Lovely stamps from all over the world transformed into pendants via Scrabble tiles. Custom orders encouraged.

Thanks, Elaina of Fun Finds for Mom!

Slippers that can be worn outside—great for plane rides, lobby dashes and shuffling around the campsite. In my experience, Keen does footwear right.

(Via New York magazine)

These are among the many cool products recently featured on design*sponge as part of a Travel Accessories Under $100 feature meant for Domino magazine, before its untimely demise. Love “I made it! I made it!” That’s always how I feel.

One of the items in Breaking the Language Barrier, my latest “travel helpers” roundup for the Minneapolis Star Tribune Sunday travel section: This fantastically priced translator, which doubles as an alarm clock. Push one of eight buttons corresponding to popular travel categories to access over 4,500 pre-programmed phrases you can read on-screen or play out loud. (There’s a headphone jack for discreet learning.) It’s quite simple to switch between the seven languages; English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese; and you can easily store your favorite travel phrases in a special button-location, for easy access. Two caveats: You must rely on the pre-programmed phrases—no ability to type in words willy-nilly. Also, Japanese shows up as characters, not translated into the Latin Alphabet. All in all, nice bang for your buck.

Because phrasebooks too often leave out, “Is anything stuck in my teeth?”

Snuggie Mania is sweeping the nation. As reported in a USA Today article, over four million people own what’s basically a fleece robe you wear backwards. Then there are the talk show references, the YouTube sendups, the hundreds of Facebook groups and even Snuggie pub crawls. Which begs the question: Why? According to the infomercial that made it famous, the Snuggie’s allure lies in its ability to keep you totally warm while allowing you the use of your hands, but my money’s on the “affordable kitsch” factor—two Snuggies and two book lights for twenty bucks? Hell, yeah. I hope to see people rockin’ these on airplanes, rather than solely using them at home, say, next to The Clapper and the Ch-ch-ch-chia Pet.

Yum—new compact candy-colored hard-sided luggage from my number one favorite luggage designer. The perks on this one include a built-in TSA-friendly lock, four 360-degree-swivel wheels and a clam-shell interior, half of which can be zipped off with a mesh panel. I love my similarly wee Hideo. It’s perfectly long-weekend-sized.

Bonus: Type in the coupon code “trustypony” upon checkout at Flight001 and get 15% off the Jelly Bean.

A washable, organic cotton double-sling, with adjustable back support, that configures and re-configures to tote your kiddo from birth on to up to four years old. Provides nursing privacy, too, and can even handle twins.

The well organized urbanite’s answer to the Swiss Army knife: a mini screwdriver, file, scissors, toothpick, knife, tweezers, pin, pen and ruler, all swiftly pluckable from their thick credit card-like home. As with the aforementioned knife, don’t try to carry this on, kids.

Key addition to any adult train ride activity pack.