I hope you’ve all had wonderful holidays, friends! Our days have been full – hosting family, traveling to see family, and squeezing in some favorite traditions. Still, I’ll always make time for the two posts I have planned for this week: today’s best of and my traditional final post, our year-in-review. They help me count the fruit from another precious year, and that’s an opportunity I’ll fight for even in the midst of these full, chaotic, slow post-holiday days. I hope they can serve as an opportunity for a little reflection on your own 2023, if you haven’t had a chance for it yet! In the comments, please share a few of your best memories, finds, and favorites from 2023, if you’d like. As always, I can’t wait to hear!
Best adventure, travel, or trip: Though there was a lot of superlative travel in 2023, two weekend trips rise to the top in my memories: our Father’s Day trip to Beaufort, NC and our fall break trip to Boone. I’d repeat both of those any day. Though I love to travel with extended family, John and I still find it a bit thrilling to structure a trip around our immediate family’s culture. They feel like a chance to live out what matters to us in a concentrated way. (Yes, cinnamon sugar donut moments included.)
Best trend you tried: Though I maintain a dark skinny jean is still the best and most versatile bottom, I have branched out – particularly with these cropped wide leg pants. The green (“olive oil”) goes with a surprising amount and they’re fun to wear. I take a S.
Best new podcast listen, newsletter subscribe, or blog follow: Even though I’ve admired his work since 2018 (when I first read The Coddling of the American Mind), Jon Haidt’s Substack was a new follow for me this year. If you’re interested in what we’re going to talk about at The Connected Family, you’ll likely want to hit subscribe on Jon, too.
Best book: This was a banner year of reading for me! I read 44 books, significantly more than in the recent past, including 22/24 from my reading list. (Last year, I read 21 books total.) The Maid, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and The Lincoln Highway took top billing for fiction and Habits of the Household won out for nonfiction. (I shared a few of my takeaways here.) A special honorable mention to the first four books in the Vanderbeekers series, which June and I passed back and forth over several months. Adore!
Best TV show:Slow Horses on Apple TV. We watched three seasons this year! (They’re only six episodes each.) It’s a bit of an acquired taste, what with a central character who gives the word “slovenly” new meaning, but the plots are fantastic. “What makes the series better than virtually anything else on television right now [is] its ability to be both a riveting espionage drama and an absurd workplace comedy, without ever flubbing the mix.”
Best movie:Mission Impossible 6, continuing our tradition of going to the movie theater (almost) only on opening nights for Tom Cruise films.
Best album, song, or artist: If our Spotify Wrapped is any indication, it’s Seven by Brooke Ligertwood all the way.
Best kiddo milestone: After seven years, we finally removed the baby gate at the bottom of our stairs. It’s the end of an era!
Best friend memory: Rewinding to the first month of the year, the first annual Articles Club weekend retreat was, well, a treat. We ate delicious meals, laughed until we cried, and built another layer on our 7+ year friendship. Biking the American Tobacco Trail (twice!) while discussing one of my favorite books of the year with a favorite friend is a sweet memory, too!
Best beauty purchase: My cheeks got a glow-up this year! After being taught the proper order to apply bronzer, blush, and highlighter, I put my newfound knowledge into practice with this, this, and my discontinued BeautyCounter blush. Love them all!
Best faith grower: This doesn’t feel like the “holiest” answer, but I’m going with it: watching the first two seasons of The Chosen, the historical drama TV show based on the life of Jesus. By telling the story through the eyes of those who knew him, layering in prophecy and present, it truly brought the Gospels to life in a way I’d never seen before.
Best new tradition: I’m not sure if this is a tradition or a habit or a little luxury, but I’ll drop it here. Our Sundays really settled into a restful rhythm: for most of the year, we’d attend church, go out to eat, head home so everyone could take a nap (except June, who would read), then tennis lessons for me and June, the easiest and most crowd-pleasing dinner (frozen meatballs, Rao’s, pasta), and finally a little light prepping for the week ahead.
