I thought I’d do a little break from books to talk about television! I like sharing other hobbies on here, but I guess this post is almost the opposite of that? I wanted to chat about some shows I started watching, got through more than a few episodes, and have since paused watching. Most of the time this isn’t a conscious decision – it’s more like I get in a mood, binge a few (or a bunch) of episodes, get distracted by a new season of another show, and then never go back. I usually tell myself that I will at some point, but these are six shows I’ve decided I most likely won’t ever pick up again for various reasons. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Episodes watched: 12 | Episodes left: 38 I binge-watched a lot of these episodes right around the time the second season came out, maybe? I don’t remember. I was intrigued at first and thought the show was pretty funny but not as funny as everyone else. It’s one of those shows where I just stopped watching it inadvertently, in favor of something else, and I’ll probably never return to it. It’s been like 3+ years and I have not once felt compelled to play the next episode. Orange is the New Black Episodes watched: 33 | Episodes left: 45 If you told me I wanted to quit this show a few years ago, I would have been shocked. Chris and I LOVED and devoured the first […]

I feel like I’ve discussed this a little bit in the past, but I’m in the mood to talk about it again. I’ve actually developed a pretty decent system for getting ALL of my media time in. I’m looking at books, audiobooks, music, and podcasts. I’ve had really good months and really bad months for reading, and it’s usually based on my current addiction level to something else. 2018 was a big YouTube year for me – I could not stop watching things and didn’t read that much at all. I also got addicted to a few TV shows. This year I’ve been really into podcasts, since I have a commute again, but I’ve also been mixing audiobooks in a LOT. I’ve been also reading many, many books, which means I’m not watching TV or YouTube as much. In the post I linked above, I talked about developing some kind of schedule to balance my hobbies: Between audiobooks, podcasts, regular books, Netflix, and YouTube, I really need to allocate my time better. I need to focus on what’s important and what isn’t. Just because I love Nikkia’s YouTube videos doesn’t mean I NEED to watch her review of a product I’m 90% sure I won’t buy or care about. I don’t have to watch every single creator I love when they post something. I’d love to, but it’s not feasible. Tati posts 5 times per week and I already cut back to just the topics I’m interested in; I should […]

I posted my Hallmark Holiday round-up the other day (which I continue to add to after posting, if you care to click the link for an update!), but wanted to do a last-minute movie round-up for everything else watched in 2018. There were some new-to-me movies, the yearly classics, and some I haven’t watched in YEARS. They’re all categorized below and some of the old favorites / new movies have little bits of my thoughts underneath. The tried-and-true yearly favorites don’t need any information! Yearly Watches       My favorite Christmas movie is THE SANTA CLAUSE, and that’s usually my first “real” holiday movie of the season. I don’t really count all of the Hallmark ones I keep on in the background starting in November. My second favorite is CHRISTMAS VACATION because it’s perfect. The others are classics we’ve started to watch each year! New-to-Me (Non-Hallmark) Movies Hallmark movie reviews can be found HERE!   I wanted Chris to watch THE CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES with me (we failed at that) but knew I’d be watching THE PRINCESS SWITCH alone! I put it on while wrapping presents and folding laundry (fun and exciting stuff) on my favorite day – Christmas Eve Eve. It has the classic switcheroo storyline of two strangers who look alike and decide to swap lives for a period of time. It was definitely a cute one! Haven’t Seen in Years    I had high hopes for this section because I really wanted to watch a lot of rom-com Christmas […]

I honestly wasn’t into Hallmark movies until last Christmas, when I discovered their wonderfulness and large amount of Candace Cameron Bure. I just recorded some that looked interesting and reviewed them on the blog throughout December. This year, I downloaded the Hallmark Christmas Movie app, pre-planned which new ones I wanted to watch, and recorded a bunch on my Sling DVR as needed. I figured I would toss ALL of them into one post with some quick thoughts (I’m posting this now but will ADD TO IT LATER). They’re listed here in order of me watching them.    Christmas at Pemberly Manor While I’m not a Pride & Prejudice fangirl, I can often appreciate a “retelling” without knowing the source material very well. This was a cute movie overall! I’ve seen that some people don’t like the female lead very much but I’ve liked her over the years (and really only know her from the 90210 reboot I loved). The male lead was decent too. It was a classic story of a girl putting on a Christmas festival and getting the grumpy workaholic to take some time off for loooooove. Christmas Joy This one was super cute. A market researcher is forced to return to her “hometown” after her aunt suffered an ankle injury. She takes over on the annual Cookie Crawl while trying to balance her work AND the cute Christmas-obsessed guy she used to know from high school. I thought the two leads had really good chemistry and […]

I’ve had this post drafted for a while (and by “drafted” I mean a post draft with zero body text and just the title of “How We Cut Cable”) – back in October 2017. We cut cable a few years ago and have had zero regrets since. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve wished for regular cable again in the past year or two. I’m here to chat about how we get by without cable! (To be clear: this post is not sponsored by anyone or any service, but the link below has a referral discount I’ll talk about later!) As you can see, we were still able to stream the World Series, football games, and seasonal faves! What we watch We watch the following things live each week: football games (and sometimes other sports, depending on the season) and wrestling. We needed to figure out how to watch the channels that those appear on, because a lot of other shows that we’d watch later can be found on Hulu or on channel-specific apps. Our wrestling shows happen on the USA network (and will also be on Fox in a year or two). Football games happen on CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN, NFL Network, and Amazon Prime, depending on the day of the week. Full disclosure: my team is based in North Carolina so I don’t often have the option to watch them on regular TV where I live. My dad has NFL Sunday Ticket, so we will go over […]

