Any affiliate links are marked with an asterisk. ♡
August coffee date… or more like Summer Recap Coffee Date.
I think I skipped July? And is it even August anymore? When does summer officially end? I don’t even know. Cabins and beaches and evening walks and staying up too late watching dumb TV and ordering appetizers and drinks on a restaurant patio instead of properly making dinner… it’s all sort of running together.
It’s been such a good summer. The sun, the long days, the warmth… all of it is life-giving for me.
Today I’m drinking an iced jasmine green milk tea with boba – but other favorite summer drinks have included iced decaf lattes, big bottles of Pellegrino, those juicy little sparkling Izze’s, and straight up LEMONADE. My weakness.
What have you been drinking? More importantly, what have you been DOING because, like, wow. Summer is closing up shop and three months have gone by in the blink of an eye and what’s your season been like and are you a summer lover like me?
Okay, I’ll start.
Vacationing With Babies
We took two vacations with Solvi-Lu-Who this summer.
Vacations might be an ambitious term, but they each involved about 3-4 hours of driving, and 2-3 nights of sleeping in an unfamiliar place. That counts as a vacation, right?
This poor girl. We have not taken her anywhere outside of the immediate vicinity since day one. Before she was born, I thought maybe I’d be chill about traveling with a baby. Spoiler: I am the opposite of chill. I’m the type of person that gets freaked out if we are more than one mile away from the nearest hospital or if there is even a slight chance of a meltdown that would interfere with our schedules, feeding, leisure time, or above all else – naps.
But even with a poorly timed teething situation, and a cabin in the woods very far away from a hospital, a car meltdown, and several skipped naps, we survived! And we had fun. ♡
Special shout out to this super easy-to-use travel crib*, these travel blackout blinds*, and the little grassy area next to the McDonald’s off the highway where we spent some special family moments changing diapers and eating string cheese.
Have you taken any summer trips? Do you travel with kids? What works for you?
This Is What The Office Looks Like
So Pinteresty!
Okay, actually, the truth is that we’ve set up some makeshift workstations to hold us over until the real furniture arrives, and we are thisclose (did I say that last time? I think I did) to ordering the stuff for each of the offices.
I am super hopeful that I will have more to report back next month, including the progress of the kitchen design! whee!
This Was Very Back-To-School Of Me
After eating brats and chips and Taco John’s potato oles and puppy chow for two weeks straight, I came home and immediately went to work in the kitchen.
I prepped:
- Baked Tofu
- Roasted Broccoli
- Peanut Sauce
- Rice
- Spicy Chicken
- Beans
- Zucchini Muffins
And it felt amazing. My End of Summer Self can’t be bothered, but my Back To School self is here for this kind of thing. A chill in the air, a light sweatshirt, windows open… girl I am all over this.
Which reminds me of two things.
- If you like EASY and HEALTHY as in FREEZER MEALS, you need to look at this post. It is a huge resource of all our best recipes that work amazingly well when pre-assembled and frozen. They are all no-cook, meaning you don’t have to cook anything to prep them, and they all transfer FROM FROZEN to the Instant Pot. Like, no thawing. We compiled them all in a free printable for you so you can just mix and match the ones you want.
- How do you do meal prep? Do you have a good system? Do you have struggles? Even though I want all of us to eat dinner together, I find it so hard to get dinner on the table now that we have Solvi bombing around all over the house. I’d love to create more resources for myself (and for you!) around this idea of meal prep and easy dinners, but would be so interested to hear from you in terms of what you think would be helpful.
Now I’m An Adult Who Can Do My Hair
Okay, the ads finally got to me.
I bought a Tyme iron.
I have never really curled or styled my hair before for two reasons:
- My hair is thick so it would take me – not joking – 45 minutes to curl my hair with a regular curling iron.
- My hair is also the kind of hair that falls flat 1-2 hours after curling. Complete and utter waste of time. Nope.
However, my hair has always responded really well to a straightener, so I decided to give the Tyme a try. It’s like a straightener / curling wand combo, and guess what? I can do it in ten minutes, and IT HOLDS THE CURL.
I could not only wear these curls all day, but go to bed and sleep and wake up and shake out my hair and wear them for a SECOND day! (I mean, they don’t look suuper awesome, but still! The curl is there!)
This is a game changer for me. Honestly I’ve always just felt a little lost with styling my hair, like all the things that worked for other people just didn’t work for my hair so I’ve always defaulted to straight hair. ut this has given me so much confidence in doing my hair curly and fancy and having it actually last.
You can find the iron on Amazon* or on their website. It has pretty mixed reviews online, which, honestly, is really surprising to me. I’m a vote in favor!
Now I’m An Adult Who Can Do My Hair… And Eat Puppy Chow
Crunchy, cold, salty, sweet, peanut buttery and chocolatey… oooooh baby.
You still have time to make this. Summer’s not over yet.
Very Fancy Recipe: Melt 1/2 cup peanut butter, 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup chocolate chips. Mix with 6 cups Rice Chex. Toss in a big paper bag with 1 1/4 cups powdered sugar. FREEZE (essential!) and enjoy. You are a true Midwesterner now!
Thank you to my friend Angela who made this, and my friend Angela’s mom Linda who provided the recipe of our dreams.
Words From Sage
With drool and a piece of grass hanging off her lip, Sage wants you to know that you are beautiful. Look at you! A human soul that can love and learn and give and heal and stretch and bend and forgive and grow.
You are spectacular. She’s proud of you.
We love you guys (we being me and Sage, since currently we’re the two ding-dongs staying up late to write this post) and we’re excited to hear how your summer has been.
xoxo