Life without Cable - Confessions of a Roku Owner

When Aaron and I got married, we made a few changes to our "lifestyle."  We wanted to find ways to save more money to put us in a position to buy a house within the next two years.  The first thing we did was to get rid of cable.

Let me start by saying that I hate Time Warner Cable with every bone in my body.  There are no warm fuzzy feelings for them. Anywhere.  At the same time, I like TV. I like internet and, at least around where we live, there just aren't that many other choices.  To get what we wanted, we couldn't get the price down to less than $100/month.  So, we gave up the cable, but kept the internet.

For those that don't know, when you get rid of cable, you have to use another platform to watch TV.  You can use bunny ears or you can stream from the internet.  Enter the Apple TV, Roku, Xbox, Blu-ray players, etc.  It's basically like a smart phone, but for your TV.  You have apps that you use to watch shows and movies.

I was the first to move into our apartment, around August 2013, and Aaron moved in after the wedding in September. We didn't buy the Roku until after the wedding.  That means that for roughly a month, the only TV I had was through the bunny ears.

Confession #1: I bought a Dooney & Bourke bag off of QVC.

Bunny ears are bad news if you live in wooded areas or in a multi-family housing situation (condos, town homes, apartments). Our bunny ears pick up about 20 channels.  A quarter of those channels are some form of PBS and most of the others come in very choppy.

QVC comes in perfectly every time.

One Saturday morning, about two weeks before the wedding, I was watching QVC because nothing else was coming through clearly.  They brought on these snake embossed leather purses.  And they had MAGENTA.  I cannot resist animal print, real leather, or crazy colors.

Oh! And five easy payments? Yes, please!

Sigh. Perfection.

It arrived a week later and went on the honeymoon with us.

I have had middle-aged women tell me they also own my bag (but in a much more demure color). I don't care. I love that bag.  You could rob me and I would give you everything in it, just not the bag. True story.

Confession #2: I have watched Grey's Anatomy from the beginning to the current season (ahem, that would be 10 seasons) in 4 months.

Don't judge me.

For four years, I didn't have time to watch TV.  I had a DVR, but I couldn't go back and watch whatever I wanted, when I wanted.  In fact, I generally forgot what was actually on the DVR.  With the Roku, I have Hulu Plus, Netflix and Amazon Prime, among other things.  I decided to start back at the beginning of grey's because I could. And I did. Soon, I will have to find a new obsession as I'm only 5 episodes away from being completely caught up.

Confession #3: I lose entire days of my life watching TV (ahem, Grey's Anatomy)

Remember when I said I didn't watch TV for four years? I'm making up for the lost time.

Confession #4: I was scared to get rid of cable because of Bob Van Dillen.

I watched CNN Headline News for years. You can't get that without cable.  I enjoyed it because it was interesting, nothing too political and the anchors are snarky smart alecks.

And this.

Who doesn't want to get their weather from this guy?!?

Alas, Bob was not worth the extra $60/month to keep the cable.  Now I just stalk his blog.

Confession #5: I actually enjoy not having cable.  

I watch so much more TV now that when I actually had cable.  I can watch older shows, go back and watch old episodes and it's all on demand. It's a LOT cheaper (we're saving roughly $60/month). Now I just have to find a new obsession...and weather man...

Little Changes that Make a Big Difference

When I was in college, I gained about 50 pounds. There was a boy involved. I ate what he ate, when he ate. I became almost unrecognizable to myself. I have always struggled with my weight. Always. But that was the biggest I have ever been. I would post a photo, but I made sure to destroy pretty much every photo documenting that time. I do have a few just to make sure I never get there again.  In the end, I lost it all.  I got motivated. I worked hard and, with the help of Weight Watchers, I lost 50+ pounds.

And yet, losing 20 pounds is harder.

To my credit, I have kept most of my weight off since junior year of college (roughly 7 years), gaining no more than 10 or 15 back. Then life changed and it got harder.