Best habit you created: Driving 20 mph in the neighborhood. After a tragedy struck too close to home earlier in the year, I committed to driving under the speed limit in our neighborhood whenever possible. This feels like the kind of vow I might have made in the moment and then forget in the bustle of life, so I’m grateful to have stuck with it.
Most surprising goal progress: I set a goal to reach 5,000 minutes on Peloton this year and am shocking even myself by rounding the corner to 8,000 this week – a big jump from last year, when I logged just shy of 4,000! I was helped by Peloton adding tracking for outdoor walks and cycling, but I significantly upped my stretching and strength classes, too.
Best mama moment: There were so many favorite moments, remarkable in their ordinariness and preciousness, but reading the first Harry Potter with June is a particularly sweet memory. And, of course, our weekend together at camp!
Best home improvement: Our green bathroom cabinets make me happy every single time I round the corner!
Best little luxury you’ve enjoyed: Hear me out: getting places on time (or even with time to spare). John has many incredible attributes, but getting places on time is generally not one of them. Add in three children, and our default is often a late arrival. When I transitioned from working four days to three days at the beginning of this year, I suddenly found myself arriving places five or ten minutes early on my two weekdays off, and it truly felt luxurious.
As always, I’m ending the year so grateful for the delights, big and small, that filled our year. I’ll be sharing more in my year-in-review post soon, but in the meantime, please do share: what are some of your “bests” from 2023? Can’t wait to hear!
Just a quick post today to share a few scenes from around our Christmas home!
With the way our house is laid out – one main open room on the first floor, so only a few walls and corners – we just don’t have that many surfaces to decorate. While our nativity may be clustered around our TV instead of luxuriating on a foyer table or piano top, I think this year more than ever we made the most of what we do have.
Come on in!
Before we step inside, let’s pause on the porch. I envisioned Christmas wreaths on our front gates before they were even built and they live up to all my dreams! Wreaths are from Trader Joe’s and the bows are from Etsy.
These cardboard gingerbread houses were a very fun after-school project last week! I cut shapes from a delivery box and we all used white paint and white paint pens to add detail. The paint pens made it easy to achieve an elegant look even for our five year old. We didn’t trust Annie with them, but she had fun going to town with the white paint – the kids decided her houses were in the midst of a snowstorm, ha.
Popping a few bows in unexpected places was a new addition this year.
We had a German Christmas pyramid growing up and it was one of my very favorite decorations. I asked for the exact same one as a gift the first year we were in our house – this is it! The tablecloth is from HomeGoods.
All dressed up for Articles Club last night!
The pine garland is a new addition this year and is excellent quality. Sadly, it’s sold out (I went back to buy another for our stairs!), but I’d put in your email to be notified if you’re interested! That’s how I snagged these two earlier this year. Here are the candles (battery operated but with real wax!) and candleholders.
This canvas, one of Lindsay Letters’ very first, was a wedding gift more than a decade ago.
This may be of niche interest, but I wanted to share just in case. I bought two of these little caroling books ($4!) at the start of the season, and they have been fun for guitar singalongs. June, especially, loves them and has squirreled one away to her room in an attempt to memorize the lyrics to every Christmas song :)
Finally, here is a peek at our Christmas card! June and I chose the design together and I love that it’s festive while still working with our outfit color palette.
Thanks for stopping in, friends! If you have any questions about anything I haven’t mentioned, just drop a note in the comments.
Writing about your own generosity is a tricky thing, isn’t it?
On the one hand, there’s the very real fear that you’ll come across as prideful, a show-off. Or that you’ll needlessly make others feel bad about their efforts – which might represent a real sacrifice – or feel shame about the gap between your generosity and theirs.
So why risk it?
Of course, there’s also this, just one chapter later – also from the mouth of Jesus:
Giving in public = bad? Giving in secret = good? If only it were so easy :) The Christian faith is not interested in being simple; it’s interested in being true. In the end, the motivation of the heart is what categorizes the same act as either a treasure or a disgrace in the eyes of God, which can make it confusing to know when to share. However – as long as I can feel reasonably confident that I’m sharing to reflect the light and love of God and not to be praised by men blog readers, I want to do so.
