Coffee Break: Paula Babies
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I'm digging the '60s vibe to these cute heels from Sézane. Something about them feels really right in this moment where tall heels aren't really in, but you might still want a bit of height and a heel.
I love the double strap, as well as the slight hint of toe cleavage.
I feel like black, camel, or leopard (yes, seriously!) will be the most versatile of the color options — but the white/ecru and pale pink ones are also gorgeous.
The shoes are $215, with a 2″ heel.
(I was today years old when I learned that “babies” is a phrase for Mary Jane shoes — huh!)
Sales of note for 9/23/25
- Nordstrom – Fall savings event! Also: get 15% off select beauty items and 6x points on beauty.
- Ann Taylor – 30% off tops and sweaters
- Banana Republic Factory – 40% off everything + extra 15% off
- Boden – Up to 40% off
- J.Crew – Extra 30% off sale styles, plus up to 50% off layers they love
- J.Crew Factory – 40-70% off everything + extra 60% off clearance
- Nordstrom Rack – UGG up to 40% off
- Rothy's – Up to 50% off last-chance sales
- Soma – 5 panties for $39 + 35% off 3+ styles + buy 2 get 3 free panties — readers love these PJs and these no-VPL panties
- Talbots – Anniversary event! 25% off entire purchase, plus fresh fall classics from $34.50
- White House Black Market – $50 off $200+ purchase
Does anyone have their cloud or file storage organized in a way they like?
Majority of my photos are housed on the apple icloud, along with plenty of duplicate/triplicates; some of my essential files are also saved to the icloud but fairly disorganized. I pay ~$3 monthly for storage.
I also have quite a few google drives from various emails with files and backups of personal projects. Most of these files are not categorized or named appropriately in any way.
Ideally, I’d like to combine all pictures and files onto one drive with an organization system that helps me find what I’m looking for within a few minutes. Any recommendations for getting this done?
Don’t get a good organization system. Get a good search function. Organizational systems require hours and hours of human management. Using a program that can find what you need via OCR or file name takes seconds.
I have my photos in iCloud. Work documents are in my google drive for my work email. Everything else is on my laptop hard drive.
Here’s what I’d do with your files:
1. Leave your photos alone for now. If you start with them, you may get bogged down and not get the rest done.
2. Choose one location for your non-photo files. Or one for work files and one for personal files. It can be the iCloud, one of the google drives, your hard drive, or an external hard drive. But choose one.
3. Make a folder on that drive for each one of the other locations. Then One by one, go to each one of your file locations and move the files there to that folder on your new drive.
4. Then you can start organizing if you want. If not, they will at least all be in one, searchable, place.
5. After you get all those files organized, then you can start tackling your photos. Start by deleting duplicates and bad photos.
My system works OK — I do dropbox but you could just keep using apple icloud. but i mostly keep whatever i want on my phone. as it uploads to the cloud, though, i download it to my PC and store the photos in files. for the most part it’s just one per year, but for a vacation or big family milestone i’ll put stuff in its own folder. once it’s on my computer i know i can delete it if/when i want to from my phone.
i’d also download those google drives to your hard drive; to start just name each drive something unique. i keep a rough categorization of 2025 bills, general healthcare stuff, general kid stuff, but agree with others that the important thing is being able to search it.
if you don’t have a PC or have limited space, then i’d get an external hard drive. just came in handy when i needed to find some photos from 23 years ago.
When I do a Google lens search of the image above, the sponsored results include a few very similar shoes, although not necessarily in leopard print.
https://www.asos.com/us/asos-design/asos-design-simone-buckle-strap-detail-mid-block-heel-shoes-in-leopard/prd/208391381
https://factory.jcrew.com/p/womens/categories/shoes/heels/slingback-mary-jane-heels/CL384
https://www.dsw.com/product/lifestride-beatrice-mary-jane-pump/602829
If anyone knows of a dupe for these Sezane Paula shoes, with the mary jane strap similarly placed close to the toe, please share.
Following – these shoes are so cute but well out of my budget
I feel like I saw a clone at Belk’s last weekend. Maybe Sam Edelman or one of the typical department store brands?
