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I'm Shay! I’m a cookbook author, lifestyle blogger, travel agency owner, wife and mama who loves making every day special for my family.

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Mix & Match Mama

Everyday Life ·

Tuesday Talk: Echo Dot!


It’s TUESDAY TALK!

Once a month, I link up with Ashley and Erika (who host this fun little blog link up), and you blog about anything and everything.

In January, I blogged about HOW I’M USING ESSENTIAL OILS NOW
In February, I decided to blog about…THE FAMILY VALENTINE’S DANCE
In March, I encouraged women to share their businesses so we could SUPPORT ONE ANOTHER
In April, we talked about SNACKING!
In July, we talked about SUMMER SLOW COOKER SUPPERS

And today, I have questions for you about my Echo Dots and I want to know what you know about Google Nest Hub…please!

I’ve mentioned before on here how we bought our kids all Echo Dot Kids Edition for Christmas…

…and how we really have enjoyed using them thanks to YOU for sharing some really cool features.  Right now, my favorite feature is “drop in” where I can be anywhere (inside my house or I could be on the other side of the world) and “drop in” on my kids in their rooms.  This is so nice because instead of hollering “dinner is ready, come clean up that mess, for the 100th time ‘get out of bed'”, I can just use the app on my phone and call into their rooms.  (Because heaven forbid I walk up the stairs…sigh.)  I also like it because if I’m downstairs and hear arguing/a loud commotion/etc, I can just drop in and listen to what’s going on.  Brilliant.

I also love the Echo Dot for kids because you know how we love our sound machines when we sleep (cough, cough, see this post here), and  the Dot can play it for us.  When we tuck the kids into night, we say “Alexa, play ocean sounds on loop” and she does.  It plays until the next morning when we ask her to turn it off.  Another thing?  She is an alarm for the kids.  Kensington can say “Alexa, wake me up at 6:30” and she will set an alarm and do that.  She’ll also read them stories, play them music and tell them jokes (all kid-friendly).  If my kids ask her to play music or share information that is not kid-appropriate, she won’t.  That “Baby Shark” plays at my house like 100 times a day thanks to Alexa 😉 .

So…needless to say, the Dots are a great idea!  That being said, I would never have known about the drop in feature if it weren’t for you, so I’m hoping that if there are some other amazing features, you’ll please share with me today.  I really want to maximize their Dots!

My next question for today is about…

…the Google Nest Hub.

Someone tell me about this please!

I read a “back to school” article in a magazine this month (probably like Good Housekeeping or something) where it said how this thing can really help busy moms revolutionize their lives/schedules/calendars/etc.  I looked it up online and it looks amazing, but I’d reallllllly love feedback from someone that has one.  I was thinking I would put it in my kitchen?  Thoughts?  Opinions?  Maybe I don’t need it because we have an Echo Dot?  Help.  If you guys all have one and your life has been simplified, then I want one too.  Hahaha!  I would love some feedback, thank you in advance!

Okay, that’s what we’re “talking” about today!  If you have any other gadget-type-thingy at your house that you love, I’d love to hear about it.  Chat in the comment section please and then go have the best Tuesday! xo

 

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Comments

  3. Danielle says

    Thanks for sharing the drop-in feature! We bought my soon to be six year old one for his birthday. Is there a setting for how many times they can play a particular song, lol. If not there should be! ?

  4. Monica Rivera says

    We love our Google Nest Hub (my cousin is a software engineer for Google so we are biased ;))! We have one in the kitchen and in our bedroom. It does all the same things as the Dot but more because of the screen! We have all of our wedding pictures shown as a slideshow since we got married a month ago! We even got one for my mom simply because she wanted to have our pictures in the kitchen! hahah You can also quickly ask Google to ‘cast’ a Youtube video or something from the TV. They are great!

  5. D'Andra Landry says

    Morning! I have both, my kids have the dot and I have the nest in my kitchen. It’s fantastic. It’s perfect for everyone and essentially does all the things Alexa does. My kids know how to turn on the tv and it plays all of there favorite pictures. It allows me to stream tv shows or the news on it when I’m up alone.

