These monthly recaps are thus forth replacing my “What I Bought” posts. Since I want to get away from being so material/consumer minded, I want to place less emphasis on acquiring things. I originally wanted to name the post “What I Bought and Did in January” but that felt limiting (I might want to add what I returned and/or what beauty items I finished if people are interested).

This past week was a bit of an off week for me. I got a really sore throat and I thought I for sure got Covid even though I had no real exposures (I mean I went to Trader Joe’s and the farmer’s market but it seems really unlikely—but these days you never know).

Hi guys, just wanted to hop on here to apologize for some confusing blank blog posts this past week (it’ll show up if you subscribe or have my blog in your RSS feed). I’m usually on top of making sure my drafts don’t publish but sometimes life gets in the way and I forget. This week, Emi is home from school because of both a student and teacher exposure to the coronavirus.

Between Christmas and New Year’s we took a quick family trip down to LA. Mostly for fun and for a change of scenery (since we weren’t planning to fly home to Hawaii or anywhere else for that matter). We also decided to take Emi to Disneyland (well California Adventures) to see Cars Land since she’s a huge fan of the Pixar movies Cars.

I’m happy to report that I didn’t buy too many extra closet items this month (ok ok so I still got another bag). But overall I purchased more for family members, more essentials, and more items that’ll help me with my goals for 2022.

I’m getting started a tad early this year on my New Year’s resolution but for good reason. I’m hoping some of you guys can join me (and thus keep me motivated as well). And yep, it says it all there right in the title: less new in 2022.

I really like doing my end of the year recap of what I wore most in the past year because it makes me stop and reflect on what have been the true workhorses of my closet. Last year, not surprisingly, loungewear and all things comfy were at the top of the list (here’s 2020’s most worn list). I also did this in 2018 (with data from my Stylebook App) and I’m happy to see that some things have stayed on the list even three years later. Which just goes to show that I may buy a lot of different things throughout the year but I probably don’t have to since I stick with a lot of the same things anyway.

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.