Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Musing - February 2019

Welcome to the month of love! February was super cold (thanks polar vortex) and it is still lovely in many ways. (Mostly soap and people.)

Books: Late bloomer over here! I just read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland! It was a lovely read. Quick but with lines that make you think later. And because I was sick for a few days, I read books about death - Apprentice in Death and Dark In Death by JD Robb. I'm still working  my way through The Now Revolution. 


Gratitude: Good Asian food. Good chiropractors. New soap. Quiet hotel rooms. Purring cats. Organized things. Amazing friends. Washing machines. Changes. Groomed dogs. Tulips. Pasta ready when I get home.

Listening: Southern Lady Code is confirmed as my new favorite podcast. (There is a book coming soon!) And I've been listening to a lot of Dave Ramsey and Entre Leadership and Marketing Over Coffee and Household Name. And I highly recommend Rethinking Leadership, Episode 31 Dealing with Negativity. For music, I've been Florence and the Machine or Halsey. (Probably in a bit of a rut there....)
Perfume:  Same as last month, most weekdays I've been wearing  Les Perfumes de Rosine Majalis  and Dirtyque's Ofresia. (Boring! I know. But I'm about to run out of both and am finishing them.)

Recipes: I made a round of Lavender cookies for Artistic Girl's 19th birthday.  And zucchini bread for 13's good grades. But nothing super new or interesting. Somehow I seemed to make a lot of pasta this month.
Self-Care: The soap love may have achieved neverending status. My new favorite day is "new soap day" when I open up one of the Cellar Door Bath Supply soaps. This month's main sop was Birchwood Spiced Rum.

In addition to the continued great face oil experiment, I also grabbed a clearance new face cream and mask duo to try. Here's the updated day and night routine:

- Day -I'm still using Juice Beauty's Stem Cellular  Anti-Wrinkle Booster Serum around the eyes. And I'm still totally Juice Beauty for the day. Serum, oil, eye cream, CC cream. That pretty much is my standard and it continues to serve me very well.  (Although, now that I use more oils - I don't think I like the Juice Beauty oil as much as some of the other oils for feel. Efficacy to be determined.) 
- Night - I've kept using  Predire Eye Care Ant-Aging Night Serum. (And reminder, I did not pay retail for it! ) I'm still using Little Barn Apothecary oil  plus Juice Beauty nutrient cream to keep neck wrinkles at bay as well as Juice Beauty's anti-wrinkle cream on my forehead. I tried the Peter Thomas Roth' Fountain of Youth set mid-month. The mask does something I've never felt before - it heats up! Lots of different kinds of oils in the mask and the cream so it's weird to rinse the mask off. I don't think I'd like a larger size. But it was fun to try something different!

Things 12 said: 12 and I love the same type juice - orange, no pulp. Usually, I don't mind if she drinks all of it. But mid-month, I was sick and that's all I wanted. My first day after being sick, I came home from work to her drinking a glass of juice.

- Me: Are you drinking my orange juice?
- 12: Just a little bit.
- Me: But it's MY juice
- 12: But I'm just having a little bit
- Me: Yes, but it's MY juice. What if I wanted it?
- 12: But I'm just having a little bit.
- Me: (I relented because I was only teasing) - It's fine. You can finish it.
- 12: That's good because I already did.
- Me: I thought you said you just had a little bit!
- 12: Yes, I did. But there was only a little bit left.
She is a character. She'd even already put the juice container in the recycling!

Watching: I finished The Americans - which was weirdly comforting with the Russian language use. And I've begun a serious binge of  Grimm. I have a serious love of mythology and fairytales - I'm not sure if you'd enjoy Grim as much if you don't. (At least so far from Season 1 & 2.) I am a little weirded out that none of the actors match the look of the origins of their creatures but it's a global mixing pot.

Random:  The polar vortex. So, Guy and I have not spent that much working time together. Usually he works outside the home and I work at home. And...we have very different work styles. Much like night kayaking, I'm going to call it a testiment to our relationship that we both survived working from home the few days of polar vortex non-starting cars.


Take-away - Be present. Life isn't lived in the future. Don't spend your life here but paying attention to unreal things and other people's lives. 


Original musings posts you may enjoy:


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
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Monday, February 25, 2019

Scenes from Philadelphia

Guy and I took a quick business trip to Philadelphia in late December to look at some equipment for his shop. And while we were in that lovely city, we enjoyed the food and art a good bit!

