Happy Friday Everyone!
One – My Birthday!
Happy Friday, friends! Well, this month is my birthday month and I turned ’45’! Brian took the day off work and we got up extra early and checked out a brunch place called Latte Lounge + HG Eatery that I’ve been wanting to try out for a long time! It is a black owned business and this is their newer location that serves not just coffee, but food! I was SO excited to try out their iced latte flights board. Oh, it was heavenly. The cinnamon one with the whipped cream on top was my absolute fave! I got their breakfast sampler plate for my meal and it was excellent! Thank you to those of you that sent me gifts, I appreciate it.
The weekend before my birthday, I had a collaboration with Beauty Brands and I got a an updo and gel manicure (see my IG Reel on it HERE!). I planned it to coordinate with an evening Brian was taking me out to dinner. It worked out nice and we even took pictures at a park close to the restaurant. Brian surprised me with the most beautiful bouquet of flowers on this same day!
Brian took me to my favorite restaurant, Vicia! They have a farm fresh feast that they bring out and everything is a surprise. Their menu is driven by the best of what’s available at the moment and sourced from relationships we have with farmers, fishermen, and artisans in the Midwest region and beyond. We had an orange colored wine (it tasted like a rose’) and one of my favorite appetizers they gave us was their peaches wrapped in prosciutto.
Two – Summer Happenings!
Well, we wrapped up the teens summer this month. We used to go to the zoo a lot more often when they were younger, but we did get one zoo trip in this summer. They closed the children’s zoo at the St. Louis Zoo and replaced it with a really cool Dinosaur Exhibit. I got to enjoy an alcoholic (it just had a shot of rum in it!) Dole Whip at the zoo. It was so refreshing!
Autumn had dance camp this month, so Nathan and I went out to visit the new Wally’s mega-gas station one day. WOW. It was huge! There is a store inside with a huge gourmet coffee station, sandwiches, popcorn station, an entire wall of various beef jerky and the bathrooms were huge! Everything was really inexpensive and we had lunch there.
Three – Tula Brand Partnership!
Shop Tula:
Clean. Heathly. Glowing Skin. Tula is made by doctors, it is 100% clean, clinically-effective, cruelty-free and focused on guiding your skin to be healthiest it has ever been! I’ve been using and loving Tula for a long time and that’s why I’m SO excited to announce my brand partnership with Tula!
Did you know Tula is formulated with probiotic extracts & superfoods to feed your skin the good stuff? Yes, it is! Use CURLYCRAFTYMOM for 15% off!
What’s your favorite Tula product?? These are my favorites:
The Cult Classic – Purifying Face Cleanser
Rose Glow & Get It – Cooling & Brightening Eye Balm (Feels SO good under your eyes & brightens them!)
Take Care + Polish – Revitalize & Cleanse Body Exfoliator (Softly exfoliates & cleans. Smells so good!)
Filter Primer – Blurring & Moisturizing Primer (sheerly tinted) – Color: Fair/Light (LOVE this matte finish under my makeup!)
Brightening Treatment Drops – Triple Vitamin C Serum (I use this serum EVERY morning & it really brightens my skin!)
Four – Latest Books I’ve Read & Shows I’ve Watched
Shop This Book:
I was able to read TWO books this month and I’m halfway through Every Summer After. I decided to read Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty, because everyone is reading this book right now. Ohhh, this book really keeps you guessing. It is SO good!
Here is my review: I’ve read other books by this author and Apple Never Fall did not disappoint! This book talks a lot about tennis and how Stan and Joy owned a tennis club at their home. They have four children that are brought up learning tennis, but none of them make a career out of it. The books flashes back to the past, but the main chunk of the book is after Stan and Joy retire and they have A LOT of time on their hands and how they’re just a little disappointed with how life turned out. A character named Savannah pops into the book and she is mysterious and Joy and Stan are overcome with the distraction she gives them while they try to figure out what to do with all of the hours in their retired days. However, the grown children start to ponder who this Savannah character is and there are a lot of secrets (and self discovery) unfolded throughout the rest of the book. Then Joy goes missing… and, detectives are involved and I won’t give away any details, but the book gets very serious and becomes a huge page turner where you’ll want to stay up late at night to figure out what happened to Joy!
Shop This Book:
Every Summer After by Carley Fortune is another hot read right now. I read this book in less than a week, it was so good! I met my husband when I was Percy’s age and we reconnected later in our adult lives and got married, so this story rekindled a lot of that for me (even though a lot of it was different then what we went through). This story rotates from the past and present in each chapter and builds upon Percy and Sam’s relationship. This is a sweet love story with some real life hardship thrown in. Percy and Sam grew up in this book and it was fun to live their childhood through their eyes and then to see where it lead them as adults. I really enjoyed it. This was this author’s FIRST book and I would have never have guessed that she had never written a book before.
We just finished Virgin River, Season 4 and it was really good! We may watch the latest season to Outlander next, we saw that it is on Netflix (finally). I’d love to watch Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 (its only 3 episodes) soon.
Five – Nathan’s Room Update & Professional Interior House Painting
We have A LOT going on at the house right now. We’ve decided to update Nathan’s room finally, so he has gotten new furniture. We are getting 3 rooms professionally painted in the house and we are waiting on the schedule from the painters. We’re getting the master bedroom, master bathroom and Nathan’s room painted. Once we get the schedule from the painter we need to move everything 3′ away from the walls, empty out Nathan’s closet (his closet is painted blue and we want it to be white), take all the knick knacks off the furniture, take curtains down, all the wall stuff down, etc. Whew!! I’m not sure WHY I didn’t get my act together and plan all this earlier in the summer… because now we are approaching the start of school (and 4 (!!) work trips for Brian. But, it is what it is and when it gets done it’ll be SO nice. I plan to do some decor posts once I get everything done. I have my office space I’m still working on and I’m getting close to finishing cleaning up/organizing the unfinished basement. I’ve been REALLY busy working on house stuff this summer!! But, stuff is getting done!
I hope everyone has a nice and relaxing weekend!
