Café Con Monica

Three on Thursday!

Another Thursday post of Favorites thanks to Steph @ Not Entirely Perfect
Google Drive & Google Photos…This is a random one but I use it so much for work, for school, for my personal shit. I am always telling people to use it too. I prefer to keep all my stuff in one easy to locate place…especially if I can pull it up on my phone anywhere! My photos back up from my phone to google photos automatically and I have almost all of my photos from before off back up drives and onto there. If anything ever happens to google im probably screwed. 
After Bite…normally I prefer to keep the medicated stuff I put into or on my body to a minimum but I have become mosquito dessert here in Austin. I am not even kidding. Particularly my ankles. It has gotten so bad that I have the dark spots/scars all over my ankles now from scratching the bites. I currently have about 20 bites between both ankles right now from standing out in the street waiting for an Uber Saturday night. I am still in search of the right bug spray that doesn’t stink and has natural ingredients so if you know…>PLEASE send my way. BUT this after bite stuff works. Not even kidding you. I’m obsessed and my ankles really really need it! I get immediate relief after putting it on, it isn’t sticky and has an easy applicator so I don’t have to touch it. 
Tmobile Tuesdays…Sometimes they are great, sometimes not so much but they are always free shit. So that right there makes it a favorite. Last week I got $.25 off per gallon of gas at Shell. Yes please. I filled up my gas tank for $23!! Sometimes they have free tickets for movies, lyft credits, free Vudu credit,  discounted concert tickets. A month or so ago I got $25 free Grubhub code by visiting a Tmobile (on Tuesday) and getting an extra code. (I usually don’t bother but I actually had to be there that day!) So anyway…I always remember to check and sometimes its something I actually want! 
Those are my favorites this week! 

Happy Halloween! Costume Edition….

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays…probably my most favorite. This year I didn’t get to do any of the fun stuff that I usually do. Moving and settling in and just the fact that we don’t know many people and we flew home this month has left us scrambling. Lets not forget that it rained for almost 6 weeks straight in Austin and then we couldn’t drink the water for a week. So yea…October has been a shit show. Soooo since I didn’t get to do any fun dressing up this year I thought I would share the Halloween costumes over the years!

The year I was Alvin because I was in China and had to come up with a costume! 

Madonna…ala Like a Virgin….I don’t know what I thought going out half naked like that. 
Dexter & his victim! I sweat so much I am pretty sure I lost 3 pounds that night! 
I have worn this costume many times! I keep it as my backup for years that I go out for more than one night!  

The year we were Minions! I love Group costumes guys! 

Ninja turtles! I wish I could find the post for this but it might be before I changed my blog name. 

Tina & Louise from Bob’s Burgers…I loved this one it was so easy and comfortable! 

 Jigsaw…my costumes have started to involve more and more clothes over the years. This one was so easy I literally only had to buy a red bow-tie! 

So those are some of my past costumes! What are some of your favorites from over the years? 

Travel Days: Caribbean Cruise Pt. 1

 

You can check out some of my other Travel Days Posts here! 
How we ended up on a 7 Night Western Caribbean Cruise

While I was taking all that time off the blog over the summer A and I went on a Caribbean Cruise. We had originally planned to be going to Europe with his group of friends at that time but alas group trips always find a way to fall apart and no one booked anything. We found ourselves 2 months before we both had time off and nothing planned. We eventually settled on a cruise (not what I wanted but A is not very good at just sitting around so All inclusive beach trip isn’t high on his radar) I have mentioned before I am a HUGE supporter of cheaper traveling so I was all about finding the best deal for this cruise, the cheapest flight to Miami and the best priced stay for the overnight before we boarded.

I scoured sights and came to this:

  • We booked on Expedia because they were offering the stops we wanted as well as deals like choices of drink package, 3 or 4 night dinner package, wifi for the trip or $$ towards an excursion. 
  • Considering that we both like to drink and the drink packages on cruises are ridiculous we saved over $400 choosing the drink package option. 
  • Expedia also offered $50 towards an excursion through them
  • I also took advantage of the Norweign Upgrade Advantage that lets you name a price you are willing to pay to upgrade your room. I low balled it HARD for a few different upgrades and eventually we got a bigger/nicer room for only $100 more. 
  •  We knew that 8 days is A LOT to be making plans for every day so we chose to only do excursions on 3 of the 4 stops.
  • We decided not to do the wifi package and instead choose to do 3 nights of dining package. (looking back now I would NOT do the dining package again. It was not worth it.)

This is my favorite photo from the trip and a glimpse of the kind of trip it was! 

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