Kelly in the City Home-1

Disclosure: This post was sponsored by XFINITY, but all opinions are my own. Please scroll down to learn more about the collaboration, and–as always–thank you for supporting the partnerships that keep Kelly in the City up and running!

I feel like I talk about this all the time, but Mitch and I had a rough time decorating our current home. For the time being, we’re renters–and we’ve found difficulty in investing in anything for the apartment, as we view it as temporary. I mean, how could we possibly predict what our future home will look like, and whether the pieces we purchased for this apartment will work in a permanent space, too? The struggle!

While my taste as certainly changed (and improved, haha) over the years, we’ve decided to live with the furniture we purchased for our very first apartment together in the East Village. (For now.) I have SO MANY decorating ideas for our future home, though. This is what I’m feelin’. You dig? ;)

But currently, we’re still in our tiny apartment… and sometimes we get a little down in the dumps about hanging out in the living room. The grey molding (not pictured) and our dated, black furniture have a tendency to make the place look a bit dingy, and up until recently, our entertainment system was a hot mess. We didn’t have cable (actually, never have until recently!), and were trying to get by with mirroring steaming videos from our laptop. FAIL. It was really frustrating, and a lot of times we’d simply give up and opt for watching the news over and over, haha.

Things have improved over the last month, as we finally signed up for Xfinity’s X1 Platform. We actually enjoy spending time in our living room, and have been watching a ton of great stuff after dinner most nights. The cloud-based interactive system allows up to store hundreds of shows, record up to four of them at once, watch them in any room in your house, and take them on the go. We can also stream or download the programs right to our ipads or phones for when we’re offline. Finally, we can also view our favorite apps on the big screen and use the X1 search engine to quickly find what we’re looking for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyBIdmCozVY

A couple of weeks ago, we got the new XFINITY Voice Remote, and we can’t get over how much we love it. We use it to change channels, find shows, get recommendations and launch apps. (And it always works. No messups!) All you have to do is press the “voice button” and speak.

You can search by actor, channel or sports team, and there are no confusing commands. It also has a backlit keyboard and aim-anywhere control, making it super easy to use when the lights are off. I should also mention that the remote has a fun “hidden” feature: it recognizes hundreds of popular movie quotes. For example, if you tell the voice remote, “If you build it, he will come,” it will find the movie “Field of Dreams.” Rumor has it that you can even find “Frozen” by singing a few lines from “Let it Go,” haha. Oh! You can also search for your favorite celebrities and listen to their responses. For instance, search “Taylor Swift 22,” and she’ll have a special message for you. (Oh, Taylor…)

The Voice Remote is available to anyone with the Xfinity X1 Entertainment Operating System. New customers will get the remote during their installation, and existing ones can either pick one up at XFINITY stores or order online using the form here. It’s free!

Anyway, here’s the really fun part. :) Enter to win a $100 AmEx gift card by simply commenting in the comment section below! Tell us your favorite feature of the Xfinity Voice Remote, how you’d use it, or if you’ve ever tried it out! The winner will be selected in one week. Good luck!

Thank you for supporting the partnerships that keep Kelly in the City up and running!

XFINITY partnered with bloggers such as me for their Fast Life program. As part of this program, I received compensation for my time. They did not tell me what to purchase or what to say about any product mentioned in these posts. XFINITY believes that consumers and bloggers are free to form their own opinions and share them in their own words. XFINITY’s policies align with WOMMA Ethics Code, FTC guidelines and social media engagement recommendations.