Holiday Hacks

Streamline and simplify your holiday season with this comprehensive guide filled with quick tips, easy hacks, and fun DIY project ideas—all designed for the most wonderful time of the year! While the holidays are a joyous time to spend with family and friends, we all know they can quickly become a hassle if you’re not prepared. Holiday Hacks gives you expert tips and pointers to celebrate in style—while getting the presents wrapped and sorted, the food beautifully prepared, and the decorations on point—all with a minimum of stress! Holiday Hacks includes over 600 handy tips for everything holiday-related—from how to fill your house with a festive cinnamon scent, to soothing those holiday headaches, to an easy and delicious hot chocolate hack using Nutella and milk. There’s even advice about ornament storage—egg cartons are a great way to keep your small and delicate ornaments safe in their yearly hibernation—so you’ll be ready to go when the holidays roll around again next year!

Presents unique craft projects that have been seen on the Life hacks for kids YouTube show, including feather earrings, melted crayon art, a headband holder, and indoor s'mores, and includes questions answered by Sunny.

Open up this book and you will find amazing, clever, innovative solutions to everyday problems that you can do yourself. This collection of ingenious, helpful, budget-conscious hints, tips and how to's prove that you don't need a workshop full of tools or 30 years of experience to be a successful DIYer. Save time, money and frustration, plus, up your DIY game with these hacks shared by our editors and readers. Chapters include: -Cleaning Hacks -Painting Hacks Workshop Tips -Storage & Organizing Hacks -Safety & Security Hacks -Holiday Hacks -Best for Your Pets

So much of what is commonplace today was once considered impossible, or at least wishful thinking. Laser beams in the operating room, cars with built-in guidance systems, cell phones with email access. There's just no getting around the fact that technology always has, and always will be, very cool.But technology isn't only cool; it's also very smart. That's why one of the hottest technological trends nowadays is the creation of smart homes.At an increasing rate, people are turning their homes into state-of-the-art machines, complete with more switches, sensors, and actuators than you can shake a stick at. Whether you want to equip your home with motion detectors for added security, install computer-controlled lights for optimum convenience, or even mount an in-home web cam or two purely for entertainment, the world is now your oyster. Ah, but like anything highly technical, creating a smart home is typically easier said than done.Thankfully, Smart Home Hacks takes the guesswork out of the process. Through a seemingly unending array of valuable tips, tools, and techniques, Smart Home Hacks explains in clear detail how to use Mac, Windows, or Linux to achieve the automated home of your dreams. In no time, you'll learn how to turn a loose collection of sensors and switches into a well-automated and well-functioning home no matter what your technical level may be.Smart Home Hacks covers a litany of stand-alone and integrated smart home solutions designed to enhance safety, comfort, and convenience in new and existing homes. Kitchens, bedrooms, home offices, living rooms, and even bathrooms are all candidates for smart automation and therefore are all addressed in Smart Home Hacks.Intelligently written by engineering guru and George Jetson wannabe, Gordon Meyer, Smart Home Hacks leaves no stone unturned. From what to purchase to how to use your remote control, it's the ultimate guide to understanding and implementing complete or partial home automation.

Achieve all of your financial goals with these 300 easy solutions to all your personal finance questions—from paying off your student loans to managing investments. Are you looking for ways to decrease your spending…and start increasing your savings? Need some simple advice for maximizing your investments? Want to start planning for your retirement but don’t know where to start? It’s now easier than ever to achieve all your financial goals! Many people are afraid to talk about money, which means that you might be missing some of the best money-saving skills out there! In Money Hacks you will learn the basics of your finances so you can start making every penny count. Whether you’re trying to pay down debt, start an emergency fund, or make the smartest choice on a major purchase, this book is chock-full of all the useful hacks to make your money work for you in every situation!

With more than 60 practical and creative hacks, this book helps you turn Raspberry Pi into the centerpiece of some cool electronics projects. Want to create a controller for a camera or a robot? Set up Linux distributions for media centers or PBX phone systems? That’s just the beginning of what you’ll find inside Raspberry Pi Hacks. If you’re looking to build either a software or hardware project with more computing power than Arduino alone can provide, Raspberry Pi is just the ticket. And the hacks in this book will give you lots of great ideas. Use configuration hacks to get more out of your Pi Build your own web server or remote print server Take the Pi outdoors to monitor your garden or control holiday lights Connect with SETI or construct an awesome Halloween costume Hack the Pi’s Linux OS to support more complex projects Decode audio/video formats or make your own music player Achieve a low-weight payload for aerial photography Build a Pi computer cluster or a solar-powered lab

Podcasting does for Internet audio listeners what TiVo does for television viewers--it puts you in charge of when you enjoy a program. Podcasting is a web-based broadcast medium that sends audio content (most commonly in the MP3 format) directly to an iPod or other digital audio player. You subscribe to audio feeds, receive new files automatically, and listen to them at your convenience. As you can imagine, podcasting is taking the "blogsphere" by storm. A podcast is a professional-quality Internet radio broadcast, and like blogging and HTML before it, this revolutionary new way of publishing to the Internet has become the new outlet for personal expression. If you've got Internet access and a copy of Podcasting Hacks, you can find out just how easy it is to listen to and create your own Internet audio programs. With Podcasting Hacks, Jack Herrington, a software engineer with 20 years of experience developing applications using a diverse set of languages and tools, delivers the ultimate how-to of podcasting for anyone looking to get the most out of this hot new medium. Since August 2004 (the month that iPodder.com editor Adam Curry considers the start of podcasting), audio blogging has exploded. Podcasts cover every conceivable topic, including sex, relationships, technology, religion, home brewing, recreational drugs, rock 'n roll, food, entertainment, politics, and much more. There were podcasts from the Democratic National Convention in Fall 2004, and some programs on Air America and NPR are also podcasts. Podcasting Hacks offers expert tips and tools for blogging out loud--for transmitting (and receiving) audio content worldwide with ease. This groundbreaking volume covers both entry-level and advanced topics perfect for aspiring and experienced podcasters. Herrington shows you how to get started, create quality sound, use the right software, develop a great show, distribute a podcast, and build an audience. More advanced topics include audio editing, podcasting on the go, and even videocasting.

Cooks are already one step ahead when buying refrigerated dough, and then with the inventive recipes here, they can re-purpose--or hack--that dough into creative recipes. Whether you make Crab-Filled Wontons or Monkey Bread out of Crescent Rolls or enjoy Ice Cream-Filled Glazed Doughnuts or Strawberry Kabobs made with Grands Biscuits, the 125 recipes are surprising, fun, and delicious.