Welcome to the latest series on the blog and the third edition of 2018! On Around the Table, you'll find products I'm loving lately, family updates and/or stories (aka adorable pictures of my kiddo), hospitality stories about the times we host guests in our home, what we're eating lately, and more. I'd love to hear what YOU want to hear in this series, so please feel free to comment or reach out on Instagram!
1. Christmas 2017. Before we jump straight into the New Year, I just wanted to make a quick note about this year's Christmas. We were very excited about sharing the Christmas season with our two-year-old since we figured he was probably old enough to understand it a bit more this year. I had grand plans for a daily advent activity, baking bread for all of our neighbors, doing all the Christmas things, but y'all that just did not happen. But that's okay. We did read this book almost every evening, made cinnamon ornaments, baked some Christmas cookies, and say Jingle Bells at least 500 times ;).
2. Polar Express Train. One of the biggest things we did for Christmas was a ride on a Polar Express train! I don't think Greyson was quite old enough to appreciate it yet but he did have a ton of fun on the train itself and did get excited to see Santa walking through the train. We're already looking forward to doing it again next year with a 9/10-month-old - eek!
3. Goals and Resolutions. I've always been SO bad at setting good goals. I usually write "sleep more" and "read more" but very rarely set actionable goals. It's one of the things I'm working on the most for this new year. I bought the PowerSheets workbook and have loved it so far! Any other PowerSheets users?!
4. 1 Second Every Day. I've done this a few times in the past, but never have stuck with it for a whole year. This fun app for your phone lets you select a 1-second clip from videos and compile them into a video for a certain time period. My goal is to do this all year so we have a 3-minute video at the end of the year to look back on. I did this with a handful of videos from December and it was SO fun and nostalgic, even with way fewer clips than I would have after a year.
5. Nesting. I didn't experience this a lot with my first pregnancy, but then again we weren't in our own house at the time. I don't if it's things like Emily Ley's #SimplicityChallenge2018 and everyone wanting to get rid of their pre-Christmas clutter, but I've been wanting to do all the things in the house. We hung some photos from my study abroad to Italy in our bedroom and now I find myself looking at every inch of the house trying to figure out how to get it "ready" before the baby comes!
6. Smart Home. This one is more of my husband's thing, but basically, since we moved into our house, he has been trying to slowly move us towards having a smart home. He got a Google Chromecast for Christmas and a few other smart devices, so soon enough we better have something that brings me my coffee in the morning, too 😉 Does your house have any smart devices?
7. Video. Recipe videos (and video in general) have taken over social media over the last year and I am really wanting to start producing more video recipes for the blog this year. I have a few underway already and a list of ones to work on this year that I am really excited about! Video is something I've done quite a bit now after working with Life Storage for a few years as a contractor, but I've never dedicated enough time to producing video content for my own blog. This year I'm hoping to change that!
8. Maternity Leave. At my doctor's appointment yesterday, I realized that I have two weeks left until this baby boy is 36 weeks along and officially in the clear to come anytime. Now I realize there's a VERY slim chance he will be here that early (nor do we want him to be!) but it definitely has my booty kicked into gear. I have BIG plans for scheduled content while I'm adjusting to being a mama to two and definitely have a lot of work to do before baby #2 comes!
And last but definitely not least, today is my sweet husband's 30th birthday! He's been very ho-hum about this birthday, but I definitely wanted to make sure to mention him on this little blog. Happy birthday sweet husband! I'm so grateful to have you as my partner in life, dada to my babies, and my best friend.
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