I am a creature of habit. Change my world and I will get really, really angry. Well, last year changed my whole world and it took a toll on me.  For the first time in my life, I have high blood pressure.  I also gained a significant amount of weight in a short amount of time.  All due to stress and change.  For three years, I have worked out before work. My job description has changed and now I am out of the office more than I am in it, meaning I get to work earlier and stay later to catch up. I used to live off Lean Cuisines and Progresso soups. Now I live with my husband, it's not just me. Now I need to cook, I want to cook.  

So, I've slowly been adapting.  I've tried to find ways to make my life work for me.  I don't really have time to diet and, really, who wants to?  It's not easy, but I have found little changes that really do make a big difference.

Exercise
When I went to see my doctor recently, she told me that I had to find time to exercise. That my stress level was not getting any better, nor was my schedule and to just "make it work, even if it means doing jumping jacks for five minutes at a time."  I took that to heart.  I don't do jumping jacks, but I also don't really do hardcore workouts that much any more.  I do zumba and kickboxing when I can, but for the most part, I go to the YMCA at lunch and walk 2 miles. Or walk a mile and do weights.  Sometimes I have a five minute dance party. It's what I have time for.  And you know what? I feel better.

Lunches
For three years, I lived off Lean Cuisines and Progresso soups.  I didn't have time or the energy to cook. Now, I can't stand them.  I've been trying to find alternatives that are healthy, but are still time (and budget) friendly.  My friend Danielle Rusher has a nutrition blog and I asked her to do some facts on diet foods and some alternatives to them.  For the nutritionist view, check out her blog, Food or Fodder.

I took her suggestions to heart and tried some different things.  Most notably is my favorite thing: the bento box.  I love the bento box.  It's easy.  If you make it like I did, you get a big-kid lunchable.  You can also make them with left overs.  I like it because it doesn't take long to make in the morning and it fills me up for so much longer than a Lean Cuisine and it works with everything!    

Bento Box with leftovers.  Took an idea from Pinterest and used cupcake wrappers to be able to take my fruit out when I microwaved the leftovers.  

Bento Box = Big Kid Lunchable (about 550 calories)

For more bento box ideas, check out my Lunch Freedom board on my Pinterest account!

Dinner
I love to cook.  I love to destroy a kitchen like none other.  It's therapeutic for me.  After a long, stressful day at work, though, all I want to do is sit on my couch and have dinner produce itself for me.  This means that for a while, we ate out a lot.

Now I cook.  And Aaron eats my cooking like no one has ever fed him before, which I appreciate and take as a compliment.  But it also means I'm still learning portion sizes in order to have leftovers.  I've pretty much decided that in order to have leftovers, I need to cook for six to eight people (when it really is only two...).

When I say cook, I'm not talking gourmet dinners.  I'm talking thirty minutes or less dinners (Aaron does the dishes and is impressed with the meal and mess I can make in less than 30 minutes!) I'm also talking 10 ingredients or less meals.  Five or less makes me REALLY happy.  Where do I get these lovely recipes? Here!

• Cooking Light - By far, this is where most of my recipes come from. They take awesome meals and make them lighter by substituting a few things.  They also have Dinner in 20 Minutes or Less and 40 Minutes or Less sections (the real reason)
• Weight Watchers 5 Ingredients or Less Cookbook/Magazine - These are published quarterly.  They are about $6 and totally worth it. They give the calories and the points value. 
• Pinterest!! Before wedding planning, I mainly used Pinterest for recipes.  Still do. 
• Fix It and Forget It Lightly and Not Your Mother's Slowcooker - I love my crock pot. The end.  
• A crap ton of other cookbooks. I just look at the calories.  I try and stay below 500 calories or less.

So what do you do when you don't want to cook? 

• Chicken Caesar Salad. (lettuce, 1 grilled chicken breast per person (hello George Foreman!), Parmesan, lite Caesar dressing, and veggies that you have one hand). 
• Keep a few family size frozen meals on hand (read the ingredients!) My favorite is the Stouffers Chicken Enchiladas 
• Grilled chicken and some frozen veggies.  Put the veggies in a bowl, no one will EVER know!