Anything leopard in a wide width would be amazing. Darn you perfect shoes other than fit!
Dammit I have a longish reply with some links in mod, and I accidentally replied to the post above about organizing cloud storage. Try doing a Google Lens search of the image above, but look at the sponsored links and not the real search results
Help me figure out how to wear pants to work with boots. Winter is coming but my eye seems to think trousers can only be worn stylishly with a heel and I usually skate by with a pointy toe flat. Most of the stylings I see online are with heels. Since I’m going to need warm dry feet, what pants work? Are we still doing wide legs? Do I need to just change shoes at work?
If it’s actively snowing or gross I go with slim pants tucked into boots for the commute, but otherwise, I find Uggs have enough height to keep wide leg hems out of the muck. I have a walking commute though so all of my office shoes just live there, year-round.
Pants are complicated, as what works best in winter depends upon the weather/type of boots you want to wear, and what type of pants work best for your body shape.
I am pear shaped. In winter, with pants, I wear a lot of booties. I think it looks odd in my snow/very cold winter to have bare legs showing through when you wear pants with booties. So I often wear high shaft snug booties that overlap the pant length with cropped length pants of various lengths. I also will wear a knee length trouser sock or warmer sock to prevent bare skin flash that match the color of my pants or boot. I prefer a slight flair at the cuff if the pant leg is straight/more fitted, boot cut or flare, or very wide pants. Of course I love a higher healed boot or bootie with flowing wide full length pants, but this is just not practical in snowy days if you commute. There are various tricks for hiking up long pants to protect them during the commute, but didn’t work for me.
There is a reason why wearing skirts/tights/knee high boots is popular in many parts of the country that deal with winter snow/cold.
I wear ankle boots almost exclusively in the winter, not with heels, and always wear pants big enough to fit over them. They may or may not hit at the top of the boot (I am not that stylish). If the weather is wet, I wear rain or snow boots and change to work flats. I have a transit commute though, so I change shoes a lot even in the summer.
what are your favorite ways to eat oatmeal? i’ve always liked it with a hot cocoa packet, but i’m looking for new ideas
I make an oatmeal mix where I can just add hot water. It’s oats, oat milk powder for creaminess, peanut butter powder, dried apples, and a nut and seed mix. Such a small thing but I spend 2 nights a week in a hotel and being able to have a nice warm breakfast in my room (just add water from the kettle) has dramatically improved my life.
At home, I make fresh oatmeal with apples or bananas, cinnamon, nuts.
+1 – I make fresh oatmeal at home with steel cut oats and milk instead of water. I like to mix in dried sour cherries and almonds, or diced apples and cinnamon.
Made into granola and eaten with yogurt and fruit.
The Scottish way…with butter and salt.
I throw in a handful of trail mix, usually the kind with nuts and dried fruit.
My usual is to microwave quick oats, water, and frozen wild blueberries and then add a spoonful of flax, hemp, and chia seeds and some pea milk to thin it out (these both have to be added after cooking or the texture is weird).
If your social media world has evangelicals in it, what are you seeing? If you’re a Christian of another flavor, how are you feeling about what you see?
The sanctification of Charlie Kirk makes me uncomfortable. He was a man. Who, even if you liked most of what he said, wasn’t perfect and said hurtful things. The rapturous (ha) embrace of him – and Trump – makes me think evangelicals, for all their “our eyes are on heaven,” are desperate for anyone, anywhere they can claim to be a Christian celebrity.
And this is surprising you?
Did she say she was surprised?
I’m disgusted by the sanctifying and praise being heaped on him by evangelical Christians. I’m so sick of hearing that he “was speaking the truth” and all the associated “martyrdom” that he’s been given. It’s given me such a bad taste for Christianity.
I would identity as a Christian, but I’m becoming increasingly disheartened by the Christian rhetoric. It feels very much against how Jesus himself acted and against how he spoke.
This rhetoric is not Christian, as you point out yourself. It’s time for real Christians to stop being afraid to speak up for what is right.