 It started with the window boxes on the street. So very pretty! We took a lovely stroll down a street and around a corner with 2 great restaurants:
- The Belgian Cafe
- OCF Coffee House
We had a very relaxed and delicious breakfast at the Coffee House, went to see the equipment, toured a historical prison (Eastern State Penitentiary) - which was surprisingly interesting, had a lovely lunch at The Belgian Cafe (best vegetarian burger I have had in my life and LOVELY desserts).  

 I really should have paid attention to the name of the street because while Philadelphia has beautiful murals on many walls, the one on that street was exceptional. The mural appeared to be a garden! It was a full block long and wrapped around the end of the block. It actually looked very life-like!  (Also, notice the cobbled streets. Aren't those awesome?)

 We also went to the Viking exhibit at the Franklin Institute, which was fascintating. Great place to take kids, lots of hands on activities. And I made Guy pose for a picture! Or two.
We stayed at a lovely hotel as well. Which was amazing considering Guy didn't make a reservation. I can now, whole-heartedly, recommend HotelTonight.com - we got a great deal and stayed right downtown at Le Meridien.

 Getting there was interesting as we passed THROUGH mountains! Blue Mountain, Kittatinny Mountain, Tuscarora Mountain, and Allegahny Mountain.  Which made me wonder how we name these things....

 Side note - we also discovered I hate driving on curvy roads. 

 Take-away - Go somehere new. Take someone you love. Have an adventure. (Picture from a zoo trip a few years ago. It's my motto!)


 Other posts you might enjoy:
- Musings - October 2018
- A Texas Weekend
- And Again, Please
- The Crescent City
All photos by moi! And you can tell...
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Monday, January 28, 2019

Musings - January 2019

Here's the round up of the first month of January. I hope your year had beautiful start. 

Books: I got all flummuxed on what to read! I still want to try to do 50+ books for the year, but then I read where someone said the book you start the year with IS your year. And well, at the time, I was reading both an older social media book and Midnight in the Garden fo Good and Evil - I obviously didn't want to start my year with either outdated info or deception, so I had to go to my bookshelf. And there was the book I was meant to read, LaRae Quy's Mental Toughness for Women Leaders. She's ex-FBI. Since it's 52 tips, I guess you could read and concentrate on one per week but I decided this book would be the perfect way to start my year. And then I finished Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. (I prefer the movie. Sacrilege, I know.) Which is clearly less than the four books I should have read for the month but still not a bad start to the year.


Gratitude: Trying new things. Good chiropractors. Fun restaurants. Unexpected boxes. Cool co-work spaces. Purring cats. Cleared roads. Amazing friends. New ventures. Soft snow.

Listening: Even more podcasts! I went to a luncheon that had Interview Valet's president as a guest and learned about more podcasts! Southern Lady Code is my new favorite as I mourn the coming end of the Bombshell Businesswoman.
Perfume:  Most weekdays I've been wearing  Les Perfumes de Rosine Majalis  and Dirtyque's Ofresia.

Recipes: I'm honestly not sure I cooked most of the month. (Okay, cobbler was made, but the kidlets pretty much require that.) Things have been very busy. The only exception was New Years Day. We made something delicous and sweet to start the year with sweet success.  

 Fruit pizza!

 Super delicious and easy. 
- 1 container of crescent rolls (I get the reduced calorie kind)
- 1 jar of Nutella
- Your choice of fruit

Unroll the crescent rolls as a single sheet and bake. Allow to cool. Top with Nutella and then your favorite fruit. At our house, that's strawberries (17 loves them) and raspberries (12 loves them) plus blackberries for me. Most the rest of the house eats a combo of fruits.

Self-Care: The soap love continues. My new favorite day is "new soap day" when I open up one of the Cellar Door Bath Supply soaps. The only - tiny - criticism I have is the dark colors do make a bit of a mess in the bath. But they smell gorgeous and lather beautifully enough to double as shave cream.

 The great face oil experiment continues with specific oils for evening and morning. (Sad update - no one this month mentioned thinking I'm years uounger than I am.) Every day. Here's the day and night routine:

- Day -I'm still using Juice Beauty's Stem Cellular  Anti-Wrinkle Booster Serum around the eyes. And I'm still totally Juice Beauty for the day. Serum, oil, eye cream, CC cream. While I like to experiment - that pretty much is my standard and it continues to serve me very well. 
- Night - I've kept using  Predire Eye Care Ant-Aging Night Serum. (And reminder, I did not pay retail for it! I picked it up for about 1/10th that price on a Vegas business trip last fall.) I'm still using Little Barn Apothecary oil  plus Juice beauty nutrient cream as my skin has started to chap with the winter weather change. 


