Weekly Review: August 4, 2023

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Happy Friday!

This is a double weekly review because I didn’t post one last week. Last week was all about finishing up the porch furniture makeover and I was working too hard at that to do much of anything else, so I didn’t have a good update for you all!

If you missed the big post I wrote about the last 4 years of front porch progress, including the porch furniture makeover, check it out here.

Recently, I heard someone on Instagram talk about how important it is to physically acknowledge your “wins.” I’ll explain. We often work very hard when we are trying to finish something or meet a deadline – self-imposed or otherwise, and that creates a lot of stress in our body and mind. Then when we accomplish whatever the goal was, we just move on to the next project without giving ourselves a minute to tell our body through physical rest and comfort that we are safe and calm. Which isn’t great for our nervous systems and can create a lot of tension in our bodies. So on Monday when I finished the porch and had photographed it, after working really hard for the past couple weeks, I took a day to intentionally be slow and relaxed. I still did things I wanted to do, but I did them slowly, and I even stopped by an antique store before picking the boys up at camp to walk through slowly and look at every little thing for an hour (I didn’t even buy anything). It was just what I needed and it re-energized me to work on blog posts and photographs and reels I wanted to make about the porch this week. It’s a simple and obvious thing, but most things that are good for us are, aren’t they? I’m really glad I did it, and I’m going to make a point to do that after I finish projects.

Here’s what I’ve been loving the past couple weeks:

Food

We made this Miso Chicken for dinner last week and it reminded me how much I love anything cooked with miso. Our local grocery stores never have miso paste but I order it from Walmart.com (here is the one I ordered this time). I also love this recipe for Miso Roasted Cauliflower and have made it a dozen times. Sometimes I use broccoli instead (doing so tonight!). If you’ve never tried miso, it is salty and savory and delicious – try it out!

I’ve also been drinking tea like crazy, which isn’t really anything new for me, but I have two new tea-centric things to share.

The first is this fine mesh tea strainer I ordered so that my loose leaf tea was easier to drink. Before I had a tea ball that was annoying to fill and empty and wasn’t fine enough to keep the little bits out of my cup of tea. I also love that these ones come with a little metal dish you can set it in when you’re done steeping it.

This week I made iced tea, but instead of using decaf black tea like I always have, I used this blueberry tea, and it was sooo good. I don’t usually like blueberry flavored things because they taste fake, but this one is just right for me. It was the perfect summer iced tea. I keep mine in this container in the fridge.

Books

I re-read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte this week — I actually listened to it and it’s a free book on Audible. It is viewed as one of the first feminist novels and it’s a wonderful story of triumph but still has that Jane Austen romance aspect that I’m a sucker for (I listened to all the Jane Austen audiobooks and rewatched all the TV and movie versions of each one last winter and I highly recommend). Listening to these Victorian or Regency novels on Audible is actually more enjoyable than reading them for me because the intonation adds so much to the dialect of those time periods.

TV & Movies

Because I read the book I had to watch The Tenant of Wildfell Hall on Prime Video. It was very good, the acting was perfect, but the video quality wasn’t the best. I still enjoyed it – there is something wonderful about watching a rendition of a novel right after reading it.

I was clearly in the period drama mood after that, so I watched The Young Victoria. I loved it in some ways but I felt like the plot was very rushed in places and the relationships at the center of it weren’t fleshed out enough. But it was beautiful in the way a good period piece is and I love Emily Blunt as an actress.

Now I am watching Colette – I had no idea her life was so interesting and that she was such a trailblazer. I’m really enjoying it (I’ve been watching it in little spurts before bed and I should finish it tonight) and I think Keira Knightly does a great job of showing Colette’s specific personality. I read Claudine at School when I was younger but I haven’t read the rest of her work and now I’d like to.

Kids

I bought 24 of these cabana stripe towels for our pool last year, and they have held up so much better than our other pool towels (you know, the character ones the kids get for birthdays and such). But I have recently discovered that these are the best life hack for summer activities. We went to a water park recently, we’ve been swimming at friends’ pools, and the kids went to summer camp this week — whenever I send them both with our striped towels we have avoided the lost and mixed up towel situation so easily. We just pluck our green and white towels out of the scenery on the way out without any towel mixups with other kids.

Speaking of character themed things that don’t last long, Harrison had a Toothless (the dragon) backpack last year and it ended up getting really ratty and worn out. Graham has had one of the large Jansport backpacks in a galaxy print for two years and it’s still as good as new – I could see him using it into middle school. So I just ordered this backpack for Harrison with the crossed baseball bats embroidered on it (he chose the embroidery and color). I love that it can grow with him and I know it will be great quality (we’ve had PB’s lunch boxes for them for 5 years).

Clothes

I haven’t been shopping a lot lately but I’m getting excited about dressing for fall! (Don’t kill me). A lot of the fall clothing isn’t out in stores yet but I’m loving this suede bag that would go with everything.

That’s all I have for you this week! I hope you all have a great weekend.