I am a mainline Protestant. I have been longing for someone, anyone, to stand up and point out that the evangelicals and Christian nationalists are espousing hatred and other values that are decidedly non-Christian. This Sunday our pastor finally decided it was time to let someone preach openly against authoritarianism, hatred, and violence. It was so refreshing.
I’ve certainly seen a lot of praise for him, but nothing I would call rapturous or sanctification. I’m not sure I’d blame anyone for wanting a Christian celebrity, but I think most of it is just reaction to the horrible way he was killed, and, perhaps cynically, there are a lot of people drawing it out to draw attention to their brand/positions (a very human failing that is definitely not limited to any political or religious “side”). Evangelicals certainly have a style of speaking that can seem over the top (I’m not much a fan myself), but I don’t really know what you’re expecting to gain by this criticism. But maybe you’re just seeing more annoying people than I am.
I wouldn’t call him a Chrisitan celebrity. He was an evangelical celebrity.
Cardinal Dolan called him a “modern day St Paul”, which is basically sanctification. And there was a rush to proclaim him already in heaven, which is another weird take from Catholic leaders, since we believe in praying for souls and purgatory and all that (that’s the point of a funeral Mass – to offer prayers to help a soul get to heaven because we can’t be sure!).
Obviously I am Catholic and run in those circles online, and it’s pretty split…the social justice, Jesus Catholics believe he held a lot of problematic views, though any murder is a tragedy. The MAGA Catholics are claiming persecution and martyrdom
I’ve seen two posts in the past 24 hours. One is basically about how killing someone for their beliefs is wrong. Can’t say I disagree with that. The other was amplifying his wife’s message of grace and forgiveness as an example of what Christ calls all of us to do. Can’t say I disagree with that, either. Both posts are from folks who don’t like Trump (and probably didn’t like Kirk much either), though. Not liberals, but people who think bombast and cheating on your wife are inconsistent with Christianity.
I realize rereading this that it kind of sounds like I was saying Kirk cheated on his wife. Obviously, I meant that part only to apply to Trump.
I’m seeing a lot of videos of his interactions with people in college campuses.
I don’t see sanctification; I see a lot of people who find his love for Jesus, his wife, and his kids to be admirable. There are men who are writing love notes to their wives because they found Charlie’s habit of weekly love letters to be worth emulating.
Huge numbers of people are going to church for the first time in years for Charlie.
Lots of vigils in other countries – South Korea, Germany, Canada, England.
A lot of parents are talking about how distraught their kids (teens, college, that age are. They were avid listeners of his podcast.
We are all human. Everyone is flawed. That doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to mourn someone’s assassination.
Whether or not someone mourns him is not at stake. It is outrageous to me that his overt calls to violence and overt hatred is being sanitized, but really, that’s not really at stake, either. Think what you want of Charlie Kirk. I don’t think telling people that empathy is fake, that gun violence is acceptable, and that trans folks are less than human is outweighed by getting people to write love letters to their spouses, but YMMV.
What’s at stake is the state-sanctioned deification of him. Nancy Mace and others want him to lay in state. People with powerful voices are sanctifying him. That’s not mourning someone. That’s deploying a death in the service of a religious ideology on behalf of a nation that is, at least in name, not an ethnoreligious state.
The reactions to Charlie Kirk in contrast to the Minnesota lawmakers is quite stark and tells me those who are deifying Kirk don’t really value life generally, they only value those they agree with.
It doesn’t tell you that.
That’s such a deeply cynical take. I can’t imagine it’s serving you well.
Very much agreed. It’s not a cynical take; it’s an accurate one.
+1 how can you interpret it any other way?
Pretty easily, actually. People didn’t see the videos of the Minnesota lawmakers getting shot. People also mostly didn’t know who they were before they were assassinated. They had no recognition outside of Minnesota and limited recognition inside it. Both of those factors make it so it’s understandable that someone might be reacting with more emotional force to the CK death than those deaths.
Those are just two possible factors. They didn’t require much imagination for me to come up with them. I’m sure there are others.
So what if they didn’t see the video? Were the published details not enough to paint a picture? The fact that he shot the golden retriever, too? Where’s all the whimpering and crying about the fact that the Hoffmans’s daughter was at the door with her parents when they were shot? What about the trauma she endured?