  6. Elizabeth says

    My daughter loves her echo dot…but here is a question for your readers (or you!). Her dot is now telling her when packages from Amazon are going to be delivered! How do I turn that off? I’m thinking ahead for Christmas season and don’t need her dot alerting het to packages everyday! (Her dot is a few years old and not the kids version…maybe i should swap it out?)

    • Lesley McFarland says

      During Christmas time she does not tell what is in the package. Just when it is coming. Her comment is something like…it’s the holiday season and it’s a surprise.

    • Meghan says

      It’s easy to turn it off – just open the Alexa app on her phone, and go to “settings” in the menu list. Then click “notifications,” then “Amazon shopping,” and then the first should be “Delivery Notifications.” She can click off the “delivered,” and it won’t tell her that a package has been delivered.

    • Keisha @bigpittstop says

      I think you can disable. Last year during the holiday season, she stared saying “I won’t be telling you what’s in your shipping so I do t ruin any surprises”. But I bet having the kid one would solve that too.

    • Makayla Phillips says

      I have an echo dot and we have a monthly $4-$5 charge for music, but we don’t have amazon prime. I figure if you have prime it wouldn’t charge you.

      • Grace says

        I have prime and I still pay for music. I think you have a limited amount with Prime, but not the same vast library if you pay. I tried the free version, but it kept telling me to upgrade if I wanted to hear certain songs, so I caved.

  11. Alexis deZayas says

    I have smart light bulbs connected to my Google Home so I can say “Google turn off the living room light” or “Google turn the living room light to 50 percent”. I also have the bedroom lamp set to gradually come on in the morning so that it will be on when I wake up (you can program it to gradually turn off at night too) and have it programmed for the lights to turn off when we leave and turn on when we get home. There’s an app that it’s connected to on my phone that lets me control the lights too! I believe it would be the same with Alexa if you got the bulbs! We use the Hue brand. 🙂

      • Kathleen Compton says

        Yep, works with the dots too! We got Smart light bulbs for our living room and love being able to use Alexa to adjust our lighting based on time of day, if we’re watching a movie, reading, etc.

      • Amanda says

        I have a couple smart outlets and switches connected to alexa and our alarm system. I can say alexa turn on Harper’s light and it turns on the lamp in her room, I like it because she can say it but has trouble physically turning in the lamp and we did this before she could reach the switch to her main light. Also from the couch I can say alexa tell vivint to arm stay or change the temperature
        upstairs…I’m sure you could have it on google too.

    • Crystal says

      We have the same thing with our Amazon devices. Got the smart plugs from Amazon on Black Friday for a steal. You can set them in groups too so when we say, “Alexa, Good Morning,” it automatically turns on the living room lights and our son’s bedroom light. We can also turns lights on individually.

    • Katie says

      Same here! We have the smart bulbs which makes turning lights on/off (especially on a different floor of the house) a breeze. We have the Nest doorbell so it will automatically show on our hub who is at the door and if it is a familiar face will announce aloud who is there. We also have a nest thermostat that we can control by the hub or on an app on our phone which is nice to adjust when you aren’t home. There are just so many features!!! We love how everything syncs. We use a lot of google apps/features like keep (we do grocery lists and other kinds of shared lists between my husband and myself) and we can just tell the hub to add items to our list. It’s crazy how efficient technology makes everyday life!

  13. Julie says

    There is a Echo Show that is a lot like the Google Nest and it will connect to your echo dots. We have two shows and you can video drop in with them. We got ours during prime day and have been loving them.

    • Stacy says

      Same here. I love my Echo Show! My favorite feature is that I keep mine in my kitchen and tell it to add things to my grocery list. Then when I’m ordering groceries I can just pull up my list in my Alexa app. This one feature alone makes it worth it! I also bought a second Echo Show for my mother-in-law when I got ours, and now the kids can easily Facetime her (or whatever the Amazon equivalent is called!) !
      I think the Echo shows are usually $80 or $90, but on Prime day they were $49 or 2$for 88, and I bet they’ll be that price again on Black Friday.

