Tag: Let’s Look At…

Let’s Look…At Our Biggest Comforts

Posted on by Lauren Lane

Happy Wednesday, friends!

It’s another edition of LET’S LOOK!

This is a little link-up where we “look” at different aspects of our lives. And today we’re looking at our biggest comforts in life.

My biggest comfort by far is my family and faith.

Having all of these people that have been entrusted to Nathan and me home, asleep in their beds, right where they belong safe and loved.

And faith…well, sometimes it’s felt like the only thing that has gotten me through some of my darkest days struggling with depression.

On a much lighter note, there are a few things that just comfort me whenever I’m feeling down or out of sorts…

To-do lists. And checking things off. It feels so good.

Love having an awesome candle burning day or night. It lifts my mood with the flickering of the flame and yummy smells.

A really long, super hot shower is one of the best comforts of life.

Followed by a huge bowl of Tonight Dough Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

Time spent gardening. Planting, caring for, cutting flowers. So rewarding and comforting to create something beautiful in nature.

Re-watching Gilmore Girls for the thousand-eth time. Let me move to Stars Hollow, please…

Getting an area organized and purged so it’s functional AND pretty.

And last, but not least, my mom’s chocolate chip cookies. Forever a comfort.

Let’s Look…At My Worst Habits

Posted on by Lauren Lane

It’s been months since I’ve written a Let’s Look post. And last week got sidetracked and busy, and I just struggled to find time to sit down and write. So, it’s a new week. New week, new me! If you’re new to these parts of the interwebs, this series is a little link up hosted by Shay and Erika to share a look into an aspect of our lives. And today’s topic is our worst habits.

I tend to be a pretty sensitive person. I over-analyze situations, tones of voice. I notice when small things have been moved from the position I put them in previously. I pick up on people’s idiosyncrasies pretty quickly. And all of those things that can sometimes be such wonderful traits, can also be a curse…so let’s settle in for a tour of some of my worst habits…

I overfill the trash can…regularly. In our house, Nathan takes out the kitchen trash. It’s one of those few things in life that I rarely do, even if it’s needed. I will wait for him to take it out. I should also probably wait to put more things into an overflowing trash can, but I don’t. I just keep filling it up. And then there are usually curse words and grumbles when Nathan comes home and takes it out.

I will keep my 5am alarm on even if I know I’m not going to get up and work out in the morning. To be fair, Nathan never turns off his 6:15 alarm even though I’ve never seen him wake up at this time.

I lose my phone multiple times a day, and have to ping it with my watch to figure out where I left in the house…or the garage…or the garden.

I never remember to have a snack on me at all times. I suffer from what many people call ‘hanger.’ It comes on suddenly, and like a tidal wave. One minute I’m fine, the next I will bit your head off over the most dumb thing and turn it into an argument.

And I still after all of this time of knowing that low blood sugar does this to me, I still forget to carry a granola bar on me at all times.

I have a chronic sniff from post-nasal drip that never seems to go away. Should I really have this looked at? Probably. I don’t even notice it anymore, except when I hear myself on videos. Like seriously, lady. Sniffing every couple of minutes.

I can not do painted nails. I will sit and pick at them until I completely take them all off. And then I don’t pick the nail polish off and throw it in the trash, I will leave it sitting on the coffee table for a week until I finally pick it up.

I will gladly help pick off your peeling skin from a sunburn. Nothing thrills me more than peeling off dead skin. I find it so completely satisfying.

I’m addicted to chapstick. I literally cannot live without having a chapstick in every room of the house, in every purse, and in my car. I need my lips to be coated with the original chapstick at all times.

This resonates deeply with me…

I’m sure there are others…let’s just not ask Nathan. 😆. I can’t wait to read through the links to see what others consider their worst habits!

Let’s Look…At Our Best Amazon Purchases

Posted on by Lauren Lane

Hey! It’s “Let’s Look” day! If you’re new here, once a month, two of my favorite blogs host a link-up to share about some small routine aspect of our lives. I always love a good look into someone else’s life, don’t you? Even the mundane, I find fascinating how other people live.