Look, I’ll buy that a bunch of conservative, Christian, straight white men finally experienced empathy for the first time because *someone like them* died, but this is not laudable and does not explain the vast disparity in grief and reactions, generally. These people identify with Kirk (see above) and look up to him because he has a pretty wife and gets to own the libs, what a great life. He’s their brand of hatred, in a “successful” package. It’s not that deep. But we’re talking about more than just initial emotional gut reactions here–the sanctification, the venomous and dehumanizing way Trump, Miller & Co. are talking about “the left,” the threats to use the full force of the federal government to go after “the left,” targeting people not grieving properly by getting them fired, etc., etc. — and that’s the problem.
Cynicism is not inherently inaccurate. It’s just inherently unproductive.
Yup
I also agree completely. I don’t know why I’m shocked, but I am. I expect better from people and hard core conservatives/MAGAs always disappoint.
Yeah. As a non Christian new testament morality is mostly, from what I understand, consistent with my own personal moral and ethical values. But “Christianity” as it is used popularly is often an in group signifier used to exclude and vilify non-Christians or supposed non-Christians (meaning members of a sect you don’t like.) It feels like “Christian”
is used interchangeably with “trump supporter” in ways that make me uncomfortable even if it’s not my battle to fight.
Yes, I very much agree.
Yes…the number of people I’ve seen post or say things like “I’m going to teach my child never to celebrate a person’s death, no matter what side of the aisle.” And yet those people were cheering for alligators to eat migrants and saying all manner of things about George Floyd and other murdered black men.
It is stunning hypocrisy, but I am not surprised.
(And no I do not celebrate CK’s death, that was despicable. Gun control now.)
But that exactly what left did with George Floyd. The martyrdom and sanctification were quite present. At this time no cities burned.
I grew up in evangelical Christianity in the Bible belt, and I have a lot of family and childhood acquaintances who love Charlie Kirk and love Donald Trump.
And yes, the sanctification is disconcerting. There’s a hashtag going around Facebook, livelikecharlie, and finally one person who was posting it a lot realized that in fact, they shouldn’t “live like Charlie”, they should “love like Jesus”. EXACTLY.
I saw another video of a bunch of kids saying, “I am Charlie Kirk”, and again… why? Why are you telling your kids to “follow” and “be” Kirk vs. following and being Christ?
The same hashtag-happy person also posted that Kirk’s death feels different because “it’s the first time a Christian was murdered in America for their faith”. Um, I suppose we aren’t counting the church shootings and bombings in our history?
Basically, they are going over the top with praise, exaltation, etc., and it’s super weird to see them turning him into a saint when evangelicals don’t even really believe in sainthood. They wouldn’t say it that way, but when you see the rhetoric, it’s similar to how other religions talk about saints and how multiple religions (including Christianity) talk about prophets.
Why does it bother you? So people mourn someone’s death more than you think they should and in ways that aren’t inherently bad, but you do not like.
Move on.
Because it’s playing into societal division and extremism, presumably. I do not like to see politicians making a martyr out of a private citizen who has been murdered.
Are you completely oblivious to how the right, including in particular the Trump Administration, is trying to use his death to further erode our civil liberties and divide this country?
That’s why it bothers me. That, and I dislike dishonestly in general. I also dislike seeing racist, sexist, homophobic bigots white-washed and elevated as if their beliefs are something to be admired.
It sounds like you follow one person who isn’t very smart but posts a lot. Maybe it’s time for you to mute that person.
I am going to call it as it is. The Kirks are not Christians. Evangelicals are not Christians. None of these people are Christians. They are imposters who give actual Christianity, the Christianity defined by the words and actions of Jesus Christ as described in the New Testament, a bad name.
More to the point — the U.S. is not a Christian nation. So whether the Kirks are good or bad Christians isn’t important (to me, at least). It’s using them as a shorthand for a vision of an evagelical/Christian (and White) America that’s the problem.
It is important, though, because it causes prejudice against actual Christians. I have to hide my faith to avoid being branded as a conservative bigot. Members of other religions do not.