Also, we hear a lot about Christians behaving badly. But there are many, many, many more stories of light that go untold – stories of quiet, unsung acts of selflessness, compassion, and generosity. We need those stories, too, to remind us about the beauty, grace, and truth of a life spent imitating Jesus (imperfectly, always, but earnestly, too).
Finally, on a practical note, I like hearing about the positive things others are doing! It inspires me to be better, to do more, to stretch my conception of what I think I’m capable of and comfortable with – and it gives me ideas for how to do so! It reminds me that people everywhere are doing their best to make people feel loved and the world a better place. It buoys my hope and optimism about my fellow man and the world we inhabit together.
So — with that lengthy introduction, I submit to you three ways we’re trying to live generously this Christmas season – written with humility and love!
We’re giving generously to our kids’ teachers.
Currently, Annie and Shep each have two preschool teachers, while June has her second-grade teacher, her math teacher, and a student teacher. In past years, we have given physical gifts to preschool teachers, like fresh wreaths, snap totes, and Cultivate goodies. I love all of these ideas and may return to them!
This year and last, however, we’ve moved to giving gift cards (accompanied by handwritten notes). Last year we gave each preschool teacher a $15 gift card to a local ice cream shop. This year, we’re giving them $50 gift cards to a local gift shop I love, and the director (who is also a teacher in Shep’s classroom) a $100 gift card to our favorite local restaurant. It’s been a challenging year in their school, and we want her and her husband to enjoy a fun dinner out.
For June’s main teacher, we’ll do a $75* gift card to either a local garden store or the same local restaurant – I haven’t decided yet! (I always try to choose based on their hobbies – last year, we gave her first-grade teacher, an avid runner, a gift card to Fleet Feet.)
*I had planned to do $100, the same as our preschool director, but our district put a $75 cap on gifts this year.
For her math teacher, we chose a 3-month subscription to the Book of the Month Club, and her student teacher will get a Cultivate tumbler stuffed with crinkle paper and a $50 coffee shop gift card.
Again: I include the dollar amounts not to show off (blerg), but to gently encourage. Last year, $15 for five preschool teachers felt like a stretch. My understanding is that even the smallest gift card is appreciated, and if $5 per teacher is what’s possible, it will be gratefully received.
This year, we can do more, so we are. When I think about what it would cost to send our three children to private school (I did the math right here), $100 per teacher feels like a drop in the bucket. Excellent teachers are the lifeblood of our schools and I’ll do almost anything to help them feel appreciated.
We’re giving generously to our pastor.
Moving on to our next category of challenging jobs :) Full-time ministry – whew! It is not for the faint of heart, for the pastor or for his or her family. They (joyfully!) sacrifice so much for the people in their care, and last year, John and I felt compelled to share one of our very favorite traditions with our pastor and his wife.
We wrote them a note explaining our end-of-year celebration dinner – what it is and what it has meant to our relationship over the last many years – and included a $100 gift card to a local restaurant in the envelope. We wanted to make it easy for them to start their own tradition, if they wanted to. We’ll do the same thing this year. Sowing into their marriage feels like sowing directly into God’s Kingdom, and we’re grateful to do it.
We’re giving generously to our garbage and recycling guys.
This is one I come by honestly – it’s straight from the brain of my mom :) Growing up, she’d always leave a Subway gift card and bag of peanut butter balls on top of our trash and recycling cans in December, and honestly, I thought it was weird – ha!
But I also just thought it was normal, and sure enough, when we moved into our own home a decade ago, I taped a colorful (eye-catching!) thank you note, a Jersey Mike’s gift card (we usually do $20 – enough for two guys in each truck), and a bag of peanut butter balls to the top of each can one Wednesday in December. I can only hope my children will think this is weird and then grow up to do the same thing, too.
Of course, I’d love to hear: big or small, how are you being generous this season? This group always has the best ideas.
Welcome to the last month of 2023, friends! I’m grateful to be here. Between Thanksgiving, the anniversary trip for my parents, the (very soft) launch of The Connected Family, a particularly sad+thrilling week with Articles Club that I hope to tell you a bit about in the future, and, last but not least, the everyday magic of writing by the light of our Christmas tree with a fun holiday weekend ahead – how could I feel anything but?
