How-to

Maybe your perfect Valentine’s Day is just you and your special someone. Perhaps instead you’d like to include a group of friends in your Valentine’s Day plans. Whichever you choose, here are some recipes you can use to plan the perfect Valentine’s Day dinner at home.

When my children were younger, I remember my wife and I contemplating questions like: when is my child ready for music? and How can I make sure they’ll like it? Even though we’re both classically trained pianists and I write and produce music for a living, we STILL grappled with these questions! Well I’m going to try to give all parents some answers. In addition to my own perspective on this subject, I bounced a few ideas off Jennifer Gasoi (2014 Grammy Award Winner- Best Children’s Album). She obviously has some fantastic insights and tips. You’ll see her perspective liberally peppered throughout this post.

Money – you can’t live with it, you can’t live without it, and it’s all too easy to let it slip through your fingers on a day-to-day basis without even knowing where it’s gone off too. I think it’s a real skill balancing a household budget, and it’s all too easy to slip back into free and easy spending. But if you put a few of these tips into place, you’ll start seeing positive results right away.

Stream the content you want without upgrading your television with one of these great media streaming devices!

A lot of people do a pizza night at least once a week, and for many of us that night is usually Friday. Having pizza for dinner is a nice, casual start to the weekend and there are so many different varieties you just can’t get bored of eating it. If it’s pizza night at your house and you’re staring at the same old ham and pineapple, here are a few of my favourite pizza recipes to add some inspiration to your pizza night.  

Given the amount of money we spend on things like smartphones, tablets and PCs it’s understandable that physical protection—cases, covers, screen protectors and laptop bags—are big business. What’s on these devices is often overlooked, though. If your basement floods and your PC is submerged you can buy a new PC. If you haven’t backed up the data on that computer’s drive, you have a much bigger problem and files like your digital photos, school work  and music could be gone for good. Don’t let that happen. Here’s how to protect your data like a pro.

If what we saw coming out of the Consumer Electronic Show is any indication, 2015 is going to be the year of the smart home. I wasn’t prepared for how much I would love smart devices like the mydlink Wi-Fi Smart Plug and the mydlink Wi-Fi Smart Plug+, or how handy the mydlink Wi-Fi motion sensor would be when it comes to keeping me informed on what’s going on around my house.Here’s what I found out when I set up my very own mydlink Connected Home.

Smart thermostats, smoke detectors, door locks and appliances have gone mainstream and are finding their way into more homes than ever. What sometimes gets lost in the list of cool things those smart devices can do is that they are connected. Without an Internet connection, most of them fizzle. Poor Wi-Fi means a poor user experience and for many people, their wireless router is the weak link in the smart equation. In this post, I’ll review the network and computer essentials for a smart home that lives up to the billing.

I’m one of the few people I know who enjoys grocery shopping. For me, it’s a challenge finding new and interesting products, getting the best price on those things I buy all the time, and saving money at the checkout. And because groceries make up a sizable chunk of my monthly spending budget, I like to save money on them as often as I can. Read on and I’ll share some tips that will have you saving on your grocery bill like a pro.

There will come a time when a new PC is in your future. Maybe it’s your first, or maybe you’re moving on from an older computer that just didn’t make sense to upgrade. Making the decision to buy a new PC is one thing, but picking the right one? That’s a lot tougher, especially when you begin to wade through all the specs and promotional material. Don’t make your choice based on who has the best marketing department. I’ll help you to choose your next PC like a pro, so you end up with a computer you’re happy with.