Life Lately : November
So a bit last minute, I decided I wanted to partake in Blogmas. I’m definitely unprepared for this but I’m gonna do my best! If there are any post suggestions/topics you want me to write about, please let me know in the comments! To kick off #blogmas, I thought I’d do a life lately post as I haven’t done one in a while. Life lately posts are some of my favorite ones to read so I thought maybe I should start giving them a go more often. I used to do the monthly favorites posts but they did get a bit overwhelming after a while. I’m definitely a creature of habit and slowly introduce new products into my routines (both skincare and makeup). It was a bit stressful trying to find new favorites each month and I didn’t want to keep repeating the same items over and over. So instead, I thought that chatting about some of my favorite things that happened during the month, new discoveries, and my favorite things around the internet would be fun (a la Like Neon Love style!).
Honestly I cannot believe that we are now in December. This entire year has completely flown by and I can’t believe a new year is almost upon us. Back in October, T and I went to New York for a week and a half. I’m still working on my post(s) for NY but it’s just been go-go-go since we got back. Following NY, we had one weekend to play catch-up, which included tidying up our apartment and running errand on errand. This also included Halloween weekend so we dressed up Ollie as a Porg (from Star Wars) and ended up borrowing a Storm Trooper onesie from my friend. The following weekend, the first of November, we had a jam packed weekend. On Friday night we celebrated our friend’s birthday and hosted friends over at our apartment. On Saturday night we went to T’s work holiday party in San Francisco at The Exploratorium ! And then on Sunday night we hosted my high school friends for an early Friendsgiving. Safe to say we’ve been on recovery mode since then.
My mom’s side of the family usually has Thanksgiving together but this year those plans fell through. T’s family isn’t as picky on what day we do celebrate and typically we just aim for sometime throughout the weekend. Since plans with my family fell through, T ended up volunteering our apartment for Thanksgiving and we invited over his whole family along with my parents. It was a bit nerve-wrecking for us and we were mostly concerned about our parents having anything to talk about together. It ended up fine and we didn’t have too many issues with food. Our turkey did come out a bit salty (whoops) but oh well - you live and you learn! Growing up Thanksgiving was probably my favorite holiday. But I think as I get older and actually prep the food, I don’t find that I enjoy it as much as I used to. In general, I find that cooking food makes me enjoy it less. *shrugs* T is lucky enough to get the entire week off for Thanksgiving at work and I’m thinking that next year I may want to sneak off to Europe since I saw SO many friends there this year and all the Christmas markets started opening and it’s always been on my list of things to see.
With Thanksgiving came a wave of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. This year I felt a bit numb to all the sales as I feel things have gotten blown way out of proportion. Black Friday sales were starting as early as Monday of Thanksgiving week, with Cyber Monday sales being extended into the following week - coined as Cyber Week. Over the last year I have become a lot more conscientious of the amount of waste I produce and have been on a huge track of change towards conscious consumption. Enough so that I’ve decided to start a mini series here on my journey towards a lifestyle as a more conscious consumer. While I wasn’t a huge participant or promoter for Black Friday this year, it still did not stop me from picking up some essentials that had been on my list. I finally picked up an AllSaints jacket this year after quite a few years (and Black Fridays) of eyeing it and mming/ahhing. At the beginning of this year when I started seeing a somewhat steady flow of income from blogging, I decided that when Black Friday came around I would finally treat myself to this jacket. I stuck with that plan and am so happy to have my new leather jacket in my collection. I also picked up some Mejuri pieces since their jewelry never goes on sale and I had been eyeing up and down a few pieces for quite. some. time. A few of my pieces got backordered but I’ll be sharing a little haul and overview of my jewelry collection once those last pieces come in.
T and I also used Black Friday as an opportunity to pick up some home bits that have been on our to-do list for over a year now. We picked up some new furniture/accessories for our bedroom along with some new bath mats and rugs. All essentials and things we’ve been needing, but haven’t took the plunge to buy until now. Why pay full price when you can get it on sale? That’s what I always say anyways! We’ve been sleeping on a full-sized bed with Ollie and let’s just say that it. is. rough. There’s little space for us and Ollie likes to sleep like the bar in ‘H’ and kick both of us off the edges. We ordered king-sized everything and we are so ready to have more space to ourselves and finally have our bedroom finished. I’ve gotten a few requests to do some home tours during Blogmas so you can expect to see some before/after snippets of our bedroom in this space soon.
