1,000 Places: Ravello, Italy

Ravello sits high on the cliffs on the Amalfi Coast. Getting there is nearly impossible, but the views from the top make the twisty, slow drive completely worth it. When you look towards the water, you can see the same gorgeous view you saw as you climbed the cliffs from the shoreline of the coast. But as you arrive in Ravello, the lush vegetable and grape vines capture your attention as their green becomes your new favorite color.

While Ravello is a location in the 1,000 Places book, that is not why Thomas and I traveled there. My Italian cousin, Francesca, picked the quaint coastal town as the backdrop for her wedding to Sebastian (my new German cousin!) and Thomas and I were thrilled to be invited to share that special day with them.

Our welcome to Ravello was an intense storm the likes of which they hadn't seen in a long time. Our hotel flooded as the rain poured down in sheets, and the nearby town of Amalfi had a wave of water wash away cars. Despite all that, the rustic feel of the town was comforting and I immediately felt like I was at home.



Our first day in town, Francesca's father, Egidio, took my aunt, Thomas and I on a tour to Villa Cimbrone. As we wandered through the narrow, uneven streets, Thomas and I fell behind, stopping to take pictures of everything. There was nothing our eyes landed on that was not the classic Italian picture. The Villa is famous for its Infinity Terrace that looks out over the Mediterranean and you can see both ends of the Amalfi Coast and many of the coastal towns. We thought we had seen a gorgeous view from our hotel room, but nothing compared to the view from the terrace. Edigo told us that it was Francesca's favorite spot, and he assumed that is why she picked Ravello to get married.

On our second day, we wandered around Ravello on our own and actually attempted to get lost on the streets, just following the beauty around town.

When it came time to leave Ravello for our next destination, Thomas and I didn't want to go. We both felt so relaxed and comfortable there, I felt we could have just moved in and stayed forever.

Despite the hard journey getting to Ravello, I have every intention of visiting again, but this time, I want to stay much longer.

kik Messenger: iPhone App Review

When Sarah and I made the jump from our old Blackberries to the iPhone a month or so after it was available on Verizon, we basically had only one thing we were going to miss. Blackberry Messenger (BBM) is a data based messaging app that is free to use for all Blackberry user to talk to each other through enhanced text communication. Its one of the best parts of a Blackberry and we thought we'd be without it once we switched to the iPhone.

Turns out, app developers were already ahead of us long ago. Kik Messenger does all of the same things that BBM does but gives it to anyone on an iOS device. You might wonder how kik Messenger differs from your run of the mill SMS texting because on the surface, it looks the same. However there are subtle differences that make kik a better option most of the time. For starters, messages sent through kik are sent via data so if you have an unlimited data plan, you can send messages as much as you want. It also allows you to see when the person you are talking to has received a message and if they are currently typing a message back to you. These are the same features you got with BBM!

Kik's method of adding contacts to your list of people is actually easier than BBM's. With BBM you need to send a PIN request and get an acceptance. It often didn't seem to work the first time and if you don't have your PIN memorized, you need to go in and find it in your settings. Yes these are all easy things to do, but with kik, you can just let the app scan your contacts for you and find people you know who are also using it.

How about the price? Just like BBM, kik is totally free. Data rates may apply of course but as far as the app is concerned, its free to download.

LEGO Project: Star Wars Y-Wing Attack Starfighter

The LEGO Project series is a look through the Second Snack collection of LEGO sets from Thomas’ childhood as well as some modern sets. For years these LEGO bricks and pieces have been laying dormant in plastic bins but with the pooled resources of the Internet, reassembling sets is now a reality.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the biggest LEGO set I have. You're looking at 1473 bricks and pieces snapped together to recreate the rebel Y-Wing Attack Starfighter. While the X-Wing usually stole the show, the Y-Wing faithfully filled in as backup to Luke Skywalker in his assault on the death star. If you watch the Star Wars films you'll see a bunch of Y-Wings flying missions alongside X-wings as well.


It took me two straight days of 5-6 hour sessions to put this set together and because of that, I'll likely never take it apart or reassemble. Its going to stay on top of our bookshelf. Its embarrassing to admit this, but my body was tired after assembling this.


