5 Favorite Things (Right Now)

Hey all! Hope you had a lovely holiday weekend! Mine was social every day except the 4th - Daisy the dog got sick again on the 4th, and we didn't want to leave her all alone. She got better, though - we think she ate something she wasn't supposed to when we weren't looking or something.

ANYWAY.

I've been doing the 5 Random Things, and it's fun; if I can come up with a decent theme, it's a fun writing-based "blog filler", plus I usually get to talk about myself! (Super fun for me!)

I've also been enjoying blogs I follow and their own variations on "Friday Favorites" or a weekly links compilation. These are some of my favorite posts, to be honest, because I find even more stuff on the internets to waste time explore!

So I'm thinking I'd like to combine the two, and post my 5 Favorite Things, either random melange of objects, or themed items. Could be books, link, food, etc. WHATEVA, it's my 5 favorite things (right now)!

• Relish: My Life in the Kitchen* (physical copy) or Relish: My Life in the Kitchen* (Kindle!) - This is a graphic novel/memoir/recipe collection/foodie fangirling book by the wonderful Lucy Knisley. It's a food-based autobiography - Knisley shares poignant memories that revolve around food, and her drawings and love of food makes it so you can practically taste the food. Bonus: In the case of some food, you can! Once you make it yourself based on her included illustrated recipes, that is. ;D If you'd like a feel for her writing/drawing style, you can read the first chapter here.
  

  

  It's a book best read with food ;D

  
  

  
  

• A Beautiful Mess App - I adore the lifestyle blog A Beautiful Mess; they've created their own unique look that makes the blog enjoyable from a visual standpoint as well as content standpoint. What they achieved on their photos with Photoshop, they've now made available to anyone with an iPhone! (Android app is coming ASAP) I've been playing with it on my phone, and I loooooove it so far. Totally worth the whole $0.99 I paid - they have even more packages available for purchase (filters, "doodles", font styles, etc.), but the basics that come with so far have proven to be PA-LENTY. (You can see an example of the app's abilities above - the title image for this post was made with the app!)
•  Gone Girl: A Novel* (physical copy) by Gillian Flynn - GURL. This novel is BONKERS, in like the BEST WAY EVER. In part 2, and the twist was a TUH-WIST. I'd heard previously that there's a major twist, and I totally thought I'd figured it out; turns out I had really early in the book, dismissed it as illogical, then assumed I'd guessed the "real" twist - and go fig, my initial instinct was right! My ego didn't care, though, because OMG THIS BOOK, Y'ALL. OH. MUH. GAWD! I stayed up until 2am finishing it Thursday night because it just got so good and I had to find out how it ended! WORTH THE LOST SLEEP. I can't believe the ending, man oh man oh MAN. Such a good book!
• Raw white cheddar from Spring Hill Jersey Cheese. This has been my snacking cheese - I just cut a chunk and NOM NOM NOM NOM, along with some cheddar-onion pistachios and some fruit, all bought at my local farmer's market. That's right, I'm spoiled enough to buy this cheese right down the street at my local market. But hey, apparently they sell it online! We've also had the pesto jack, garlic jack, and sage cheddar - they're all so creamy and flavorful! YUM. They also made a smoked jack that we used in mac & cheese that was the perfect amount of smokiness. 
• "This Is the End" - I saw three different movies last week: A free preview of "The Lone Ranger", "Monsters University", and "This Is the End". "Lone Ranger" was meh (If you need an excuse to get out of the heat, you could do worse - it was definitely worth the price ;D); "Monsters University" was cute but not as great as its predecessor. I wasn't expecting "This Is the End" to be that great, but it had great reviews and I do generally enjoy the cast. I'm actually glad I went in with low expectations, because I enjoyed the movie that much more! It's very funny, and also a leetle bit scary in parts! (It DOES take place during Armageddon, after all.) I literally jumped and clung to The Hubs at one part, it scared me so bad! (I'm also a big fraidy cat, though.) I can't describe my favorite scene, unfortunately, because it's so much better to be seen without knowing. It's towards the end. I laughed a lot!

I hope you find something you will also love amongst my favorite things (right now)!



*Links marked with the asterisk will lead you to Amazon.com - it is an affiliate link, and I will make a very small commission if you end up purchasing something through my link. Just an FYI!

What Works for Me: Curly Girl!

So as I mentioned before, I have been trying to figure out my hair for the last 10 years or so. My hair was never perfectly straight, and I noticed as I got older that it started to bend more and more. I never considered myself "curly", though, because as soon as I brushed it out the curl turned into bends so I assumed, well, must not be curly hair! Plus neither of my parents have curl in their hair.

As you can see, I should've caught on sooner.

In college, I had a roommate with curly hair who clued me in; she let me try some of her products and told me not to comb it out, and VOILA! Curls! Or at least definite waves. I started using products and working the curls, but they still seemed awfully unpredictable.

In the last few years, I managed to get my waves to a point where they looked ok and were fairly consistent, but I still wished they looked better and it still felt like guessing as to how to make them look good. I did some internet research, like the "no poo" method, but all the methods depend on the person, and frankly I still wasn't sure if I could count my hair as CURLY when they aren't tight curls. I got some help from naturallycurly.com, but not as much as I wanted.

