Five on Friday

Hi friends! I cannot believe this is the last week of October. This fall has been busy, and even though we’ve been working on Halloween costumes around here, in my mind it still feels like that is weeks away. Which means the holidays are really upon us. I was talking to Chuck today saying that usually by now I’ve started shopping (I typically try to be done with most of the tasks related to Christmas by very early in December so I can relax and enjoy the month) and this year I have ZERO motivation. I told him I’d be perfectly happy to just skip Christmas gifts this year. Not because I don’t love our family (or my own children) but because absolutely no one needs anything and the amount of mental energy it takes to decide on gifts for about 17 people plus our own kids is a lot. I know I’ll rally and if the weather actually cooled off maybe it would convince me it’s time to get going on some of this, but for now I’m still sitting here in denial that we really are approaching the end of the year! So it’s time once again to dive into five random things on my mind these days….happy reading!

**ONE**

Even though I really do have zero motivation to get going on Christmas gifts right now I am actually trying to follow Kendra Adachi’s Lazy Genius principles a bit as I start to think about the next couple months. Her magic question of “what can I do now to make life easier later?” really has been helpful to me in small ways. I did book our family photos and bought our outfits and had those taken in early October. I knew that this would give our photographer the opportunity to edit at her leisure and not feel crunched by time running low and would be a big piece of getting Christmas cards checked off the list. I also knew my folks would be in town that weekend and wanted her to grab some shots of them with my kiddos so I was able to accomplish that as well. (Side note, how adorable is this photo of Asher and his Papa? Asher’s middle name is Vernon after my dad, and I love that she snapped this one).

Other things that are always on my list to try and do in October are buying stamps for Christmas cards (something that takes practically zero effort but still lets me cross something off my to do list!), making a list of everyone to buy for and jotting down any ideas I might have for them, and grabbing gift cards for teachers (we always do a Target gift card for teacher gifts, that’s something I can grab any time and have those gifts already crossed off my list, I’m at Target all the time so that one is an easy one to do early!). The last big thing I try and do in October is wrap the storybooks my kids open every night in December. Which leads me to my next thing…

**TWO**

This is a tradition we’ve had since my boys were 4 and 1, and even though they are getting older they still love getting to open a book every evening at bedtime and be delighted by favorite titles that show up year after year. Wrapping them early in the fall helps me get a larger task crossed off my to do list and also helps me use up some of the wrapping paper from last year and see what I still need in terms of wrapping supplies before I have gifts to wrap.

Every year I get asked for a couple of ideas of Christmas books to add to a family’s collection so I thought I’d share our very favorites here. I will say if this is a tradition you’d like to start, you do NOT have to buy all these books in one year! We’ve accumulated our collection over 7 years now. My first year doing this I checked a ton of Christmas picture books out from the library and wrapped those. I marked the back with a little asterisk in sharpie and that was a clue to me that those were library books we should open earlier in the month so we could read them and return them on time. Now we own enough I don’t use the library for picture books but we absolutely did our first few years and it worked great!

So with that, here are the Christmas picture books that I highly recommend for anyone’s collection. We read a ton of variety—some are about Santa, some are nativity books, some are about snowmen or winter traditions, some are about Christmas trees, we include them all.

For younger kids our favorites are (and by younger kids, I mean my kids still love them but if you have preschoolers absolutely check out these!): Mortimer’s Christmas Manger, the Snowmen series (this is a 5 book collection but 3 are specifically dedicated to Christmas/winter—the illustrations are amazing and there are hidden objects on each page to find. The poetry is a delight as well!), Bear Stays Up for Christmas (again the poetry of Karma Wilson’s books for kids is my absolute favorite!) and A Night in Santa’s Great Big Bag (the illustrations in this one are GORGEOUS!).

For older elementary aged kids, our very favorites are: The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey, (a beautiful story of redemption, it’s a little long but gorgeous), The Elves and the Shoemaker, The Legend of the Candy Cane, The Polar Express, and The Christmas Tapestry Does your family have any favorite Christmas books you like to read? I would love to hear what they are!

**THREE**

If you follow me on Instagram, you know I share a lot of poetry by a man named David Gate. He’s an online poet who shares short and poignant poems I absolutely adore. I’ve never been a big poetry fan, but I adore his, the way he puts words and images together to create something that always seems to resonate with me. I highly recommend following him as he is constantly sharing new work. His Instagram profile is at DavidGatePoet. One of his poems I have printed and taped to the cabinet where I stand doing dishes every day as a reminder that the work we do around the home matters. I thought I’d share it here today.

Doing the laundry and the dishes and the meal preparation are not tasks of the mundane
Because being clothed and clean and fed declares the dignity of human life and nurtures us into new days into new eras, they are not mundane, no they are the rituals of care.

