How to Navigate in HandiLand, New and Improved

If you’ve been in HandiLand recently, you’ve no doubt noticed the new mousevover effects we’ve introduced. These little guys are called tooltips and, we hope, they make our special features and functions more noticeable when you’re moving your mouse around the world. We’ve got several tooltips, including doors to signify that clicking on that pink square will transport you to a different room, sneakers, which indicate a clothing catalog, and an old-fashioned joystick to indicate games.

These appear whenever you put your mouse over any pink squares, just to give you a little hint at what’s underneath. Try them out today. Maybe you’ll find some fun hidden features you never knew existed!

How To Get Animals

If you’ve seen animals walking around side by side with cats, that’s because those cats have bought those animals from clothing catalogs or traded for them. The last catalog to have tons of animals in it was the Winter catalog that… hint hint… still exists somewhere, hidden within the world.

To get an animal, all you have to do is find this catalog or trade for it. If you’re a member of the Cool Cats Club, you can simply find a costume that features and animal and click “Buy” to purchase a new playpet for your cat. If you’re not a member, try and trade something cool of yours for an animal that someone else has.

Now, about this secret catalog, I can’t give you another hint, so try not to read into it.

How To Turn Music On and Off

A lot of Cool Cats have been asking how to turn the music in houses on and off. It’s simple! Just click on the blue music note that appears above a Cool Cat’s room to turn music off. Click it again to turn music on again.

It’s as simple as that. We’re working right now on a way to make that more obvious for users but, for now, use the blue note to turn music on and off if you don’t want a cat’s room music interfering with the music you’re already listening to or if you just want some peace and quiet.

How to Find Your Old Favorite Games

If you’ve been around HandiLand recently, you’ve noticed that three games were missing: Punks in Love, Stack a Snack and Puzzle Shuffle. Well, they’re all back now, you just have to find them.

We’ll give you a very obvious hint: Punks in Love is where it always was. But the other two? We’ll never tell.

Just remember. You can play games like Punks in Love and Funny Phone Booth to win prizes. If you’re not a member of the Cool Cats Club, you can really use these prizes to your advantage and get quite a collection of things to trade.

So for all the cats asking where these fun games went, wonder no more.

How to Tie Your Shoes

Whether you’re new to tying shoes or confused about the whole “rabbit” trick that some kids love, here’s a fun, easy way to tie your shoes with style!

First, grab your two laces, the right lace in the right hand, the left lace in the left hand.

Practice making a knot by crossing them over each other and tucking one underneath the other.

Now your laces should be crossed over and knotted in a very loose way.

Take the ends of the laces now and fold them over, so the tips point toward eachother and to the middle of the shoe.

Keeping them folded over — this is the tricky part! — make another knot, just like you did before.

Perfect! Now you’ve got a sturdy tie on your shoes and you can run off and enjoy your day. You don’t even have to re-tie it. If your sneakers are loose enough, you can just slip in and out.

How to Concentrate

Sometimes we can be our own worst enemies when it comes to one very important thing: concentration. You know the feeling. You’re just sitting down to do some homework or reading and then your phone rings. Or there’s a noise down the hall. Or you turn on your video games. Or (gasp) you even log on to HandiLand when you’re supposed to be doing something else. Well, we’re not here to discourage you from having fun and relaxing, but there’s a way you can do both!

The most important part of learning to concentrate is learning how to separate your work stuff from your fun stuff, so the two don’t get mixed up when you least expect them to.

Here are some pointers to boost concentration:

• Take lots of breaks. Your brain is a powerful machine. If it works on something too hard and for too long, it’ll overheat. Every half an hour, get up from your work, walk around, fix a healthy snack or go do some jumping jacks. Shift the attention away from your brain and to your body. You’ll come back to work more refreshed! If you need help sticking to this suggestion, borrow Mom’s kitchen timer and set it for half an hour.
• Listen to familiar music. Sometimes, if you listen to songs you know really well, they’ll fade into the background and help you focus. Don’t listen to new songs… you’ll be distracted by new melodies and new lyrics.
• Close your door. There’s nothing like being alone to help you concentrate. If you’ve got your door open, that means you’re not really committed to what you’re doing.
• Same thing goes for movies, web videos, web sites and games. If you’re going to do your work, do only that. Don’t keep one eye or ear on something else. You’ll get your work done faster, the quality will be better and you’ll be done, so you’ll be able to enjoy the fun stuff 100%!