Now that Thanksgiving is out of the way, I’m ramping up for Christmas! I’ve already heard radio stations playing Christmas tunes and I just feel more excited than I have in recent years. Since we were in NY for a chunk of October, we missed out on going to the pumpkin patch with Ollie (throwback to last year here). We’re very fortunate to have a bigger apartment this year than last, so we’re going to use this to our advantage and get ourselves a big(ger) Christmas tree than we did last year! Hopefully it won’t be raining too much this weekend and we can make our way to a Christmas tree lot and pick up a fresh tree. Growing up our family always had a fake tree (you know, the ones you can pack away at the end of the year). But T and I picked up a mini fresh one last year and I loved how nice and fresh it smelled! Our office building just put one up on Friday and the whole building is already smelling fresh and festive!
Onto my favorites for the month:
SHOWS:
Riverdale :: I binged through Season 2 on Netflix and caught up with the current season. I still think that the entire show is ridiculous because teenagers are running rampant like young adults. Reminds me of Gossip Girl but with a darker twist.
Sabrina :: I had started this back in October and watched half of the first episode. I ended up spending an entire day during Thanksgiving weekend cleaning up my room/office and binging this show. I basically finished it in a day and only left one episode for the next day since I didn’t want to stay up past 1AM (lol - such a grandma).
Once Upon a Time :: Now that OUAT is done, I thought it was time to binge through and finish the series. I actually prefer doing this because it’s nice to watch it all and be done with it, and not have to watch from week to week. I always thought this show was fun in the way that they incorporated all off the characters from different movies, although some of them are quite strange.
TUNES:
Some artists I’ve been listening to on repeat while doing work/driving would be Khalid, Alina Baraz, Billie Eilish, and Ella Mai.
A guilty pleasure song I’ve been obsessed with since it came out is Ariana Grande’s Thank U, Next. I’ve never been a huge Ari fan, but recently I’ve found myself enjoying a lot more of her songs. This happened with Bieber’s last album too so maybe times are a changin’.
INTERNET People
That Grace Girl recently got a site-lift and it looks even better (if that’s possible). Grace has been one of my favorite content creators out there and it still holds true today. She’s a beauty editor Beauty Bay so she knows her way around the beautysphere and the many products there are out there. I love her writing style and I think if you read her posts, you’d see what I mean quickly.
Sunbeamsjess is done with her Master’s and is coming with all that #content. She is probably my ultimate girl crush and I love her edgy style - even if it’s something I’d probably never be able to pull off. She’s on YouTube but recently started a blog. She is a huge book-head and has a huge book collection! I love that her content is very insightful. She is extremely well styled (with a closet room to die for and well read.
@Cynthialions :: I hope when I’m a young mom that I can be as chic as Cynthia (who also goes by Cindy sometimes) ! She has the cutest home with interiors that I dream about. Her feed is effortlessly cohesive and she makes everything look so so good. She’s pregnant with baby #2 and she’s one of the few bloggers I follow that is a parent and has a good balance of lifestyle + parenting.
@kara_bino Sarah has a feed that I could only dream of. I’m trying to incorporate more lifestyle/travel/beauty shots Sarah does it so well. I’ve been following a few food bloggers lately and I have started dreaming of the day when I’ll have a kitchen and an actual dining room. T and I have been cooking a lot more and I used to be an avid Yelper/food photographer and I want to try and incorporate more cooking/recipe shots.
@dearsaturdays I randomly came across Christine’s account and completely became obsessed with her aesthetic. Everything about her content is so whimsical and carefree and she makes me want to experiment with cooking and fall in love with all the preparation. She was living in Brooklyn but just recently moved to Paris - which is my absolute dream ! One recipe I have bookmarked to make is the Black Sesame Banana Mochi Scones - it looks so so good !
That’s it for now! Hopefully I’ll be able to take a crack at this whole Blogmas thing. I’m definitely excited for Vlogmas and it’ll be nice to have them on in the background while I’m shooting photos and writing up posts! Send me the links to all your favorite Vlogmas accounts!