Musings - November 2019

November is a wind-up for the holidays. We've been planning for that and a trip at the end of the month. Plus I had some business travel (scenes from my hotel). It's been busy! (And the trip is the WHY of why this post is so very delayed)

Books: Kindle Unlimited is the bomb! I ran a full series on a new-to-me author, C.N. Crawford.
- C.N. Crawford's Shadow Fae series (7 books) - not for serious fantasy readers. When you world-build, the details matter. But it's got beach read fun vibe going for it.
- C.N. Crawfords's Dark King (1st book of the Sea Fae series)
- All 4 books of Elle Adam's Library Witch series
- Laura Thalassa's War and Pestilence books
- Rise of the Fae by Linsey Hall - finished out the Dragon's Gift: Dark Fae books
- The Selling Staircase by Nikki Rausch, which was the only physical book I read!

I did not finish 1000 White Women in November.


Gratitude: Time with friends. Fresh laundry. Holidays with people who love me. Girls night out. New recipes. Kitten purrs. (Despite how soft and cuddly they are, they will be 2 in March. I should start calling them cats.)

Listening: Halsey. And a lot of podcasts. Million Dollar Bad Ass. Dave Ramsey. Planet Money. Dan Carlin's HardCore History (which you can listen to at 1.5 speed to power through those long episodes.)  Don't Keep Your Day Job. Marketing Duct Tape.

Perfume: Still rocking that Magazine Street. It's a travel theme.


Random: We are spending some time away for the holidays and I'm very excited about that. It has involved many vaccinations.

Recipes: Nothing new but we had a hell of a Thanksgiving Day menu. Traditional favorites all the way around. Corn casserole. Green bean casserole*. Stuffing with apples. Stuffing with mushrooms. Deviled eggs. Pigs-in-blanket. (Latter two courtesy of 13 - it's her specialty). Home-made cranberry sauce. Zucchini bread. Berry cobbler. Pumpkin pie. Ham. And then his family brought rolls, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, turkey and a still warm apple pie.


*Let us discuss the green bean casserole. If you are American or Canadian and make it with canned beans - YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG. Frozen green beans. Garlic cream of mushroom soup. Fresh shallots. (I will accept frozen pearl onions.) Fresh mushrooms. A bit of milk and pepper. Then, the French's onions on top. There is no other way to make it. Soggy canned green beans are why people hate it. Made properly - this is how it looks.

Self-Care Overview: 

I've been wearing Country Roads lipstick (Kismet, an Amercian brand) the second half of the month. It's part of my travel theme for this month, too.


"Keeping the Face Young" Skincare...
Day - Mad Hippie's Vitamin C Serum then 100% Pure's Super Fruit Oil Nourishing Eye Cream and then top my whole face with light application of Pacifica's Super Flower Power Rapid Response Face Oil.  Seems to work well with either quick Bare Minerals powder or with full-on Juice Beauty CC Cream + finishing powder.

Night  - There was some travel. When I travel, I tend to use my DHC Beauty samples as night as lotions and to try different products. I also take my DHC Oilve Oil Cleanser and Face Wash during travel. (I love my various cleansing balms, but when I travel, I don't want to use the hotel washcloths on my face - who knows what those were laundered in?!? And balms need a face cloth wipe, for sure.) On non-travel days, at night, I've been using the African Botanics Le Masque Hydralift Intense (October Boxwalla box) all over plus African Botanics's Fleur d'Afrique Oil. 

Stress: Big. Family stuff. (Of which I've said before. But it's still tough simply not being invited to big holidays.) Work stuff. 

Things 13 Said: Did. She's kickboxing now and has become a very teen-age girl. Lots of time in her room.

Watching: Shameless. (Spoiler - really Fiona? $50K? Is that for your guilt so you don't see them again?) Bob Hearts Abishola. Mom. Finished The Blacklist. 

Take- away - Your life is built for choices. Make the ones that work for you. Because you are in charge of your choices- and your life.

