What Brought Me Joy in November – Love & Renovations

The end of the year always flies by, but the older I get the more I find myself standing here thinking, “wait, wasn’t it just August?!” I know it’s cliche to say but I genuinely cannot believe it will be December in just a couple of days. How did that happen? Did I fall into a brief coma? Did we fall through a rip in the space-time continuum?

The next time I write one of these little posts it will be the end of 2023. I can’t quite wrap my mind around that yet, so for now let’s just chat about November. It was a fun (but too short!) month full of cozy family memories, lots of snuggling up on the sofa, and aaaaaaall the Christmas anticipation. My favorite kind of month!

Moments + Memories

We had our third annual Friendsgiving, and it has truly become one of my very favorite traditions of the entire season. We pile so many people and too much food into our house, we all stuff ourselves silly and spend hours talking and laughing, and it just brings me so much joy. It’s a combination of a couples who don’t generally all see each other outside of this event, so it makes it feel extra festive!
Thanksgiving was, of course, full of delicious food and plenty of family time and lots of cozy moments. We’ve been doing puzzles and playing games and coloring Christmas pictures and watching tons of Christmas movies. It truly is the most cozy and heart-warming time of the year and I just can’t get enough.
We hit four years in our house this month! I love taking the time to really intentionally celebrate these kinds of milestones. We have a special dinner together and bake cookies and spend some time being really grateful for our home. It always feels so special and I can’t believe it has been four years!
Aaaaall the Christmas decorating and planning for the month ahead! December is always stuffed full of really special moments and it requires a fair amount of planning to make it happen. If you wanna join in on some of the fun with us, you can see our activity advent calendar here, and our Christmas scavenger hunt here!

Books + Media

Here’s everything I read in November:

A Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes by Suzanne Collins – I quickly re-read this book in anticipation of the movie coming out, and man, I had forgotten how much I loved it! The Hunger Games is one of my favorite series ever, and I love seeing this perspective of things from an earlier timeframe!
Home Before Dark by Riley Sager – I have yet to read a Riley Sager book I didn’t absolutely adore and this one was no different. It was borderline scary several times, which was fun, and as always, he managed to shock me again and again with his twists!
Good As Dead by Susan Walter – This book was really great, though I found it hard to sympathize with many of the characters who continually made awful decisions. I enjoyed it a lot and it kept me guessing for most of the book, even if I found myself shaking my fist at it a lot while reading.
Please Tell Me by Mike Omer – This was a book I got for free from Prime First Reads and I loved it. It truly kept me on my toes the entire time, and towards the end I found my heart pounding as things were wrapping up. Such a great story!
Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney – I wanted to love this one a lot more than I did. It was good, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve heard incredible things about it and I ended up finding it to be just good, not great. It felt like the author reeeeally wanted to shock and surprise you (and she did a few times!), but at the end things ended up just feeling a little muddled. I found it hard to root for anyone in the book, and I love an unreliable narrator story but this one got downright confusing.
Iron Flame By Rebecca Yarros – Eleven out of ten! Can’t recommend it enough! I adored the first book in this series (as did the entire world), and this one did NOT disappoint. In fact, I stayed up about three hours later than normal on night to finish the last quarter of the book while all-caps texting my best friend (who was also reading). It was magnificent.
A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw – This one started off with a bang and for a minute I thought I might read the whole thing in one sitting. It slowed down to a really comfortable pace in the middle, and then I devoured the last quarter of the book in one evening. It was fantastic and I’ll be thinking about it for a while!

Corey and I went to see A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes this month (SO GOOD!), and we took the kids to see Wish (nothing revolutionary, but it was cute!). We watched tons of movies at home, including Jerry & Marge Go Large, Mister Organ, and Unbreakable.

Games + Fun

This month we…

Did this cute Christmas puzzle with the kids after school.
Played a cutthroat game of Marbles with my family over Thanksgiving.
Busted out Chess & Tetris with the kids over the week-long break.
Played way too much Uno Attack.
Built the Home Alone LEGO set.
Gave Super Mario RPG a shot – Corey and I hate it, Jackson adores it.

Products

Here’s everything I bought this month that brought a little extra joy to our day-to-day.

So (so!) many twinkle lights for the holidays. I can’t get enough!
I ordered this super oversized cardigan over Black Friday weekend and it’s the softest, coziest thing I’ve owned in a long time. I have a feeling it’s gonna get a LOT of use this winter.
Grabbed these faux evergreen trees with these planters for the front porch, and they make me smile every day!
Christmas sheets. Need I say more?
I got tired of continually stocking up on cotton rounds to take my makeup off, so I decided to give these a shot. So far, I’m loving them. My super sensitive skin isn’t breaking out, and I don’t ever run out. It’s the best!
We got a new coffee table! I was a little nervous about it because I loved our old one, but I needed something a different shape and with a little more storage. We all agree this one works so much better for us, and you can’t beat the price! I’m using this gorgeous gold tray on it right now, and it’s the perfect size.

And that’s a wrap on November! I’m sooooo excited to kick off December – there’s a lot of fun in store in the next few weeks.

Wanna catch up on everything else that has brought joy this year?