Monthly Roundup: November Favorites

Happy belated Thanksgiving, friends!

I hope you had a wonderful time with your loved ones yesterday. I always love the moments of looking around the table and seeing some of my all-time favorite people all in one place. The holidays are also a time where the absence of those who are in Heaven is more apparent. I look forward to the day when we are all together again in Heaven.

I know some of you may be out shopping and scoring those deals today, but for me, Black Friday means helping my mom decorate my parents’ house for Christmas. We’ve decorated every Black Friday for as long as I can remember (with the exception of last year because we both had COVID) and it has become one of my favorite traditions of Thanksgiving weekend.

Also… you won’t want to miss next week. I’m pumped because I have something pretty exciting up my sleeve to share with you, but you’ll have to wait to find out! (I know, the anticipation is probably killing you!) I promise it’s worth it, though.

Anyways, without further ado, here are a few of my favorites from November.

{ONE} Starbucks Holiday Cups

It’s that time of year again! Starbucks released their holiday cups this month and you bet I stopped by on the first day to grab the first peppermint mocha of the season. #SorryNotSorry

{TWO} Build-a-Bear x FRIENDS Collection

My childhood self would have loved this. Build-a-Bear released a Friends collection and I am obsessed. Am I too old for a Build-a-Bear? Yes. Do I still want one because it’s Friends? Also yes. You can see the whole collection here.

{THREE} Stoney Clover x American Girl Collection

My childhood self would have definitely loved this. I was a huge American Girl fan growing up. I loved them all, but Samantha was by far my favorite. Stoney Clover launched an American Girl collection of makeup bags, luggage sets, patches, and more. If I could justify spending that much on a pouch, I would’ve definitely been the first in line. View the entire collection here.

{FOUR} Pentatonix’s Evergreen Christmas album

Pentatonix released a new Christmas album this month called Evergreen. You can listen to it here on Spotify. It is beautiful. A few of my favorites on the album are The Prayer, I Just Called To Say I Love You, and Over The River.

{FIVE} Our Christmas tree adventure

I have to share a little story with you guys. Towards the end of Christmas last year, the top half of our pre-lit artificial tree burnt out. It wasn’t cute, but we made the most of it by stringing some lights on the top and getting by. “We’ll fix it before we decorate next year,” we said as we packed up the tree and forgot about it.

And we forgot about it all year until a week or so ago when we wanted to decorate our house for Christmas. “Oh no,” we said. “Our tree! We’ll need to fix it soon.” So we agree that Luke would spend a few hours fixing it before we got everything out.

So on Sunday, Luke pulled out the tree, plugged it in, and we realized that not just the top half of the tree was burnt out, but most of the tree didn’t light up. “That’s it!” Luke said after an hour of trying to mend the problem. “Let’s go buy another tree.”

And so the saga began. For five hours, we drove to multiple Lowes, Home Depots, Michaels, and Targets looking for the perfect tree to replace our broken one. We had a specific style and height in mind and apparently, that style is exactly the one that’s super popular right now so we couldn’t find it anywhere.

Except a display tree at Lowes. That was the only one in Delaware, apparently, that was perfect. “It’s not for sale,” said the salesman, and so we continued hunting for the perfect tree without any luck.

I will admit, I was getting pretty discouraged after Hour 5 of our search. But Luke, being patient and tolerating my grouchy-ness, said, “I’ll drop you off at home and keep looking.” And lo and behold, guess what he did?

He went back to Lowes, convinced the salesman to let us buy the display tree, and brought it back within 30 minutes! A Christmas miracle!!

So yes, our main tree is the display tree from Lowes, and I am very, very happy about it.

{SIX} Decorating for Christmas

As you can see from the photos above, I love decorating for Christmas. This is just a taste of the decorations that we have around the house. One of my recent favorites is my little pink and gold tree that I set up at my office at work. It’s my first Christmas with my own office so I bought a little tree from Amazon, some ornaments from Michaels, and now my little beige office is a bit more festive.