What’s Up Wednesday - July 2019

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Gosh, I can’t believe another entire month is gone.  Just like that, July is over.  I have to say, I’m ready to get the kids back in school and on a schedule again.  I love summer now that I’m not working, but I love fall even more, so BRING. IT. ON.

Let’s recap!

What We’re Eating This Week

Mon – Eggs, grits, bacon, toast

Tue – Grilled cheese sandwiches, green beans (gotta get those greens in!)

Wed – Out with the girls

Thu – Beef and Parmesan Pasta with Zucchini

Fri – Out

Sat – Out

Sun – Sunday dinner at Momma and Daddy’s

What I’m Reminiscing About

I’ve been doing a lot of reminiscing about my first job at the movie theater lately.  I worked there from 1998 – 2001 starting when I was just sixteen years old.  All of my best girlfriends worked there with me, too, and since we’re all still close, we’ve decided to try to plan a movie theater reunion for August.  We’ve been hunting down as many of our old coworkers as we can find, so it’s been fun connecting with people I haven’t spoken with in almost 20 years!  I’m still close with a lot of my old coworkers to this day, but many of them I haven’t spoken with in forever! 

Two of my girlfriends and I started a private Facebook group for the reunion and so far we have 77 members.  We’re all hoping to get as many people together as possible in early August, and I’m hoping we have a good turnout.  That job was the best job I’ve ever had and I would give anything to be able to go back and revisit those days just once!  They were some of my favorite years of my whole life.  I actually dedicated an entire post to that job and all of our shenanigans a few years ago.  You can see the post here if you’d like.  :o)

What I’m Loving

The low humidity!!!!  Y’all, it’s normally a rainforest here in Georgia year-round.  A typical day for us includes humidity in the 80-100% range, so when we hit 70% humidity and below, it is something to behold.  The last few weeks we’ve had a sprinkling of days here and there with lower humidity, and earlier this week, it was the lowest I can ever remember during the summer. 

Monday morning I took the kids to the playground and I thought we’d all died and gone to heaven.  It was 87 degrees out, but the humidity was only 40% and I could not believe how cool 87 degrees feels when there’s no humidity.  Like, it was actually comfortable!  In fact, it was so nice, that we stayed at the playground for over an hour.  We normally don’t make it past 20 minutes at the playground during the summer because five minutes into it everyone is soaked with sweat and about to die from a heat stroke.  87 degrees with 100% humidity feels like 105 degrees and it is misery. 

This dry air is giving me LIFE, y’all.  I swear it felt like a little glimpse of fall.  Speaking of which, fall, feel free to join us whenever you’re ready.  I’ve been ready since July 5th.

What We’ve Been Up To

The kids and I have been doing a lot of relaxing at home, we celebrated July 4th, had a couple of play dates with friends, celebrating Jacob’s birthday, and plenty of other things including preparing for back-to-school.  I’ve been recapping all of our daily happenings in weekly posts, and you can see all of the recaps below.

Summer - Week 6

Summer - Week 7

Summer - Week 8

Summer - Week 9

What I’m Dreading

August.  Sigh.  It’s my least favorite month of the whole year.  

August is typically our hottest month of the entire year here in Georgia, and most of the time it’s downright oppressive.  I typically tend to get in a funk at the very end of winter and the very end of summer, but my end-of-summer funk has been worse the last few years, so August is usually the worst for me. 

By August I’m tired of the hot weather, I’m tired of wearing all of the same summer clothes over and over, and I’m just ready for the refreshment that a new season (FALL!) brings.  I think August is also particularly bad because it’s right before my very favorite four months of the whole year (September – December) and since I’m so ready to get to September, I always feel like August drags on forever.  Last year I thought it would never end!!

If this low humidity would hang on for a while (spoiler alert, it won’t!), then it wouldn’t be so bad!