The Y-Wing comes from LEGO's "Ultimate Collector's Series" and is geared to the more hardcore builder. Its built to a scale larger than LEGO mini-figs so the amount of detail is much higher than your standard set. The did include the standard issue R2 unit to help the pilot fly his missions, and included a ton of bits to make the craft look as close to the movie version as possible.


Overall, a fun but grueling build. Hope you like the pictures.

Saving Vs. Sanity

In all of my previous money and budgeting posts, I have spoken about how saving and budgeting are good things. However, there is a fine line between budgets being good and budgets being terrible. The thin line between saving money last year and us losing our sanity was a line we didn't always ride correctly. Here's the most important lesson we learned.

Having fun is a necessity.

It's so easy to forget that along with budgeting for food and rent, you need to add in a budget to have some fun. Initially, Thomas and I were so freaked out that we cut out our 'fun' budget altogether to save money. We were soon miserable and learned that it was too drastic a measure and added 'fun' back into our budget. To maintain a sense of balance, think carefully about that 'fun' money you spend so that it does not feel wasteful and instead feels fully enjoyable. We would ask ourselves "will we feel guilty for spending this money?" If we felt guilty, we didn't spend money.

It is also possible to spend your 'fun' money in a smarter way. If we wanted to go out to dinner, we attempted to go to more affordable restaurant, or try to use coupons so the meal wasn't full price. We were still being careful with our budget, but also getting to enjoy some life.

Another way to carefully integrate fun money is to use delayed gratification. Just because something is expensive doesn't mean you shouldn't buy it. We feel that there needs to be a waiting time to give us the chance to really think about our desire for the item. We try to make ourselves wait until the next month to purchase. Sometimes at the start of the next month, we bought whatever it was we wanted. Other times, the item was no longer desired and thus, we saved some money without much of an effort. It became a way of not denying ourselves pleasure, but helped us to be smarter about where our money was going.

One of the best ways we found to still have fun and enjoy life was to find little and affordable things that brought us joy and really take advantage of those things instead of denying ourselves them altogether. A Starbucks coffee on a Saturday morning went from being thought of as a wasted $5 to a nice treat for myself instead of buying a new dress. We would look forward to those little treats and they became more enjoyable than we expected.

Bottom line, check in with yourself to see if your budget truly fits what you need in life, or if you feel it is making you miss some very important things, like your sanity! Thomas and I had to learn that the hard way, don't put yourself through that same tough lesson if you can avoid it.

Second Snack: 100 Blog Posts Later

Well, here we are at our 100th post on Second Snack. This site started as an experiment for me and has evolved into something so much more. As you can see in the picture above, we've been getting visitors from around the world. I always knew that without a focus on a single subject, that our growth would be slow and may just stay as something to bother our friends and family with. However, since we launched in January 2011, we've had a surprising amount of positive feedback along the way.

Recently I was at an industry event mingling with people I hadn't seen in person in almost two years. It was great to be back around people I work so well with. I had forgotten that a couple people who get their Facebook news feeds blasted with our posts would also be in attendance. Near the end of the night I was having a conversation with one of these people who I only get to see at events like this and he said, "You know... because of you I'm able to use chopsticks much easier now." I was floored. That post was weeks old by the time this event rolled around. It was so awesome to hear that something I wrote was received so well!

That's just one story about the feedback we've been getting about our blog. We've been surprised by the amount of times people have brought up our rinky-dink site and the posts we write. The feedback we've been getting in post comments and on our Facebook profiles have also been fantastic. It helps us figure out what people want to read about, what clicks with them, and where we should take our writing.

I think 100 posts is a perfect opportunity to thank all of you for continuing to visit our site. Your feedback and participation has been amazing. Second Snack has been a great place for us to talk about the things in life that we care about. We've got some ideas about where to take the site and look forward to sharing more posts with you. Until then, take care!

Thanks,

Thomas & Sarah

Meme Monday: Batdog

Meme Monday brings you a weekly Internet Meme that we have found. Internet Memes are described as something that catches on like wildfire with Internet communities with no outside source of promotion. They exist purely for enjoyment and laughs.