Original musings posts you may enjoy:

- Musings - October 2019
- Musings - September 2019
- Musings - August 2019
- Musings - July 2019
- Musings - June 2019
- Musings - May 2019
- Musings - April 2019
- Musings - March 2019
- Musings - February 2019
- Musings - January 2019
- Musings - December 2018
- Musings - November 2018
- Musings - October 2018
- Musings - September 2018
- Musings - August 2018
- Musings - July 2018
- Musings - June 2018

- Musings - May 2018
- Musings - April 2018
- Musings - March 2018
- Musings - February 2018
- Musings - January 2018

- Musings - December 2017

- Musings - November 2017

- Musings - October 2017

- Musings - August 2017
- Musings - June 2017
- Where Did March Go?

- Musings - February 2017
- Musings - January 2017

- Message in a Bottle (2016)

All photos by moi! And you can tell...

*Juice Beauty is a staple in my beauty cabinet. I stray, I try other things - but it's my favorite "foundation" (I used the CC Cream) and great skin care. If you like Juice Beauty too, here is a link. I do get a small commission (at no cost to you) when you use these links which helps support this blog.

- Skin Care by Juice Beauty

Follow my blog with Bloglovin  - A new way to follow!

Musings - March 2019

March winds bring change. I always forget that. And then March happens. 

Books: Zip. Well kind of zip. No finished actual books. But I signed up for Blinkist and read about 10 short summaries. All non-fiction. Plus I also signed up for Good Reads.  (Pictured are the books I strated and didn't finish. I thought Irish Fairytales for St. Patrick's Day but yeah, that fizzled.) I'm at 5 of my 52 books for the year - and certainly not making enough of my Kindle Unlimited membership, obviously I need to kick it in gear a bit with reading next month! Travel is happening so that always helps with the reading more.


Gratitude: Live butterfly exhibits (see the cycle of life in the photo below - little caterpiller, big caterpillar, coccon, and new hatched butterfly). Nice pens. Digital tools. Kittens. New friends and wine evenings. Art. Dinners with smart women. Little Free Libraries.  New vacuum.

Listening:  Halsey. Florence &  the Machine (which, it turns out 12 loves as well.) And I found the best new podcast for rocking about 10 minutes of meditation at lunch - Live Awake. 

Perfume: I am ready for a change. So I've been using  Les Perfumes de Rosine Majalis everyday as I want to run this out and move on. March isn't the only thing ready for a change!

Recipes: I don't think I made anything new or a fresh recipe but I made A LOT of desserts. Seriously. Banana bread. One Friday evening I made pumpkin pie, cherry pie, and strawberry-stuffed pound cake from scratch in under 3 hours. I probably made the quick fruit cobbler 6 times this month. It's officially the go-to dessert of the house.

Self-Care: I am a little bored. So things got switched up a little.  The basics are in place - most days. But I've moved things around for weekends and nights.

The Basics

- Day - Juice Beauty line for brightening emulsion, serum, eye cream, CC cream. That pretty much is my standard and it continues to serve me very well.  (Of course next month, I'll need to add suscreen. Because spring is about to happen.)
- Night - Night is basically bardin skincare. Most of what I use I got on sale -  Predire Eye Care Anti-Aging Night Serum. (And reminder, I did not pay retail for it! ) which I am trying to run out. I've added H2O Infinity Renewing Youth Serum (which I got on mega-clearance of $28) plus I'm still using Little Barn Apothecary oil  (See first picture of this post for what that looks like and options). 

One evening, we (Jericho, me, and 12) did a homemade mask for girl's beauty night. Mashed strawberries + honey + a bit of dry clay. It's been ages since I made my own mask from simple, natural ingredients. I had some recollection of hand-mashing the strawverries - nope. The best option is a blender. We discovered that the hard way with chuncks of strawberry falling off our faces. But, I will say we had beautiful, glowy skin afterwards.