I love matching books and movies up with each other, providing recommendations based on other books you liked (if you liked this, try that!), and a bunch of recommendations from just one book. I was thinking about some of my other favorite forms of media and how I might be able to make recommendations based off those. Some of these involve podcasts that are popular with lesser known shows, or vice versa, so you’ll see how they can be mixed and matched. I also have a couple that couple podcasts with books, instead of just shows or movies. A Very Fatal Murder + American Vandal As a true crime podcast aficionado, I’ve come to realize that A LOT of them follow the same formula: incompetent law enforcement, botched investigations, suspects who aren’t taken as seriously as they should be (or vice versa), and the commentary on ~small towns~ / “it could happen anywhere.” I absolutely LOVED The Onion’s true crime parody podcast (complete with fake ads from products that will definitely remind you of stereotypical podcast sponsors). The show reminded me of every true crime podcast mashed into one, with the added element of parody and comedy. This is EXACTLY like Netflix’s AMERICAN VANDAL, where high school students investigate the very serious crime of penis graffiti on teacher’s cars (and the second season about the Turd Burglar). It’s another crime procedural parody and I loved every second of its insane humor. Clue + Deadly Manners I only saw the famous […]

After sharing that I’ve been waaaayyy too into YouTube lately in my last LL post (and Kristin being interested in who I watch), I decided to do a quick round-up of my current favorites. I think most of them are fairly well-known in their niche, so I won’t go crazy talking about them. I am currently subscribed to less than 40 channels (and many of them I don’t watch), so I’ll focus on some of my current favorites. I’m also going to embed a video that’s either a recent favorite of mine, or encapsulates who they are as a channel! Beauty I used to watch a lot of these back in the day, then stopped, and recently started again. It’s important for me to watch videos where people have the same skin type as me (meaning, oily ones!) because obviously they’re the most helpful to me. I love all of these channels A LOT and they’ve gotten me right back into beauty YouTube as a result. Nikkia Joy I have to put my girl Nikkia first because she is my absolute favorite. She’s SO funny and genuine. She is also the absolute master at combating oily skin. She has how-to videos about keeping your skin matte, reducing pores and cakey foundation, etc. that have been viewed millions of times. I love videos like this one because then I learn what she’s loving lately… and go buy the same stuff! Casey Holmes She’s another favorite oily girl. She also has rosacea and […]

Chris and I started watching Black Mirror a few months ago and MAN does this show fuck me up. We were kind of addicted at the beginning and tried to binge a few episodes in one sitting… but honestly this show is just too heavy for that. I don’t know how people do it when the new season comes out! I get too depressed too quickly. There are four seasons, as of right now, and we spread them out over the course of a couple of months. I’ve seen a lot of people rank them from best to worst, so I’m going to share my favorites and least favorites here in order – the best ones are at the top, of course. You can see some other interesting opinions here and here. USS Callister (S4/E1) I loved this Star Trek-esque episode! The concept was really cool and the cast was fantastic. I was basically on the edge of my seat the entire time, especially toward the end. I hope they turn this into its own show, like the rumors are saying. I could totally see it. Nosedive (S3/E1) This one really got Chris and me thinking! I can’t imagine a world where everyone rates each other based on every single interaction they have. Clearly, it could make you go crazy. The concept here was phenomenal and the lead actress did a great job. I was rooting for her. San Junipero (S3/E4) SO GOOOOD. This one would be up a little […]

If you told me a few years ago that I would spend roughly 6-7 or more hours per week watching wrestling (sometimes closer to 10-12 if there’s a pay-per-view), I would have laughed at you. Seriously. I was never super interested in WWE or wrestling in general, and was one of those buttholes who completely wrote it off as “fake.” I remember watching on and off with my cousins throughout my childhood (late 90s/early 00s) and had a few classic wrestlers I loved at the time. My interest waned over time and I didn’t really get it. When we learned that some friends of ours liked wrestling, Chris decided to pick up watching RAW on Monday and Smackdown on Tuesday, just VERY occasionally. He played the WWE 2k15 games with the guys and enjoyed it. I barely glanced at the TV (usually just to scoff like a jerk sometimes) and would read a book while he watched and built Lego. I sloooowly started to turn my attention toward the TV a little bit more. I saw Morgan’s post (which is truly one of my favorite posts ever and I’ve read it a million times; check out her new blog here!) and became more intrigued by it all. I’m going to quote her post here because she makes the best points about this: “Wrestling is fake.” I’ll be the first person to tell you, wrestling fans know that WWE is scripted. And we don’t care. That’s different from fake by the […]

I’ve posted two podcast recommendation posts in the last year that focus on some of my favorite topics. I usually listen to only true crime, with maybe some comedy or wrestling mixed in. You can read those here and here! I wanted to take a minute to show which podcasts I’m currently rotating through on a weekly basis. I spend a lot of time finding old podcasts and catching up on back episodes before becoming up-to-date, but there are plenty of others that I listen to weekly/monthly as new episodes come out. I’ll call this my “current podcast rotation” if you’re curious to know what I’m playing every week. This is accurate as of February/March. True Crime The most common podcast that I listen to is the general category of “true crime.” There are a lot of one-off podcast that have one story in one season that I’ve listened to, but there are some that still come out with new content as of right now. The ones below are either individual story episodes (one case per episode) or season-long stories (one case per season). I kind of like the individual story ones more because it’s quick and easy; the season-long cases usually get too dragged out for me after a while. Criminal This is one of my longtime favorites and I love how consistently the episodes come out! The host even made a spin-off podcast (coming up later in this list) that I’ve been listening to. This show features little […]