Five Favorites Friday, Lifestyle March 14, 2020

Five Favorites Friday on a Saturday

During this time time of uncertainty and taking stock of what we have and what we need, I wanted to write out five favorites. Mostly to remind myself life is for living and while it’s natural and expected to to be scared, we can take productive steps to move forward.

As far as what we’re doing, we are self-quarantining. Social distancing is an important and necessary next step and we will be doing our part to help flatten the curve. I am incredibly grateful that our jobs can be done from home. For those of you who work in the medical/healthcare field, retail or a service industry, your contribution and dedication is needed and so very appreciated.

I know you’re getting hit with Coronavirus news from every.single.angle. But if you’re prone to anxious-end-of-the-world thoughts like me, I did want to share two articles that helped me understand the current state of things and how instituting preventative measures now will create lasting life-saving effects. An article on social distancing by Ariadne Labs and a Vox article about the importance of flattening the curve.

That is my very small addition to the Coronavirus talk — wash your hands, don’t touch your face, stay home when you can, contribute where you can and check in on your loved ones. We will get through this! On to five favorites —

Warmer weather. It was in the low to mid 70’s all week here in NC and it was GLORIOUS. We spent so much time outside. We didn’t have a particularly cold winter but it felt like it rained everyday so getting to be outside with the sun warming my skin felt like paradise. I’ve had a lot more laundry to do because Luca loves playing in the dirt and changes outfits like he’s in a 1 man playing 5 characters play but it is so worth it.
Amazon’s Subscribe & Save. If you read my Diaper Debacle post then you know I’ve had some issues with Amazon’s Subscribe & Save feature in the past. But I’ll save those gripes for a time when I’m not incredibly thankful for our scheduled monthly deliveries. We get toilet paper, paper towels, dog food, surface cleaner, diapers and wipes (along with a few other things) delivered every month. All of these things are necessities and a lot of them are sold out everywhere. If you don’t already, I highly recommend setting up subscribe & save for things you need every month or every other month. It’s definitely helped me to feel a bit more prepared during this time.
Our Nespresso machine. I don’t drink a lot of coffee. I used to be a 3 cup a day girl but stopped drinking caffeine before I got pregnant with Luca. I started drinking it again when Luca was a newborn but stopped a few months ago because I felt like it was keeping me up at night. Now I’ll make a latte like once a week and I swear it powers me up for the whole week LOL. After one sip I feel like I could clean my whole house plus run a marathon. Our Nespresso machine took me through all the stages of my caffeine consumption and it’s my favorite way to drink coffee. I’ll microwave milk, add a little brown sugar, froth it and pour the mixture over the espresso for an easy and delicious at home latte. These are the pods we get and this is our frother.
FaceTime. We live hours away from all of our family members. We love where we live and probably won’t ever move back to Philly but it is hard being away from everyone especially now that we have a little one. It must be even harder for Luca’s grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins to only see him in person a few times a year. So we FaceTime — a lot. Every day we FaceTime a different family member, sometimes it’s multiple in one day — really whoever wants to see Luca gets to see Luca no matter what (unless he’s sleeping). It’s great for Luca because he knows and recognizes everyone and it makes everyone happy to get to participate in his life in some way. I am incredibly thankful to be living in a time where we can spend quality time with each other virtually.
Our Amazon Fire Stick. We don’t have cable but we do have almost every available streaming service and we recently purchased an Amazon Fire TV Stick to replace the Roku Streaming player. The Roku kept freezing and would sign us out of all of our apps all the time and was just so frustrating to use. We think it may have been because our TV is over 5 years old but because we’re not in the market for a new TV right now, we figured we’d try a new streaming device instead. The Fire Stick has worked perfectly and is so easy to use. The home page is intuitive and clean/easy to look at and the navigation is so simple. It has frozen a couple of times since we purchased it (2 months ago) but no where close to what the Roku was doing. If you’re looking for a new streaming device and have an older TV — the Fire Stick is a much better option over the Roku.