When you check out the latest smartphones from Apple, Google or Samsung, you’ll notice they have something in common: glass designs. Why? Glass allows for wireless charging, better connection signals, bigger display screens, and truth be told, glass feels great and looks beautiful. But these features come with a price — durability. Compared to metal or plastic, glass cracks, shatters, scratches and can get slippery.

Fortunately, there’s guidance available for consumers wondering about the durability of new phones. When new smartphones launch, SquareTrade, an Allstate company that provides highly-rated protection plans to millions of smartphone owners, conducts independent durability tests with their SquareTrade Breakability Robots that drop, bend, tumble and dunk devices to see how they survive everyday activities.

These tests recently found that the latest Apple iPhones and Samsung Galaxy phones all shatter on the first drop from six feet, no matter if they fall face-down or back-down.

This is bad news for consumers, as repairs are more expensive than ever. A screen repair can cost over $300 and a non-screen repair nearly $600.

Faced with these steep repair costs and the fact that many of these phones are $1,000 or more to purchase, it’s more important than ever to take steps to protect them. Here are three easy ways to start protecting your phone.

Get a Screen Protector

While sitting in your pocket or purse, your phone can rub against different objects (like keys), scratching the glass. Screen protectors placed over your phone’s glass screen will prevent this. While scratches usually won’t affect the usability of a device, they can be annoying visually and impact the resale value, which is something to consider if you’re buying a phone for $1,000.

Get a Case

A case is the most obvious way to protect your phone, but it’s important to remember their effectiveness varies. For example, you should look for a case with a lip that rises above your phone’s screen. At the same time, you don’t want one that’s so bulky it won’t fit in your pocket. Before you buy any case, be sure to read its reviews to learn how it’s worked in the real world.

Get a Protection Plan

Screen protectors and cases can help protect your phone — but unfortunately, they don’t make them invincible. A whopping 66 percent of smartphone owners say they’ve experienced some kind of damage in the past year.

For a small monthly fee, protection plans provide coverage against the rising costs of repairs due to accidents like cracked screens and liquid damage, plus hardware failures. Considering that repairs can now cost up to $599 (the same retail cost as the most expensive version of the first Apple iPhone), they’re definitely a smart choice for consumers. Plans can be purchased from SquareTrade for as little as $8.99 a month.

Accidents and hardware failures happen. But with a three-step protection strategy, your device will last longer and function more smoothly until your next upgrade.

-Statepoint

From special occasions to everyday get togethers, you can upgrade any gathering without a lot of extra work by serving delicious pairings of small bites and sparkling wines.

Be advised that when it comes to great bubbly, you don’t need to spend a lot of money to get a great bottle. For a delicious, wallet-friendly option, try serving Cava, a Spanish sparkling wine made using the same traditional method as Champagne.

One Cava producer offering top-quality sparkling wines is Poema, a family-owned producer that farms its grapes sustainably. To help you plan your next gathering, check out the winery’s suggested food pairings for some of its top wines. These will have you covered for each course of the meal:

Getting Things Started

Remember that guests often arrive hungry, so have your appetizer spread ready to go. Look for a sparkling wine that’s versatile enough to pair nicely with most tapas and light appetizers, such as Poema Cava Brut ($12.99), a sparkler boasting fresh citrus, mineral and Granny Smith apple aromas with toasted bread notes.

Before your guests sit down, start them off with this Brut-style Cava alongside favorite light bites such as roasted potatoes, olive tapenade, jamón and Manchego cheese served with fresh crusty bread, stuffed mushrooms, shrimp fritters or even oysters and other seafood.

The Main Course

Consider a wine that pairs well with different main course options, such as Poema Cava Rosé ($12.99), which features fresh notes of strawberry, raspberry and rose petals and a balanced acidity that keeps the wine light and fresh.

Whether you’re serving a casual meal of build-your-own sandwiches with cold cuts and lightly smoked fish, or you’re barbecuing lean meats, this versatile wine will work for many casual style meals. For an added bonus, consider a picnic style theme with a checkered table cloth.

A Fizzy Sweet Finish

Don’t disappoint those with a sweet tooth by neglecting the dessert course! Whether you’re serving creamy custard, sponge cake, chocolate truffles or brownies, consider pairing with the sweeter-tasting Poema Cava Dulce ($12.99), which can be enjoyed alongside dessert, or served alone as a refreshing aperitif.

Upgrading your next gathering doesn’t have to require a lot of time or stress. The addition of some high-quality sparkling wine will make an everyday gathering more festive and more memorable.

-Statepoint

For area stockmen, this winter is looking very difficult. We’ve come out of a growing season where hay crops are sub-par. In the southern areas, too much rain kept producers out of hay fields as finding time for the hay to cure proved very difficult.

From central Angelina County to the north, quite the opposite problem was encountered. These stockmen did not receive enough rain to make any hay. I visited with more than a couple producers who spoke as though another 2011 drought was upon them.

It is important to describe for those not in the livestock business in east Texas that we have basically two different time frames in the year. The growing season for pastures and hay meadows typically starts in April and lasts until late fall. Commonly grazed forages such as Bermuda grasses or Bahia grasses and others can be readily relied upon to produce grazing for livestock and we can harvest excess forage for the winter months (our second season) when these grasses are dormant.

Feeding out stored hay and supplementing most hay with additional protein to get cows thru the winter is a common strategy for the dormant season. Most plan on cattle losing a little weight during the winter months, and putting it back on during the spring and early summer.

The dormant season starts at first frost. Frost signals the end of all warm season grazing. While the cooling weather in October and November certainly slows the pasture growth, frost brings it to a complete halt.

Any of the excess, still standing and frosted grass is certainly grazable. This grass will be referred to as “standing hay” in some circles. It was cured as any other hay, just not by cutting and letting it dry but by frost. While it may be just slightly lower in quality than the green grass a few weeks prior, it will still offer the savvy stockman a grazing opportunity for their livestock for at least four to six weeks.

Getting thru the winter months is always the most expensive part of raising cattle. In our region, we traditionally cut and bale excess grass to feed back in these winter months. Depending on the size and quality of your round bales, one can put up three to five bales per cow to ensure that you’ll make it through the winter. (Use this only as a rough guide, as many have used far more bales of hay and some compensate with other feedstuffs and get by with fewer.)

Another winter-feeding strategy is to plant a cool season crop. A fall planting of grains, clover, ryegrass or a combination of the them can provide excellent forage for the winter months. This

takes a different management style and skill-set but can be an excellent method of carrying cattle thru the winter.

In fact, if done correctly, many of the stockmen that use this winter pasture strategy expect their cattle to gain weight. The very best managers will buy thin cows to flesh out or purchase younger calves to grow out during this time.

Presently, we have very low cattle prices and hay is hard to find. The result is that many cattle producers are facing a tough decision: sell off their herd at greatly reduced prices or spend far more than normal just to keep cows fed.

My concern is that cow prices will continue to be driven down as many opt to reduce their herds rather than pay for overpriced hay.

Looking way ahead, stockmen can offset this dependence on annual hay crops by planning for and planting a winter cover crop during the fall months. Grains such as rye, wheat or oats can be drilled into the soil in the fall for the earliest grazing opportunity. Clovers can be over-seeded into existing pastures to provide grazing and build the soil. Perhaps the easiest winter forage is ryegrass. While offering the latest graze-able forage, it will certainly be the easiest to establish and will provide an abundance of forage well into early summer.