That day our internet was limited....

We moved into this GORGEOUS house mid-December. We love it, and so far we love everything about it. It was the house I wanted to hate when we were touring houses, it was a whole 15 minutes from work, as opposed to the less than 5 I lived before. It is out in the country. It runs on propane. It only has two bedrooms, with a beautiful unfinished basement that will hopefully not be too hard to finish off with the potential of two more bedrooms, another bathroom, a big multipurpose room, a laundry room, a storage room. It is a split level, four steps up to the main floor and nine steps down to the basement. It doesn't have a fence.  It isn't in my top choice of elementary schools. Ahhhh, we wanted to hate this house. I told Marc as we were driving out to the house that this had better be good or else there is no way.....

We walked into the house, it is totally open on the inside, the living room flows into the dining space, which flows into the kitchen. It backs up to the Crow Wing State Park (which we love and adore). It is a quiet neighborhood. It had two bathrooms, TWO bathrooms, this is a big deal when we have all of our family over. It has a three stall ATTACHED garage. It was under our budget. It had beautiful details. Besides the guest room nothing absolutely HAD to be painted. (Mom has since painted the 2nd bathroom because I didn't like the color before, thanks mom, it was livable but now this is wonderful). The guest room is next on the list to be painted. The yard is huge. We love this house, we have adjusted and really don't mind the 15 minute drive. Propane isn't a big deal to us. We continue to grow into the house and figure out where stuff goes. But one thing that we have found we actually don't mind is the fact that because we are so far out in the country we don't have unlimited internet access, we had to go with a dish internet provider which only allows us so much internet each month.

Living/Dining/Kitchen before anything was moved in

We actually read more books, we talk to each other more, we don't have Netflix streaming endlessly, we don't sit mindlessly on facebook for hours. We have plenty of data each month to do what we want to do, we just don't stream things without end. We communicate more. We enjoy the silence more. We get lost in more books and magazines. We watch movies we already owned. We check out movies from what feels like a nearly endless supply at our library. We have disconnected some, and we love it. We aren't as tied to our ipads, iphones, laptops, and tv. We were just discussing last night what a welcomed change this has become in our lives. Yes, we still use the internet probably more than we care to admit but it has been seriously lessened and we love it. I still make photobooks on shutterfly, instragram, facebook, read blogs, write blogs, and my husband frequently looks up triathlon training plans and I look at half marathon plans but we have taken a step back from the technology that had gotten a grasp on our lives. I don't think we even had a clue how much we were absorbed in it until our data was minimized and while there are moments we miss it, the reality is we are actually enjoying the lack of data.

How much do you use the internet in any given day?
Do you enjoy the chance to step back from technology?
What are your opinions on technology?

Favorite Websites

I love the internet and can't fathom life without it any more, for one reason or another I have decided to post a list of my favorite websites. The websites are listed in no particular order.

• Shutterfly - I LOVE making photobooks! At one point in life I thought I would actually scrapbook like everyone else in the world, when I realized that would not happen! I am not creative enough and far too much of a perfectionist when it comes to certain things to actually scrapbook - however I have found great freedom in digital scrapbooking and love the quality of these books! I have also used them to make Christmas Cards, post cards, journals for work, and several other projects. I LOVE shutterfly.
• Facebook - I know it maybe totally cliche, but I love facebook to a certain degree, yeah the petty stuff and the complaining gets annoying, but I love that I am able to easily connect with friends, see pictures of friend's kids, and connect with some people that I haven't talked to in forever. Granted nothing replaces actual phone calls, skype meetings, handwritten letters, and actual visits - facebook works well for me in the digital world.
• Pintrest - LOVE IT! I love all the ideas that I am able to pull off of here and make happen. There are lots of things I will never have time for or will never actually make but I have actually used quite a bit of stuff off this website. It has ideas and everything! 
• Raverlry - This website has lots and lots of crochet patterns (knitting too but I have no clue how to knit, so am only interested in crochet patterns). It has some for free and some you have to purchase for a reasonable price (usually). I have found lots of patterns that I love on this website, I am thankful for the ability to see other patterns and see people's pictures of how their item turned out to know what a certain project may look like
• Pandora - How brilliant! I love the ability to create radio stations and tailor them to my liking. I have lots of different stations all for different moods and things. I love not needing to haul around cds or my ipod and just being able to play pandora whenever I want.
• Oremus - I love having an NRSV version of the bible available online, one that I can pull scripture off of to put into documents or whatever the need may be. The NRSV is my preferred version of the bible.
• All Recipes - This is my go to for trying new recipes after pintrest, of which I have discovered many of the pintrest recipes I have use are originally from allrecipes.