Tag Archives: christmas

Twinkly Gets The Winter Fun Started Early

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Anyone who’s serious about Christmas knows about Twinkly. Their lights can transform your ho-hum set of twigs into a truly showstopping Christmas tree that tops off the festive season. How? Twinkly have this great set of Xmas lights which you drape round your tree as you would normally, but then the Twinkly app works it’s magic using your smartphone to map the positions of the lights to show off special effects that are perfectly synced no matter how incompetently you put on the lights. It’s awesome and really is a wonder the first time you do it.

Christmas is still a few months away but given the time of year Twinkly are reminding us that they can put on quite the show for Halloween too. Less red and gold and more green, orange and purple.

Twinkly do a wide range of lights from strings to curtains to squares and tubes. I really didn’t know how many different types they had to offer until quite recently.

Finally, in a piece of sheer marketing genius, Twinkly have signed up Chevy Chase as their 2024 Christmas Ambassador. You will have to have watched National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation to understand the brilliance of this. If you haven’t see the film, put it on your watchlist for the holiday season. Suffice to say that Christmas lights feature heavily in the film. Here’s Chevy aka Clark Griswold upping his game.

I can’t believe that they even do reindeers…

If you are in UK, the entire range is available from the Twinkly website, B&Q, Very and Currys. There are some discounts on now if you want to be prepared before the Xmas rush.

Jingle All The Way with a Bluetooth Bauble Speaker

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Looking for the final decoration to finish off dressing your O Christmas Tree? Well take a look, or rather a listen, to the Accelerate Holiday Tunes bauble with Bluetooth speaker. Connect to a smartphone via Bluetooth and instead of a Silent Night you’ll be Rocking Around the Christmas Tree. The decoration comes in four different colours – Red, Gold, Green and Silver Bells.

The 200 mAh battery will Jingle Bells for about two hours before needing a charge via the supplied USB cable. There’s a microUSB charging port on the back and it takes a similar amount time recharge. You could go for a Sleigh Ride while you’re waiting.

Avoiding a Blue Christmas is straightforward. Hold down the power button to put the bauble into pairing mode and look for HOLIDAY TUNES in the Bluetooth settings of your smartphone. Once paired up, any music played on the phone from Spotify, Amazon Music, iTunes, etc. will come out the Holiday Tunes bauble. It’s not worth Driving Home for Christmas just to hear the music but the sound quality’s better than you’d imagine. There’s a hanging loop for putting the bauble on the tree.

The Holiday Tunes bauble is available from Amazon.co.uk, priced at around GB£12-£15 (the price changes a little). You may find it cheaper in store too – try Home Bargains. It’s kitsch Christmas fun so even if it’s a White Christmas and It’s Cold Outside, you’ll have a Holly Jolly Christmas with your favourite tunes.

More in the YouTube video below. It really is the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

Disclaimer: This was a personal purchase.

Flavr Festive Phone Cases

Accessory, smartphone, ,

flavr logoWith the departure of Hallowe’en, it’s socially acceptable to discuss Christmas in the UK, though I suspect the USA has to get past Thanksgiving before giving in to the seasonal traditions. Recent years have the seen the rising popularity of Christmas jumpers (sweaters) revelling in fun knitted patterns. Jumping on this kitsch clothing are Flavr with a range of festive phone cases, riffing on the jumper styling.

Flavr Festive Fone Cases

Available for iPhones and Galaxy S7s, these Christmas crackers cost GB£18 (inc postage) from Flavr’s Xmas Shop or only £9.99 from Carphone Warehouse stores.

Flavr Festive Phone Cases

So bad, they’re good!

 

Roku “Stuff Your Stocking”

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Roku LogoOur friends at Roku are indulging in a bit of Christmas fun with their Stuff Your Stocking promotion. It’s a straightforward draw to win goodies such as a 40″ Hisense Roku TV, Roku 3 and Roku Streaming Stick (HDMI Version) along with subscriptions to Sky NowTV, Netflix and Rdio. The exact prizes vary from country and the competition is open to residents of the US, Canada and UK. There are different draws for each country so make sure you follow the right link.

Roku 3 Present

December Wallpaper Calendars

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Smashing Magazine LogoContinuing the Christmas theme, Smashing Magazine have a bunch of unique festive wallpapers for your desktop and other backgrounds needs. Part of their regular monthly programme, the December wallpapers function as calendars too, with dates embedded in the wallpaper, which is pretty handy anyway – no need to start up an app to check the date.

All the heavy lifting has been done too with a range of resolutions for different monitors and desktop sizes – I use them as backgrounds on my tablet and smartphone. The only difficulty is choosing the best. I’ve included a few below but check out over 20 others at Smashing Magazine.

dec-14-xmas-time-cal-1024x768
dec-14-a-sleigh-with-gifts-is-coming-to-town-cal-1024x768
dec-14-snow-globe-cal-1024x768
dec-14-gifts-lover-cal-1024x1024

Christmas Icons from Smashing Magazine

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Smashing MagazineThe Christmas season is officially underway with today’s opening of the first door on the Advent calendar. To help get festive, Manuela Langella and Smashing Magazine have produced a great set of Christmas-themed icons for holiday projects. They’ll look fantastic on desktops, websites, cards and invites, and are great fun for children too – your creative ability is the only limit!

Smashing Magazine Xmas Icon Set
Icon contact sheet courtesy of Smashing Magazine

The icon set  is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported licence and is free for private and commercial projects. It’s a 20-odd MB download and the icons come in AI, EPS, PDF, PNG, PSD and SVG formats which covers most needs. Stop making excuses and get making.

 

Toys for Christmas 2014

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Minecraft FiguresOnce Hallowe’en is over, the holiday seasons begins in earnest with both children and parents thinking about Christmas presents and toys. Unsurprisingly, the Toy Retailers Association for the UK and Ireland is happy to give some advice on what it considers to be the likely favourites for Santa Claus’ sack and in the festive spirit, here are their top twelve toys of Christmas.

  • Bop-It! Beats from Hasbro
  • Disney Frozen Snow Glow Elsa from JAKKS Pacific
  • Disney Frozen Sparkle Doll from Mattel
  • Kidizoom Smart Watch from VTech
  • Little Live Pets Bird Cage from Character Options
  • Minecraft Figures (Assorted) from Character Options
  • My Friend Cayla from Vivid Toy Group
  • Nerf Demolisher 2-in-1 from Hasbro
  • Benny’s Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP! from LEGO
  • Toot-Toot Animals Safari Park from VTech
  • Transformers Stomp & Chomp Grimlock from Hasbro
  • Zoomer Dino – Boomer from Spin Master Toys

KiddiZoom SmartWatchAside from the fact that Disney’s Frozen features twice, the other item that stands out is the VTech’s Kidizoom SmartWatch. Smartwatches are hardly mainstream items, yet here they are. At a retail price of less than GB£40, these have to be the cheapest smartwatches available, with some great features, including lots of different analogue and digital clock faces, a colour touch screen, built-in camera, voice recorder (with effects), games and a rechargeable battery. I think there are some adult smartwatches with fewer features!