Netflix Lately

My last Netflix post got an insane amount of views, so I took that as a sign that I should post some Netflix-faves more often! Judging by this list, you would think that we spend all of our free time watching Netflix, but let's be real... we're really just binge-watchers. If something catches our attention, we'll spend a whole afternoon getting through each and every episode. I'm sure we're not alone in this! Anyways, here's a rundown of the best of 'em.

Backstreet Boys: Show 'Em What You're Made of - A must-see if you are/were a Backstreet Boys fan. It covers the history of their rise to fame, and it follows the members in present-day as they revisit some parts of their past. I actually teared up a little - and then followed it up with a BSB dance party. Just sayin'.

Better Call Saul - Shawn and I had been impatiently waiting for season 2 for over year... and it's finally here!!! If you were a Breaking Bad fan, do yourself a favor and watch this. I actually think it's better than Breaking Bad (shh!!), but you kinda need the background of Breaking Bad to fully appreciate Better Call Saul - the two just go hand in hand. Plus, Saul and Mike were my favorite characters anyway.

Love - That's basically what the show is about - love... and all it's ugly faces and nasty habits. Yep, it's a story that has been played out time and time again, but I really enjoy the fucked-up-ness of these characters as they navigate their relationships and life in L.A., and I love the sarcastic hilarity of it all.

Lovesick - Shawn and I watched every single episode of this in one sitting; don't judge! The episodes and the seasons are short. It's a show about a guy who finds out he has an STD, and subsequently contacts every girl he has slept with over the previous five years. Each episode focuses on a different girl, and ties his past into his present-day. So good! And the actors are British so, you know, that's a plus.

The Great British Baking Show - Want more Brits? Enjoy watching baking competitions? Watch this. It's so freaking good. The one thing I still can't get over is how nice all the contestants are to each other! My family swears it's just video editing, but I like to think that the Brits just aren't total competitive a-holes like Americans are.

Burn After Reading - Classic Coen brothers. (Shawn and I saw this when it first came out, but he didn't remember it, so I happily watched it again.) George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, and Frances McDormand... if the directors and the cast aren't enough to suck you in, then I don't really know what else to tell you.

I Don't Feel At Home in This World Anymore - This falls into the category of dark comedy crime thriller. The main character is fed up with the general selfish attitude of humans and when her home gets broken into, she enlists the help of her neighbor to find the culprits herself. Then shit gets crazy! We really enjoyed this one.

Waffle Street - Based on the true story of a wall street guy who loses his job and starts serving tables at a local waffle house chain, with the intention of one day owning his own franchise location. Really heartwarming story, and I love the take-away at the end. You'll have to watch it to know what I mean though!

Schitt's Creek - This was recommended to me on my last Netflix post; I remember seeing trailers when this first came out, and I'm so happy it's on Netflix because I really wanted to see it! A wealthy family loses everything they own and are forced to move to a podunk town that they bought years prior as a joke. Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara are hilarious, as usual. Definitely worth a watch if you're looking for a good laugh.

We also watched a few notable comedy specials:
Garfunkel and Oates: Trying to be Special
Neal Brennan: 3 Mics
Louis C.K. 2017

How about you - have you watched anything good lately?

Read more...

Netflix Lately

As much as I try to fight it, winter is a time for being lazy and retreating into the deepest corners of the couch. We have been watching a lot of Netflix lately. There have been a few things I've really enjoyed, and a few things that are just worth mentioning, so I thought I'd share them with you. Make some chocolate chip cookies, grab a tasty beverage, and settle in for an evening (or four).

Blue Jay - Grab a box of tissues and your coziest blanket before starting this one- it's a tearjerker. Shot entirely in black and white, it follows two high school sweethearts who run into each other later in life, and their story slowly unfolds. This movie is the definition of heartbreaking. Real life: I ugly-cried, and had to pause the movie because my nose was so stuffy that I couldn't breathe. I felt physically sad for two days after watching this. So worth it though.