So far this year, I’ve shared:

And today, we’re sharing our best, most favorite Amazon purchases of all time. With such a looooong and robust relationship with Amazon Prime, the task of finding the BEST purchases of all time is BIG.

Ask a former auditor to rank things based on ALL TIME greatness, and you’ll find yourself a very overwhelmed former auditor who will likely make a spreadsheet with tabs by category to evaluate said items. It’s who I am. If anyone needs to check my paper trail behind this list, you can be assured that I will have it.

Favorites for the Kids:

The Hatch alarm clock has been a game changer for both of my kids. I have one child that I used to dread waking up because it was like waking a troll that had been hibernating for the last 50 years and was not ready to get up yet. And one child who thinks that 5:30-6:00 am is the time the day starts. The Hatch now wakes my troll child every morning, and informs my early riser that ‘it ain’t time to start the day’ yet until the light goes off. I love that I can control the Hatch through my phone, and it wakes them with a beautiful simulated sunrise and flute or chimes. You know, whichever you prefer. It also replaced their white noise machines, so pulling double duty!

These cute little boy dress shoes made for a wide foot were perfect for our littlest this winter.

For the Home:

This pillow is worth every last penny. I can’t believe I spent 35 years of my life sleeping on the cheapest Target pillow I could find. That is all.

This cookbook is maybe my most favorite cookbook ever. SO many good recipes! I loved it so much, I gifted a copy of it as my “favorite thing” of the year at our Christmas book club!

For You:

Upgrading my hair dryer was a big moment. Love this new one. Love how quickly it dries my hair, and all of the attachments that it comes with. And it was a fraction of the price of a Dyson hair dryer.

It’s not often that I sing the praises of Amazon fashion. I feel like more often than not, the clothes can feel cheap and poorly made. But I wore this dress on repeat all of last summer. It was super good, durable quality, AND it was so comfortable and cute. Looked put together while being soooo simple. It comes in like….50 different colors too.

This travel toiletry bag is the best one I’ve ever purchased. The quality is so good. That is, the zippers aren’t jankity and hard to close. The space is just the right amount for me, and I love that it hangs up on the back of a hotel bathroom door. I’ve had it three years now, and it’s still very much a favorite.

Those are, I think, my all time favorite Amazon purchases. It was a tough list to come up with, but it seems like a good round-up to me. 🙂

Let’s Look: At What’s In My Medicine Cabinet

Posted on by Lauren Lane

It’s Let’s Look day where we share a peak into some very random aspect of our lives!

Last month, I shared how I schedule/organize our family.

And today, I’m linking up with Shay and Erika to share a look at our “medicine cabinet.” And I do mean medicine cabinet.

Oh man. You know we have buckets of medicine. Pantloads of medicine in this house. We are in the pit of daycare germ central in the Lane house. Harrison has finally grown to an age where he really only gets super sick once or twice a year, and will have a few colds thrown in there. Jonathan, though. Bless. Our little COVID baby who was around people with masks from the time he was born until January of last year, woof. We have taken a beating on the cold front with him for the past year. All of us. Or really, mainly me since he practically wants to re-attach his umbilical cord and won’t let me go whenever he’s sick. If Jonathan’s sick, I can pretty much guarantee that my immune system will not withstand being coughed in the face, sneezed on, vomited on, used as a human Kleenex, and invariably the child steals my water bottle and puts all of his cold germs all over it.

Can you tell I’m a bit of a germaphobe? Not a good combination with a toddler who goes to full time daycare. But I’m working through it.

