Friday Things #554

1. Hello, hello! I hope all of you had a wonderful holiday; we are still in slow mode over here, as the kids don’t go back to school until Monday. It’s been a fantastically relaxing break and while I’m craving a little bit of a return to routines, I always hate when breaks end!

2. We had a great holiday, celebrating Christmas, went ice skating outside, taught the kids how to play dominoes on New Year’s Eve, Dominic and Isabelle built gingerbread houses, we ate lots of cookies, watched a lot of college football and world juniors hockey, I did a lot of puzzling and reading… all in all, it’s been glorious!

3. Speaking of reading, I finished The Friend Zone (Abby Jimenez) and even though it started a tad slow for me, I ended up loving it! I just dove right into the second book in that trilogy, The Happy Ever After Playlist.

4. Do you track your books on Goodreads? I love setting reading goals, though I came ONE SHORT of meeting my goal last year (I’m blaming how long it took me to get through two books I really, really didn’t like). My goal this year is to read 18 books, which I guess seems low (so many people I follow on Instagram read upwards of 100!), but I don’t do audiobooks or Kindle, so this is a realistic goal for me.

5. And on that note, I happened to see this amazing cross-stitch bookmark that you can make, which is also a reading tracker. I haven’t done any cross stitch since I was probably in middle school or high school, but this makes me want to dive back in and make this a little project for the year!

6. What are you looking forward to cooking this month? I think the first two things on my list are going to be chicken with mushrooms and wild rice soup!

7. A few years ago, I was on a serious kale salad kick for lunches and it may be the lack of cooking over the last couple of weeks, but I’m craving salads again right now! I love keeping chopped kale in the fridge, along with shredded carrots, using some type of protein (turkey, chicken, bacon), cheddar, cucumbers, chopped apple, and croutons.

8. Ahhh I LOVED You’ve Got Mail when it came out (I still do!) >> 26 Years Later, People Are Relating to You’ve Got Mail’s Celebration of Small Life More Than Ever

9. We’ve started watching Landman, and I am loving it! Though, when I first saw Billy Bob Thornton’s ex-wife in the show I had to do a double take because I was pretty sure it was the girl from Varsity Blues, and turns out I was right. That came out when I was in college aaaaaaand now I feel REALLY old.

10. TGIF! The pups say Happy January!