Friday Favorites - First Friday in December!

 

Can you believe it???  Just three weeks from today Christmas Weekend will be here!!  And I just realized this will be my last weekend in town until then -- this month is going to FLY.  And no, I have not started decorating yet :/. BUT my shopping and gifting is solidly at 50%.

As always, I'm linking up with Texas bloggers Andrea and Erika for some favorites from the week. Life has pretty much gotten back to "normal" but I'm trying to celebrate/embrace the "normal" -- ha!

Favorite things - my sister and I have decided to do a Foster Family Favorites as our gift exchange this year.  I'm so excited about it -- with all the kiddos being "adults" now it's hard to buy specifically for them all at once (birthdays are still fun!) so we are each going to give one of our favorite things to two people in the group.  I am hoping to make mine but have ordered a back-up just in case.  I miss making my gifts so still try to do as many as I can.  

If you've never done one of these -- a couple of years ago a friend and I who both have February birthdays had a combined get-together where each person brought 5 $10-$15 items (all the same thing) and then we shared *why* it was a favorite - I did Bob Goff's book Everybody Always, which I also gave everyone at Christmas that year too. I considered doing Tyler Merrit's I Take My Coffee Black  but I've talked about it so much I'm hoping that some have already downloaded or bought it for themselves!  My sister and I upped the price tag and lowered the quantity since 2/3 of the kiddies are scraping by in college.  We hope it might become a tradition and that we never loose our annual Christmas get-togethers with our parents and everyone who can make it to Ohio the week before the holiday.

Did many of you get your Spotify lists this week?

Mine was fun to review. . .it says that I listened to almost 7,000 minutes of podcasts!!!  I believe it -- I have my favorites and then others that I also like/listen to.  Here are my top three:

I get so many GREAT ideas from all of these ladies!!!  I bet I did half of my Christmas shopping just based on their recommendations :). Sophie and Melanie do a "Five Favorites" every week and there isn't a week that goes by that I don't at least click on one or two items they mention (it's not always products -- some are songs or shows or YouTube links).  Erika and Shay (one of whom hosts this link up) have great ideas, always.  I first heard of Favorite Things parties from their blogs and they've also done an entire podcast on parties or girlfriends or something.  Sorta Awesome is fairly new-to-me (they do an Awesome of the Week also,

like Sophie and Melanie) and I've recently listened to a couple of podcasts dedicated entirely to products and hacks to "make life easier".  Check any/all of these out if you just want to tune into a couple of ladies talking about "life" :)

This just came on and is a FAVORITE also!!!  I'm so happy to have a Christmas playlist with songs from all artists and songs that are favorites in one place :). What should I add to it?  I start listening the day after Thanksgiving and will be tired of it all by Christmas because this list will be on repeat for the entire season -- yay!!  I also like that Spotify will suggest pieces based on my selections so I get to discover new-to-me tunes too.

My favorite sister had a birthday last weekend :)

(Sorry, Kathy and Kristin, I've known her longer. . .)

Anyway, the above shows what a super aunt she is -- SUPER MOM as well. . .if I went way back you would see this x100 with the oldest Bell child -- for awhile he was all either of us had!  He did go on two hiking trips with her this year. . .it's so.much.fun having adult kids to travel with!!

Anyway, we both became empty nesters this year and began new jobs in this transition - and have another trip together next weekend.  Yay!  I'm so fortunate that she is MY sister.

We've come a long way from that throwback up there in my oh-so-stylish hat :/

Our first Christmas puzzle of the season has been completed:

This one was HARD. . .when I first opened the box I was excited by HOW BIG the pieces were. . .

but also irregular.

So irregular that we couldn't even get the frame done the first OR second time through sorting. . .

This photo was taken just before Thanksgiving. The normal board we do these puzzles on is sitting next to Nancy b/c it was too small -- ha!

I finally made it to this stage this week and then finished.  It is really fun to work on these together or alone -- it's also when I listen to some of those 7000 minutes of podcasts :)

Highly recommend -- Hobby Lobby had Christmas puzzles 60% off a few weeks ago and I snagged several so we'll get another (hopefully smaller) one out this weekend I hope.  Those big pieces were really great though.

And this will be "it" for this week because, like I said, I like to make many of my gifts and the following is almost done.  For some reason the Christmas layout is in February and the December spread would be better for the month of February so I've got to re-do those two pages, add two more birthdays and get these guys ordered!! 

Shutterfly suggested the following layout and before I deleted it I took a quick screenshot because I loved it so much :) Perfection would be the other two most important girls in my life (and maybe my two boys too) -- just interesting how accurate AI (artificial intelligence, Mom, since you don't like acronyms) is in giving suggestions to personalized products we should buy.

Here's to a productive weekend!!!  I hope all who are reading are finding joy in this season -- slowing down enough to soak it all in.  

Love,

Jenni