I'll have my next gift guide up on Thursday, but I wanted to pause the gifting posts today to talk about giving. Today is Giving Tuesday - a great day to donate to the not-for-profit organizations that are important to you, if you're able. I know that everyone has their own priorities, but I want to share some of the organizations that I support.
I went back to figure out where to start with this month's general recap of my life, and realized how much has happened! It had some downtime too, but was pretty packed. It made me understand why I'm really looking forward to some time off around the holidays in December. Here's everything I've been up to over the last month-ish.
Is there a more appropriate day than today to share a gratitude list? Probably not! So without further ado, I'm sharing the things I'm feeling most grateful for right now.
This was one of my most highly requested gift guides! All of these gifts are $25 or under - they'd be great for a Secret Santa type exchange or a stocking stuffer, and some of them could be combined if you're looking for a little higher budget, too.
In the past few years, I've heard about "Favorite Things" parties - where everyone brings a gift that's one of their favorite things, and then everyone exchanges, grab bag / white elephant style. It sounds like so much fun - I love sharing my favorite things, and learning about what other people's favorites are! I don't actually have a Favorite Things party to go to, but thought I'd share some things I'd consider bringing if I did.
This week has felt both too long and too short at the same time - it's not like anything out of the ordinary happened, but I think it's just the general craze of the impending holidays that makes time feel a little bit off. I honestly don't have much more to share about this week - just kind of going along and looking forward to a few days off next week.
It's that time of year again! I'm going to be sharing gift guides weekly until mid-December. I'll have a variety of themes and price points, but every year I like to start my gift guides by sharing gifts from Pittsburgh small businesses. Most of these are businesses that I know and love, though a handful are new to me. These are all great businesses with some very cute gift options!
Maybe it's the time change (which I normally enjoy, actually!), or maybe it's unrelated and something else, but I have really felt so scattered this week! Losing track of the day and time constantly, just feeling very all over the place. I have a really low-key weekend planned, so I'm hoping I can really use it to kind of reset and get back to a little bit more of my typical routine.
I'll be sharing gift guides next week, but in the meantime, I like to start by sharing my own Christmas list. This year's is pretty short - I'm sure that when I'm shopping for other people I'll also find things I want to buy myself, but at the moment, at lot of the things on the list are holdovers from my dream birthday wishlist that I shared! Some of these are realistic, and some are less so, but it's still fun to put together.
When I was young, Advent calendars were one of my favorite things about December and the holiday season. They were nothing elaborate, but I looked forward to opening the calendar every single day. In the last few years, I've gotten into Advent calendars again, just a slightly more grown up version of them! I tend to go for things with consumables - I have enough little things (though I do make an exception for beauty calendars), but I love the thought of a little treat for myself every day in December. In case you're anything like me, I thought I'd share some of the best ones I found.