And since we do still eat out, the main change? No more sweet tea. Just water. Sigh.

BUT I'm averaging losing 2 pounds a week.  Totally worth it! 

What are some little changes you've made?

Pinterest Unfailed - The Wedding Card Experiment

First - I have readers!!! Okay, now that's out of the way.

Pinterest.  I have had a love/hate relationship with Pinterest since I got engaged.  Everyone is all about DIY these days and while that's great for some, I have very few creative bones in my body.  What I have even less of is time.  During wedding planning, Pinterest also had idea overload - I would decide on a "theme" or "look" and then I would find something else I liked more! Eventually, I stopped looking at Pinterest.  I created a board and gave permission to my Maid and Matron of Honors to pin what they thought I could use. I only looked at that board and I was able to keep my sanity and get some really great ideas.  Now that the wedding is over and I'm not on wedding overload, I've started using Pinterest again.  

What you tend to forget about Pinterest is that people blog their best work. And since that work is awesome and cute, people pin it.  Regular not super creative people (ahem - me) tend to forget that we aren't the creative geniuses that blog about our creativity all the time, that don't spend the majority of our time crafting..  We see these cute, deceptively simple  ideas and think "Hey! I can do that!"  Except, you can't.  Or you can, just not as easily as you may think.  

I'm sure you want to see my Pinterest fail.  And I'm happy to show you my fail.  But let's not put the cart before the horse.  

I have a card problem of the Hallmark variety.  I love cards.  True story - you could forget to give me a present and get me a really awesome card and I would be totally okay (this does not apply to my husband).  I also scrapbook, or I used to back in the day.  I am an only child and spent many summers and breaks trying to find things to keep me busy during the day.  One summer I found scrapbooking.  It was perfect for me - I could be creative, but I didn't have to draw, I could use things already created by others.  I loved it. Still do.  So, combine the two - cards and scrapbooking.  This means I have every card that we received during the wedding process and lots of other mementos as well.  

While on Pinterest, I found this craft project:

It's a way to make an album out of your wedding cards.  I thought, "Hey! I can do this!!" And so our story begins: How Sarah failed at Pinterest and then saved herself.

I started by gathering all my materials.  There were lots.  I kept cardboard like the post said.  I bought a big pack of card stock in our wedding colors because I knew I would use it for scrapbooking as well.  I bought a crop-a-dile, which is a hole punch on steroids.  And I bought a laminator.  "A laminator?" you might ask.  Why would Sarah need a laminator? Because I am an overachiever.  Since I had all my cards, I decided I would make dividers for each event, because I am awesome and was convinced I would beast this Pinterest project (I literally told myself that once - I will beast this!).  Problem one. I also bought loose leaf binder rings so I could make it into a book.  The projects I found only used one ring or thread.  But they weren't me.  They weren't beasting the project like I was. That would be problem two.

                        

My trustee laminator and cards. Yes, those cards are separated into bags by event. Don't judge.

All my cool tools. The green thing is my crop-a-dile aka hole punch on steroids.

So I start making everything. All my pieces.  I figured out where I was going to punch the two holes based on the size of my cards.  I measured the length of cardboard I would need based on where the punches would go. I then measured and glued card stock on the cardboard covers. I even covered the tops and sides because I am anal retentive like that. I made my dividers out of card stock that I laminated, so I measured all of those pieces and printed out titles for them.  While my hand writing is not serial-killer terrible, it's also not cute enough to forever memorialize in my Pinterest project.  Fonts and printers are my friends.  I laminated the pages and I started hole punching.  Up until this point, I was beasting this project. I was awesome.  I was NOT going to have a Pinterest fail. Nope, not this girl.

Awesome measuring at work.

  

Cutting perfectly straight lines with the craft knife (that I also cut myself with)

Then hole punching happened. It all went downhill from there.  