  14. Sarina says

    It seems like all of your tech is Alexa/amazon specific, therefore it might be better to get the Echo show. It’s the same idea as the google hub, but could sync with all the dots.

      • Brigette Burr says

        We have the Echo Show in our kitchen and LOVE it! It’s just like the Google Nest Hub, only the Amazon version, so it’s compatible with all of our other Amazon devices.

      • Kelly Brick says

        We have echo dots and a google home mini (basically the exact same as the dot). We love that the google home mini gets louder than the dot when we want to have a dance party in the kitchen. However, the google mini doesn’t seem to do anything else better or as well as the dot. The mini doesn’t answer questions as well as the dot, it doesn’t pick up your voice as well, if I want to play a certain song my phone has to be synched up to it so it can pair with my amazon music (otherwise it just plays a pandora channel), where the dot plays the song I request. We actually moved the google mini in to our bathroom and put a dot back in our kitchen. I’m only telling you this because you might want to stick with the Amazon show instead of the google home hub. I also think it would be nicer to have the amazon show to be able to connect and work with your dots.

  16. Mama V says

    You can easily turn off the Amazon delivery notifications by giving the instruction to “turn off notifications”. Easy peasy!

  17. Danielle says

    We have kids echo dots as well and use the same features! We have Amazons version of the google hub, the echo show! We love it. We can pull up songs we want, the weather, our lists on Cozi, set timers, see recipes, use the Internet. We love it.

  18. Craig Bonner says

    We have an Echo Dot in the main bathroom and master bedroom, an Echo (the larger size) in the kitchen and family room. And an Echo Show 5 in the office. We use them to control lights and devices, play radio, play music (my 12 year old mostly) and set timers. We also use the drop-in and announce ( send a message to all Echos in the house). We regularly use the shopping list feature. We say “Alexa add milk to the shopping list” ant time we are running low on something. When I go to the store, I open the Alexa app on my phone and select lists and shopping list and there is everything I need to buy. We love our Alexas.

  19. Audrey Bolton says

    We have an echo show and LOVE IT!!! I have mine in the kitchen and can drop in on the dots throughout the house. I love the video feature and play Prime Video tv shows on it while cooking.

  21. Jessica says

    I’ve been thinking of getting dots for our kids rooms especially for drop-in feature. This convinced me 😉 we have a regular Alexa in our kitchen and the kids use it to turn on our TV/Netflix. Our Alexa also talks to our robo vacuum. It’s pretty amazing what they can do.

  22. Stephanie G says

    So we also have lots of dots around our house! We also got some smart plugs. You can link it all together – and ask Alexa to turn on or off the lamp, or in our case, we have set routines in it. We say “Alexa girls bedtime” and their lamp turns off and she plays a bedtime playlist we created! We have our lamps in our bedroom synced too so when we’re done reading we just tell her “Alexa goodnight” and she turns off our lamps! Technology is cool 🙂

  23. Liz says

    My husband uses the echo show to “spy” or make sure the kids are not watching tv and doing homework or playing too much video games.

  24. Alexa C says

    Another glowing recommendation here for the echo show! I have 3 dots and just recently got the show. My favorite feature on this is how I can check my front door camera from the screen! You can also watch amazon prime tv and movies on the device too!

  25. April says

    Two of my kids have the kids echo dot and one has the our regular echo dot. We mainly use it for alarm clocks, sleep sounds, and music

    I would love to get lightbulbs set up but it is a little over my head right now – something I should of checked into over the summer when there was time.

  26. Em says

    My son discovered today that the Nutrislice website the school uses for cafeteria menus has an Alexa function. Now he can just ask Alexa what is for lunch and she will read the menu.

    I have banned my children from playing music on our Echo in the common areas. There is only so many times a mom can hear “it’s raining tacos” before she loses it.

  27. NicoleinWi says

    My house is full of Alexa’s and Dot’s. I noticed you said you use drop in, which I love too – but if you need to tell all kids at once, you can use the Announce feature and that will play on all amazon devices at once. You can do this from the app or if you have a kitchen Alexa you can tell her to announce dinner is ready. Then all devices say dinner is ready and she plays a little dinner bell!