Things 12 said: We went ice skating. 12 was magnificent. I clung to the side of the rink for 5 turns. I fell 4 times and had to visit the chiropractor a few extra times the next week. But when I asked what the best part of her week was, she said ice skating - so there is that.

 There was also cross-country skiing! My second time. 12 and 13 took the hills like champions, and Guy was amazing. I fell. A lot. But like life - it counts that you keep trying to get up.
- 12: How many times DID you fall?
- Me: I gave up counting after 5, Little.
- 12: You did keep getting back up.
- Me: And that is what counts in skiing and most all of life.

 Side note - snow is MUCH softer than ice, if you have to fall on something. 


Watching: Tidelands which has the most gorgeous soundtrack ever. (The mythology is a touch wobbly but it's a good Netflix watch.) I caught up on Bull and Criminal Minds. And then I re-started The Americans from the beginning.  

Random: I made things! A gallery that teaches fused glass classes has opened up near me; I've taken a few classes now. Last month, ornaments. This month, pendants. 

 Here they are unfired and fired. Strangely, I almost prefer the unfired. Something about the sharp edges appeal to me. 

Take-away - Your life is made up of the every day. It's the small habits that that make you or break you. Want to change? Start with one small thing and build it. And never step away from the opportunity to do something new.

 PS - January 21st is the day that marks the fall of resolutions. If you need a kick to start back up, I have a digital book that can help! (Click here to read more.) 




Original musings posts you may enjoy:


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
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Monday, January 21, 2019

Lessons - 2018


Each year. as the year progresses, I write things down. To learn from them. To remember them. To share them. I keep them in the Random area of my blog until the year ends. 

 And then, I share them! This is that post. And I'll frame it by noting this was a heavy year with relationship changes: eldest #NotMyDaughter got married, my paternal family underwent some massive shifts in family stress, I left a professional board I'd been on for more than 10 years, and my maternal family circled the wagons on family loyalty (with me on the outside).  Wave after wave of changes. And this is what I learned from them.

  1. All relationships can be boiled down to the pronouns used and the money. (Ex:Watch what they say and how they spend their resources. It tells you a lot.)
  2. Stay curious
  3. Instead of RBF, try Resting Pleasant Face
  4. When you can't help, step back so someone else can.
  5. Everyone thinks they invented it (so no one will use your referral link.)

I took number 5 from the 2016 lessons and made a 7 Day Boot Camp digital book. Click here to check it out:



Take-away - Life is short. Make everything a little bit special. (Picture top - cake with a bit of fresh fruit brings it to another level.)
Other posts you might enjoy:

Pictures by me.
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Monday, December 31, 2018

Musings - December 2018

Here's the round up of the December. And I wish you a lovely turn of the year!
Books: There were several business trips but somehow I got a bit of reading in. (Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia.) 
- The Art of Social Media: Power Tips by Power Users by Guy Kawasaski and Peg Fitzgerald   - which held up pretty well to the current social media landscape but was obviously made to be a digital book as it had constant references to links that don't work off paper.
- Crimson Death by Laurell Hamilton which was about 300 pages too long. (It doubles as arm weights.) She really really needs an editor to help her get to the point. Less than 200 pages of it were in the location which was the point of the book.
- Your First 100: How to Get Your First 100 Repeat Customers by Meera Kothand was a quick digital read. (Go Kindle Unlimited!)

Gratitude: Travel. Communication. Gorgeous scented candles. The 4 non-whiny children. Pictionary. Time off. Perspective. Creating pretty things. 

Listening: Holiday music via Pandora. All the podcasts. Dave Ramsey podcasts. Christy Wright's Business Boutique podcast. Susan Hyatt's Rich Coaches podcast.
Perfume:  I've been wearing the Carolina Herrerra body cream and Les Perfumes de Rosine Majalis while traveling. I love the cinnamon rose/honey scent of it. Most weekdays continue to be Dirtyque's Ofresia, which I have decided is entirely too light for winter. I may finish out the Majalis and then come back to it. 

Recipes: We made a ton of things for Thanksgiving! So, for Christmas, I bought food. Seriously. Local restaurant had a holiday catering menu. Since we were just back from Philadelphia and I was tired from the trip/driving, it was the perfect solution! I highly recommend delegating things that could stress you out of the season, and for me, this was one.

 Alright, full disclosure, I did make the Freezer Cobbler for dessert! This continues to be a big hit in our household - even beating out the fancy chocolate eclair pie that came with our Christmas dinner.