And then there’s this absolute gem of a poem by him:

Be kind about the names your friends give to their children. Praise their haircuts Love their tattoos. It doesn’t really matter if that’s what you would do. Like every selfie. All of them. Clap their songs. Cheer them on. You were born with a limitless supply of encouragements. Use every one of them. Don’t wait for eulogies to speak out loud that your friends are precious and they make you feel proud.

Man I love his words. I highly recommend following him and just pausing in your scrolling every time you see a new post of his to sit with his words for a moment. And don’t wait for eulogies to speak out loud that your friends are precious and make you feel proud.

**FOUR**

I mentioned awhile ago that I realized if I was going to hit my 100 book reading goal for 2023 I was going to need to get serious about utilizing audiobooks, something I really hadn’t done before. I’ve now listened to 10 this year so far and am in the middle of my 11th, and while I think reading a book in print is still my preferred way to absorb a story, I’ve enjoyed venturing into this new-to-me medium. It is fantastic to get grocery shopping done or laundry folded and read at the same time. I’ve decided one of my favorite genres of books to enjoy on audio are actually memoirs where the author reads the book themselves. You can experience the stories in a much more powerful way when you hear it in their own voice. I’m in the middle of listening to Michelle Obama’s newest book, The Light We Carry, read by her, and it is fantastic. (Side note, her first book, Becoming, was one of my favorite memoirs I’ve ever read. Ahe is a phenomenal writer and her stories are powerful).

Towards the beginning of the book she mentions deciding early on during the covid lockdowns that she wanted to learn how to knit. She hadn’t ever tried before and was thoroughly confused by the pattern but after watching numerous YouTube videos she got the hang of it. She says she’s now the person knitting during zoom meetings, while watching TV, on car trips and when just sitting around with her family. Her reflection on how, through the repetitive motion of moving the needles and gradually seeing the rows of her project grow one at a time, it really helped quiet her mind during a time of a lot of fear and anxiety. The meditative motion of the knit stitch and the focusing on something small when so many big things were happening in the world that she couldn’t change or fix brought her a great deal of peace. She writes there was a small sense of having accomplished something with her hands when her mind couldn’t solve the problems around her. As a new-found lover of knitting I absolutely resonated with her reflections on learning this craft, and well, I’ve always adored her, so knowing that she and I are both now knitters, well, that chapter brought me an embarrassing amount of delight!

She mentioned that it doesn’t have to be knitting, but when we are faced with a world where there seem to be no good answers and feel somewhat paralyzed, doing something, anything, creative with your hands can help center us. Some love to bake bread, decorate cakes, write music, play an instrument, use coloring books, scrapbook, garden, build with legos—anything that helps get us out of our heads and physically doing something with our bodies can help with anxiety in some very real ways. Annie Downs always says on her podcast that if you work throughout the week with your mind, sabbath with your hands and if you work throughout the week with your hands, sabbath with your mind. She means that if you have a job that is highly intellectual—you’re in a lab, you are a professor, an engineer, a doctor, an attorney, then you have to find a way to get out of your head and into your body as a form of Sabbath. And if you have a job where you do a lot with your physical body—construction, being a chef, a baker, a landscaper, an artist, a photographer, something in the athletic world, then to remain well rounded we need to find a way to Sabbath with our mind through books, writing, learning, exposing ourselves to new information can help our minds and bodies integrate.

We are holistic people, yet I know I’ve always gravitated towards activities that utilize my mind so much more than my body. I love that in her book, Michelle is addressing this, bringing out the peace that can come when we move from our minds to our physicality and back again. So, if you need me, I’ll be over here knitting away…

**FIVE**

We are headed into the fall and winter months, and one of the foods that feel very autumn-y is a good kale salad. Now, before you decide I’m crazy and kale is disgusting, you have to ask yourself if you’ve ever had a good kale salad made really well? Because if you’ve ever bit into your kale and found it hard, rough, or too tough to chew easily, you haven’t had a good kale salad. The secret to a good kale salad is that you have to dress the greens AND massage the dressing into them, a solid 30-45 minutes before you eat it. The vinegar in the dressing and the act of massaging the leaves softens them, turns them a brighter green color, and completely changes the texture. Only after your kale leaves are tenderized do you begin to add the rest of the good stuff.

The perfect combination of toppings for a kale salad is something creamy like a goat cheese, something crunchy like toasted almonds, pistachios, or pepitas, something fruity like blueberries, pomegranate seeds, dried cranberries, or golden raisins, and I always add an avocado to mine. Throwing in a handful of cooked quinoa or some garbanzo beans for some protein, or some diced shallots for an extra punch of flavor doesn’t hurt either! This recipe is a great jumping off point (the dressing is delicious) but if you’ve never played around with using kale as the base for a hearty lunch salad (this is what I eat so often in the cooler months for lunch), maybe give it a try and see if you become a convert too!