IT HAS BEEN a frustrating week on the decorating front, but a good week for gadgets.
I am redoing my bedroom and I am looking for a particular shade of navy, but no luck. (More on this next week, hopefully.)
Anyway, the good news is that I did find a new gadget for my home - the Ring Video Doorbell 2 (Amazon, £139).
Love a good gadget – our home is full of hi-tech stuff designed to make our house smarter and our lives easier. My husband Craig and I are fascinated by technology.
We have smart thermostats (which means we can control our heating with our phones): and smart lights (LED remote-controlled ones for our external soffits and an Amazon Echo system inside); and we are looking at investing in smart locks too – we have been researching the Yale keyless lock for our front door.
(We even have smart keyfinders which help us find our keys – or smartphone! – at the click of a button.)
This week’s gadget, however, is a revelation. I am not going to lie, I was a little sceptical about exactly how much use it would be but truth be told, I am loving it.
This little box allows you to watch over your home in crystal clear HD video, and it means you can see, hear and speak to visitors from anywhere. You can answer the door when you are not in the house – amazing.
You can hard wire it, but we chose not to. I am impressed with this little device - and it is great for people with disabled or elderly relatives - a really useful way to support them when needed.
Read more: Our expert on blush pink, what to buy, and this week's cleaning tip
MUST HAVE : As we did not hard wire our device we decided to purchase the WIFI enabled Ring Chime (Curry’s £24.99) to ensure we got ring notifications in our home. Plug it in, connect it to your Wi-Fi network through the free ring app and link it to the ring video door bell, it’s that easy to install. We live in a townhouse and even from the top floor you can hear this loud and clear.
Read more: Best way to reduce the stress of packing for holidays
TOP TIP: While helping my dad, who is in the process of moving and clearing out some furniture, I noticed a little gem of a table in the garage. It was looking a little bit worn and tatty, but I remembered a tip I had heard about reviving wooden furniture. All you have to do is mix a few drops of olive oil into a quarter cup of vinegar, and wipe this over your furniture using a clean cloth. The vinegar pulls the dirt out of the wood, and the oil brings back the shine. It looks great.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel