5 Favorites

Hi y'all! I was slightly star struck when sweet Hallie asked me to host everybody's favorite mid-week quintuple roundup, but I quickly dusted off my casual-yet-engaged-nonchalance email response tone and said, "sure, I'd love to." Or something like that.

So welcome, Moxie readers! Link up your linear goodness below, and then go forth and celebrate the killer feast day lineup the rest of this week has to offer. My kids will be pounding the pavement Thursday night as a cousin-cast-off, hand-me-down duck and Superman in pajamas, respectively.

Dry run at the office today, complete with chocolate pre-gaming. 

I'm sorely tempted to craft my 8 month pregnant belly into some kind of regrettable costume statement too, but I suspect "haggard pregnant mother walks suburban streets in freezing temps" will have to suffice.

Without further ado, the favorites:

1. 
These curtains. 

I found them new via Goodwill (I go there kind of frequently) for around $10 a piece, and they make our family room shine. I have become more and more convinced of the wisdom of building a room around a single great piece of furniture or a fantastic print, and not the other way around. Whenever I buy something 'just because' and try to bring it home and fit it in somewhere, it inevitably ends up back in the giveaway pile or relegated to the man cave in the basement. Intentional shopping yields rooms that actually look, wait for it, intentionally designed. Mind blown.

2. 

Reading chapter books to my 3 year old. It turns out I don't hate reading aloud to my children, which is a bit of a relief. What I do hate? Most children's books. Imagine my surprise when a well-worn copy of Little House in the Big Woods made its way into Joey's little paws a couple weeks back and he fell immediately in love with the transportive literary power of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

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Tapping trees for 'pancake syrup' = totally awesome to little boy minds 

That's my boy. I mean, she does talk all about slaughtering meat and narrowly avoided panther attacks, so I guess it should come as no surprise that a little boy would find it all fascinating. But still. It's so cool to be reading something that doesn't tempt me to skip every other page. Or word. Shhhh, he'll catch on soon enough.

3. 

This stuff in mah hair. 

On the off chance that I'm showering and blow drying in a single day, I'll most likely be adding a dollop of this to my locks while still damp. It's the only product I use, actually, which isn't saying much considering I'm a paltry thrice weekly washer (don't judge, I've got a one wash per offspring ratio going here) and even more stingy with the hot air. I have fine, fine, fine baby hair, and lots of it, which equals limp and greasy looking with most any product added in. This stuff though? Does the trick without slicking me down. And it smells like environmental responsibility. And marshmallows.

4. 

Speaking of environmental responsibility, it looks like we may have been collectively barking up the wrong tree for a number of years now. Japan, a developed nation with true Zero percent Population Growth (ZPG) is reporting a crisis of "celibacy syndrome" in their under-40 demographic, in which younger Japanese have lost interest in traditional relationships and, in some cases, sex altogether.

"Japanese Celibacy Crisis"
(Oh Google image search, sometimes you get it so right.)

If that isn't a compelling argument against secular sexual ethics, I don't know what is. This piece is simply fascinating.

5. 

The "make a meal/freeze a meal" challenge. No, this is not a real thing, but it has become my personal quest to kill two hungry birds over the next two months and fill both my own freezer and those of my local and newly-delivered mommy friends with ready-to-heat goodness that doesn't start with a C and end in 'hipotle. 

That bag of two frozen pork chops? Totally counting that as a 'meal.'

I've never done much in the way of advance nesting, but maybe it's the estrogen this little lady is pumping into my system because I am all hands on deck this time around. It occurred to me sometime late last month that I could actually combine my one easy charitable activity (making meals for growing or grieving families) with some actual foresight for my own brood, and bam, the make/freeze self challenge was born. So far I've got 3 meals prepped and frozen in my freezer (and three happy families in the Denver metro area who scored some free, homemade goodness), which is three more times than I cooked in the first 3 months postpartum with either of my first two children. I'm thinking our waistlines and our bank account will benefit. 

There you have it folks, all the finest random ramblings that a Wednesday can contain. Thanks for stopping by!

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