    I also have a lot of smart plugs in my house. So I use it to build macros to do things for me. For example, I can tell Alexa “We are going to bed” and that triggers her to turn off all the lights in my living room and then turn on my bedroom lamps and fan (because white noise).

    I don’t know anything about the Google Nest, but I have thought about the Amazon Echo Show for the family as well.

  28. Clare Butler says

    We use our echo dots for everything around here: shopping lists, turning on and off our lights around the house, listening to the kids school menu for the day… We even have our Nest Thermostat, our electronic deadbolt and our Ring doorbell connected to ours — which is really cool when using the echo show, because we can see our porch on the screen. We got our Echo Show on prime day and have been LOVING it!

  29. Johannah says

    You can say, “Alexa, make an announcement,” and she will record what you say and play it on all the echos in the house. I use it a lot for “Dinner!!” And “Good morning, Wake up!”

  30. Stephanie says

    Yes, my dot turns my lights on and off so that when I walk into a dark house carrying things in both arms, I don’t have to fumble around for a light switch! I also like being in bed and saying Alexa, lights off 🙂 So handy!!

  31. Cathy says

    My son in law is coming to help us make our new home “smart” this weekend! He programmed theirs to turn on all the Christmas lights & play Christmas music when they say “Alexa, Merry Christmas”. So cool!

  33. Heather says

    We have dots in both of my kids rooms. They just have regular dots, not the kid version, but you are able to turn on the kid settings within the app. Just wanted to point that out because the regular version is usually a lot cheaper.

  35. Cara P. says

    This might be one of my most favorite posts ever, not only because we love our echo devices but also for all the other comments. Can’t wait to learn more about what I can do with mine. We bought several sets of smart plugs that we originally used for last years Christmas lights and then we moved them over to lights through out the house once the holiday season was over. I guess we will have to get more for Christmas lights this year because I love these little guys. Very much like the smart bulbs but we found the smart plugs to be more versatile and way more affordable. I can turn on just one or many depending on what room or group I say to Alexa. Its great for helping get the kids up in the morning. I turn on the kids lights from our room while I’m making the bed.

    A close second favorite feature is to use it with our Direct TV in the family room. It can pause, ff, rewind and turn it off. It used to adjust the volume too before we added a sound bar. This feature comes in handy when I’m in the kitchen and I want to pause a segment on TV I don’t want to miss, when the remote is across the room, or when the kids aren’t listening to me because the TV is on.

    The kids love it for jokes, the escape room game, and to find out whose birthday it is today. I make the bad handwashers in my house sing Happy Birthday and my daughter decided she wanted to know who she was singing it too.

    Food timers, and music from Apple, Amazon and Pandora are also frequently used by me as well.
    Can’t wait to read all the comments! Thanks!

  36. KayLynn Stone says

    I have a dot and love it – I am thinking about purchasing another for white noise in my bedroom. I also see that they are rolling out Echo Car and I requested an invitation for that when it is available. While I have the app on my phone I love the ability to be totally handsfree and be able to ask Alexa for things in the car

  38. Elizabeth Feldpausch says

    Have you looked into the echo show? I can tell her to start my day and she’ll go through my schedule for the day, tell me traffic info, top headlines and the weather. She can also alert if scheduled events throughout the day!

  39. Andrea says

    Okay, so I’m not sure if this will work for you since you use a paper planner, but I use my iphone calendar for everything. (also to note, I am a paper girl! But this calendar just works better for me because I have lots of kids and constantly need to be reminded of where I’m supposed to be). Anyway, you can sync your iphone calendar to Alexa and say “Alexa, what does my day look like” and she will tell you everything you have to do. Also, my husband set it up where our kids can make phone calls from Alexa. It’s synced with his phone and shows it’s his number calling, but they can call us or their grandparents from Alexa. We have a large property and sometimes if I’m gone and he’s in the barn and they can’t find us, they can say “Alexa, call Andrea” and it will call me and we can talk just like it’s a regular phone call.