Self-Care: The soap love continues. Seriously, Cellar Door Bath Supply is just phenonmenal. I ordered them for small gifts (a clean start in 2019) for an event I hosted. AND... one of my friends gave me soap from a new area soap place!

I continued to try face oils on a schedule. Yes, specific oils for evening and morning. Every day. And... I'm pleased to announce that we have achieved a change! Someone I've known professionally for several years thought I was a full 10 years younger than I am. Go oils!

 Here's the day and night routine:
- Day -I'm sampling Juice Beauty's Stem Cellular  Anti-Wrinkle Booster Serum around the eyes. And I've gone back to being totally Juice Beuaty for the day. Serum, oil, eye cream, CC cream. While I like to experiment - that pretty much is my standard and it serves me very well. 
- Night - I've kept using  the layer of Predire Eye Care Ant-Aging Night Serum. (And NO, I did not pay retail for it! I picked it up for about 1/10th that price on a Vegas business trip last fall.) I'm still using Little Barn Apothecary oil  plus 100% Pure Multi-Vitamin serum. It's very active but not super moisturizing, so the night oil helps with that.

And... I've been trying out different bone-colored shadows and highlighters for the last 8 or 9 months trying to figure out what I like best in combination of what I have and wear regularly and in different seasons The trio included: a swipe shadow (technically a 5-in-1 BB Advanced Performance Cream Eyeshadow) from Bare Minerals and a powder shadow (Soul) from Bare Minerals as well as an Ilia illuminator called Moombeams and Polka Dots. The last two are my favorites for looking close to natural and still giving a little gleam. I am absolutely sold on the Ilia Beauty highlighter. It's amazing!
Things 12 said: We pass a place with animal statues on the way to Petsmart. (Yes, that's it.) We often joke about the statues we'd like to put in yard to challenge the dog's sense of rightness with the world. It has cows. She said she'd like to put them in our yard to ride. 

 When 18 and I tried to point out the cows are stationary since they are statues, she mentioned a tornado would allow her to ride the statue cows. And then she said she'd like to move to Florida so with the hurricanes the possiblity of her riding them happens more often. We (18 and I) saluted her intrepid rodeo spirit.


Watching: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel which is awesome but quite reminiscent of Amy Sheridan-Palladin's Gilmore Girls. (Plucky, pretty, blue-eyed heroine who comes from money and everyone's mysteriously amazed by her. Seriously make Lorelai a Jewish girl form the 1950's NYC and yes.) The Magicians is back and was a great holiday binge. Also, Travelers is back with Season 3! I'd thought it cancelled, so that was happy. 

 Holiday flash - We did a mini-movie marathon of the Pirates of the Caribbean. 


Random: 1) Guy and I know how to do a date day! (Envy us.) December the 22nd, we toured a closed factory to look for salvagable parts for his business, had a perfectly lovely lunch at The Belgian Cafe, then did a historical tour of an abandoned penitentary, and then to a science/history museum with dinner at a pub. Top that!
2) They might all be crazy. You may be the sane one. Or they might all be stuck in an old pattern that you are part of. You leaving may be the only way to change that. And, in the end, people who don't value you aren't your family anyway.


Take-away - Take a moment. Think about what brought you joy in 2018. Something that you can do more of. Make a plan, right now, on how to do that. Because, in the end, you are responsible for your joy.



Original musings posts you may enjoy:


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!
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Sunday, December 2, 2018

Musings - November 2018

Hello! November is always my favorite month with Thanksgiving near the end. I hope yours was good!

 Ours was fantastic. I made all the things (pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, yeast rolls, corn muffins, yellow cake with blueberries and a lemon glaze, corn casserole, vegetarian dressing aka stuffing)! And then 12 made her famous deviled eggs and pigs-in-a-blanket. Guy took care of the roasted potatoes, ham, and turkey plus made something called "spicy tomato fritters". We also put out a bag salad which was fairly well-received- mostly because I felt like we needed more food without butter and bread as the main components.

 Books: It was a fantastic month for reading! I finished 10 books over the month, thanks to the holiday and catching "plague":

- The Colony by John Tayman   - this was the book I picked up from the Puerto Rican book exchange at the hotel last month. It was dense reading, as many good non-fiction books are! It was filled with personal accounts of the leper colony on Hawaii.
- The Divine Secrets of the YA-YA Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells  - which I'm late the party on and have never seen the movie. It was a very enjoyable read from my local Little Free Library and made me want to hunt down the other 2 books! (Which are sadly not on Kindle Unlimited.)
- Lynchpin by Shannon Mayer via my Kindle Unlimited which was not super exciting or illuminating but I'm a finisher.
- While I had plague, I ran through the whole Blood singer series by CT Adams after finding Book 5 at the local Little Free Library the week before. Thanks to the awesome digital option - I was able to download the others to my Kindle for instant gratification. (Blood Song, Siren Song, Demon Song, The Isis Collar, The Eldritch Conspiracy, To Dance with The Devil, and All Your Wishes.) 

