Category: Personal / Information / Etc.

February Grocery Challenge: Rules & Weeks 1-2

Posted February 19, 2020 / Food & Drink, Goals & Planning, Personal / Information / Etc. / 2 Comments

I spoke a while back about how randomly I got obsessed with Jordan Page’s videos. She’s a specialist in being frugal, budgeting, paying off debt, scheduling, productivity… all that good stuff. While I’ve heard some so-so things about her since (just google it), a lot of her videos and blog posts have inspired me in my house and life. The main ones here related to the #Shelftember and #Stocktober challenges. You limit grocery spending in September to $25/week and eat from your pantry, fridge, and freezer as much as you possibly can. In October, you stock back up on the essentials. I realized in January how I spend SO much money on groceries. I only grocery shop during my lunch break because I’m in a town with way more options (Trader Joe’s!) than the town I live in. I tend to buy smaller bits of groceries throughout the week but sometimes find myself going WAY over budget because of so many small trips to different stores. Can’t get Velveeta for the Superbowl at Trader Joe’s? Guess I’ll also stop at Stop & Shop and oh wait they have all these other things I may need sometime soonish! – me all the damn time. Believe me, it’s good for my computer-facing eyeballs to leave the office at lunch (and during the warm weather I love to just read a book outside!), but I don’t need to go to a STORE multiple times each week. Enough was enough – we have an expensive […]

Huge True Crime Podcast Round-Up

Posted February 12, 2020 / Media, Personal / Information / Etc. / 2 Comments

A few years ago, I posted three podcast recommendation posts: one for true crime and some comedy, one with my current rotation (including wrestling and general podcasts), and another true crime update. Surprisingly, I’ve only really featured podcasts in my Lauren Lately and Five on Friday posts since then! That means I’ve shouted them out very randomly across about three years. I thought it was high time for a BIG update on my podcast recommendations. Yes, these are all true crime-related. I’ll give brief descriptions and general feelings about them underneath and they’ll be in alphabetical order, so I don’t have to worry about ranking them. These are all ones I’ve listened to between mid-2018 and early 2020, and I’ll let you know if they’re ongoing or if they’ve wrapped up. Quick list of true crime-ish podcasts I’ve recommended in the past: Unconcluded, The Fall Line, My Favorite Murder, Thin Air, Dirty John, Up and Vanished, Serial, Criminal, Missing Richard Simmons, Accused, In the Dark, Finding Tammy Jo, S-Town, and Unresolved Show: A Killing on the Cape Style: About one case Status: Complete Snapshot: This one was an interesting, professionally-made podcast about a murder that happened on Cape Cod. It was made by 20/20 and there’s also an episode you could watch about it. Was the convicted man actually the one who committed the crime? Show: A Murder on Orchard Street Style: About one case Status: Complete Snapshot: Super similar to A Killing on the Cape, as it was also made by […]

Currently: February

Posted February 5, 2020 / Currently, Personal / Information / Etc. / 22 Comments

Currently is hosted by Anne in Residence, where we link up and discuss what we’re currently doing, feeling, etc.! The topics change each month and this post is about what we’re loving, embracing, tasting, wearing, and preparing. I like to link up on things like this occasionally and have done my own “currently” posts in the past as well. Currently loving… Our new TV: We knew we wanted to get a new television around the Super Bowl because that’s when the best deals happen for them (correct, not Black Friday!). My dad called me in late January (the day of the Royal Rumble) to tell me the sales were kicking off at places like PC Richards and Target, so we spent the whole day looking at the screens and finalizing our choice. We’re SO happy with the one we selected! We also bought a new TV stand for underneath since our old one was super small (just like the TV was lol). We managed to shop around, buy both the stand and TV, and set everything up JUST in time for the Rumble to start! We were excited to host Chris’s sister and her husband for the Superbowl this weekend too. Tati Beauty’s Blendiful: So there have been some mixed comments and reviews on this one so far but I genuinely adore it. Before I get into that stuff, let me explain: Tati came out with this new sponge/puff sort of duo that you can apply your entire face with. I used […]

2020 Planners, Spreadsheets, and Organization

Posted January 27, 2020 / Goals & Planning, Personal / Information / Etc. / 8 Comments