And thank you again, friends, for your warm and excited support of my new venture. I shared that my subscriber goal for this week was 50, and we’ve now topped 350 – plus several pledged subscriptions, which I truly did not expect at this point at all. I’m sure we will unpack all the feelings at some point, but suffice it to say I know that this community is a big chunk of my “new” one, and I couldn’t imagine better gals to have along for the ride. You’ll see several TCF-related goals on my list below – excited to keep you in the loop as things progress!
A quick snap of my favorite shoes at my dear friend Libby’s brand-new play cafe in Raleigh! Triangle friends with littles, you must go visit!
On my calendar: — Dinner out with John for our 2023 review and celebration. — Hosting my family for Christmas. Truly an honor (and big responsibility) to orchestrate magic for a group! — A trip to California for Christmas with John’s family. It’s been four years since we’ve been out to visit my sister- and brother-in-law and we’re excited!
What I’m loving right now: — Copyright issues notwithstanding (?), this audio track of The Grinch is fun to listen to around the Christmas tree or on a holiday road trip! H/T to my friend Bethany for unearthing it. — This little flocked Christmas tree has been sold out for years and they finally brought it back! It’s the one we have in June’s and Shep’s rooms, and this year I bought two more to flank our front door. It looks delightfully full once fluffed! — Late breaking to this year’s stocking stuffer post, but if you have Squishmallow fans in your house, this mini set is genius. I’m planning to put one in each kids’ stocking, share some with my sister, and save the rest for Easter baskets or friend birthdays throughout the year. Perfect to go in on with a friend!
As a reminder, you can find allll the things I’ve loved over the last few years neatly organized right here!
What you’re loving right now:
This is where I highlight a few items here that have been popular in the last month with fellow readers, based on my analytics. Here’s hoping this will help you find something you’ll love!
Plus lots and lots of orders for Christmas books – makes me so happy!
What I read in November: — Welcome Home | This home decorating and hosting book – based on the four seasons – was on my 2023 reading list. Though I enjoy the Nester’s style and home/decorating philosophy (and enjoy her newsletter!), this one was a DNF for me. It wasn’t offering me much new info and when I continued to reach for other titles, I knew it was time to return it to the library! — A Light in the Window | Another book in the Mitford series, the coziest story set right here in the mountains of NC. — The Wishing Game | This was a debut novel that felt a bit like a debut novel. Good, not great! It’s a sweet story but was just missing a little spark in the plot and life in the lines for me. — China Rich Girlfriend | I read the first in the trio a few years ago and when a community group friend was offering this one up, I snagged it! Again – the writing is not necessarily going to win any awards, but it was a fun, quick read that kept me turning pages.
Revisiting my November goals: Submit all passport paperwork for the kids’ passports and my renewal (Nope, absolutely no progress on this, ha!) Tackle Shep’s closet Finish writing and design the Articles Club guide and list it for sale (Very close! Just need to finish the design!) Finish our 2015-2019 photo album (Determined to finish this in December!!) Design and order our Christmas card and newsletter Edit Sheptember, Volume 5 (Halfway done!)
December goals: — Finish our 2015-2019 photo album (gotta do it, it’s one of my 2023 goals! ;)) — Prepare well for my family’s visit. With such a large group, I’ve learned that advance (somewhat intense) planning is key to being able to fully enjoy our time together. Rereading my own post from last year to brush up! — See what I can do to continue to customize The Connected Family’s home on Substack – it is pretty bare bones currently! — Plan out content for Q1 of TCF, including brainstorming at least 100 newsletter ideas — Tackle our laundry room… — …and our downstairs linen closet, the very last space to complete my 2023 goal! — Savor the Christmas season by focusing on loving the ones I love most, and loving those who need it the most. Even to me this sounds somewhat trite, but also the best way I know to celebrate the arrival of a tiny baby king who did the same.
Wishing you the merriest December, friends! Please feel free to comment on anything I’ve mentioned here, or anything else on your mind.
