still chat with my friends.  The calls are very clear and I have had very little problems with hearing my caller, and vice versa.  I am really bad at charging my phone on a regular basis, so a lot of the time I would get "stuck" to the wall with my phone plugged in.  Not any more! I can plug my phone into our center island and have free range of the kitchen!  The brochure says I get 33 feet, but I haven't tested that.  I love it for calls.  The earbuds fit pretty well.  I did get them tangled in my hair once, but I usually have my hair pulled back so it isn't a big deal.  Check me out wearing it!  (Don't mind my lax makeup today!)  You can just see the wires going from the headset to my ears.  I probably should have picked a solid backdrop.

However, it has so many more features!  I felt like I didn't take full advantage of it yet.  I didn't even know until my month trial period was almost up that my iTouch has bluetooth!  Cristina told me because she also received the LG Tone, and uses it when vacuuming her house.  Gosh!  I wish I had realized that sooner.  My iTouch doesn't have any music on it right now, so it didn't do me much good.  Like many people, my iTunes account is sort of messed up, so I set up my iTouch as its own account, and haven't put any music on it yet, and I am guessing it is going to take more than a few minutes to get it figure out.  Thankfully, I am allowed to keep the headset, although my reviews needed to be done by today, so I will be able to use it with my iPod eventually.  Once I do, I will be able to listen to my music through bluetooth in STEREO!  I can put my iPod on the shelf on the treadmill and not have to worry about the wires connecting me to it.  The wires on the headset are short, just going from it to my ears.  They also store in the ends by a magnet when they aren't in your ears. (oh, and I also learned from Cristina that there is some sort of Nano recall for the batteries, so I might be getting a new one of those bad boys, but will need to reload ALL of my music again onto it, so I am not sure if it will be worth the trouble). 

Now, onto the other random new things. 

I LOVE LED CANDLES!  They are the bomb!  I wasn't given any to test, but purchased a bunch from Costco.  They are so much safer around the kiddos, and the candlesticks and large pillars have timers so I don't need to touch them!  Yeah!  The pillars are also great on our mantel.  We have tons of real candles up there, but we have everything packed so dense that I was afraid to light any of them.  We will probably do it on Christmas Eve for a short time.  I am concerned with the heat from one flame melting the sides of another candle, and also that they are so close to the wall. I sort of wished we had them spaced more evenly, but we placed the German decorations first, and then fit the candles around them.  They don't stand out so much in the daytime because the blend into the wall and the decorations pop instead.  I was going to use small votives, closer to the front, and still might switch it. 

The first pack of candlesticks had a bad one, that just stayed on.  I bought a second pack, and still need to return the bad one to Costco.  I am not worried with their excellent return policy.  I just took one out of the new pack so we didn't have to take the batteries out of the first pack, as well as get out the extension ladder to get the one in our entryway window down.  They are a little "yellower" than we would like, compared with the really bright corded non leds on the sides of the house, but all I have seen around with timers are LEDs, and I don't know that another brand would be more white.  You can't really tell in this picture, but you can when you are in the house (btw, we were the weird neighbors hanging our garland from the porch at 10pm on Saturday, in the dark, because the weather was warm and it hadn't started pouring yet- we had several days of rain that followed this, and it was misting on us as it was).

We also got our  new tree from Costco.  It looks more real that our previous tree.  It is not as "shiny" looking as our other tree that Ryan described as a pipe cleaner, and it is a positive..  It has plastic wired branches that look really real.  They were a bit more challenging to get ornaments with small string loops onto, but anything with a big loop or hook was no problem.  It isn't LED, which we sort of wanted from an energy standpoint, but we liked the color of the regular bulbs better.

Soren thought it looked just like the picture on the box:

Here are a couple really mundane new things we tried this week too.  I got some Jif Natural Peanut Butter, and it was AWESOME!  I had tried Smuckers a while back and hated it.  The Jif does have sugar and molasses in it, so it isn't just peanuts.  It has the same calories as the reduced fat creamy and the regular crunchy.  It is a total winner!  I also bought some Meijer apple cider, and it was amazingly good too!  Perhaps it is because we have been out of cider for a while and just any cider was good, but it hit the spot!  It comes from MI, so it has likely made out of tasty MI apples.  Soren thought it tasted like Three Cedars (which is still closed, btw), but not as good as Parmenters.  I mainly wanted it to make pumpkin bread.  It doesn't taste nearly as good when made with water instead of replacing it with cider.  I don't think it is worth the calories when made without cider!  I also got egg nog, which is always fun this time of year.  I think I might need to try Bolthouse Farms nog.  It is a low calorie version, but I expect it to taste richer than the low fat kind I bought.  Has anyone tried it?  I love their juices, so I would expect it to be good.

We also got Elf on a Shelf.  It has been very fun, and practically all of Keira's classmates have one too, so I am glad she isn't left out.  It hasn't been quite as effective as we had hoped with Soren, but he is coming around. He took one look at the elf and scoffed, "that's not real, it's just a toy" on the first day, but he is now talking about how it moves magically from room to room.

On the converse, I got a few things that I didn't love so much.  I got the Honey Maid Gingerbread graham crackers and didn't love them.  There were very crumbly, and I am not sure what I think of them.  They have a nice gingerbread taste, but since they are a cracker, are super dry.  I guess that is what they are, though.  Maybe I should just make some gingerbread cookies and save these for house building.  They look like they are designed for that.  We also got a bunch of costco flushable wipes, and within a few days of using them with Soren, I had already clogged the toilet after he had a particularly bad accident.  I am sure it is just because I used too many, and it probably would have happened with any brand, but at any rate, I think we will be going back to Huggies wipes put in the trash or give the kid a shower if this happens again.  The garbage truck had just come, though, and the thought of poopy wipes sitting in the  garbage for a full week just grossed me out.  Not nearly as gross as the MASSIVE mess the toilet made that almost caused me to add my own puke to it, but now I know :)  I love having a sanitized bathroom, but just wish it didn't come as the result of an emergency, and just because I had some free time on my hands.

Finally, my training is getting back into the routine.  My mileage is pretty low, still, getting ready for the official plan to start in 11 days!  Yeah!  It do have to make some modifications due to Christmas Eve falling on a Saturday, and I have been forbidden to run on it.  I also may have some more glitches because my gym's childcare is closed on snow days here.  It wasn't in MI.  We always worked out on snow days in the past, and I was never afraid to venture out into the snow.  I do need new tires still, so that may limit me, but I guess if I don't take care of it soon enough, that is where I will be on our first snow day, since apparently no one goes anywhere with the slightest bit of snow on the ground.  I AM NOT AFRAID!  Bring it!  It was weird to decorate the tree in a running skirt, and I got hot once I changed into my normal clothes.  How on earth am I going to train for a spring marathon if I am not going to train in a blizzard?  Well, maybe that will be OK and I can deal with having some milder weather for training reasons.