Alright y’all – new year, new planners and spreadsheets! I’ve posted countless organization-related posts over the years that can be found in this category on my blog. I’m keeping some spreadsheets and planners the same as last year and bringing some new things to the table as well, so let’s get into it! Planners (Digital and Paper) Artful Agenda – Digital Life Planner I wrote a whooole post on this when I first got the Artful Agenda, so feel free to check that out for an overview. I use this to sync with my Google calendars (blog posts and personal) and can include other tasks, meals, and to-do lists/notes pages. Below are two screenshots. The first is part of the monthly view: And below includes the daily page layout, next to the calendar section. (For more pictures, definitely check out the post I linked above.) There are priority tasks, other tasks, meals, water intake, and an automated daily quote. The section at the bottom has a title you can edit, so I made mine into a place where I can track groceries and/or things I need to pick up that day. I also use the “other tasks” section for my internet and blog-based tasks; the “priority tasks” section is mostly for ~real-life~ tasks. Bullet Journal for Reading/Books I’m still doing a bullet journal this year for my 2020 reads! Again, I made a whole post about this with my pages before I filled anything in, so check out that post […]

2020 Reading Bullet Journal

Posted January 9, 2020 / Goals & Planning, Personal / Information / Etc. / 8 Comments

I tried to share some bullet journal posts last year and got lazy for the final pages of the year. I think I was not giving myself enough ability to be creative with it and just lost steam. I ended up putting a lot of thought and effort into my layouts for this year, so I thought I would share my bullet journal setup for 2020! This includes all of the yearly pages (reading tracking overall, challenges, etc.) but not the monthly layouts. I kept some layouts the same, moved stuff around, and came up with brand new ideas for my new challenges. I also ended up using the same bullet journal from 2019 and just setting up a 2020 section because I barely made a dent in it last year haha. So, here we go! 2020 Divider Because I’m continuing in the same bullet journal from last year, I decided to make a 2020 divider page so I know where the new year starts. I’m keeping the little bookmark there as well. Year in reading and dates completed/read These pages are similar from last year’s setup as well. I made a large book where I color in one stripe/line across for every five books I finish. By the end of the year, the book should be full of stripes and colored in! The second page here features a year-long calendar. If I finish a book on a specific day, I circle that date in the calendar. If I finish […]

#ChristmasMovieADay (40 Movies) | Part 1

Posted December 16, 2019 / Media, Personal / Information / Etc. / 1 Comment

I thought there was too much pressure (only from myself TBH) last year to watch and review holiday movies, but I still felt like something was MISSING from my holiday post schedule without this kind of roundup! I thought I would talk a little about my plans to watch 40 Christmas movies in the 40 days leading up to Christmas (approximately). I tweeted each of them so this little roundup will discuss each movie per my Twitter feed! #ChristmasMovieADay While this hasn’t worked out exactly as I planned (because honestly a LOT of the Hallmark movies this year didn’t fully appeal to me for some reason), I still wanted to target watching 40 movies in the 40 days leading up to Christmas. I figured any time where I got behind, I’d probably make up for it later on. Chris is on board with watching some classics when we get closer to Christmas, so we’d end up seeing a few movies a day then. I also got lucky where my boss was out of the office for a few days – that meant I could play some cheesy Hallmark or Netflix movies in the background while working. Mini Movie Reviews So Far #ChristmasMovieADay A Shoe Addict’s Christmas ? I somehow didn’t get around to this one last year despite the fact that CCB is my favorite. Fun concept overall but I don’t know why God was referenced..usually Hallmark is not that overt and it felt random toward the end pic.twitter.com/jkjfLxx57h […]

Holiday Decor Home Tour

Posted December 5, 2019 / Personal / Information / Etc. / 3 Comments

I try to share my super basic holiday decor each season, and this year is no exception! It’s very similar to last year but we managed to move a few things around differently. I also added a couple other decor elements after consulting with Chris that we were just missing a little something. He’s very much a “we’ll do Christmas after Thanksgiving” kind of person, while I prefer to start on November 1st, so we usually compromise a bit. I’ll watch my movies and listen to music all throughout November and we decorate our house during Thanksgiving weekend (last year it was riiiiight before Thanksgiving lol). So! Here’s what we did over the previous weekend. I would have put the tree up so much earlier but refrained! Chris and I headed to the local farm we went to last year – Cropley’s – to pick out our tree. We had a lot of success in 2018 because we got a much larger tree for the price, based on the size range for each price range at the farm. We spent a little more this year, which annoyed us, but the tree we got is virtually perfect! We put it in our stand on Saturday after Thanksgiving and then had a million errands (and a birthday party) to attend/do. So, we spent our Sunday morning decorating before football! It actually snowed on December 1st up here too, so having the Christmas tree up with the lights during a snowy football Sunday/end […]

