2020--The Best in Life from Home
What a year, right?? It definitely was historic, and was not really lacking much of anything—I mean we even had murder hornets. I don’t even really know what those are or whatever happened to them but any year has a new murderous type of insect is an historic year in my book. I think it would be easy to roll into 2021 without a glance over our shoulder because for the most part this is a year we’d like to pretend never happened. Yet if we do that, I think we might miss some of the good stuff. Because there WAS good. There were incredible acts of creativity, bravery, community and love we saw this year, and those are the things I don’t want to forget. It’s that time of year when “best of” lists are everywhere. I realize they may feel cliche, but I have always been a sucker for a good year-end list (or two or four…) and because I have some things I don’t want to forget from this year I’m making my own. And I’d love to hear from you all your responses to these categories too! This particular list is a list of favorites in the “life at home” category and tomorrow I’ll publish a list of the best books I read this year so for now, enjoy this random list of the things that brought me so much joy in this very strange year.
The Best in Creativity
Ya’ll this was the thing that saved me this year. Over and over again I would go searching for the creative stuff, the funny memes, the tear jerking videos of nurses and doctors dancing their stress out. When the world shut down one of the gifts I think it gave everyone was the gift of time. That wasn’t always welcome, but my goodness some incredibly creative and talented people used their gifts and all this free time to bring joy to the rest of us. Jimmy Fallon broadcasting from home with his wife and daughters as his only real crew, the videos YouTuber Julie Nolke made explaining the pandemic to her past self were hilarious (part 1 was my favorite, the others weren’t quite as funny). The Holderness family wrote a parody of Hamilton songs about the pandemic that was absolutely fantastic and another one about If Broadway Songs were about Quarantine that I loved. John Krasinski won the year in my mind with the series Some Good News that was absolutely phenomenal and if you for some reason haven’t watched you still can and each episode is worth it. The joy he brought to so many was truly a gift this past spring. And finally there were the memes. I was amazed at the humor, the creativity, and how often I went to google just to find the best latest memes. They brought so much levity to situations that were not at all humorous and I think the memes will be something people will study someday as a cultural commentary of this year. These were some of my favorites.
And then came the election. And the endless ballot counting that led to more amazing memes.
THE BEST IN WATCHING
Probably the thing we watched the most this year in our house was the wonder that is Hamilton on Disney+. Lin Manuel Miranda and the Disney execs gave all of us an absolute gift by allowing us to stream it and I will be forever grateful. It gave my kids and I so many memories, from the hours we spent listening to the music, to Aidan’s Halloween costume of King George, and when I think about 2020, Hamilton will be at the top of the list. Theoretically it’s still coming to Jacksonville in September of 2021, and the tickets we had from March when everything was cancelled are supposedly still ours, so we will still be going (and getting 2 more tickets to take the kids since they’re so obsessed) but until then I’m so grateful to have it on my screen.
My other favorite show this year was a show called Younger that I watched on Hulu. It follows the story of Liza Miller, a 40 year old woman who pretends to be in her 20s to get a job. It works and then she has to live her life as a 20 something and hijinx ensue. I thought it was sweet, funny and a delightful find this spring.
Chuck and I are still working our way through The Crown, which is maybe one of my favorite shows ever, but I don’t want to speed through it because I don’t want it to be over since another season isn’t coming for 2 years thanks to Covid. The other thing we both really enjoyed this year were biography documentaries. We actually watched several that we really enjoyed—The Last Dance about Michael Jordan, the Netflix documentary Cheer, The Road I’m On (a documentary about Garth Brooks), Here I Am (a Dolly Parton documentary on Netflix) and a really fascinating one on the Challenger disaster. We sometimes struggle to find shows we both like but we definitely both enjoy learning so documentaries are a great option!
I don’t know about anyone else, but this year I also found myself without a lot of energy for new things, new shows and new characters. I found a lot of enjoyment in rewatching the familiar. I went through all the seasons of the drama Brothers and Sisters, which I loved when it was on live TV years ago and found I loved it all over again this year. I also rewatched the first few seasons of The West Wing which is always one of my very favorite comfort shows. I can watch episodes of The West Wing much like many people watch The Office. The characters, the dialogue and the subtle humor are my absolute favorite.
We didn’t watch too many movies this year, but we did see Knives Out back in the winter in the theaters and loved it, and the kids and I loved Onward, which was our last outing before everything shut down last March. At home we watched a few that were excellent, my favorites being the new Little Women, RBG, and The Peanut Butter Falcon.
The Best in Fun from Home
Since we had a LOT of time at home, especially in the spring figuring out how to spend time and find some new hobbies was key. Not too long into our time at home I pulled out some puzzles and was shocked at how much I enjoyed them. I’ve never ever been a puzzle person but when things were so up in the air and life was changing so rapidly I found I just could not read. I know, me, the girl who likes to read a book a week could not for the life of me concentrate on a book. But I was craving something to do with my time as we watched TV in the evenings or as I waited for dinner to cook. I started doing puzzles and they were such a gift! I was doing so many puzzles initially it was the catalyst for my husband to actually build us a new dining room table (well that plus the kids needing to do school from home). So our dining room table is our souvenir for this year of Covid-ing and I’m super grateful for it!
