Welcome to Dooba Reviews

Taveling this Holiday Season? Keep track of your Passport and Tickets.

Author Thomas | 30.11.2009 | Category Home & Garden

Rustic River Leather has added a new Passport and Ticket wallet to it’s home and office lineup.

Ever approached the security line in the airport and begun to wonder where you placed your passport or boarding pass?  With so many compartments in laptop bags and carry-on bags, it’s easy to misplace your passport or other travel documents and begin a frantic search before it’s your turn in the line.  The Rustic River Ticket Organizer is made to help prevent such embarrassing occurrences.

The ticket organizer has pockets to store your passport, tickets, and boarding passes, business cards, and other travel documents.  The organizer is made from genuine cow skin leather and has an Old West style and feel to it.

The organizer measures 9 1/4 by 5  inches and can be found at Rustic River Leather.

Flameless – Wickless Scented Wax Candles

Author Thomas | 17.03.2009 | Category Home & Garden

The world is all a-rage with Scentsy Candles because they’re wickless, have a unique design and are somewhat safer than regular candle warmers or wicked candles. There are however a number of alternatives if you’re set on getting a candle that actually looks like a candle but isn’t as dangerous as a candle warmer.

Wickless LED candles can provide the perfect candlelight atmosphere without the danger and smoke of wick burning candles.  We purchased a 3 pack of candles that are LED powered and are quite impressed.

The candles make a great addition to the home decor and are great for dinners, parties, etc. A few more things we like are that the candles:

• Flicker like real candles
• Will last for hundreds of hours on 2 AA batteries
• Do not heat up
• Have a Vanilla Scent (it’s not strong, but there, and probably better than nothing)
• The LED light is hidden within the wax about half way down into the candle
• Make a great flashlight at night if you need to go and check on the kids without turning on the lights
• Are portable

Because the candles are so portable and safe, they take you back a couple hundred years when candlelight was the “light bulb” and flashlight of the day.  We’ve found ourselves turning on the candle at night and taking it down the stairs to check on something at night rather than flipping all the lights on and going blind.  The candles are fun to use and the kids like them at times instead of a night light.  There are a variety of candles such as these; the three-pack is nice for the cost savings. The wickless candles are available here with free shipping.

Natural Spectrum HappyLite

Author Thomas | 16.03.2009 | Category Home & Garden

The new Natural Spectrum HappyLite from Verilux is a great way to brighten a room.  Not to make too much fun, but  Seasonal Affective Disorder is the condition of feeling down or blue during the winter months and the acronym is S.A.D.  You’ve got to love whoever thought that one.  It’s also humorous that the light is called the “Happy” light to combat the effects of S.A.D.  

Anyway, the lights do help to brighten up a room.  We’ve done some limited testing with normal fluorescent lights (which give off a yellow hue), white fluorescent lights, and the HappyLite.  The HappyLite and the white fluorescent lights were amazing compared to the regular energy saving fluorescent bulbs.  Even regular light bulbs give off a yellow hue.  The white light from the HappyLite emits a bright white light more similar to what you would see shining in to a room through a window on a sunny day.

The lights come in a 2-pack and are pretty bright, so position them however seems best in your room or office.  One funny thing was that after we got our lights, we saw the same ones in our doctor’s office a week later.

ShelfReliance CanSolidator Pantry Review

Author Thomas | 02.03.2009 | Category Home & Garden

CanSolidator Pantry Dimensions: Height: 11″ Width: 20″ Depth: 16.5″ Capacity: 40 Cans

The ShelfReliance CanSolidator Pantry is a great way to store food cans.  But who would want to store food cans?  Katrina, Hugo, Tornadoes, Earthquakes, Downsizing…ring any bells?  Storing food is a smart idea in preparation for difficult times.  It’s also just a good idea to have some food on hand for those crazy cooking moods you might get in.  You many just need something that comes in a can.

The CanSolidator can help you stay stocked with food because it makes it easy to see where you’re running low.  We recently purchased a CanSolidator and were amazed when we went to fill it just how low we were on a certain food type.  It was hard to see previously because our cans were stacked one on top of the other.  We purchased the CanSolidator Pantry, but will probably upgrade to the Pantry Plus soon because our shelves are wide and can fit more.

The product is a Food Rotation System or FRS for short.  Using First in First out or FIFO, cans are placed in the CanSolidator at the top level and then rotate down to the bottom level.  You remove cans from the bottom, thus using the oldest cans first.