What I’m Working On

July was filled with lots of downtime with the kids, but I did manage to work on a fair amount of stuff as well:

1. The main project for July has been cleaning out Brian’s office.  Whew, it has been a job, y’all.  But we’ve been rocking it and we’ve made excellent progress.  We have gotten so many things cleaned out, we’ve actually hung stuff on the walls to decorate (even the TV!), we rearranged the furniture to be more functional, and we’ve organized a lot of stuff.  We now need to work on organizing all of his “projects” that he has to do for the office.  He has lots of old CDs that need to be ripped to the computer, lots of old live shows that he recorded on special equipment that need to be transferred to the computer, old pictures that need sorting, etc.  Those projects will take a lot of time and there are so many of them that they are likely to be permanent fixtures in the room for a while until they’re completed.  I’d like to get them organized and put up somewhere so they’re not all over the office while they’re waiting to be accomplished.
2. I’m a big playlist kind of girl and I have playlists on my phone for everything – dinner parties, outdoor parties, certain favorite years in my life, workouts, fall, Christmas, kids, etc.  I spent a good bit of time this past month creating some new playlists and reorganizing existing playlists. 
3. I finally started photographing more clothes to sell!  After months of having it on my monthly goals list and failing, I finally started just the other day!  Check!
4. I also finished updating the kids’ baby books.  Although, come to think of it, I think I finished that last month.  Can’t remember…
5. I’m also still whittling away at my Master To Do List.  I’m on track to cross off more things than ever this month!  Stay tuned for the results on Friday.
6. And, of course, I’m obviously always working on blogging.  Here are some highlights from this past month:

What I Ordered from Amazon in June 2019

4th of July Home Tour

Five on Friday – July Goals

What I Wore – June 2019

30A Beach Trip 2019 – Days 7 & 8

This is Eight… Jacob’s Birthday Interview

The Best Dupes for Nordstrom Sale Items

Jacob’s Third Birthday

Five on Friday – Favorite Back-to-School Products

What I’m Excited About

Last month I was excited about my new rugs from Target, but I was worried about having such a small rug in our living room.  You may remember our living room is kind of small and awkward, so standard rug sizes don’t work in there.  Since nothing worked in there, I just decided to go with a 5x7 rug to put under the coffee table.  Well, after a few days of having the rug in there, it started to bother me since it wasn’t the “correct” thing to do. 

Fast forward to Amazon Prime Day and I received a notification that rugs were all on major sale.  Well y’all, I found this rug in an 8’ x 8’ which is PERFECT for our small, awkwardly square-shaped living room.  I put it down as soon as it arrived and I am just smitten with it!  I actually love the colors, pattern, and texture even better than the Target rug, and now my mind can rest easy because we have the “correct” sized rug for the room.  The best part was that we got the Amazon rug for the same price as the Target rug… even though it’s twice as large!  Thank you, Amazon lightning deal!!  Our living room is now complete aside from stripping/restaining the coffee table/end tables.  Anybody wanna come do that for me??

Here's the before:

And here's the after:

Much better, right?!

What I’m Watching/Reading

Watching – B and I just finished The Bachelorette and we’re nearing the end of The Handmaid’s Tale.  We also finished Better Call Saul (what was on Netflix) and we also finished Big Little Lies… I loved the end.  There is speculation that there will not be a third season, and as sad as that would make me, I feel like I have enough closure from the second season if they don’t.  We’re also still watching America’s Got Talent with the kids, and then we just started two new shows – Gossip Girl on Netflix for me, and Barry on HBO for B.  I’m liking Gossip Girl so far, but Barry does absolutely nothing for me.  B loves it, though.

Reading – Holy moly, have I been flying through some books!!  This month I read five which is a record for me since having kids… come to think of it, it may be a record for me for my whole adult life!!  I finished the second half of Every Breath, I read The Perfect Couple, One Day in December, The Rumor, How to Walk Away, and I’m now halfway through The Nightingale.  I have loved every single one of these and I highly recommend all!  My favorite was a toss-up between The Perfect Couple and One Day in December.  Both were excellent. 

