I’m going to be vulnerable for a moment and tell you that I totally fumbled Tom’s recent birthday.

Not COMPLETELY — we had friends over for football, and dinner with his family. I also made him a blackberry pie. It’s not like we didn’t celebrate. It’s just that aside from the kids making him cards, I didn’t really get him anything. I didn’t even muster up a sappy blog post, and sappy blog posts are my love language.

I felt bad because if anyone deserves to be celebrated, it’s Tom. But he barely even noticed. He’s just not a material guy (and also, when you’re married to me, every day feels like your birthday).

Then, at the most perfect timing, we received a box from the good people at TP-Link — a Smart Home plug, a Smart Home bulb, and a Smart Home light switch.

Pssst…use the code TPLinkSmart for 20% off your next Smart Home purchase through Dec 31

If you’re like me, you don’t know much about Smart Home products, these allow you to control lighting and appliances with your phone, and monitor your electricity usage.

If you’re like Tom this is the best birthday present you’ve ever received.

In under five minutes the bulb and plug were connected, and using the TP-Link Kasa app, Tom was instantly controlling, scheduling,  and monitoring our floor lamps.

A quick aside…

I’ve seen Tom actually watch our electric meter while using different appliances to monitor our electricity usage.

What I’m saying is that I should have gotten this for him a long time ago.

Ultimately Tom wants to monitor all of our lights and our TV and create a spreadsheet and a master plan to lower our electricity usage.

(I’m only half joking.)

For now we’re using the plug for our Christmas tree lights. Now we can turn them off remotely if we forget to on the way out the door, and we can turn them on before we get home. Oh, and we can see how much it’s costing us to light said tree. Every Scrooge’s Christmas dream come true.

Also — how great would this be for exterior Christmas lights? For electric candles in the windows? Let me tell you, Christmas is a great time to be smart.

I had a lot of plans for the bulb. A lot of sensible, boring plans. But Tom took one look at it and said, “I’m putting this in our lamp and I’m going to have dance parties with the kids every night.”

Dance parties are not sensible, but they are the best, most fun, smartest idea.

After dinner (while I clean the kitchen…by myself), Tom takes the kids into the other room, turns on music, and the kids dance and shout color requests.

Oh, did I forget to mention that you can change the color of the light with your phone?

BECAUSE YOU CAN CHANGE THE COLOR OF THE LIGHT WITH YOUR PHONE!

It’s a rainbow light. The kids think it’s magic. It allows me to clean in peace, so I sort of do too.

One night, Tom turned the light blue and the kids gathered all their sea creature toys and pretended they were in the ocean.

Totally magic.

I haven’t mentioned the light switch, and the reason is very simple. I stashed it away, and Tom is going to find it under the tree on Christmas morning.

Just like that, I get to cross one more thing off my holiday to-do list, and thanks to TP-Link we’re all feeling pretty smart around here.

 

Visit TP-Link to learn more about their affordable, wifi-friendly line of Smart Home products, and use code TPLinkSmart for 20% off your purchase through Dec 31 2016.