Blind Date - A french film about an uncanny relationship between neighbors. Super cute. We got some good laughs. The subtitles aren't terrible, so that's a plus.

Hard Candy - Ellen Page plays a sixteen year old girl determined to take down a pedophile. This got way more intense than Shawn and I expected. This definitely isn't a movie with a happy ending. (Pun intended...)

Penelope - A modern fairy tale; Christina Ricci plays an aristocratic girl cursed with a pig's nose, looking for true love to break the curse. We needed something-light hearted after watching Hard Candy, and this definitely fit the bill.

The Beaver - Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, Jennifer Lawrence, Anton Yelchin (the kid from Charlie Bartlett), and a beaver hand puppet. That pretty much sums it up. All in all, not a terrible movie- it actually starts a pretty solid dialogue about depression.

Nightcrawler - Jake Gyllenhaal plays a f*cking weirdo in this one. He's really freaking good at that.

Minimalism - A documentary about (you guessed it) minimalism. Definitely worth a watch though, if that's a concept you've been thinking about or actively working towards.

Black Mirror - This series is a bunch of stand-alone episodes that act as commentary about how we interact with modern-day technology and where that might lead us. Brilliant. And scary (in the holy-shit-that's-not-terribly-far-off sense). I've been recommending this to everyone lately.

A Series of Unfortunate Events - We've only actually watched the first episode of this so far. But I love Neil Patrick Harris, and I wish Patrick Warburton would narrate everything, all the time. I'm not actually familiar with the books, but I really like the way this is filmed.

Other shows I've been catching up on: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and New Girl - SO GOOD.

What have you been watching lately?

Read more...

In case you were wondering....

....this is why you don't see many photos of us on the blog.





Those aren't even the outtakes, those are the real thing.
Our best one is our sidebar photo, where Shawn is about to pretend-stab me with a pen.
I rest my case.

Read more...

Virtual Apartment Plans

One of my favorite computer games when I was younger was The Sims. I know I'm not the only one who can admit to this, and it's not hard to understand why... the game freakin' rocked! What other game let you build imaginary mansions furnished with all sorts of extravagant and eccentric furniture that you downloaded online and subsequently 'bought' with the all the money you 'earned' playing the game. (...I know I'm not the only one who frequently used the get rich quick cheat code!) Oh yeah, and you pretty much got to control people's lives too.

Seriously though, I used to spend hours on end creating homes and then furnishing them with great detail. I think I built houses more than I played the actual game. (I did the same thing with my Barbies too.... I'd build them extravagant 'homes' out of cardboard boxes that I had lined with wrapping paper and magazine clip-outs to function as 'wall-art'....) What? Didn't I tell you I was an odd child obsessed with creating imaginary and detailed furnished houses?

Well, my favorite childhood past-time was recreated in all its greatness the other day when one of the blogs I read (can't remember which one though!) led me to Urban Barn: The Make Room. And just like back in the day, I've been spending a whole lot of my spare time designing houses. Actually, apartments in this case. And the measurements are far from exact... but who needs math when you have virtual furniture that you can size and place however you please!

Behold, a floor plan of our current apartment:

(larger image)
Oh, I had entirely too much fun there. Yep, that's really what our place looks like these days! Some appliances are missing, like my kitchen aid mixer, but the program only offers so much! Aside from missing appliances, it's fairly correct.

You know me though, I can't stop at just one! After I drafted our current apartment, I made up the plans for an imaginary two bedroom apartment:


(larger image)
It's completely made up and only based off of the things we wish we had (a larger kitchen, wood floors, an office/studio room, and a patio with lots of plants). I could totally have made it super extravagant and added things like stairs, a six-burner stove/oven, a washer/dryer, and a jacuzzi.... but I didn't. But I could have!

