If you're going away on holiday for a few days, you can still leave a monitoring device behind - your webcam (probably beside your main door). As long as your PC is on and connected to the Internet. it is possible to remotely take a look at an area of your house. Simply install WebcamXP and set it to "shared" to view streaming video and audio. The free version lets you use only one webcam, and places a watermark upon captured photos/videos, but that is probably just fine for home use.