A few thoughts and observations when we pulled it out of the box:

• Assembly is required.  It’s not a big deal, but you have to put the pieces together to fit the width of cans you want to put in there.
• Holds three full-sized cans and one medium can.  We weren’t able to fit 4 large soup cans in there, but we could fit 3 large cans and one medium cream of mushroom soup can.
• Deep than expected.  The CanSolidator was deeper than we expected, but the “Pantry” fit in our Pantry just fine.  We also measured for the CanSolidator Cupboard and it would fit in our cupboards.  It looks like they were built to standard sizes.
• Holds only 4 types of cans.  The Pantry model holds 40 cans but only 4 different types of cans (10 of each).  So, after we set it up, we thought, “Hmmm.  We need another one.”
• Better in earthquakes and other natural disasters.  We noticed as we were moving our cans around prior to putting them in the CanSolidator, that our cans on the shelf can be knocked off very easily.  Once we put them in the CanSolidator, it was hard to get them to just fall out.  This is an advantage because if you think of any natural disasters that might shake your house a little bit, your stacked cans would fall over, break, or otherwise be compromised.  The big problem is that it’s in the natural disasters when you might need your cans the most!  Shaking the CanSolidator, we saw that the cans weren’t going to go anywhere.  The very top cans if filled up to the edge might fall, but not very much more than that.
• Space utilization.  It seems that we could fit more cans on our shelf if they were simply stacked instead of in the CanSolidator, but we like the CanSolidator because it helps us to better manage food cans, it looks so much better on the shelf than a bunch of stacked cans, and it’s cool.
• Stackable.  The CanSolidator is stackable.  In fact, the Pantry can be split into two separate units.
• Expandable.  The rotation system can be exapanded with more peices or hooked together with additional Cansolidators.
• Helps to monitor food storage levels.  We really like that we can see at a quick glance if we’re running low on food storage items.
• Helps rotate through food stock.  The CanSolidator helps us use the oldest cans first.  If you think about it, stacking cans usually hides the oldest cans in the back and bottom of the pile.

Video Demo from LLG & Company of the CanSolidator Pantry

Overall, we really like the CanSolidator Pantry, and will be getting more soon.

ThinkGeek :: R2 Fish Training School Kit

Author Thomas | 05.02.2009 | Category Home & Garden

ThinkGeek has a pretty cool product if you’re into training GoldFish, yes, that’s right, GoldFish.

The kit includes multiple training venues for the fish.  The video demo is pretty cool (and it’s a real fish, not computer animated).

ThinkGeek :: R2 Fish Training School Kit .

Weighmax 300lb Shipping Scale Review

Author Thomas | 06.01.2009 | Category Electronics, Home & Garden

The WeighMax 330 Lb Digital Shipping Scale is a great shipping scale.  The scale can:

• Weight items up to 330 pounds
• Weight displayed in kilograms, pounds (4.2), or pounds and ounces (10 pounds, 3 ounces) for example
• The scale has a display that is separate from the weighing platform (this is handy if you have large boxes)
• A good warranty is provided by the manufacturer
• “Tare” function allows you to determine net and gross weight

For the price, it’s a great scale.  The only downside is that when weighing, the LCD display screen is back light with a bright blue “indiglo” light…maybe just a little too bright.  Overall, great scale with good capacity.

Leather Golf Look Book

Author Thomas | 28.11.2008 | Category Books, Home & Garden

The Golf Log (found here) is a great little gift for your favorite golfer. The log lets you keep track of weather conditions, the course, shots taken and score.

Leather Writing Journal

Author Thomas | 10.10.2008 | Category Books, Home & Garden

The leather writing journal is a fun return to the old cowboy style journals. The book is hand-made with acid-free pages (to better preserve what is written).

It’s not a regular book binding, but is stitched. The side flap opens up and can been secured by wrapping the leather strap around the journal.

Digital Photo Keychains

Author Thomas | 11.07.2008 | Category Electronics, Home & Garden

There are a lot of “interesting” digital photo key chains out there, but one trumps them all.  The MX Digital Photo Keychain has a metal backing similar to the ipod (very nice looking). It can store around 100 (re-sized) pictures.

The software is included in the photo frame and works through your computer’s USB port. It also has a calendar and clock features.

Also available in white:

Laptop Cooling Pad for your Lap

Author Thomas | 12.05.2008 | Category Accessories, Electronics, Home & Garden

Remember when the term “laptop” changed to “notebook”? It was probably around the time when people figured out that laptops get really hot and not comfortable to hold on your lap.

There have been many gadgets out there to help return the “notebook” to “laptop” status. Some a big and bulky, while others are so small, they won’t accommodate the larger laptops.

The Lap Mat provides a great solution to the problem. The Lap Mat has a leatherette (i.e., fake leather) top with a nice stitching detail around the edges. The support surface is strong yet slightly flexible. Under the laptop support surface a pillow filled with soft beads helps to diffuse the laptop heat even more and provides a comfortable cushion to the lap mat.

The cushion can be removed from the laptop support (it’s attached by Velcro). I suppose you would do so if your laptop bag was large enough to put the lap map inside and you wanted to use the cushion as a pillow when flying.

The Lap Mat easily accommodates large, 17″ wide screen laptops.

Because your lap tends to slope downward, you might try combining the Lap Mat with the Cool Lift Portable Notebook Cooling Pad (from the same manufacturer).

The Lap Mat is available on Amazon.com (Direct Product Link).