And now I'm going to find something more productive to do with my time - because sitting in front of the computer for hours on end just can not be good for you. Psh... whatever, I walked almost three miles today to get croissants... I think I deserve to sit on my bum (and eat my bag of croissants!) - ha!

Read more...

Netflix Lovin' & Sweet Treats

In case you haven't quite figured it out yet, we're huge fans of Netflix over here. Which is kind of ironic, actually, considering the fact that when Shawn and I first met he was working at the local video store and he absolutely abhorred the thought of Netflix, whereas I was preaching about Netflix to everyone who would listen (way before they even started their amazing Instant Queue feature... my parents were early-Netflix customers). It just goes to show you how opinions can change as you grow (...and how the need for things like video stores dies out after a while).

Netflix is by no means sponsoring us or this post (but they totally should!), so the real question is - why are we such big fans? When we moved out here a year ago and did our cable company research, we just couldn't bear the thought of spending $100+ a month just to watch tv whenever we wanted (especially considering Comcast is the primary option out here - we've vented about them before though, so I'll spare you those details). Cable-less but in need of some visual entertainment, we opted for a Netflix subscription instead. At under $11 a month for one unlimited movie 'rental' at a time and unlimited access to the thousands of movies and tv shows in their Instant Queue 24/7, we would have been crazy to pick anything else.

So what if we can't watch 'real' tv? The only good thing on tv these days is Wayne Brady on Lets Make a Deal anyway!

We'd make deals with Wayne all day if he wanted us to...
But that's enough 'real' tv jazz - back to the Netflix love. They must really love us because they have all of our new & old favorite tv series on the Instant Queue:

* That 70s Show
* Futurama
* The Twilight Zone
* Scrubs
* 3rd Rock From The Sun
* 30 Rock
* Dexter (unfortunately only seasons 1 & 2 so no spoilers, please!)

...and our newest favorite series of all: PSYCH.


Shawn Spencer, Burton Guster, and the occasional pineapple.
Yes, we're a few years late on yet another bandwagon, shush. The show is hilarious. And smartly done. The episodes are an hour long, too, so that's always a plus for us. The main reason we watch it though is because the main character - Shawn Spencer - has such striking similarity to Shawn... it's uncanny. The personality traits are almost spot on and they even got his physical appearance right:


Shawn = Shawn?
...Shawn even has a button down shirt in that same pattern and colors. Strange. We're still trying to figure out how they got a hold of all of Shawn's shirts, thoughts and quirks.

But enough about that; now that I've proclaimed our love for Netflix and our new favorite (old) show, lets get into food mode.


Remember this peanut butter 'dip'? Did you know that it's not really a dip, it's actually a filling for something sweetly addictive? Check this out:


Pretzel peanut butter chocolate dipped yumminess!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel Bites

Ingredients:
1 cup creamy peanut butter
2 tablespoons butter, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
a bag of hard pretzels
4oz dark chocolate

To Make:
- In the medium bowl with a spatula or in the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the peanut butter and butter until combined.
- Scrape down the bowl, add sugars and beat until combined. You should be able to roll the mixture into balls without it sticking to your hands. If the dough is too sticky, add more powdered sugar until you reach a consistency that is easy to roll.
- Roll the peanut butter mixture into small balls, about 1 teaspoon of mixture for each ball, and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet.
- Sandwich the balls between two pretzels and place in the freezer for 30 minutes.
- Melt the chocolate in a metal bowl over a pan of lightly simmering water. Stir occasionally until smooth, and remove from heat.
- Dip each pretzel bite halfway into the melted chocolate and place on the prepared baking sheet. Chill in refrigerator until chocolate is set.
- Enjoy at your leisure! These keep best in the refrigerator or freezer.

Careful, they may be addictive. I should add, it's a quick and easy recipe that makes a great snack while you're getting comfortable on the couch watching Psych... or whatever your pleasure is. If you dig peanut butter as much as we do over here, you'll thank me for this one.

Read more...