Cute Cheap Stuff

Happy New Year! I hope the year is treating you right so far. It’s only been six days, so nothing too bad could have happened, right?

My six days have been pretty meh. I woke up Tuesday with a sore throat and have been sick ever since, but I’m starting to get better so there’s hope. I’m spending my Friday night reading blogs, watching Dateline (seriously I don’t think I’m ever going to get married because every Dateline is about someone’s spouse dying or better yet, someone killing their spouse. color me single please!), drinking a delicious and somewhat healthy banana shake, and taking pictures of my cat:

My handsome man

And he's a cuddler

Can you blame me?

I would like to pretend that I’m only spending my evening this way because I’m sick, but it’s a pretty normal Friday night for me!

I wish I had some sage advice for the New Year, but I’m all out of ideas. This year my goal is to pay off my credit card debt, which is the same goal I had last year. I made some progress on it in 2011, but not as much as I had planned. If I buckle down and barring unexpected expenses (because that NEVER happens), I could potentially pay it all off, which is kind of crazy to think about it – in a good way of course! I’ve felt so enslaved by it for so long, it would be nice to get that monkey off my back. I already have a cat on my back.

You’ve probably already seen this, as it made the rounds on Facebook a few days ago, but just in case: Kitten Covers!

I mean … come on … kittens!

KITTENS!

Some things you can just count on: death, taxes, always picking the longest line at the grocery store, celebrity marriages ending quickly, and finally, mp3 deals at Amazon.

Since it’s a new month, we have a new selection of $5 albums. And since it’s now the holiday season, they have a selection of $5 holiday albums. Or you can buy individual holiday songs for 69 cents.

P.S. I’m really excited Christmas is coming, you guys! I don’t really care about Christmas music that much, but I care about my family Christmas traditions, and more importantly, I care about seeing my family. Living across the county from them kind of sucks sometimes, so I’m really looking forward to seeing them.

While I’m on the topic of food, here’s a little public service announcement from me:

For the love of all that is holy, do not buy:

• Trader Joe’s baked blue corn tortilla chips. Since they’re baked, I didn’t expect a flavor fiesta in my mouth – which is good because those “chips” tasted like straight up cardboard (el cardboardo). Barely salted cardboardo at that. Avoid it. Also, while we’re on the topic of TJs, if you buy their avocados, carefully inspect them and if they seem too soft, do not use – I got food poisoning several years ago from it. It was unpleasant and turned me off guacamole for a while – and that is a travesty.
• Lipton Cup A Soup (chicken noodle). I am no snob when it comes to this type of stuff, but this soup, which I just made 5 minutes ago, is really not good. Maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that this cheap as hell instant soup isn’t very good, but let me tell you that Lipton Soup Secrets chicken noodle soup is the bomb. It has been my food staple when I’m sick ever since I was a kid. It is delicious and salty and wonderful. I don’t know what Lipton did to the Cup A Soup. Maybe it was the decision to use “A” instead of “of” that sent bad grammar vibes into the broth? Avoid it.

What say you? What’s your food regret? What should we not buy?

Somehow it’s already June, and you know what that means… new $5 albums from Amazon!

I’m especially excited about the inclusion of Death Cab for Cutie’s new album, “Codes and Keys.” Five dollars!

Normally, Amazon offers 100 $5 albums each month – which is great.

But in May, they’re offering 1,500 albums.

You have been warned!

Cute Roulette!

Happy Friday!

If one’s Christian-ness is based on the amount of “Christian” music they listen to, then I’m practically atheist. I could go off on a rant about the Christian music world (and why music can’t be called Christian anyway), but instead I will say that I recently came across an artist whose music is in the Christian genre, and she’s really good: Audrey Assad.

A while back, her song “The House You’re Building” was a free download and I really really liked it. And then recently I discovered that her album is only $5 on Amazon. Check it out!

I’m facing a pretty big life change – at least for a month. My doctor has advised me to go on a non-fat diet for one month. Yep… don’t be jealous, friends!

This month is a trial period to see if some of the pain in my abdomen I’ve been having is related to gall bladder stones. This one-month diet is to see if my pain improves and to try to see if gallstones are really to blame. If it is, then I might be able to control it with diet or I might have to get surgery, which is very scary to me. But that’s something that’s out of my hands at the moment, and this next month is just about eating non-fat and watching what happens.

The upside to all of this is that I’ll probably lose weight. For the most part, I eat fairly healthy, but my weakness – my BIG weakness – is sugar, specifically anything that comes from a bakery. Some people crave cheeseburgers; I crave chocolate cake.

My doctor said I should be eating mostly vegetables and fruit, very lean meat, and some carbs. I can have all the calories I want, but I just have to keep it as low fat as possible. I know I’m going to get very sick of chicken and rice and vegetables after a couple days, so if you have any suggestions for healthy non-fat or very low-fat recipes, pass ‘em on to me!

I find happiness in food – probably too much. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with enjoying what you eat, but for me, I know that I rely heavily on food to make me happy. So when my doctor said “non-fat diet,” my first reaction was: Yay! No surgery right away! But then my next thought was: Well, there goes my joy in life. And it makes me sad that I thought that. I know that most people’s reactions to a non-fat diet probably aren’t positive either, but I’m still trying to rack my brain about happiness-inducing things and activities I can do to replace eating cupcakes.

