Currently #4

Celebrating

That we have a new president!! I'm assuming that all of you spent last week in a similar state as me, i.e., refreshing the news every five minutes and then waking up to look at your phone in the middle of the night. I didn't quite realize how much stress and sadness I've carried the past four years, and it felt amazing to have it lift off my shoulders on Saturday. 

Eating

This incredible peanut butter cake! We had some of my family over on Saturday which happened to align perfectly with the celebrations mentioned above. Whenever I have people over dessert is what stresses me out the most, partially because I forget to think about it until the last second, and partially because I never know what to serve. I don't like anything with cooked fruit which takes out a lot of options, cakes always feel too birthday, and that generally leaves me with brownies from a box. But! I saw this snacking cake recipe last week literally right after I asked my sister to bring dessert, and knew I found a winner. It's a cake but it isn't layered and doesn't have buttercream frosting, so the birthday connection is gone. Word of warning though - the adults all liked it, but my five year old niece took one swipe of the frosting (dotted with sea salt) and pushed the rest away. So this one might fall in the "adults only" category of cakes. 

Reading

I finally read The Idea of You after hearing about it over and over, and this one was actually better than I expected! It's about a single mom who goes with her tween daughter to a boy band concert (ahem: a thinly veiled One Direction), and ends up in a relationship with one of the twenty-somethings from the band. This book is steamy, like basically a romance novel, but the love story and the look at fame really drew me in. 

Obsessing

Over this beautiful Christmas quilt. I keep going back and forth between "I NEED THIS FOR HER IT WILL BE SOMETHING SHE HAS FOREVER" and "this is overpriced and she's only going to use it a year or two and she doesn't care what her blankets look like." 

Watching

The Bachelorette - anyone else?! The past two episodes have been totally nuts and I was so drawn in. Normally I get a little bored during the episodes and end up double screening, but I was completely riveted with the breaks in formula and look at production. And then of course I had to recap with my favorite podcast, Bachelor Party. Jeff actually got me to start listening to the host Juliet Litman way back when we first started dating when she did a podcast about lots of reality television, and we both love her so much we seriously considered sending her an invitation to our wedding just to see if she'd come 😂Like that's the celebrity we're interested in lolol. Anyway, last week she did a podcast with Nick Viall and Rachel Lindsay to talk about their fantasy suite date the night after the 2016 election, and it was such an incredible look at the behind-the-scenes for The Bachelor. I highly recommend if you're a fan! 

Buying

Matching Christmas outfits for me and Mia. We have this top for me, this top for Mia, and this skirt for Mia so far, as well as a plethora of matching black watch plaid options. Watch out world. 

Follow along with everything Kristina does via Bloglovin!