Friday Favorites + A Giveaway!
Happy Friday! Yet another week has flown by. Stop doing that, weeks! I need to catch up!
Could we please start a petition for an International Catch Up On Your Life Day? You get a full 24 hours to catch up on ALL THE THINGS from overdue blog posts to that Netflix show you’re three seasons behind on to sleep.
Okay, maybe it should be International Catch Up On Your Life Week?
Anyway, here’s this week’s list of favs!
1. I’ve been sick this week and finally had to give in and get some antibiotics. Despite asking the doc for an affordable option, when I picked them up they were $50. LOLNOPE. Enter the GoodRX app, which gives you a coupon code the pharmacy people can enter to drop the price down. It brought mine down to $21, which is still way more than the $4 generic I meant when I asked for “affordable”, but significantly better than $50! (And nope, this isn’t sponsored, I just hate when pharmaceutical companies charge way too much for things just because they can.)
The app shows the price available at your local pharmacies so you can make informed choices. Yay!
2. I posted a song that I fell in love with via Spotify last week, and I have another new one that love this week!
Yes, same musical vibe as last week. I’ve been in a weird mood.
3. If you’re anything like me, you usually kinda vaguely notice the refrigerated section of the pet food aisle or store, but never really stop to investigate.
However, FreshPet recently sent me some coupons so I could try out their cat food on the house (Yes, my cats are spoiled.) so for the first time I actually explored the refrigerated stuff!
This one was a big hit! It’s easy to feed like dry food, but it’s softer and moister. The resealable bag made me ok with sticking it in the fridge and not feeling weird about cat food being in there with my food. (Refrigeration is required because they don’t use preservatives.) This was awesome when one cat would miss meal time (there always seems to be one off doing their own thing!) because I could grab them a good meal without the sound of an opening can alerting everyone else to the possibility of food.
I believe this was around $5 for a 1 lb bag. Not bad at all given the high quality ingredients, but also not something I could afford to feed them daily. It was so handy for a quick meal, though, that I’ll probably purchase it occasionally in the future! You do need to use it within about a week after opening, or else I’d just keep some on hand most of the time.
Okay, not the best photo ever, but I think anyone with pets knows what happens when you try to photograph something for your blog or Instagram!
This one is a pate from FreshPet’s “Vital” line, which is grain-free. The cas LOVED this stuff – I think they would have happily eaten the entire 1 lb package all at once. (It suggests feeding 1/4 – 1/2 lb per day depending on the cat’s weight, so I guess multiple cats splitting one would be totally normal, but it FELT like so much!) There was a learning curve to figuring out how to slice it up. At first I went with actual slices, but they seemed to struggle with those so I switched to chunks that they could get their mouths around better. Success! This one was also around $5, which is pretty budget friendly since if you only have one cat you’re getting 2-4 days out of it. Again, though, if you live in CatLadyville like I do, it may fall into the “special occasions and occasional splurge” category.
I found these at PetCo, Target, and Walmart, but their website also has a store locator if you want to track them down. There are WAY more options available for dogs, so I’d love to see the cat food varieties, expand, too! They do also sell single resealable cups of cat food that are under $2 each, so that’s next on our list to try!
4. I’ve been in hardcore cleaning and decluttering mode because I’m determined to move back to Orlando this fall, and I feel like the less stuff I bring along with me (literally and figuratively), the better. Strangely, this has gotten me hooked on YouTube videos of other people cleaning. Can’t decide if this is a step up or down from watching Hoarders?
Speaking of video consumption, I’ve been on a YouTube kick again lately. Leave a comment to let me know who your favorite YouTubers to follow are!
5. If you’ve been visiting my blog for very long at all, you know that a) I love cats and b) dot-to-dot books for adults are my jam. As much as I love coloring books for adults, sometimes when my brain is totally exhausted from a long day of work, even picking out which colors I want to use feels overwhelming. Dot-to-dot is way more relaxing. I can just put on a good podcast and kind of zone out as a cool picture forms.
I was recently sent a copy of the new Where’s Kitty? Dot-to-Dot by its publisher, Thunder Bay Press, and I’ve definitely been enjoying it. In addition to unwinding at home, it’s also come with me to Arkansas to help turn my brain off after a long day of exploring.
Like most dot-to-dot books for adults, each page is pretty intricate and the dots can be pretty tiny and close together.
Definitely not as tiny as some dot-to-dot books I’ve seen, though, and the numbers all being black also make them easier to read than some other books. I think it would be impossible to have intricate designs where the numbers don’t stand out like a sore thumb if they weren’t quite small.
As you might guess from the book’s title and cover, there’s a kitty hiding in each page! Something about this turns me into a small child and I get all excited when it shows up, “OMG, THERE’s kitty!” (Look, I live in a very small town right now. This is about as exciting as things get sometimes.)
Each image has a clue about the setting, which is super cute.
Kitty chillin’ on a gondola in Venice
Since I’m also a travel nerd this book was a perfect fit for me, since the designs each feature a famous world landmark or destination.
Happy weekend, all, and good luck if you’re entering the giveaway!