Hi guys! How have you all been? We’ve been doing pretty well here and spent a pretty quiet Thanksgiving with family (where I “cooked” aka reheated a Thanksgiving meal set from Whole Foods). This was our first super quiet, stay-at-home-with-minimal-guests kind of Thanksgiving and I have to say I loved it.

The Row cashmere sweater, Agolde Riley jeans, IRO coat, Organic by John Patrick tee, and a Judith Lieber belt from the RealReal: Yep I got a lot of items from the RealReal this month, but it was mostly because I earned quite a bit of credit from clearing out my closet and selling to them. Sure I could have taken the payout as a check, but I knew I was going to want to add a couple of Fall/Winter pieces to my wardrobe (especially since I’ve sized out of a lot of my winter clothes these last two years 🤷🏻‍♀️)

Welcome to my third annual holiday gift guide on this blog, and if you’ve seen the 2019 and 2020 versions you’ll realise there’s a lot of repeats. I keep recommending the same things because these things are some of my most used items and have been some of my best gifts (to myself and others). And the fact that they’re around year after year means these products aren’t trendy, but rather these items are classics. So for long time readers, sorry to sound like a broken record but hope you find some helpful gift ideas in this post!

The big thing this week is that Emi started going to pre-school on Tuesday (she started this late because we were waitlisted for the school and then space opened up at the beginning of November). And wow, I feel like I’m moving on to the next stage in life.

Hi guys! It’s been a minute since my last personal weekend post. Guess that’s because I really haven’t had anything to report, plus I might have had a small case of the blahs. But I’ve been trying to do some gratitude practices and reminding myself that this too shall pass, and I think it’s been helping. Anyway what prompted me to hop on here for this bit of rambling is, believe it or not, the topic of cleaning lol.

Ok ok so I know last week I said I would skip this consumeristic post but I decided to write it after all because it holds me accountable for all the things I’ve purchased. But if you dislike this type of post, of course feel free to skip I’ll be back next week with another review post.

Instead of my usual consumeristic “What I Bought” post at the end of the month, I thought I would change it up this week with some tips for traveling via a RV (recreation vehicle, aka a trailer). Our trailer of choice is an Airstream because of the modern clean interiors and easy-to-tow shape (they’re much more aerodynamic than their boxier counterparts). If you’ve been following for awhile, you might recall that my husband and I used to run an Airstream Rental business called GoSilver.

This month was #SecondhandSeptember so I tried to keep all my clothing and accessories purchases secondhand. So how did I do? Pretty good if I do say so myself. Honestly the secondhand market is my favorite place to shop so it wasn’t hard at all. But did I actually save money? That would be a resounding “no.” I purchased a couple high-ticket secondhand items (though of course they’re much less than what they would have been retail), but September was still a “high buy” month for me. But I gotta say I loooooove everything I got this month and some of these secondhand items are real treasures!

If you’ve been a long time reader of this blog, you already know that I’m not afraid to let go of bags. I’m quick to buy but also to sell once I’ve realised I’m not using the bag much. I rarely hold on to bags for sentimental reasons because tbh all those bags would just take up so much space. If I’m done with a bag, I’ll thank it for its service and then try to rehome it to someone who would get more use out of the it than me.

Anyway I’ve touched upon purchasing secondhand luxury bags before. But here is where I usually sell my bags once I’m ready to let them go.

So I did not make it through No Buy August, and in fact I got derailed fairly early on in the month. BUT I tried not to let it all go since I know I have a tendency to binge shop once I’ve failed a No Buy Challenge. I think in the past my thinking goes something like, “Well I already failed, what’s the harm in adding a couple more new things anyway.” So this time around I tried not to lose all self-control and I don’t think I did too bad. So here are the things I bought in August:

I apologize for last week’s gloomy and somewhat needy post lol. I think being sick made me feel pretty down, but I realise I got a lot to be thankful for (and it’s one thing to see things on the news and quite another to have them actually happen to you). And thank you to both Andrea and K for supporting me despite my melodramatics. But they gave me some great advice: stop doomscrolling, do things that you enjoy, and look to help others with time/money. After doing all three, I do feel a bit better and more hopeful again.

Hi guys and what a week, eh? First Haiti then Afghanistan. Also the doomsday climate change report and rising covid cases. And personally there’s been the ongoing fires and smoky days, and I’ve been dealing with a cold (cough but no fever), which I unfortunately passed onto Emi (it’s her first cold ever and man it’s been brutal—hello multiple wake-ups in the middle of the night).