As a Christian, I also feel this extra guilt about looking to food for satisfaction. But to be honest, God often feels far away, and that piece of pie is right in front of me and it makes me feel good. I was brought up this way – food is used as a comfort and as a celebration in my family, and I haven’t shaken that. I don’t want to completely shake that either because I don’t think it’s bad that food tastes good, and I don’t think it’s bad that we enjoy food, but there has to be moderation.

I don’t want to be obsessed over food – whether that’s obsessed about eating what I want or obsessed about avoiding unhealthy food. I just want food to be in my life and just be food – to be sustenance and not the only thing I rely on to make me happy. I don’t want to eat food that I don’t think tastes good, but I want life to taste better than what’s on my plate.

So there’s a lot of uncertainty in my life right now regarding my health. My doctor is a bit baffled about what’s going on with me, but I guess we’ll just see what happens. It could be a blessing in disguise though with this change in eating. It’s just a scary blessing.

I came across this photo tonight and I can’t stop thinking about it:

I wonder what the person who put that up was thinking. Who or what were they missing? I have some theories, but we’ll never really know.

I also wonder why am I so drawn to this. Sure, there’s the fact that someone put up an honest (at least I hope), direct statement of feelings out for the world to see; it’s like PostSecret. It’s attention-grabbing. But beyond that, when I saw this photo, my heart just went YES. I don’t even know exactly what I miss. But I miss something. I miss people. I miss places. I miss some hopes and dreams that got squashed as life happened.

I don’t want to be all “woe is me” as I have much in life to be grateful for, but it’s given me some food for thought. I’m realizing that on the hope-o-meter (picture one of those giant posters for a fundraiser with the thermometer thing showing how many donations have come in), I’m pretty low. I miss those squashed hopes and dreams, and it’s probably time to come up with some new, or least modified, ones.

Now that I’ve bummed everyone out, here’s a song about missing someone. And yes, I own the “Time, Love & Tenderness” album and I quite enjoy it. Ain’t no shame. I will say that it’s probably the only song featuring Kenny G that doesn’t make me throw up a little.

(hey, it’s Teri Hatcher! one of my favorite celebrities with my name!)

And confidential to early ’90s Michael Bolton: Here’s something else you’re missing – a deep conditioner. (You know I still love you.)

It just makes me happy.

Thank you, Internet.

It’s been over two months since my last post. I don’t really have an excuse, other than to say I got sick of blogging about Amazon. I am actually capable of talking about other things.

I’ve decided that I want to branch out my blog beyond deal-related things. I’m going to keep cutecheapstuff.com because I like it, and I’ll still talk about cute and/or cheap stuff, but I don’t want to be limited to those things.

So that’s the plan. Also, I’m moving in a couple weeks, so I probably won’t be blogging a whole lot right now, but please do stay tuned. Good things come to those who wait, my bloggy friends!

As a reward for staying subscribed to the blog, you can enjoy this:

Thanks for being loyal readers! I apologize that I haven’t been posting as much lately. I just haven’t been motivated to blog about cheap stuff lately. I’ve actually been thinking about expanding what I say here beyond financially-related things. It may not exactly go with the cutecheapstuff name, but whatever – it’s my blog!

But that won’t be happening yet, as I’m about to head off on a vacation to….. (drumroll)…. Hawaii! I’m very excited, as I’ve been dying to visit for a long time, and it’s finally happening.

For the next week, I won’t be posting. But I’m hoping that when I return and get settled in, I’ll feel bloggy again.

(Sorry to be one of those people who talks about how they don’t post on their blog and life is so busy, blah blah blah. My life isn’t really that busy – I’m just lazy!)

If you are engaged or if you know someone who is (which probably all of us do), check this out. You can win a free wedding gown or 5 bridal party dresses from David’s Bridal – every month! Click here to enter the drawing.

Groom sold separately.

(Thanks, Money Saving Mom)

Photo: Creative commons – Flickr user catchesthelight

I apologize for the lack of posting here. I started my new job this week (which I’m very grateful for), and I’m really tired. I’m not used to working 8-5 every day!

Obviously, I now have less free time during the day to blog. I will still keep blogging, but it’s probably going to be a little slow for a while – at least during the week – until I get adjusted to this schedule. (I’m soooooooooooo not a morning person.) I really do have things I want to write about, so stay tuned.

 I should have mentioned this earlier, but posting will be light around here until after Christmas.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Attention Seattle area people: University Village is giving away a $500 gift card! Click here to enter.

This week is $12 T-shirt week at Threadless. Talk about awesome and affordable gifts!

(Thanks, Yugo, for the tip!)

If you’d like to share a deal you come across or if you just want to drop a line, feel free to e-mail cutecheapstuff AT gmail.com. Thanks!

If you haven’t bookmarked or subscribed to an RSS feed for this site, you can now just go to cutecheapstuff.com (instead of cutecheapstuff.wordpress.com) – it automatically forwards to the wordpress blog. It’s handy, and hopefully it’ll be easier to remember the URL without having to add the wordpress part at the end.

Also, about RSS feeds – up until recently I wasn’t using one. I’m kind of a visual person, and I liked being able to go to individual blogs and see the design the way the blogger meant it to look, but when you read lots of blogs, it’s time consuming to individually visit each site. So I started using Google Reader, and it’s awesome.

If you don’t use an RSS reader, you should really consider it! If you have gmail, just click on the Reader link at the top of your Gmail page, and click on the Add a Subscription button and then add cutecheapstuff.com and your other favorite blogs, and voila! You can now catch up on all the new posts all at once.

(Sorry for the tutorial if you’re already RSS savvy. Thank you for being awesome.)