YumSugar

50 Healthy Foods Magnets

FitSugar — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:45:00 PDT

Is your fridge covered with magnets that are of no real use to you other than holding up pictures and take out menus? Then think about getting something useful to put on your fridge.

Maybe this set of 50 Healthy Foods Magnets ($12.00) is just the tool you need to stick to eating healthy in your own home. Each food magnet includes key nutrients, calories, fat, fiber, and protein information to make choosing a healthy meal easy and fun! Just snap the magnets apart and arrange them on your refrigerator. You can even match up your favorites for a tasty meal or experiment with new and different combinations. Plus, this is a great way to get kids thinking about nutrition early on. Sound like a good idea? Then buy it from SimpleMemoryArt.com.

Get Smart Tea Towels

YumSugar — Mon, 14 May 2007 09:01:17 PDT

Have you ever wished you had a kitchen conversion chart at your fingertips? How about a wine pairing guide, or a herb cheat sheet? Well stop your wishing and start ordering. The folks over at Simple Memory Art (aka Smart) have come up with a smart set of kitchen towels. There are three sets to choose from (two different towels in each set): herbs & spices, wine and cooking tips. I love the way that they look (clean and simple) and I love the fact that they're informative and practical (they're meant to get dirty, they're towels!). Available in sets of 2 for $18, or as a full set of 6 for $50. Thanks Stacey for the tip!

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Trade the Ikea Prints For Instagram Wall Art

Kelly Schwarze — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:21:34 PST

Blame it on the dozens of downloaded photo apps and high-quality cameras in smartphones for our obsessive photographing and documentation of everyday life. Since there are tons of ways to print Instagram photos, I wanted to see how the square lo-res images translate to wall-worthy prints. Using CanvasPop, I turned an Instagram print from a memorable weekend into gallery-style canvas art as seen here.

Available in two sizes: a 12-inch stretched canvas square ($30 for a limited time) and a 20-inch stretched canvas square ($60 for a limited time), each canvas comes outfitted with a sawtooth hook for easy at-home hanging. The entire CanvasPop ordering process was as simple as taking an Instagram itself. Select a canvas size, a white or black canvas edge (which is not seen from a head-on view of the print), then the image itself by signing into your Instgram account on the site. If a retro border is what you want, be sure to select a photo from your Instagram library created with a filter that has a built-in border like Lomo-fi or Earlybird.

My 12-inch print was ordered during the hectic holiday season, but even with national holidays accounted for, it only took about two weeks for the finished canvas print to arrive nestled in a very secure cardboard box. I'm eager to make a few more prints for a pretty wall vignette while the introductory price deal is still on, since it's hard to rationalize $80 per print, despite the expert craftsmanship. The photo and filter colors on the canvas were nearly spot-on to the original image, just slightly more saturated, which actually seems appropriate considering I usually only see Instagrams in their tiny phone-sized resolution.

Whether it's a college dorm room or your first "grown-up" apartment, the CanvasPop Instagram print is a high-quality and affordable way to decorate with favorite memories.

Tattoo Your Love For iPhone Photography

Kelly Schwarze — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 11:13:07 PST

It's time for a new twist on photo memorabilia. With photo mugs pouring out of the cupboards, a bedtime t-shirt of last year's vacation, and a mouse pad snap from the trip to Disneyland, you've made sure to keep photo memories nearby. Push those stale souvenirs aside and turn a favorite iPhone photo into the ultimate statement piece: a temporary tattoo.

The set of 16 customizable photo tattoos for $14 through the iPhone app MoPho, make unique party favors or just let you show off your camera phone shots anytime you roll up a sleeve. To try out the MoPho tattoos for ourselves, we made a print of a recent dinosaur Instagram. Putting the tattoo on was simple; just like any ordinary temporary skin art, it applies with a damp cloth and the instructions are impeccably detailed. Once on, the tattoo cracked a bit with our skin, but actually looked better as the hours passed. We weren't expecting tattooed perfection from the temporary ink, rather exactly what it is - a quirky way to flaunt your photo talents.

Make sure your Instagram pics are tattoo perfection with these iPhone photography tips.