LUCKILY, my girlfriend J has legitimately curly hair. She also struggled for years trying to get it manageable (not that you'd know as she's so naturally lovely ;D), and finally found a resource that helped her out, and passed it on to me - the book Curly Girl by Lorraine Massey. And thank GOD, because it was SO HELPFUL.

I've only been doing her methods for the last two weeks, and I'm still figuring things out, but it has been a crazy change (for the better). I even have photo evidence:

Before

Before

AFTER!

I don't know what is wrong with my face in the last picture, but look at those CURLS! That's after just one week!

Here's what I do differently, based on Curly Girl's advice:

• I've only washed my hair with shampoo three times in the last 2 weeks. Seriously. If it's looking a little greasy, I rub it gently under the shower's running water. 
• I condition every day, about a teaspoon's worth, and wash it out. 
• I no longer do the towel turban to dry my hair; I scrunch it gently with the towel and squeeze a little. I will confess I kind of hate it, because I hate that feeling of water dripping down my back, but I can't argue with the results. ;p
• Clear dollar-store gel is all I use to style it. Scrunch it in, and done. It air-dries in about an hour.
• I was using Garnier's Curl Calm Down cream (which I still highly recommend if you're not in my situation), but the conditioner I just started using (Trader Joe's NOURISH brand) is REALLY rich - seriously, the second ingredient is rosemary oil (yeah, it smells delish too). That + more moisturizing cream = flat curls again. They were soft as heck still, but it's too much for my hair, I think. I used just gel today and they're back to their glorious springy selves!

Even The Hubs has noticed a huge difference, and he loves how soft the curls are. I'm just happy because my dream has finally come true - low-maintenance hair that makes me feel gorgeous! It's a little more work, but it's still maybe 10 minutes total of my morning routine, and that's including the part that takes place in the shower.

This post isn't paid in any way (Pfft, I WISH I had enough readers to merit paid opinion posts). I wanted to post about it because while it's vain as hell, it's also exciting to finally have my hair look so good and I have to share it SOMEWHERE (The Hubs can only tolerate so much). Plus if I felt so much confusion, I figured it can't hurt to spread the word around about this great resource.

 

I'M BACK(ish) and why Best Buy Geek Squad, ASUS, and FedEx can go suck an egg.

Good news: My computer is finally back! Yes, FINALLY. We dropped it off at Best Buy on Jan. 4th. We got it back Feb. 11th! Why so long? Well, here's the story as succinctly as possible:

• Computer randomly freaks out when I try to update my anti-virus software, as I'd just gotten ANOTHER stupid fake anti-virus program bug that took me 2+ hours to fix, ugh. 
• We have the fancy protection program from Best Buy, where we bought our computer, so we take it there. It's written up, and we're told it could take 3 weeks. =(
• We get an email a week later telling us it's ready - turns out the original clerk wrote up our order wrong and the computer is still out for repairs somewhere in the Midwest. 
• We get a call from the Midwest repair center because they have a question about our order - it takes 3 days to get the ball rolling again because we keep having to play phone tag. Turns out our order was written wrong (AGAIN) and the Midwest repairs thought we hadn't paid for services that were covered by our protection plan. *sigh* 
• The computer makes it back to the main store, and we need a recovery disk. Well, stupid me didn't realize that computers don't come with recovery disks anymore and now I have to get one from the maker; the Best Buy clerk tells me that it should be free of charge to get a new one (minus shipping costs), but turns out the recovery disk is 50 FREAKING DOLLARS! 
• At this point, this is the 3rd stupid mistake Best Buy's Geek Squad has made, so I ask to talk the manager (which takes multiple phone calls and phone tag). The manager is understanding and apologetic, swears as soon as we bring in the recovery disk we'll be moved to the front as a priority, maybe some compensation in the form of a gift card (which didn't happen). When we brought in the disk this past Wednesday, it still took until this SATURDAY to get our computer - despite being told it'd take 3 days max. It took going in again on Saturday morning to get it finished Saturday night. *sigh*
• Oh, but to make it worse: ASUS, the laptop maker, is just as stupid customer-service-wise. I couldn't find the disk I needed on the website, so I called in and got help (then found out it wasn't "free" like I'd been told). So when we ordered the disk, we paid extra for faster shipping because we just want our computer back. Before our order could ship, they needed our serial #; I got an email Monday A.M. asking for it, and the email said to simply reply or call it in. I replied within 30 minutes via email with the info. FRIDAY I got another email saying they still needed my serial #! I called it in and chewed out the customer service guy, and they assured me the order would go in that evening; it did, but FedEx doesn't ship on weekend so we had to wait for it to go out Monday. 
• Here's the weird/annoying thing about FedEx: We paid for 3-day shipping. The disk had to ship from Fremont, CA (about a 2 hour drive away from us MAX). The exact course our disk took was this: Leave Fremont, ship to MEMPHIS, Ship BACK to Sacramento (where we live), but is then taken to Rocklin (a town about 30 min from Sacramento) to be delivered. So it would take exactly 3 days rather than, oh I don't know, actually come to us early. Or hell, they could've called us when it was in Sacramento for 24 hours and said, "Hey, wanna come pick up your package and save a day's wait?" It probably cost 3 times more in gas than we paid for the "expedited" shipping!