With these books, I've clocked in 54 books for the year! And there is a month - with business travel and a week off - of the year to go! One of my friends suggested counting how much I read a year to see if I read one book per week, a common goal; I'd never done that before and my reading tends to ebb and flow as I have time. These results are surprising to me. If asked, I'd have said I didn't have time to read that much! 

Gratitude: Time with family and friends. New ventures. Guy's ingenuity. Family adventures. Remembering self-care. 

Listening: All the podcasts. Dave Ramsey podcasts. Chalene Johnson's podcast. Bacon Marketing podcast (yes, by the guy from last month's book.). Christy Wright's Business Boutique podcast. Susan Hyatt's Rich Coaches podcast. Hirsh Marketing (which I ended up unsbscribing to due to lack of meaningful content).

Perfume:  Diptyque's Ofresia. It's  reminiscent of a garden but I'm not sure I like it for "winter" . And I've been using that Carolina Herrara lotion, Good Girl, for quick days. (I'm so stuffed up I can't smell. So, I've been careful about using fragrance sparingly.)

Recipes: We made a ton of things for Thanksgiving! (See above for the list - here's a quick shot of the stove the day of as I baked.) I didn't create anything new but we tried vegetarian stuffing (dressing but not in the bird) and yeast rolls - those were new and well received.

Earlier in the month, we made Day of the Dead bread due to 13's interest in his Spanish class. I had not worked with yeast in a while. He did not realize how patient he would have to be. It was good exercise for him. (And why we had yeast rolls for Thanksgiving - I had left-over yeast packets to use up.)

 And I made up "bottom of the refrigerator salad": shredded broccoli stem, cut up raw brussel sprouts, shredded carrots. Topped with chickpea crumbles, red pepper and tomato. Dressing: orange juice, ranch dressing and a bit of horseradish. Super nutritous and filling!


Self-Care: Last month I mentioned my slight soap obsession (hello, Villainess Soaps). Well, I opened up the full sizes with Pearl Diver in September and Krakatoa in October. This month I popped over to a different brand, Michigan-based, Cellar Door Bath Supply Company. Let's start with awesome ingedients, beautifully packaged, and the hands-down BEST confirmation email I've ever seen. (I loved them so much - and they are such a great price point - I gave a number of them away as gifts.) 


And this month I finished out my favorite  (sale) mask and the Lumene cream while I continued to try face oils on a schedule. Yes, specific oils for evening and morning. Every day. It's a continuation of last month with just a few additions and a switch out. For the month. I grouped them in the top photo by day and night:
- Day -I'm sampling Juice Beauty's Stem Cellular  Anti-Wrinkle Booster Serum around the eyes. And I've gone back to being totally Juice Beuaty for the day. Serum, oil, eye cream, CC cream. While I like to experiment - that pretty much is my standard and it serves me very well. 
- Night -Same as last month until I ran out of  Lumene Vitamin C night cream mid-month. I've kept using  thelayer of Predire Eye Care Ant-Aging Night Serum. (And NO, I did not pay retail for it! I picked it up for about 1/10th that price on a Vegas business trip last fall.) And I'm still using Little Barn Apothecary oil. The  substitution is the 100% Pure Multi-Vitamin serum. It's very active but not super moisturizing, so the night oil helps with that.

And I'm loving Kismet's Country Roads lipstick for color!


Things 12 said: Well she didn't say much funny because she was sick for a bit - but she kindly passed it on! And it took me O-U-T for better than a week. 


Watching: 007 is back on Hulu. (Hello.) And I hadn't caught up with this year's Criminal Minds. But now I have! I also found the perfect "plague" binge - Schitt's Creek is light and funny. I'm 2 seasons in!

Random: 12 and I were supposed to go to a glass class but she had basketball (she's trying out for 7th grade basketball, even though she's only in 6th grade) so, I took 13 to the glass class. After he got over being the only male in the class, we had fun. We made some awesome ornaments!

Take-away - Let it go. Because whatever happened, it wasn't about you. It was about them. When you hold it, you allow them to anchor you down. (See post from my book on the left.) 



Original musings posts you may enjoy:


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!
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