The Night Circus Author Erin Morgenstern Talks Twilight and Harry Potter Comparisons and Her Casting Wish List

Tara Sharp — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 04:00:33 PDT

As a huge Harry Potter fan, I must admit my interest was piqued when I heard about a new book last month being compared to the magical series, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. To add fuel to the buzzy fire, the film rights for the book have already been picked up by Twilight's entertainment company Summit. After reading the enchanting, sensory love story (targeted for adults, I should add) about dueling magicians who fall in love while competing in a mysterious circus that runs from nightfall to dawn, I believe it stands on its own. We chatted with Erin, who has a background in theater and studio art, about her first novel and whom she could picture playing protagonists and star-crossed lovers Celia and Marco on the big screen. Read her thoughts below.

TrèsSugar: What do you think of the comparisons being made to Harry Potter and Twilight?

Erin Morgenstern: It has some aspects in common with Harry Potter. I'm still not sure where the Twilight comparisons come from, maybe the fact that Summit is involved with the film rights. There are plenty of books that I think would be a little more apt, like Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke, but not enough people have read that. I hope that it ends up being the kind of book that people don't have to compare it to anything. A lot of people tell me that they have trouble describing it. It's a complicated work because it's about the circus, but it's about the love story, but it's about so much more than that at the same time.

TS: What's your favorite love story in literature? Did it influence Celia and Marco's love story?

EM: I'm not really big on love stories. I'm not that classic romance sort of girl. Although I can't say it's my favorite love story, there's definitely a Romeo and Juliet aspect to it. I do kind of love a star-crossed romance. It makes everything so much more interesting and complicated, and sometimes angsty. I think that makes for a really good story.

TS: You say in your website's "about me" section that you were reading Stephen King at age 12 and J.K. Rowling at age 21. How did that affect you as a writer?

EM: I grew up in that time frame where there wasn't a YA section yet. There was a children's section and an adult's section. So when I hit around 11 or 12, I just started looking through the adult section. And for some reason I just got stuck on Stephen King and read practically the entire Stephen King shelf. And then when I was in college, I took a children's literature class, and we read the first Harry Potter. That influenced my lack of sense of what's an adult book and what's a children's book, because I had a very backwards reading life at certain stages. I like adult books that capture that child-like whimsy and children's books that don't hide the adult side of things. And I think there's more room for overlap between adult books and children's books.

TS: What are you reading right now?

EM: I'm in the middle of Lev Grossman's The Magician King. I finished The Magicians a couple weeks ago, and I have a couple events coming up that I'm doing with Lev Grossman. But I'm enjoying it very much, partially because I've read Harry Potter, I've read the Narnia books, and it has an interesting spin on those tales that I know really well. And before that I just recently finished the new Haruki Murakami book (1Q84) that comes out next week, and it's really just epic and wonderful. It's so, so good. It doesn't feel like it's 1,000 pages when you're reading it. I didn't want it to end.

TS: You've mentioned you could see Geoffrey Rush as Prospero in the film adaption, but who could you see playing Celia and Marco?

EM: I don't really picture actors when I write. Geoffrey Rush was sort of the one exception, because when I was coming up with him as the character he had a Geoffrey Rush vibe in my mind. For Celia and Marco, they look very particular in my head, and I don't have actors who really capture it. Celia was kind of inspired by Clara Bow. I found this old picture of her that wasn't that sort of classic short hair, her hair was all wispy and a little more Victorian-looking. She has very dark eyes, and that's sort of what Celia looks like. If we could find a modern-day Clara Bow type. And the actor who has a little of the Marco feel to me is Lee Pace, but he's going to be too old by the time we get around to the filming, which is unfortunate.

TS: Is there a sequel in the works. How long do we have to wait for the film?

EM: There's no plans for a proper sequel. I don't think it's the kind of story that lends itself well to "this is what happens next." And it was never intended to be a series. I do think at some point I wouldn't be opposed to do something like a collection of short pieces of side stories or people's back stories or a few of those things that happened afterwards.

The film is at least a couple of years away. It's in the stage of negotiations with producers, trying to find someone to head the ship.

TS: What did you learn about relationships as you wrote The Night Circus?

EM: I think that the essential thing I kept coming back to is that a relationship is about more than just two people. There's so many more factors in the equation, whether they're other people or circumstances. Relationships are never simple, there's always so much more going on.

If you read the book and want to find out more insights from Erin on the plot and process of writing, keep reading!