Welcome to the Friday Five!
Every Friday, I will highlight 5 things I am currently loving. This can be anything from habits that are currently serving me, clothes, apps, people I am currently loving, podcasts, food, mom hacks and everything in between!
What I am currently loving:
Foodility App
I started using this app in January of 2020 to keep track of my water consumption. The past few years I have gotten sick in January, and I was determined to stay well this year. One of my goals to achieve that was to get between 80-100oz of water daily. This app was the perfect way to track it for me. I hate those gigantic water bottles that you fill with your daily allotment of water. It doesn’t fit in a cup holder in the car or my diaper bag and I physically cannot carry it around all day with the 3 girls and all of their things. It just doesn’t work for me. I love the simple look and feel of this app and the ability to track everything about your day. Water consumption, food, exercise, weight, medications and general notes. You can even add pictures of your food and export the entire file to a PDF if you are working with a nutritionist or if you really want to dive into what you are eating and how it affects you. This is a goal for me in 2021 to really understand the way different foods make me feel.
Kate from Naptime Kitchen
I have talked about Kate a ton recently and am in the middle of her home reset. She is such a fun follow on Instagram, always a bright spot in my day. She has great mom hacks, cooking hacks, recipes, grocery hacks, etc. One of my favorite things she speaks to is accepting the season you are in and understanding how to make that work for you. Accepting that right now, with 3 small children I am caring for all day everyday, it’s okay to buy the bagged salad or the pre-chopped veggies, because I know I won’t want to cut the veggies when I get home or I won’t have the time to prep all the stuff for a salad. It’s a season and making things easier for me in the kitchen is okay. If you are a mom and you are not following her, go do it now. And thank me later.
Double Batching Smoothies
I truly don’t understand why it took me a few years of making smoothies almost every day at home to realize I should double the recipe. I rotate between two smoothies most of the time. The cauliberry smoothie and the clean and green smoothie, both from Bare Nutrition Health. I always have the ingredients to these on hand, most of them frozen and ready to go. But it still takes time every day to get everything out, load the blender, make the smoothie and then clean the blender. But its just as easy to make two smoothies as it is one. So now, I double everything and store my second smoothie in a mason jar for me to enjoy the next day with no work. It does change the consistency of the smoothie a little bit, but it is worth it for me to save the time. It’s the simplest thing, but has made a huge difference. It helps me get my greens, and I have a snack/meal ready to grab and go if I need to. Or, on one of those crazy mornings I forget to eat, I have one ready to go at least every other day.
Weekly Date Nights
This is something we decided to start doing at the beginning of 2020 and it has been fantastic for our relationship. Matt works really long hours and when he was going into the office daily, he was usually not home for dinner and sometimes not home till after I am in bed. It can often feel like we don’t even get the chance to have a full conversation with each other for the entire week. So this year we decided that we would have a standing date night every Friday night. Our regular sitter is in college, so I talked to her and had her block out Friday nights for us (we love you Alexis!). Of course, things come up and we don’t get to do something every Friday and we missed several months this year because of Covid. But, it is so nice to have this standing date. We normally go to dinner, usually nothing fancy and have even used this time to go shopping together or even just to drive around and talk. I am super proud that we made it the whole year keeping our commitment to spending this time together.
Personal Size Frozen Pizzas for the Kids
This is a mom hack I discovered last year when we started having our weekly date nights. I buy these exact pizzas from Sam’s and save them for nights that the girls are home with the babysitter. They can be microwaved or made in the oven and the girls just love them. They are a special treat for our weekly date nights, they know it’s pizza night on Friday nights with their favorite babysitter. This makes my life easier, because I don’t have to even think about dinner for the girls when they are with the sitter. It’s easy for me to make in the middle of getting ready if I need to, the baby sitter has no issues getting the girls to eat and there is basically no clean up. It’s a win win for everyone.
I hope you found something helpful or inspiring in this week’s Friday Five! I’ll have 5 new favorites to share with you next week, have an awesome weekend!