Try these tips the next time you need to get something done!

How to Get Stuff Without Being a Member

You don’t have to be a member of the Cool Cats Club to get stuff every day in HandiLand. There are many ways for you to get awesome items if you visit HandiLand every single day.

For example, there are fun games you can play. One is in the schoolyard and it’s called Spin the Top. Every time you play, you can either win Bonus Points, furniture items or clothing items. You can also get the same sort of prizes by playing Chicken Crack Up in the country. We’ll be releasing a similar game very soon, called the Funny Phone Booth. Watch out for it!

You can also trade with other cats. If you’ve got items, you can browse through the collections of other cats and ask them to trade their items. Here’s how you trade:

• Click into HandiLand and click on the Friends button.
• Click on the Box icon under a friend’s picture.
• Here you can browse through their clothes, their furniture and their stamps.
• Select an item and click the “Trade” button.
• Now you can pick out an item of yours that you’d like to trade!
• Send them the trade request and wait to see if they accept the trade.

You can also win stamps by checking off your chores and by doing the daily Scavenger Hunt. Every day, a message arrives in your mail that gives you a clue. With that clue, you can find the stamp of the day!

Another really fun way to win items is to beat 5 people per day in multi-player games like Tractor Trouble, War or Food Fight, or to get on the high score list for any game in HandiLand!

Finally, there are Missions in HandiLand, like the recent St. Patrick’s Day one. Every time you see a Mission in your inbox, you know you have a chance to find a very cool costume or furniture prize at the end of the Mission. Stay tuned for more about Missions and enjoy all the cool stuff waiting for you in HandiLand!

Brush Up on Your Brushing

There’s nothing better than that nice, clean feeling of sliding your tongue along perfectly polished teeth or braces in the morning. Bye bye, yucky morning breath! Go away, froggy throat!

Not to mention, keeping your teeth and gums healthy is key to health for the rest of your body. Making these great habits now has been shown to make a big different in the future. The earlier you start caring about your mouth, the better.

Here are some tips for brushing your teeth the right way:

• Take enough toothpaste so that it is about the size of a pea on your toothbrush.
• Don’t just stick with the teeth up front, those get enough action. Start brushing your back left or right top teeth, then make your way across your top teeth to the other side. Repeat the same thing on the bottom row.
• Brush the tops, fronts and backs of your teeth, especially the backs of your front bottom teeth — that’s where a lot of icky bacteria and plaque build up!
• Spend about two minutes brushing… that averages out to about 30 seconds per quarter of your mouth.
• If you need help, there are toothpastes that coat your teeth with color, showing you where you need to brush. Some cats really like having a visual aid!
• You can also get a toothbrush with an automatic two-minute timer so that you’re not guessing when it comes to how long you’ve brushed.

There are 1,440 minutes in a day. You can definitely take four of those to make brushing a healthy habit, morning and night.

How to Give Your Rooms a Background

You may have noticed something brand new in your Decorate House Stuff bar. A new tab for Backgrounds. Now, Backgrounds aren’t Wall items… they actually go behind your house, like wallpaper for your entire House screen!

And they’re super easy to use. Here’s how:

1. Head to the Furniture Catalog
2. Click on any furniture collection, some will have Backgrounds available, others won’t
3. Find a Background and click “Buy” (Backgrounds are only available to our Cool Cats Club members!)
4. Go to your Decorate House screen
5. Click on the Backgrounds tab
6. Find the Background you want and drag it into your house… anywhere you want
7. When you let go of your mouse, the Background will appear!

Enjoy decorating your House and the space behind it!

How to Give Gifts to Your Friends

Now, instead of just trading items with your friends, you can gift them with items that you want to give away! Make more friends and treat the friends you already have very well with gifts of stamps, clothing and furniture!

To give a gift to a HandiLand friend:

1. Click on the cat’s profile button or on the Friends button in HandiLand
2. Click on the Box button below the cat’s picture
3. Select “Give a gift”
4. Choose an item to give
5. Click “Give”

That’s all there is to it. If anybody sends you a postcard or a friend request, greet them with a nice gift from your collection.

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