Friday Favorites | January 2022

Happy Friday, friends!

We have a pretty low-key weekend coming up. It’s the first, in a long time, where we don’t have sports, other commitments or a house project, filling up our weekend. Speaking of house projects, yesterday we had our final home renovation project come to a close. We had built-in shelves put in two different rooms, and we can now finally breathe a sigh of relief that our four-year on-off home renovation process is complete. It’s a miracle! I’ll post at some point all of the different projects we tackled, with before and after photos.

Today, I’ve rounded up a batch of my current favorite things. I love seeing these on other blogs because it’s such a helpful resource for organizing and decorating (without having to do the research myself), kid’s activities and gift ideas, suggestions for books/media, finding cute seasonal goodies, and a great way to shop for clothes without having to go to the store and try things on, or order online to realize it looks awful on.

So to start off 2022, here are some of my faves…

My girls have been busy creating decals to decorate or label pretty much any and every surface. Water bottles, plastic plates, straw tumblers, storage bins. Since I took last weekend to clean house by ruthlessly purging and organizing every space that was out of control and causing me anxiety, it was the perfect opportunity for the girls to create labels for my pantry storage containers! So cute, right?!

This past Christmas, Ryan and I decided to only give each of our kids one big gift and a few stocking stuffers. It was great for the “wow” factor as they opened their gift, but mostly we wanted to avoid the hustle and bustle of shopping, wrapping and spending a fortune on a bunch of small gifts that I will eventually have to clean up after, organize, or try to quietly throw away over this next year. For Naiya, who loves all things pretty, cute and detailed, we decided to give her a “we” gift of a Cricut machine. “We” meaning, I couldn’t wait to use it!

It.is.amazing.

Based off of recommendations from friends, we chose to buy the Cricut Explore Air 2 . It is an understatement to say that this is, by far, one of “our” favorite gifts. The girls and I have been designing and creating decals like it’s nobody’s business! It was the perfect activity for our week-long snow day last week. The girls have been monogramming and personalizing endless gifts for their siblings and cousins. It’s been so fun to watch them work together to create and then bless people with their creations!

Please observe Alexia’s graffiti on our folding table. Most likely accomplished with a pocket knife, from when she was nine years old. She went through a phase where it was a fun idea for her to go around and make her permanent mark on things around the house. So aggravating at the time, but hilarious to me now.

Every year during the winter, I set up a folding table in our dining room for the kids to do indoor activities when it’s too cold outside to play. (The rest of the year we have two sitting chairs and a side table in this space). So we’ll have puzzles going on at this table, painting, perler beads, and now the Cricut, and we don’t have to put them all away every time the kids use them. It’s definitely not the prettiest, but it’s super practical and the kids love it!

Speaking of kid’s activities, this is my next fave! Our family has been using this online drawing resource for years. You can find free art lessons on their website HERE or on their youtube channel. Or you can signup for a monthly membership HERE to eliminate all ads and gain access to their mobile app to watch lessons through your phone…

Last year, we signed up for the monthly membership ($5.99 per month), which also gives you access to exclusive member lessons. But mostly, we signed up so that our kids can watch lessons without the distractions of ads and because we try to avoid youtube as much as possible. The art lessons are taught by a dad who is super positive, while one of his children draws along with him. It’s super family-friendly and the drawings that our kids do while following along are insane! This is perfect for rainy days or a lazy Saturday. This is also our primary “art” curriculum for my first-grader that I’m homeschooling this year.

Over Christmas break we started watching The Chosen season one series. Ryan and I have both been wanting to watch this for a while now, and with Ryan not feeling well over break, we ended up watching this as a family every night. We all cozied up with homemade popcorn, and for some reason chocolate chips made it onto the scene every night, and we watched this together. It prompted a lot of great questions and spiritual conversations with our kids, which we could later go back and read the bible together and have an image to bring context to the bible stories. I ended up with tears streaming down my face most nights watching this. I think their depiction of Jesus was so spot on, His kindness, how He kept addressing people according to who they were created to be, rather than who they were not. It is such a beautiful representation of the heart of the Father. My kids especially loved seeing the different character’s personalities come to life as they related to Jesus and each other. All of the characters had a sense of humor and we all were able to easily follow along and distinguish who was who throughout the show. My kids’ ages range from 7 to 13 years old. I highly recommend this series!

My next fave is this book I’ve been reading through for my morning quiet time. A friend gave this to me and it is so timely as I have felt like our family is needing a course-correction with our words. What we’re speaking to ourselves, to each other and about other people. It’s refreshing to reset this specifically, along with other things, at the start of a new year. I’m only about halfway through, but it has so far been a helpful tool for checking my spirit and my mouth. If I had to recap or highlight what I am learning, it would be these three things:

1. “God never does anything without saying it first. God is a faith God. God released His faith in Words.” (p.14). He SPOKE the world into existence. God’s words carry power. Our words are powerful.

2. “Do you really want all the negative things you have been [speaking out loud] to come to pass?…If Jesus came to you personally and said, from this day forward it will come to pass, that everything you say will happen exactly as you say it; would that change your vocabulary?” (p. 16). This one caught my attention real quick and made me ponder “what am I saying out loud every day to myself…to my husband…to my kids?” And what things am I creating, either good or bad, by my spoken word?

3. “Whose words will you establish on earth?…Spoken words program your spirit (heart) either to success or defeat. Words are containers. They carry faith, or fear, and they produce after their kind.” (p. 17). What we say matters.

This book is one that I keep thinking to myself how I want to share these nuggets of truth with my kids at breakfast. I think this could easily be read together as a family in small doses, and would spark some great conversations and teaching points.

You guys. This tea.

One of the moms at the barn that Alexia rides at next door, brought this to the Christmas barn party and it immediately rose to favorite-tea-of-all-time status. I could not stop talking about it and raving about it. So much so, that my friend bought me some as a gift. I saw that amazon sells it in packs of two. How have I not known about this tea? It is sweet enough that it needs no sweetener to be added. My kids even agree. It is all the things! Sweet, spicy (but not too spicy), festive, smells amazing, and perfect for this cold weather season. It quickly replaced the chai tea the kids had set up for themselves on the coffee bar.

These next two faves of mine, I’ve posted almost every winter on instagram. They are just that good and faithful.

This lip balm is the real deal. Instead of carrying chapstick with me everywhere I go during the winter, I’m able to apply this right before bed and when I get ready in the morning and my lips stay super hydrated! Naiya has discovered the wonder-power too, and now I find her in my bathroom every night before bed putting some on. She doesn’t have to keep chapstick with her at school every day anymore, instead she puts this lip balm on every night and she doesn’t suffer from dry, red, chapped lips.

Okay, this next one is used by every single person in my home. We have gone through an arsenal of products through the years to find a lotion, cream or ointment that would cure dry, cracked skin. Ryan especially gets really deep cracks in his fingers and feet in the winter, and he swears by this stuff. In fact, he keeps a tub of it on his nightstand to put it on his hands and feet every night. This product is from a beauty and skincare line, Lemongrass Spa, and is free of harmful ingredients and has amazing scents for a variety of products. Ryan is hyper-sensitive and highly opinionated when it comes to smells, but this Healing Elements Balm is Ryan’s-nose approved.

We also have one in our bathroom top drawer, our kitchen drawer next to the sink, and recently I keep finding Ryan’s tub on Noah’s nightstand. Our kids get such dry, red and chapped hands during the winter, it’s so painful! But this has been an amazing remedy!

Well, that wraps up this month’s favorites! Hopefully you’ll check out some of them and love them just as much as I do! Hope you have a great weekend!!! xoxo