What I’m Listening To

Oh y’all, have you listened to Ed Sheeran’s new album yet?!  IT IS SO FREAKING GOOD.  I swear, his music just gets better and better and I always tell myself there’s no way he can outdo his previous album and then he somehow does.  His newest is filled with collaborations with other artists and it’s just fantastic.  It’s a mix of hip hop, R&B, rock, pop, and typical “Ed” stuff and there is not one song I don’t adore.  I’ve had it on repeat ever since it came out… but only when the kids aren’t in the car.  Some of the songs are verrrry explicit, so it’s definitely not for kids.  Our kids were at summer camp last week so I had a lot of free time to listen and I’ve listened to it so much I can already sing along to all of the songs.  SO GOOD.

What I’m Wearing

I’m at the point in the season where I’m bored with all of my hot weather clothes, so I’m being lazy.  It’s been jean shorts on repeat along with a tank or tee.  What do I wish I was wearing?  FALL STUFF.  I cannot even tell you how ready I am to be wearing leggings and big cozy sweaters.  I just got a warm new cardigan in the Nordstrom sale and I’m ready to put it to good use.  Speaking of the Nordstrom sale, did you see my post from last week about all of the dupes I found for NSale items on Amazon? 

Yep, last week I rounded up thirteen items from the Nordstrom sale, found duplicates for much cheaper on Amazon, and I shared them all with you!  You can see the post here and you can thank me later.  ;o)  Some of the dupes look so good they are unreal.  

What I’m Doing This Weekend

We have zero plans for the weekend.  I’m hoping to lay out and read a bit, work on B’s office a bit, go to church, and spend lots of good time with family.  Just a typical weekend on deck!

What I’m Looking Forward To Next Month

As much as I love having the kids home with me, I’m so ready for them to go back to school.  They’re ready for structure and so am I!  I’m also excited about (hopefully) having our movie theater reunion if we can get enough people together, and I’m also SO SO excited about COLLEGE FOOTBALL, BABY!!!!  It starts in August this year (instead of September) and I AM HERE! FOR! IT!

What Else Is New

Tonight I’m having a long overdue dinner with one of my oldest and dearest friends and I can’t wait to hug her neck!  She and I were inseparable from fourth grade until mid-way through high school and then we kind of drifted apart a bit.  She went away for college and lived in several different cities afterward, but she now lives in town again.  Despite the fact that we live in the same city, she and I really don’t get to see each other often, so I’m looking forward to catching up with her along with two other friends from grade/high school who I do still see often.

And finally, the kids only have a week and a half left before they go back to school so we’re making the most of it!  One of the items on our summer bucket list was to do several random acts of kindness throughout the summer.  Well, this year, instead of just doing a little bit here and there, we decided to make an entire day of it!  And it just so happens to coincide with a movement going on today to do just that. 

I know many of you probably remember April Robson’s blog A. Liz Adventures which eventually changed to Smidge of This?  Well, her sweet little girl, Charlotte, was diagnosed one year ago today with Leukodystrophy, an incurable and terminal condition.

Since the diagnosis, April has committed to filling little Charlotte’s life with as much joy as possible, and on the one year anniversary of her diagnosis there is a special movement in progress.  Please consider contributing to the movement today by spreading joy through doing a random act of kindness for someone else. 

The kids and I are not only going to participate, but we have decided to make an entire day of it.  I made a list of ideas for random acts of kindness and we are going to check off as many as we can today.  Not only will this be our contribution to Charlotte’s Joy, but it will also be a great way to remind our kids that doing for others is the very best thing that we can do in this life.  And I can’t think of a better way to send them back to school than with kindness and joy in their hearts. 

If you decide to participate (and I hope you will!), please tag @charlottesjoy and #joy4charlotte in your Instagram stories and posts so Charlotte’s family can feel the outpouring of love!  And be sure to follow along in my Instagram stories to see what the kids and I have planned!

Happy Wednesday, y’all!

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