Living

I overworked myself in 2019. There is no doubt about that.

In my first year of running my online business full-time, I hit things hard in order to increase my online traffic (and therefore income) to offset the day job income that I walked away from. I achieved this goal, but also pushed myself to the breaking point in the process. 

I was exhausted (both physically and mentally), acquired a few bad habits, and gained weight all at the same time in order to achieve this “success”. By the end of the year, I had to take a moment and reflect on why I was doing what I was doing, and I realized that my goal for quitting my day job was to have more time for me just as much as it was to have more time to work.

So, I put together a 30-day digital detox for January and stuck to it fairly hard. In this one, I wanted to share the results and lessons learned from the experience.

Read more

When we are at home, we like to have constant reminders of our travels. From the random knick-knacks to hand painted artwork we pick up on the road, our house is covered with decorations that remind us of where we've been over the years.

But one of our favorite pieces of travel art is one that does not come from our travels, but is about our travels- our world map!

For many years we were settled with a DIY travel map with push pins we made ourselves, but after a while we knew we were in need of an upgrade. We searched the internet, read countless reviews, and settled on one that appeared to be leaps and bounds better than the rest- Conquest Maps.

It was the best decision we ever made.

Read more

Those who know us personally know that we absolutely love to travel hack.

Where other bloggers may source the bulk of their travels through comps, partnerships, and other discounts, we pay for most all of it ourselves and owe a lot of it to the insane amount of airline, hotel, and non-branded credit card points we rack up in any given year.

But we'll let you in on a little secret: our version of travel hacking does not involve manufactured spending or crazy schemes in order to get points. It is simply through meeting minimum spend limits on credit cards and carrying on like normal!

Okay, it definitely isn't that sexy when you really stop to think about it. This method really is as simple as opening credit cards, spending as normal, and receiving points. But while this approach may be relatively straight forward, it does have one perk that we're going to share today- it is repeatable!

In this guide we're going to take you down the rabbit hole of all the things you need to think about to before opening one of the best travel rewards credit cards to reap major rewards. The first task? Figuring how many cards you could possibly use in a given year!

Read more

As many readers of this website know, we operate a sister blog, Discover the Burgh, focusing on being a travel guide to Pittsburgh, PA.  If you've been here before, you also know that we have an incredible view from our house that we frequently share.

Ever since coming up with the concept for our local blog, I've dreamed about having a webcam on our deck pointing at the skyline for anyone to see at any time of the day- be it for sunrises, sunsets, fireworks, or to just check real-time weather.

I'll save the long rant about my webcam research for somewhere else, and summarize it by saying that getting a high resolution, weather-proof webcam with live-streaming capabilities was next to impossible on my budget.  Most either had poor reviews, were too expensive to buy, or too complicated to deal with when it came to integrating it with my website.

I almost gave up hope in finding something that would work, but found the highly rated Nest Cam, a webcam designed for indoor use only, and took a risk on its potential.  In this one instance, I'm really glad I took the chance.

Read more