I joined something new a few months ago. An every other month beauty box that - at a subscription rate - lets me try green brands that are usually out of my price range. (Click here to check out The Boxwallas).  Right now, I like the Earth Wise Resiliancy Face Serum for weekend days and African Botanicals Cell Recovery Serum and Oil for night. Plus I've used the Siam Seas Clear Skin Serum a few nights - which does a beautful job of clearing up minor bad skin flares.)

Things 12 said: Well, she's renamed her sister's kittens. (Isaac and Israel got 4 month and 5 month old kittens - super cute.) Their actual names are Lucy and Roy. She's calling them Milly and LeRoy.

She also declared herself magic after a butterfly became her best friend at the butterfly exhibit. (I had a blue morpho land on my hand. Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids is beautiful.)

She's not doing well in math - but on her latest math test, she corrected 3 grammar issues on the test. Her English skills are off the charts.

Watching: I finished the latest season of Shameless and I'm plowing my way through Grimm. (What was UP with the opener the first few episodes of Season 2?) I love a good series for cooking binges and also digital chore time - who else has noticed that modern life has a CRAZY amount of paperwork?)

Random:  An actual person bought one of my digital books! Woot hoot! (I have a tendency to give them away. And one of them is free all the time anyway.) If you want to check out my books - click here.

Here's the deal, people - if you don't want someone to attend, just don't send an invite. Sending the only notice of an event mere weeks ahead, when you know people travel for business (aka they don't have a choice on being in town or not), just to say you sent the invite is RUDE. 


Take-away - Change is the only constant in life. You better figure out how to handle it.

Original musings posts you may enjoy:

- Musings - February 2019
- Musings - January 2019
- Musings - December 2018
- Musings - November 2018
- Musings - October 2018
- Musings - September 2018
- Musings - August 2018
- Musings - July 2018
- Musings - June 2018

- Musings - May 2018
- Musings - April 2018
- Musings - March 2018
- Musings - February 2018
- Musings - January 2018

- Musings - December 2017

- Musings - November 2017

- Musings - October 2017

- Musings - August 2017
- Musings - June 2017
- Where Did March Go?

- Musings - February 2017
- Musings - January 2017

- Message in a Bottle (2016)

All photos by moi! And you can tell...

*Juice Beauty is a staple in my beauty cabinet. I stray, I try other things - but it's my favorite "foundation" (I used the CC Cream) and great skin care. If you like Juice Beaty too, here is a link. I do get a small commission (at no cost to you) when you use these links which helps support this blog.

- Skin Care by Juice Beauty

Follow my blog with Bloglovin  - A new way to follow!

And Again, Please

The human male and I are currently plotting our next vacation - probably next spring. This April we took a trip to "paradise" aka Tulum, Mexico on the Maya Riviera for 9 days. It was a space and time to decompress. Something I didn't even know I needed.

As an adult, I'd never been on a vacation before. Vacation =  go somewhere exotic, do not work, do interesting things you've not done before, and do nothing. I learned several things.

What You See and What You Don't

Everyone you meet has hidden depths. Some have more challenges than you will ever guess. They disguise them. They ignore them. They live with them.

I'm one of those people.

The Rules

My ex likes to joke that I live my life based on so many rules, I have no freedom. He's wrong about this (and many other things). I live by rules but very few:

- Try to treat others as you would be treated
- If you can't carry your own baggage, you've got too much
- At the party, know where you want to be when the "fun" breaks out
- Follow through with what you say you'll do (always)
- No recipe should ever have more than 5 ingredients (spices don't count)

Still Know Nothing About Me

I have a thing for Sting. Always have. The lyrics. The sound. I even like how he's changed and evolved into a different kind of artist - playing in jazz, country and even medieval sounds. One of my favorite Sting songs - Nothing 'Bout Me.

The Day the Music Woke Up

I have always loved music. One of the things that attracted me to my ex was his passion for music. When he left all the music stopped. And the color bled out of my world.

The Mystery of Who

Action flicks are addicting. I love them. Basically because I hate working out,  and they motivate me. Occasionally they also make me think about life.