1. The cardboard for the covers was super thick. I could barely fit it into the crop-a-dile. I decided to hole punch the covers with just the side coverings, that way I could cover the indentations with the card stock. Turns out that I am not talented at re-creating perfectly positioned hole punches.  So I ended up with this.

You can see the indentations better on the purple one.  

                                     

2.  I decided to laminate the card stock for the front cover since I had letters and a photo.  It caused a bubble.  If I wouldn't allow a bubble on a divider, there was no way I was going to allow one on my front cover.  I peeled the front cover out of the laminate to save it.  Once saved, I tried, again, to position the hole punches.  I got one and failed on the second. At this point, I decided to save my sanity and just chop off the side with the holes.      

3. I started putting everything together on the two binder rings.  Amazingly, I didn't perfectly position the hole punches on the cards either, so the cards and covers weren't lying flat against each other.  I started trying to pull the rings to try and better position them.  Then this happened.

You can see where the holes are dug into the cardboard where I tried to "fix" the problem.

4. There might have been tears at this point. There might have been some cursing.  I also want to point out that at this point, I stopped taking photos.  Why? I manage federally funded grants. How can a Pinterest project defeat me?!? I was angry, I was over it and I was definitely not going to show the world how terrible it was! Aaron encouraged me to take a break and watch some Grey's Anatomy.  So I did.  And I had an epiphany - ribbon was MUCH more forgiving than metal rings.  So I went to work. 

Only ribbon can make these holes line up!

And tada!  It actually turned out really well and cute!

Lessons learned from this project:

1. My pinterest projects will not be flawless.  You can see the indentations from the crop-a-dile. Some cards have four holes instead of two because I messed them up.  Everything doesn't line up perfectly. And it's okay.
2. "Easy-peasy" projects = 2 days of my time.
3. I am a masochist, I totally plan on trying something else.  

    

One More Time...

I attempt to start or restart a blog every few years and, every time, I fail.  In fact, I believe I start every new post with a sentence very similar to the one I just used.  So why is this one going to be any different? I don't know that it will be, but I do have high hopes for it.

Life changed a lot for me in 2013.  Life as I knew it was upended out of its box, thrown on the ground, pieces flung around the room and then stuffed into another box and handed to me.  In the span of one year I graduated (May), was promoted to Project Manager and took over 15 projects (June), moved (August), lost two grandparents (August/September), and got married (September).  It's been a crazy year.  I've been on one hell of an emotional roller coaster: stressed, elated, stressed, excited, confused, heart broken, lost, and stressed and excited again.  I'm ready for a calm 2014, but also a chance to start over with my new box.

I've loved writing and words ever since I could remember.  I grew up loving to talk to people, make up my own stories and friends in my head (only child problems), and reading.  I took those loves with me to college and majored in English and minored in Writing.  I was published in the campus literary magazine, I wrote for a local women's magazine...and then I grew up and got a job.  I now write grants (government grants - there is nothing creative about them) and administer them.  If I'm lucky, I get to do some land use planning, which is fun.  But overall, I miss words, I miss writing.  And for the first time in 4 years, I'm not in school or planning a wedding. I can write!

And I can cook. And I can craft. And I can say "Hey Aaron, let's do this!" and have him look at me like I'm only slightly crazy. I'm SO. EXCITED.

So, this blog thing. What in the world are you going to get? Well, you'll get me trying, and probably failing, at some pinterest projects.  I have a crap ton of wedding photos and mementos that I plan on crafting like crazy.  I figure I'm (hopefully) doing this once, might as well remember it...and all the crazy stuff that happened in between.  You'll get me cooking.  Not baking, I play around too much to bake (though when I do it, I do it well).  You'll get the crazy ideas that Aaron and I come up with (get excited!).  And you'll get our friends and family, because we have awesome ones and life is too short to not enjoy them.

In addition, you will NOT get new year's resolutions.  I am terrible at them.  Instead you get this.  You get me.  See you soon!