February Recommendations. 2025

Kid thing. These magnetic animals. Kids loves things that are magnets and my sister-in-law gave these to Sutton for Christmas. While, holy cow, they seem like they could be a little disturbing at first, these are a HIT. Cannot recommend enough if you have a toddler (or a 6 1/2 year old, apparently).

Food thing. I tried this viral pasta and it is every bit as good as the reviews suggest. Usually if I make something like this, Wells calls it "fake macaroni and cheese" and no one will eat it. EVERYONE ate it. You also likely have all the ingredients. So much healthier than making a box of macaroni too. I'd add roasted broccoli if I were feeling like bulking it up. 

Clothing thing.  I got these "flared leggings" at Aerie last fall. Amazing quality. Highly recommend. They are what I reach for when I leave the house so I thought it was worth mentioning again!

omg ignore the streaky gross mirror. 

Also, this Free People quilted carry-all bag. I've used it as a tote and it's too much tote for every day. I think it's a great gym bag if you're into that and very useful to have around; I don't do backpacks, really, anymore and this can be worn as a sling. I like it a lot and its looks good but I wouldn't use it every day. I tried the Amazon dupe for $35-40 and sent it back. This one is actually a lot nicer looking in person.  

T.V. Things.  Love is Blind season 8 is something to behold if you like reality TV. The White Lotus came back to HBO Max (just MAX now, apparently) for season 3.We also started The Pitt which is stupidly entertaining. Go watch it now if you have MAX. And then Reacher came back to Amazon Prime last week. Such a great show if you like action. The Bachelor is on Monday nights and then we also finally finished Yellowstone this month (on a borrowed Fubo account..shhh). I found the end to be a letdown, but they really did try to tie up every. single. thread. I would start over at this point, but Scott doesn't rewatch things. 

And I've mentioned this before, but I cannot stop thinking about it: The show Ripley on Netflix. If you have not watched it, go binge it (please). I think about this show multiple times a week and I wish I could watch it again for the first time. 

Movies. We've also been on a movie kick. We watched Anyone But You on Netflix which was very cute and funny. After that, we rewatched The Equalizer, The Equalizer 2, and The Equalizer 3. (I cannot recommend those enough.) We. also watched The Other Guys, which is our go-to comedy a few times a year. We watched Midway last week and it was fantastic as well. Scott thinks I'm "into" war movies now so we also watched Fury. Very good. He said it's probably the closest depiction to what WWII was actually like, compared to something like Saving Private Ryan. 

Listening. This digital decluttering podcast episode spoke to me. Imagine if our digital space (our inboxes, clouds, etc) was in our houses as physical clutter. I, for one, would be on an episode of hoarders. This motivated me to set a 2nd quarter goal of cleaning up online spaces. (I'm doing quarterly goals this year because the months, to be honest, fly by too fast to make progress.) This includes drives, photos, desktops (omgdesktops mine is bad)...I have a system I've been using to go through photos (go to today's date in your apps and cull that date only, each day, at a certain time) but it's been kind of not-good because I have so many pictures of Jett and I'm not willing to delete them.

Reading. I haven't actually been reading this month. I know. I read 9 books in January and then just burned out. I am in the middle of The Four Hour School Day though. I hate to talk about how cynical and radicalized I've become, but when you miss 17 weekdays of school in two months (weather, district closing due to sickness), you have to wonder if there is a better way. 

Writing. I put this about professional dress in schools on my substack recently. I have ideas for what I want to do with that space. It just takes more thought than this one.