November Favorites

Hi! It’s been a little while, hasn’t it? I just got back from two weeks in Peru. The visit was full of new places and lots of family time, which was fantastic. I’ll definitely post a few pictures and details from my trip next week. As a routine-lover and homebody, I am happy to be back though.

Since we left before Thanksgiving, I am feeling a little anxious about being “behind” on Christmas preparations. Normally, we use the Thanksgiving weekend or the weekend after to decorate the tree, do cards, etc. There are only about 2 1/2 weeks before Christmas now. I think I need to put some thought around dropping some things this year, or going full force and trying to catch up. I’m leaning towards simplifying for the sake of enjoying the next couple of weeks instead of stressing. I’ll fill you in next month to see if I was able to do it 🙂

Now on to my favorite things from November…

Have you heard of the One Room Challenge? I am a big fan of this online room makeover series that is now on it’s tenth season. The way it works: bloggers sign up to refresh/makeover a room in 6 weeks. Every week leading up to the reveal, they post on their process and progress. At the end of the 6 weeks, all of the participants post a reveal. I love seeing all the final results. To make a drastic transformation to a room in 6 weeks is hard work! This year’s One Room Challenge reveals happened in early November. There were so many good ones, but my two personal favorites were the ones by Driven by Decor and Coco Kelly. Aren’t their new rooms beautiful??

I absolutely love and highly recommend THESE Athleta pants. Especially for travel. I got a pair in black and a pair in green for our trip to California last summer where I got quite a bit of use out of them. I brought them back out for my trip to Peru and again, I was so happy I had them. They are extremely lightweight and are stretchy. So it feels like you are not wearing anything. These pants are the most comfortable thing you can wear and still look a little more put together than wearing yoga pants.

Before we left for Peru, I picked up Mindy Kaling’s most recent book, “Why Not Me?”. I remembered enjoying her first book, “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns” . “Why Not Me?” did not disappoint. It is light, funny and entertaining. I finished it by the time we arrived. Weirdly, I have never even seen an episode of “The Office” or “The Mindy Project”. I know very little about her – but I really love her writing style and the personality that shines through in her books. If you are going to be traveling during the holidays or will have some downtime, pick up one her books. You will definitely be smiling and chuckling all the way through.

Something else we did in November: we finally ordered a couch for our living room! It was something we have been needing for a few months since I sold our other chairs. Our plan was to find a camel leather couch for the space. After months of searching, we had it narrowed down to THIS one and THIS one. To decide on the right one, I Photoshopped them into the empty space in our living room and realized…I didn’t like how the leather looked in the space! It sort of muddied and darkened the space. Just for kicks I then Photoshopped THIS one which you can see is not leather but it looked really good. So, we veered from the plan and went ahead and ordered it. Article is a newish online furniture company that is getting lot of great buzz. Plus, they offer a 30-day no questions asked return policy just in case. Fingers crossed we don’t need to return it.

So those are some of my November favorites. What have you been into lately? Do you have any go-to gifts you are giving? Please share because I need ideas!

Posted by Ale & filed under Learning. This post has 2 comments.