We’ve had a TomTom One for several years and have been extremely happy with it. We used it intensively in Europe and here in the United States. A couple of months ago our TomTom car charger suddenly started making a high-pitched noise and a few days later it overheated and smoke (!) came out of it. We threw it away and bought a new (generic) car charger at Wal-Mart. A few days later that charger started making a high-pitched noise too. I read something about the possibility of a TomTom battery overheating from being plugged in all the time, so we concluded that our beloved TomTom had broken down. More »

We used to like to make fries at home. In Holland we had a very nice large black pot with a wire fry basket insert and a glass lid. It was perfect to use for stove-top frying, and we loved it. So why the heck didn’t we bring it with us?! Because it was big, bulky, and breakable, and we thought it would be easily replaced. Ha!

We looked for frying pans with baskets at all our local shops (Kohl’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, Sears, Walmart, Target, etc) but they only sell electric fryers. So I had a look online. Plenty of shops sell minuscule pots of 4 quarts or less. I figured we need at least 7 quarts, but even bigger would be better (I guess our beloved old one was 9 or 10). I found one restaurant specialty shop that sold baskets and fryers separately at reasonable prices, but shipping was crazy (about the same price as the implements themselves). Then I found out that Farberware makes a 7Q fryer with a basket, and that I could purchase it from Target.com with reasonable shipping costs. Yay! I placed my order.

So bad that the United States FDA (Food and Drug Administration) website has made an embeddable search widget. You can search for which peanut butter products are included in the salmonella outbreak. OMG, really?

Yep, really.

We bought two of these Brita water filter pitchers at Target the other day. They’re pink, to support breast cancer awareness, and they were marked down from $26.99 for only $13.48. I always find that tap water tastes too much like chlorine here, but with this excellent filtered pitcher our water taste great now. We no longer buy bottled water. The pitcher even has an indicator that tells you when to change the filter. The only thing I don’t like about it is the small lid in the top, it is not very secure and it keeps falling off. Otherwise it’s an excellent purchase.

I give it 4-and-a-half stars!

Well, not us personally, but our dog bowl is. The issue of People magazine that hit newsstands today (cover date December 15th) has a two-page spread starting on page 124 about Barack Obama collectibles titled Obamarama. One of the 10 things shown is our Poodles for Obama Dog Bowl from our democratic CafePress store Leftique. There’s a picture of our design with the text “A Dutch expat who couldn’t vote cocreated a dish to show support – 25 breeds available”. That Dutch expat they’re talking about is me!

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Today was Black Friday and many stores were open very early with special sales. Some even as early as 4 o’clock! When we got up at 5:00 we turned on the news and they were already showing helicopter views of huge lines of people in front of stores and malls. Roads around big malls like Woodfield and Gurnee Mills were already jammed. Some Best Buy’s in the Chicagoland area had people camping out in front of their doors from 3pm in the afternoon the day before! Big stores like Best Buy and Target often have so-called ‘doorbusters’, which are things like laptops and big TV’s that are very cheap but they only have a few in each store. So people want to be the first in and grab these things. More »

A few weeks ago Amazon added the Universal Wish List bookmarklet button as a new feature to their already pretty awesome Wish List. It’s great!

When you have this bookmarklet in your favorites, you can add any item from any website to your Amazon wish list! I tried it with a couple of my favorite online shops and it works like a charm.

The Amazon Universal Wish List popup on Scubadorable

When you see a product – on any website! – that you want to add to your Amazon Wish List, click on the bookmarklet to bring up the Wish List pop-up. When I did this on Birdorable, the product name and correct photo default in, and I was able to enter the price and a personal note. Then I clicked on Add to Wish List and – woo hoo! – there it is.

My Wish List now showing Scubadorable jacket

The Euro 2008 football (soccer) championships begin next week in Austria and Switzerland. Dutch grocery chain Albert Heijn is trying to duplicate the huge success of their Wuppie campaign of two years ago with a new cute character to collect – the Welpie. Welpies are cute little wild-haired lions meant to show support for the Dutch team. Welp is Dutch for baby lion.

We got our first Welpie on Monday and today I picked up another.

Our Welpies

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Amy Maniatis of Cafepress, wearing an Obama t-shirt from Lekker Politics, was on MSNBC recently talking about the sales of products with Obama, Hillary and McCain. They actually have a really nice Elections 08 Cafepress Meter that shows they sell about three times as many Obama than Hillary.

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I still remember the old-fashioned pull tabs on pop cans that were introduced in March 1963 by the Pittsburgh Brewing Company. You put your finger in the ring and pulled the tab off. Unfortunately, these pull tabs were an environmental disaster; pets and wildlife died from digesting the sharp things, as did a few people who dropped them into a can and then accidentally choked on them. The hazardous tabs wound up on beaches, where people cut their feet on them, and littered roadsides and damaged garbage disposals. More »