Does this mean I don’t have to figure out SnapChat??? (Oh, I hope so. Shhh, . . . don’t tell.)

Tuesday afternoon Instagram dropped a bit of bombshell, if you’re a SnapChat fan (or if you’re SnapChat for that matter), or as I am calling it, a surprise early birthday present (okay, my birthday is a long ways off, but it feels like it was a personal gift to alleviate my procrastination to join the SnapChat masses).

Perhaps you might remember that Facebook tried to acquire SnapChat a few years ago for a cool couple million billion (more like $3 billion actually) and received a swift “no thank you”. Well, perhaps that motivated FB because now, we have Stories, a new feature on Instagram.

Stories, so I’ve been told, is nearly identical to SC. And after my first attempt (yes, I will work on my hand-writing – as evidenced above), I must say, it is quite simple. However, if you want to know all that you can do and where to find out who can see your Story and who actually has looked at your story, follow the corresponding links.

The Stories are only viewable for 24 hours, so have some fun. My first story went live just over an hour ago, and as you can see Oscar plays a starring role, as does food, chocolate to be precise (don’t worry, no chocolate was fed to my beloved pups). So if you already follow @thesimplyluxuriouslife, you can see what we’re up to on your phone’s app (you can’t see “Stories” on a desktop – at least I don’t know how yet). Have fun making and sharing your own Stories and we’ll see how it goes.

~Follow TSLL on Instagram here