Good morning, fellow Friday lovers! I hope y’all have a fun last weekend of September (can anyone else even believe that September is basically over??) planned! We are heading out this afternoon to my husband’s hometown for a little dove hunting and to attend a game in the inaugural football season of UT Permian Basin (my husband’s alma mater) Saturday night. I know what y’all are thinking (isn’t she supposed to be a big Tech fan?) … But Tech has the weekend off, so I’m going to be a Falcon fan this weekend! (Plus they aren’t in the same conference so I can have dual allegiance!). I’ve got some good fave things lined up this week, so check them out below!

1. Mix & Match Mama Eats- Crazy Good Go-To Meals

I know I did a Mix & Match Mama cookbook last week as well, but this was a brand new, early release arrival in my mailbox earlier this week, and I can’t help but be giddy about it! It’s just as great as the Meal Planner cookbook, and features around 200 recipes that are divided out by month (so some have little themes attached). The majority are main dish recipes, but for each month, there are also a few breakfast recipes, and several dessert recipes (which is where my heart lives, friends). I’m really excited to dive into this cookbook and add these to my arsenal. The technical release date is October 1, but Amazon already has them available, and they are priced at half retail right now.

2. OPI Skating on Thin Ice-Land 

I’m a big OPI fan, and they are probably my favorite of all the nail polish brands. I don’t remotely believe I have the patience to do 354 coats of a color to get it right, and I don’t ever seem to have to do that with OPI colors, especially the darker colors. Plus, they usually have pretty clever names for colors, which I appreciate. No one loves a good word play like a former English major. 🙂

This color looks like a really dark purple in the bottle, but it comes out more plum-like. I used two coats on my nails and they are still decently dark, but not so much that you can’t still tell it’s purple.

I love darker colors for fall and winter, and even though the thermostat tells me it’s not fall, the calendar and Hobby Lobby tell me it is, so I’m gonna transition to the fall portfolio of colors. And drink an iced pumpkin drink since it’s too hot for pumpkin flavored coffee, y’all, even if it is “fall”.

3. Kevin Can Wait

We are BIG Kevin James fans in our household. Like, for some reason I’m not really sure of at the moment, I believe we have two DVD sets of the full series of The King of Queens, which is my husband’s all time favorite show. As of Monday night, Kevin James has returned to sitcoms with Kevin Can Wait on CBS.

The general premise is that Kevin is a dad that has worked for many years as a cop and now has the opportunity to retire with many lofty plans to take up his new found spare time. Due to family changes, he has to rethink his retirement plans (hence “Kevin Can Wait”).

He has a wife with a sweet and encouraging demeanor (which wasn’t always the case with The King of Queens), and three kids, with the oldest daughter being in college. I’m positive hijinks will ensue, and we will get a lot of the one-liners and physical comedy we love from Kevin James. It is definitely different from The King of Queens, but you just can’t replicate Arthur Spooner. Especially for people like us who seem to quote him on a daily basis 😉

Our current thought is that we were a little skeptical of Last Man Standing after loving Home Improvement so much with Tim Allen, but now we love Last Man Standing for it’s own merits, so we feel this will be the same. I’m just going to have to get used to watching a TV show only once a week with commercials at a set time. Y’all. Netflix spoils a person!!

Kevin Can Wait airs Mondays at 7:30 PM Central on CBS.

4. Maybelline Volum’ Express The Colossal Lash Mascara

Do you ever use something for so long that you feel like you need to change just to do something different? I have been using this mascara since college (which is MUCH longer ago than I typically realize) and recently felt like maybe there is a better option. I didn’t dislike this mascara, but thought I might like something better. WRONG.

I tried no less than 4 other mascaras before going back to this one with a white-hot loyalty that will make your head spin. I am pretty picky when it comes to mascara because I have pretty long eyelashes and want them to look long and curled up, plus full. If I don’t have on mascara (or some of these that I tried), it looks like I just woke up or am possibly on the verge of death. Real talk.

So, my main issue with the others I tried was nothing gave good coverage, plus kept the length, plus made them look full. And I think most of this goes back to the brush. And a few times, I thought I was getting a brush like I wanted based on the picture on the outside, and it wasn’t once I got it open. This was just all around a classic case of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, friends.

My only issue with the Colossal Lash is that they discontinued the Classic Brown color several years ago (which was my jam), and now the only brown they offer is Glam Brown which I’m pretty sure is just black. There’s probably the most minimal of differences between brown and black mascara, but the heart wants what it wants. Mine wants a legit brown mascara. But I’ll take this just to have all the other features.

5. Shutterfly Auto Photo Uploader App 

I need someone to explain to me how iCloud works. I thought I understood it, and I was painfully taught these past few weeks that I do not, and due to this, Shutterfly has basically saved my life.

Let me start from the beginning. By Disney and Mac magic, any photo I take on my phone or iPad automatically finds its way to my Macbook over time. It’s not usually instantaneous, but I never have to physically connect anything to download pictures, except for my camera. I was under the assumption that all these pictures on my laptop were on there for good. Not so, friends. NOT SO.

I recently decided that five email addresses are too much for one person. (Clearly.) (Just one for junk mail, one for stuff that’s kinda junky but not super important, one for important personal stuff, one for work, and one for this blog. Obviously not excessive). Well, after much weeding out, I decided I didn’t really need the junk mail address anymore, especially since it was my first name and maiden name, and I already have a new one with my married name. So, I went to Google and hit the scariest button ever- DELETE. And it was gone. Just like that.

Side note– Google, if you’re listening, it would be REALLY NICE if you would let a person just change their email instead of having to create an entirely new one. Just saying.

Anyway, when I did this, I did not realize this was the email attached to my Apple ID. I’m sure some part of me knew, but the part working that day didn’t, and let me just slap out delete the dang thing and let all chaos ensue. I began to get 90 hundred thousand alerts on all Apple devices wanting the password for my Apple ID because the email wasn’t valid anymore and it somehow couldn’t reconcile it all.

Over the course of several weeks, I was FINALLY able to change the email address on my Apple ID so it would stop asking for the password incessantly. Ain’t nobody got time for that. So, one evening, I opened up my settings, signed out of my old Apple ID on my laptop and signed into the new one. AND EVERYTHING WAS GONE.

I mean, my music was still in iTunes because I think that legitimately is on the hard drive of my computer. But the only pictures I had for the last nearly 10 years were the ~60 I had on my phone. I had so much space in my Cloud it was unreal. No wedding pictures, no engagement pictures, no Hawaii pictures, no graduation pictures, you get the idea. I just about passed slap out.

BUT! There is a silver lining to this story. Before all that happened, I had ran across the Shutterfly App that works with iPhoto. Any time there are new photos in your iPhoto, it automatically uploads them to your Shutterfly account. And so, all my oldies were still preserved. Because I might die if I thought I’d lost things like this…

All our important pictures from the past year are also preserved in multiple places, and this is another reason why I’m a hoarder and never delete pictures off memory cards. I have no idea if this works for PC, but I also don’t know if all your pictures magically flying away with a new Apple ID happens with a PC, so y’all may not need this. But I highly recommend it for fellow Mac users. You won’t be sorry!

 

And that’s it! Hit me up with any questions, and I’ll see you back here next week!

We are soaking up our last few weeks before this guy is a big brother! Next Saturday, this little guy will be the newest member of our family! We’re coming for you, Gump! 🙂