This fall I swapped puzzles for Diamond Art, which is like a paint by number but less messy. My mom brought me one this fall and I became hooked, I’m now working on my second one which is large and is going to take forever, but it’s become my favorite way to unwind in the evenings while listening to a podcast or watching a show.
The Best From My Kitchen
Like everyone else I did a TON of cooking and time in my kitchen this year. We did take out after our first 6 weeks or so of our time at home, but before then it was all me. The biggest things I’ll remember this year when i think about what I cooked was that this was the year I finally mastered homemade pizza. I don’t know what I’d been doing wrong (I think a lot of wrong cooking times/temps) but this year I finally figured out a fantastic homemade pizza recipe and we’ve had it most Friday nights since August and I finally figured out that for my oven I cook them at 475 for 7.5 minutes on each rack (so 15 minutes total but I swap the sheet pans halfway through the cooking time and they turn out perfectly. It took a LOT of trial and error to figure this out!). I make a batch of sauce about once a month and freeze it in smaller mason jars, which usually lasts about 4 Friday nights and we do a lot of ham and pineapple or pepperoni and veggies and we all enjoy it. I love that this was the first year we finally made Friday pizza a tradition.
The other couple things I found myself loving this year that was different was my produce box I got regularly this spring and summer from our Local Fare company. They put together produce from local farms each week and deliver it to the door as often as I signed up for with a loaf of fresh baked bread from a local bakery. It was such a fun treat this past spring to find new ways to use what they brought while in our stay at home season. They almost always brought tomatoes and some type of lettuce, along with the fresh bread so BLT’s became a staple in our meal rotation. It wasn’t something I’d ever made before (I know, what is wrong with me!?) but they are Asher’s favorite now. We started doing Salmon Sundays weekly which all 4 of us love and we began making Kendra Adache’s (The Lazy Genius)’s Change Your Life Chicken. If you’ve never made this, it truly might change your life, the chicken and the veggies turn out absolutely perfect and everyone will eat this. (Also, it’s a one pan meal, and you cook the sheet pan for a full hour, which means you prep it, stick it in the oven and have a whole hour to drink a glass of wine, work on a puzzle or read while dinner cooks!)
The Best in Listening
I’ve never been more thankful for the gift of my wireless earbuds and my Alexa than I have been this year! Our Alexa helped me every single day setting the tone for our day or evening, entertaining us with the Hamilton soundtrack or playing worship music. As I cooked dinner every night this summer I found myself saying “Alexa, play Penny and Sparrow” and the mellow chords of their guitars would begin to play. When we were doing virtual schooling I would ask her to play classical which set such a great tone for their work time. When the kids went back to school I would ask her at least once a week to shuffle my “For the Love of Broadway” playlist and would belt out tunes from Wicked, Dear Evan Hansen, Evita and Les Mis as I cleaned. Music was essential this year, it helped me settle when I was feeling anxious, it helped us change grumpy attitudes when I would play silly songs like “What Does the Fox Say” or the Trolls World Tour soundtrack. I was so so grateful to have music available at the command of a voice (side note, our amazon music subscription was maybe some of the best money I spent this year!)
Podcasts were my other grounding thing of the year, especially the gals from Pantsuit Politics and the crew at the Popcast Media Group and the Bible Binge. Beth and Sarah from Pantsuit Politics feel like they held my hand and walked me through this year—especially this fall with the election. I love their intelligence, their level-headedness and their nuance when situations are so complicated. Erin Moon’s work on the Bible Binge and her spin off monthly podcast Faith Adjacent is phenomenal and I cannot recommend following her enough.
It’s been a full year—so many emotions and mental exhaustion. There have been changes for everyone, along with uncertainty and conflict as everyone around us makes different decisions and choices for their families. I have been writing in my journal a lot about how this year changed me, what will be different in how I view things and what I think about all the things that have been happening. A lot has happened that has been painful but my hope is that as we look back someday on this year we don’t only remember the hard, the masks, the restrictions and the fear. My hope is that we also remember the zoom calls with cousins we haven’t talked to in far too long, all of us bored at home and with time to connect on our hands. I hope we remember the care packages dropped on our porch by friends and the ways we met in parking lots and on beaches with our lawn chairs 6 feet apart to connect in person. I hope we remember the lack of rushing around and the meals at home without evening commitments as a positive thing. I hope my kids remember the hours and hours I spent on the floor with them sorting every single lego we owned back into their colored bins so we could try and put our sets back together.
Tomorrow I’ll share the best books I read this year, because later in the spring I did finally start reading again and hit my stride over the summer, plowing through books and discovering some fantastic titles I’m excited to share with people. But for today, I’d love to hear from you all! What were the best things you watched, cooked, did, or listened to this year?? What do you hope to remember someday when you think back on 2020?
