Five on Fridays [2]

Posted November 8, 2019 / Five on Fridays, Weekly Memes / 0 Comments

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Five on Friday displays the the top five things that have been on my mind this week! It could be book-related, but it may be music, movies, TV, personal life, food, etc. I’ll generally be posting these biweekly and linking up with Friday Favorites (hosted by A Little Bit of Everything, Grace and Love, and Momfessionals). Previous posts can be found here! I did start my numbering over, since it’ll be a little different than my previous iterations…


iTrackBites

I’ve noticed that I’m not great at eating properly when I’m not tracking something. Yes, I am very tired of scanning foods or weighing things before I eat them, but I clearly need to do it for a while longer. I found that there’s a popular WW alternative called iTrackBites. The best part of this plan is that it costs a fraction of the price: it’s $35 for a year instead of over $20 per month for WW. There are multiple plans you can follow too – most of them are free! The two pro plans (Keto and Better Balance) are the only ones that require a subscription. The Better Balance plan is an EXACT dupe for the most recent WW Freestyle System. I think the Carb Conscious plan on there is reminiscent of the WW Points Plus program from a few years back. Anyways, this helps me understand why I’m hungry too – I realized I don’t have nearly enough protein in my life. You’ll see from the screenshots above that there are multiple plan options.

Elfster

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I’ve been using the Elfster website and app for multiple years now. It makes secret santa SO EASY. If you want to find a way to match everyone else with a secret santa, set certain rules, AND curate wishlists for your exchanges, you can do it all in one spot. I use this one with my book blogger fantasy football league secret santa as well as with my college friends and our significant others. My favorite feature is that you can set rules for it, so I’m able to add that none of us get our fiances/husbands in the exchange. The wishlists are easy to create because you can paste in links from other websites as well as search for items directly in the Elfster website. Makes everything SO easy each year!

Office Ladies Podcast

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I talked about starting this podcast in my last Lauren Lately post but it’s been so fun to listen to so far! Chris and I have gotten in the routine of watching the next episode of The Office right before the new pocast episode is released. In case you haven’t heard, two of the stars of the show (Pam and Angela) are rewatching episodes and then releasing a new pod episode each week. They share behind-the-scenes info and fun facts about that particular episode. I’m loving it so far. They recently had another cast member call in for an episode so I’m definitely looking forward to future cameos too. I might end up getting sick of it as time goes on but for now, it’s great.

Dry Shampoo

So I think I’ve talked on here about how I finally started washing my hair every other day? If not, here goes. I have really fine/thin hair and it’s always gotten greasy even at the end of a day, after showering in the morning. I never thought I’d be able to oil-train my hair and go one extra day between washes, but I’m a changed woman. I just decided to go for it. The reason I’ve been so successful is because of these two guys: Bumble and Bumble Pret a Powder and Batiste Dry Shampoo (travel size). I use the B&B one in the morning – rub it in with my hands and then use a boar bristle brush to comb it through. Day two usually involves a bun on top of my head, sure, but I can definitely curl or crimp it if I have other plans that require me to look even nicer 😉 I bring the Batiste travel-sized spray for when I feel like I need a touch-up. It works so well. I’m so happy I don’t have to spend as much money on shampoo. I’m working on trying to add in an extra day lately too.

End of Year & 2020 Posts/Challenges

I’m obviously starting to plan out my posts for the end of the year into the following year. Can’t wait any longer. For us bookish people, this usually involves some EOY surveys and stats analysis. I have a few posts I work on every year at this time too, like two posts about “five star predictions” – did I guess which books I’d rate five stars correctly for 2019? Which books do I anticipate giving five stars to in 2020? I also have an abundance of holiday posts coming up AS USUAL. I’m not feeling quite as Christmassy yet, which is surprising: last year I was eager for Christmas in September and definitely listened to holiday music before Halloween. Maybe if it snows this week like expected?? We’ll see. I also have to start thinking about what reading challenges I want to do in 2020. I’m definitely going to do the Popsugar challenge again and have my own challenge planned, which you’ll learn about next week I believe. I might do some kind of backlist/egalley/Kindle challenge too? We’ll see.

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