  40. Ashley says

    We love our kids dots! The drop-in feature, music, alarms and jokes are our favorite aspects! Cant wait to see if there are other ways we should be using them!! Happy Tuesday!! XO

  41. Meredith says

    This is so interesting to me. The only technology my kids(ages 11, 9, and 5) have is a kindle that they share, and they pretty much only use it to listen to audiobooks. Doesn’t all the noise of these devices drive you crazy?! I don’t think I could handle it. ?

    • Mix and Match Mama says

      I guess it’s not super noisy? (Other than me saying “get out of bed” 100 times! hahaha!) It’s been really helpful!

  42. Jen says

    This is a great post. I am so glad to read all the comments about the show. I like that it is the same company/platform as the echo and dots. I don’t really want to learn to use another brand of device. I am going to add the show to my list. And I need to figure out some of these smart features to use light bulbs etc.

  44. Laura Fuller says

    My kids all got an Echo Dot for Christmas. And I have one in the kitchen and my bathroom. I only use it for Spotify Music. One kid uses it for an alarm. And I have a reminder on one to remind him to take a shower…

    My question is this: I have their 4 set up with their own email addresses. Can I still call them? Do the announce dinner thing, all of that you all are talking about??

  45. Karen says

    I love the drop in feature. We have Show in our kitchen, Spot in our 11 year old’s Room, and dots in all other bedrooms. Our 11 year old now stays home alone sometimes and does not have a phone yet. I love that we can communicate using Alexa. I also love using them as an intercom, so I don’t have to yell through the house……lol.

  46. Stefany says

    The echo show is the way to go, since you already have the dots. We bought echo shows as Christmas presents for the grandparents last year. Now they can say “ Alexa call Stefany” and it calls my echo show, when I answer we get to see their smiling faces. It also rings my phone too, if we are not home to answer.

    If I tell alexa good morning, whichever device I am near, (dot, echo, or echo show) she tells me the flash news, and then plays a song I picked to wake me up, ha ha.

    You can program the dots, echo, or echo show, to do just about anything when you have those smart plugs. You can be in the kitchen and tell Alexa to turn on the master bedside light. You can also do it from app if you are not home.

    When I am out, I use the announcement feature from the app, when the kids don’t answer their phone right away, and I know they are home. ?

    Go with the Echo Show, you will love it.

  47. Sarah M says

    You can also place a phone call from your dot to an approved number and vice versa. I love this bc we have contemplated the home phone issue in this smartphone world and it makes it easy for my kids to call me on my phone! We set timers, alarms, there is an annoying g wake up alarm too!

  48. Jill says

    We have several Google homes, Google home minis and a Google Hub and we love them! It tells me the news and weather forecast in the morning, turns on the lights, sets our alarm, controls the nest thermostat, plays music, etc. But my favorite feature is that we’ve just gotten a new sprinkler system through Grow Connect that it can control! So I can say “ok google, water the back yard” and it turns on!!

  49. Jeni says

    I love my Echo products! My one suggestion would be to stick with Amazon/Echo products if that’s what you already have in your home. Amazon now has the Echo Show that is just like the Google product you showed. If it is something you decide to purchase, I would do that. It allows you to sync up your items easier, stays in one app, etc. Also, I’ve had those Google products before and I find that the Amazon products are comparable in price but work just a little bit better.

  50. Jill Lyon says

    I didn’t read all the comments so not sure if anyone already said this but I love it for my grocery list. As I’m in kitchen, and running low on something, I just have Alexa add it to my list. She’ll also read a recipe to me.

  51. Jana says

    I see the kids dot is on sale for 50 today, is that a good price or should I hold out for better Black Friday/Christmas deals?? Thanks! This post was so helpful!!

  52. Amanda says

    We have 4 echo dots! One in each room and in the kitchen!! I never thought I’d be a lover of these things but here we are!! I love that when I start the laundry and have to leave the dot can remind my husband to put it in the dryer. My kids love playing games and listening to stories on them. We also sync them to each other and have pandora playing while we clean!!

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