I debated on how to set up this post. Because I could probably go on for a looooong time about medicine. But since we’re looking at medicine cabinets, I’m going to share how I attack sicknesses around here…

At the first sign of sickness for anybody in this house:

I start with Elderberry syrup for everyone. I make my own, because it’s ridiculously expensive at the store and honestly super easy to make. But as soon as I see the snot rolling down my toddler’s face, out comes the elderberry. The boys actually love this stuff. It has honey in it, though, so it’s only ok if they are over the age of one. And, of course, you should always do your own research, talk to your pediatrician, etc. I’m just simply sharing what we do in this house 🙂

I buy a package of elderberries off of Amazon, and I use this recipe that lasts us about a month or more and we use it a loooot. I have yet to run out of elderberries either, and it’s been almost a year of doing this.

I myself start taking Zicam immediately and Emergen-C as soon as someone is sick in the house because….why not.

For the kids:

If it’s just a minor cold, I mostly let them ride it out without much intervention. If they’re complaining about how they’re feeling or have a cough, I opt for Hyland’s Children’s Daytime or Nightime and/or a teaspoon of honey for a cough. Again – only if they’re over one.

We have humidifiers going in their rooms at night all winter long. And we just ride it out.

If they have a fever that’s bothering them and they’re uncomfortable and not sleeping well, I throw in the ibuprofen as well.

I also usually add in a warm epsom salt bath in the evening to release toxins, and then some crazy cold wet sock trick that I read about on the internet.

What’s the cold sock treatment, you ask?

You soak lightweight cotton socks in ice water. Ring them out and put them on right after your bath, and cover with one or two pairs of dry heavy wool socks. The theory is that it puts your immune system into high gear over night as it works to warm your feet, and thus, works harder to fight off anything else your body is fighting, too. Does it work? I don’t know. Who can really say…but it seems to help the boys. And at the very least, they think it’s kind of cool to do something special.

Other items I always keep in our kids’ medicine cabinet: children’s Claritin, children’s Benadryl, Pedialyte, Stool softeners, and hydrocortisone. Nose frida…boogie wipes…the list could go on. 🙂

The adults medicine cabinet consists of: ibuprofen, Tylenol, DayQuil, NyQuil, Sore throat lozenges, Sinus congestion medicine, cough medicine, and Mucinex for colds. And then we have things like Pepto Bismal, Pepcid Complete for heartburn, and allergy meds.

Of course, we have a variety of first aid items as well: heating pads, band-aids of every variety and design, Neosporin, thermometers on every floor of the house, ice packs.

Those are the things that we arm ourselves with in this house!

Let’s Look…At Scheduling/Organizing Our Family

Posted on by Lauren Lane

I wanted to say first of all, thank you for the kind words on Friday’s post. I went back and read your comments, and gosh. You guys. They really lifted my spirits, and just meant so much to me.

I do my best to post my authentic self here, good and bad. But how raw and scary these last few weeks have been for me, I considered keeping those words in Friday’s post to myself. I’m mentally in a much better place than when I wrote those words. Writing, prayer, and working through a plan are the ways I work through things, and I feel at least at peace with where we are right now. As Nathan reminds me often, we will get through it. Whatever it ends up being, we will figure it out. What’s that saying about how your batting average of getting through hard things so far is 100%?

Now, onto the lighter side of life. I missed Let’s Look last week for Shay and Erika’s monthly link-up! They looked at scheduling and organizing the family, which is truly something I kind of enjoy. I love figuring out the pieces of how to make things work. (I may regret saying that when the kids are older and have many activities, school events, etc.!). Right now, it’s truthfully pretty simple for us. But I love a schedule and order to things.

Harrison is involved in at most two activities in a season, and Jonathan will likely start a couple of activities in the spring. But in the scheme of juggling schedules and organizing families, we’re still in the minor leagues. :). But I’m going to share what works for me to try to organize our family.

I Live by my Calendar. If it’s not on my calendar, I will not remember it. It does not exist. And you do not have priority for doing that activity or event. It rules everything. I went on a journey loooong ago attempting to find the perfect family calendar. I’ve asked so many friends what they do for their “shared” calendar, and I usually get one of two options and I don’t like either. They use the Cozi app family calendar. Or they have a shared Apple calendar on their iPhones/iPads that they add all family events to.