Guide to Holiday Movies Releasing in 2019

Posted November 7, 2019 / Media, Personal / Information / Etc. / 4 Comments

Welcome to the first and earliest installment in my holiday series on the blog! Everyone knows that this season begins for me basically on Halloween or the day after. I just want to enjoy my Christmassy stuff for two full months instead of one, and it costs you $0 to mind ya business and let me be happy. I normally refrain from making blog posts until we’re nearing the end of November, but I thought it would be fun to do a holiday movie round-up post BEFORE posting any of my holiday movie reviews, which always come throughout December. This means I’m sharing ALL of the holiday movies on my radar that are releasing this year. I wanted to get this post out early enough for people to make plans, set their DVRs, and order Disney+ in preparation. Without further ado, here are all the movies you could see this year and where to find them! Again, these are broken down by where you can find them. I thought I would get the smaller lists done first, so if Hallmark and Lifetime movies aren’t your thing, you’re able to skip out of this post before reading through them 😉 Anything you see in the purple boxes are synopses pulled from the relevant websites. Theaters Last Christmas | November 8th Starring Emilia Clarke, Emma Thompson, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, etc. Kate is a young woman subscribed to bad decisions. Her last date with disaster? That of having accepted to work as Santa’s […]

September-October Bookish Bullet Journal

Posted November 6, 2019 / Features, Goals & Planning, Personal / Information / Etc., Wrap-Ups / 0 Comments

When I mentioned the idea of sharing layouts from my reading-related bullet journal on the blog, most of you seemed interested to read about it! I can’t justify making one post each month dedicated to the 3-4 bujo pages I make during that month, so I thought doing a little bullet journal update every two months would be fun instead! In these posts you will see all of the new pages I added during the past two months. September new releases and review copies: Big release month in September, apparently! I’m not super surprised now that I look at this. September TBR: LOL this is a sad wrap-up. I didn’t read a lot in September because it’s always super busy, between alllll the things in my life happening at once. Anniversary, birthday, football, etc… all the good things I love! I don’t read as much during the month and clearly the books I DID read weren’t on my original TBR. September reading tracker: It took me a super long time to read one of my books and others were pretty long as well. Usually I don’t take an entire week to read a book – especially a contemporary romance – but that happened a lot here. Fall bingo card: I didn’t get my shit together on fall bingo until after I did some September spreads when usually I’d prefer to have that at the front of the season. Oh well. This is fairly accurate but I believe I finished a few more off after […]

Fall Bucket List

Posted October 10, 2019 / Goals & Planning, Personal / Information / Etc. / 2 Comments

Usually I write some kind of fall-based post or bucket list in September, when my birthday and all the fun things start to hit, but I wasn’t in the mood to deal with anything until right now. It doesn’t help that my Summer Bucket List wasn’t really completed until the last day of September, when I ate my final lobster roll for the “season” and finished my post about it. In any case, I do have some fall goals I’d like to accomplish! Bookish (1) Read 5-7 spoopy/falltime books (by Lauren-standards). I’m not one for horror or anything overly creepy, but I DO enjoy a good thriller or paranormal story occasionally, especially during October. For fall in general, I love reading thicker books or deeper ones, like fantasy or retellings. I just know that October-November are all about non-contemporary romance reads for once in my life. I hope to read at least five but hopefully seven books that I would personally qualify as good seasonal reads! (At the time of posting this, I have already read or am currently reading a couple of these below!) (2) Finish the yearly challenges that I logically can I just posted my final push for challenges TBR/planning post the other day. If you read that, you can see that I’ll be almost completely done with my year-long challenge goals in November… if all goes according to plan! I do have the Monthly Motif Challenge that needs to be done in December, but the “last […]