So yeah, the Ballad of My Laptop is a long, complicated, utterly cluster-eff'd story filled with UTTER RIDICULOUSNESS. Not only do I not want to buy anything from Best Buy ever again, but I also don't want to use services that use FedEx ever again ('cuz they've never worked well for me, tbh, shipping always seems to take FOREVER). Add in the fact that my life has just been crazy lately, and the whole situation has just been an unpleasant, inopportune thorn in my side. *sigh*

Of course, it's been so long since I've really blogged anything of worth on this here blog that I'm wondering what I'm going to write about now that I have my laptop back! Sheesh.

Anyway, more to come. I'm aiming for at least twice a week postings, pending schedule and inspiration.

Product Review: My Memories Digital Scrapbooking Software

So I received an invite to review the My Memories Digital Scrapbooking Software for free. Which is awesome, because A. I love computer stuff, B. I love crafting, and C. I LOVE FREE STUFF! So I said a whole-hearted yes.

There's no such thing as a free lunch software download, though. I have to review the darn thing! Which meant I had to mess around with it.

Please keep in mind that I received the software for free for the purposes of evaluating it and promoting it on this blog. I will schill, but only honestly. ;D So my review is how well it worked for ME. Specifically, they offered me the big momma - My Memories Suite Version 2.0.

Downloading/Installing: Piece of cake! A breeze to download and install, and while I say this as someone who is computer-savvyish, I think even a relative novice will have no issue downloading it. The instructions on the download site were smooth and easy to follow.

Use: For the most part, I found the software REALLY easy to use. My suspicion is that this is designed for people who aren't computer-savvy or scrapbookers by nature. There were a few minor quibbles, though, so let's just break it down into pros and cons:

Pros -

• It's mostly intuitive; I simply picked an album and started clicking away, no tutorial needed! But, again, I'm comfortable with computers. BUT they have a helpful-tips window that explains everything the first time you open the program, and it'll stick around until you tell it to go away:
  
  
• They have a ton of pre-made layouts to choose from! They range from basic photo layouts, so you can choose what "papers" you want, to pre-made albums where all you do is add the photos! The example photos are using one of the pre-made albums:
  
  
  
• You can even use the software to make COMPUTER-only photo albums - you can add music, narratives, videos, links to websites... it's pretty advanced options, but it's easy to add - you just click the menu you want to add stuff from, and then click the necessary buttons. I didn't mess with it too much, other than testing out adding music - took a second and was very easy!
• These pre-made albums are completely customizable, too, see?
  

  

  Please note that I'm fully legal age and I'm allowed to drink - in fact, I was turning 30 that day and had plenty of reason to drink, let's be honest. ;p

  All I did was click on each individual item to change the paper or background, whatever you want to change. I did have to individually delete the dots and replace them with hearts, but that was easy, too.

 Cons - 

• It runs kind of slow. I'm incredibly impatient, so having to wait for the program to catch-up with my key movements were REALLY annoying. This was mainly with keyboard manipulations (like using the keyboard arrows to move an embellishment), but you can move most items with your mouse, too - but there's still a delay. Again, though, this delay is all of 1 second, but I'm INCREDIBLY impatient. ;p
• There are some random errors that weren't really... errors! I'd get these "Error" messages, but ultimately they weren't ERRORS, whatever I was trying to do would work fine once I hit the "ok" button. (To the program's credit, they have a tech support email listed at the end of each error description - I just didn't because, again, impatient and ALSO lazy - that "hot mess" isn't part of my screen name just 'cuz it's cute, y'know.)
  
  
  
  
  

Overall, I liked My Memories! It was easy to use, and the basic program has a lot of options. They offer more "kits", too, if you need more options than what comes with the basic package, at a variety of prices. Their website also offers non-download options to make your own photo albums and calendars, with a decent amount of variety.

I'm using the program to make our Xmas "card" this year! Instead of having to spend hours making each card, or buying a bunch of meh ones, I can create my own "card" with my own pictures and the program's easy layouts! Check it out:

This is just a prototype; my parents had us take family portraits with them and our own little family as well, and I plan to use those in place of the ones I currently have once we get them (although the current ones aren't so bad either). I like that it's part letter, part card, and part picture! Plus I can get them printed out on nice paper if I really want it to be all fancy-pants.

Interested? The software I used, the Suite, is $39.97. As part of my review, My Memories has offered a $10-off coupon code AND a free giveaway! I'll do the giveaway later this week in its own separate post, but if you just want to buy it now, here's how:

1. Go to http://www.mymemories.com/digital_scrapbooking_software 
2. Click on Add to Cart.
3. Enter the Promotional Code STMMMS56332 in the PRomotional Code field on the shopping cart page
4. Finish the checkout. To download the software, go to http://www.mymemories.com/my_accounts/downloads and click on the link to download the software. Your product key will also be displayed on that page (you'll need it for installation).

Let me know what you think, and show me what you create! I'm excited to see what you come up with as well.