You guys, I didn’t like either. I wanted one master calendar of ALL MY THINGS, including work. My job uses Microsoft Outlook for their calendar, and Microsoft Outlook does not sync with any of those options, so you’re left with adding things multiple times to calendars – once to your Outlook calendar and once to your family calendar, if you want a whole picture of your day/week/month. Or flipping between two calendars to determine what’s going on in your life.

I would love for someone to make a feature that would allow me to select in Outlook if an event should be transferred to a family calendar, and then it would magically show up on a joint calendar, but I could still have everything on my one personal calendar. PLEASE SOMEONE MAKE THIS or tell me it if already exists!

What worked for us, since both my work and Nathan’s work uses Outlook is that we send each other event invites from our work calendars for any family events, date nights, or even personal social events that we have that the other will have to cover on little boy duty. That way we each have our own calendars with everything on it for our day.

Is mine color coded by family member for each person’s event? Yes. Of course. What kind of Type A organizer do you think I am? 🙂

I use Apple Reminders a lot on my phone. I set reminders on my phone to help make sure I have all the boxes checked for myself and the kids. I set recurring weekly reminders to wash the kids’ waterbottles from school and switch our their lovies to clean ones. I set reminders for myself if there are appointments I need to schedule, or check in on a friend that has a big doctor appointment or event coming up.

I set YEARLY reminders to check my smoke detector batteries, schedule the dog’s annual well visit. I even have reminders set for things like dealing with a particular garden pest that comes out at certain of year, so I know when to start looking for the bug and dealing with it.

I Meal Plan + Grocery Shop once a week. I know so many of you meal plan. I put on my calendar every single week thirty minutes every Thursday to sit down and meal plan for the next week. I look at our upcoming week’s calendar, nights that we have events, and then I plan accordingly. A super busy week at work for me looks like leaning more heavily on easy meals. Pulling meals I’ve stored in the freezer. Opting for pasta and meat sauce from a can. Crockpot meals, etc.

I Purge Things Often. I am constantly editing our house. By that, I mean, I often times open a drawer and get rid of all of the things that we don’t use anymore. I hold on to very little that I don’t use. I go through the boys’ backpacks weekly and pitch most of the things that come home. And the playroom in particular is edited often. Mostly to rid it of what seems to be a never-ending pit of broken toys.

Those are the things that come to mind when I think about organizing our family!

Let’s Look At…Tidying Up

Posted on by Lauren Lane

It’s Let’s Look day with Shay @ Mix and Match Mama and Erika @ A Little Bit of Everything! If you’re new here, it’s one day a month that we share a little peak into some aspect of our lives. So far this year, I’ve shared:

Being a Type A personality, I have a soft spot for things be orderly and tidy. If you want to speak my love language, talk to me about organizing and everything having a place.

The flip side of that coin is that I would be the most bitter, frustrated mom and wife ever if I spent the time needed to tidy everything at the end of the day.

I used to be that super bitter, exhausted, shell of a human being as a brand new mom. I wanted my house to look the way it did before babies. It’s just not possible, though. There will come a day when the boys are off on their own, and my house can be mostly tidy at all times. But I’m doing my best to enjoy living in a house that’s a little messier.

I try to do a small amount of tidying every day. Usually I take 20 minutes after the boys leave for daycare and tidy things that are at a level that I just can’t live with anymore. I get as much done as a possibly can before the clock hits about 8:10, and then I just let the rest go. For the rest of the day. That’s right. I don’t bother to tidy up at all after the morning.

Come along with me as I tidy one morning…

Always left with a sink full of dirty dishes after the boys’ breakfast.

