Category: Uncategorized

Editor’s Note: Posting late again! This was meant to post Tuesday, Nov. 13.

It’s bitter cold here in Austin, Texas, which is highly unusual for November. It’s 35 degrees and cloudy outside, while we’re used to balmy days and nights much of the year.

I’ve finished reading “The Nest” and have begun making my way through “Every Breath” by Nicholas Sparks. I’m enjoying the novel’s jump between Africa and the East coast.

Yesterday, I had the day off because of Veteran’s day, but stayed at home except for one doctor’s visit because of the rainy, cold weather. Instead, I cooked one of my Blue Apron meals and watched the “Sex in the City” movie. I had never seen it and did not think it was all that great, but it was easy to watch while doing other things.

 

 

Editor’s note: This posted two days later than I had planned.

Surrounded by travel books, my friend Bobbie Jill and I spent yesterday pouring through books on Hawaii at Book People planning the perfect trip to Hawaii this summer. I bought one book on the Big Island, where we’ll see lava, a green beach, waterfalls and botanical gardens. Her book is on Oahu, where we plan to see Diamondhead and visit Pearl Harbor. Planning trips are so much fun, and, although we have a lot of tiny things to organize, I love the process of figuring out which day to do what.

To prepare for our big day of planning, we visited Magnolia Café, to make sure we had the energy. We love their garden room on the right-hand side at the Lake Boulevard location. The delicious Magnolia omellette with black beans and a blueberry pancake was so much food, we skipped lunch. Bobbie had the lox and bagel.

I was so worn out by the end of the day, I crashed around 7 p.m. and slept through the night. Today I’ll take photos at the farmers market, which will be really cold, followed by laundry and posting on Poshmark.

Don’t forget today is Veteran’s Day!

 

I’m on a comedy kick on Netflix right now. Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj is fairly timely, although it is pre-midterms (so three days ago!). Minhaj covers Amazon as a monopoly, your state legislators and more. I just got started but plan to continue watching.

Last night, I brought out the magic eraser, which doesn’t happen often—I was a late adopter and tend to forget how useful they are. But after attempting to clean my bathtub with a broom (I broke my broom, but it worked OK), I found this other article on new ways to use your magic erasers, which led me to walking around the house looking for things to use it on.

On Wednesday, I got the chance to take photos for Texas Farmers Market, which led to buying kale from a vendor that was delicious. The seller gave me the tip to sauté the kale in butter, which I wouldn’t have thought about. It tasted delicious with a little garlic salt sprinkled on top.

And finally, I got a sample from Sephora called Hourglass vanish seamless finish foundation stick. I tried each of the colors, none of which was a great match for my skin and I felt like it was way too much coverage for me. If you’re looking for something thick, it does blend in fairly well, but I like to see my skin through my products, because I love my skin, even though there can be some redness around my nose and on my cheeks. It wasn’t for me, but I know some people really like a full coverage and it actually looked quite nice in photos (see the photo from a wedding in my last post).

I am super-excited to announce that, not only did we make our Kickstarter campaign, but we made a little bit more than the $7,500 goal. We’re now on our way to making a children’s book! It will have about 12 short songs to go along with it and narrations for each character. If you want to learn more, you can visit Jump Little Cake, Jump!

Here are some of my favorites by category:

Journalism

• News Leadership 3.0
• 10,000 Words
• Dave Lee J-Blog

Central Texas News

• Impact News — Lake Travis/Westlake (shameless plug)

Personal Finance

• The Simple Dollar
• Get Rich Slowly
• Wise Bread