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Let’s Look At…Keeping Healthy

Posted on by Lauren Lane

It’s Let’s Look day with Shay @ Mix and Match Mama and Erika @ A Little Bit of Everything! If you’re new here, it’s one day a month that we share a little peak into some aspect of our lives. So far this year, I’ve shared:

And today, we’re talking about keeping healthy. How ironic that I’m sitting down to write about staying healthy on a day where I really don’t feel healthy….mentally, physically….But that’s just it. It’s not a straight line of healthiness at all times. It’s having habits that direct us back to feeling our best. There are a lot of facets of keeping healthy for me:

Staying Active. I’m a Bar Method devotee. I’ve been an almost daily regular at Bar classes since 2013. Days that I start my day with Bar have me feeling more energized and awake even though I get up two hours earlier before the boys on work-out days. I feel it the days that I miss class, which has me all the more excited to get back ASAP. It wasn’t very long ago that I wrote a whole blog post about my active lifestyle, and it really covers it all.

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Let’s Look At Our Go-To Summer Lunches

Posted on by Lauren Lane

It’s Let’s Look day with Shay @ Mix and Match Mama and Erika @ A Little Bit of Everything! If you’re new here, it’s one day a month that we share a little peak into some aspect of our lives. So far this year, I’ve shared:

Today, we’re sharing our go-to summer lunches.

Let me see, my go-to summer lunches for kids are: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Easy mac, grilled cheese, and cheese quesadilla. Ha. Doesn’t that sound like your childhood, too?

My adult go-to summer lunches look a little bit different than the kids, though.

Option 1: In the summer, I usually pick up at least one bag of pre-packaged salad a week to have on hand. I like a spring mix or a spring mix & baby spinach. Half of the time, I also pick up a pack of the already hard-boiled eggs to stick in my fridge as well, because I’m unbelievably lazy when it comes to having to pre-make anything for lunches.

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Let’s Look At…My Hometown

Posted on by Lauren Lane

Harrison’s favorite song for the past year has been “More Than My Hometown” by Morgan Wallen, and whenever I look at this prompt, I think of that. It makes me smile.

I love this link up. A fun little prompt sharing a little part of our lives. As usual, the link-up is hosted by two of my favorite blogs (Shay @ Mix and Match Mama and Erika @ A Little Bit of Everything). Before we get to this month’s prompt…a look back at what we’ve looked at this year:

Today, I’m sharing a bit about my hometown. My hometown is just a few miles farther south than where we currently live. I grew up in a Kansas City suburb called Overland Park. That would be the very technical answer for my hometown, but quite frankly, there isn’t much difference between my hometown and the city where we currently live and are raising our kids, Prairie Village. And they are all just suburbs in the same general area of Kansas City.

Kansas City, while the city proper that most people associate with KC, is in Missouri, the Kansas City metropolitan area actually straddles the state line between Missouri and Kansas.

I loved having grown up in Kansas City, and now raising my own kids in KC. Having lived now in several other cities, I’ve realized that I’m truly a midwestern girl at heart. The people are kind and helpful, for a mid-size city there’s a lot of fun things to do, and it continues to grow, and it’s hard to picture ever loving another place to live more than this one!

SPORTS: Kansas City is home to many professional sports teams. Most popular are the Kansas City Chiefs and the Kansas City Royals. I have many fond memories growing up and over the years going to many games.

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Let’s Look At…How We Plan & Do Date Night

Posted on by Lauren Lane

First off, thank you so much for understanding the need for a break last week! Everything just seemed to go haywire, and I needed some time to catch up. But I missed you guys! My week felt like it was missing something the whole time, so I’m so happy to be back!

Given that tomorrow is Harrison’s birthday, and my post will be fully dedicated to my little guy, I’m posting ”Let’s Look” a day early! I love this link up. A fun little prompt sharing a little part of our lives. As usual, the link-up is hosted by two of my favorite blogs (Shay @ Mix and Match Mama and Erika @ A Little Bit of Everything). Before we get to this month’s prompt…a look back at what we’ve looked at this year:

And today, we’re talking date night. You guys, I love a good date night…or date day. 🙂

Here’s the guy I go on date night with for the past 10 years…

A couple of things about this topic as I thought about our seasons of life.

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