Alone is AMAZING!! It's definitely a favourite of my husband and I

We have started The Gentlemen recently and really like it!

After almost two years of not owning more makeup than eyeline and mascara, I went out and purchase makeup to do myself up for my husband's company Christmas party. One blemish coverage stick, foundation, blush and 2 eye shadows cost me $75! And it was only CoverGirl!!! Since the Christmas party I've been wearing it sporatically but I really don't like face makeup. Even with "plumping" face creams underneath, I find it all sits in my wrinkles and makes them more noticeable, which I hate. It also washes out all my colour. I don't know. It's just not for me. But I spent $75 on it and feel like I need to use it so I'm not wasting money.

@Hayley sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you about glycerin! For me, glycerin, and any other humectant, dries out my hair in really dry and cold weather, and in humid weather is makes my hair frizzy. Today, for example, our humidity was oddly high at 86% and the products that I used had glycerin and I had a frizzy poofy mess. It was actually quite humorous! lol. And when it's dry, if my products have glycerin, my curls fall and my hair literally flies away with static. I really try not to use anything with glycerin high on the ingredient list (in the first 5 ingredients) but sometimes I impulse buy things that other people rave about (like AG ReCoil) and hope that the glycerin won't be a problem. It always is though. Curly hair.... you never know what you're going to get lol

Skwigg I am right there with you in preferring cheaper products to more expensive ones. The lower and simpler the ingredient list on shampoo, conditioner, and styler, the better it works for me. I find that so many of the more expensive products have super-long ingredient lists. In addition, they all seem to have humectants, like glycerin, way up high in the ingredient list. I know that curly hair likes moisture, but personally, the ongoing draw of moisture from the humectants in products just causes a big poofy mess for me and I’m only wavy-haired! Is this the Air Dry Cream you like? I am on the market for a new cream. I purchased AG ReCoil but, in addition to being quite expensive, it had glycerin high up in the ingredient list. Ugh. I love your hair Skwigg and think you could definitely pull off a similar hairstyle as Andie MacDowell. Hailey, I bet the chlorine in the pool was providing a cleansing effect during the summer. I was jumping in the lake multiple times a day this summer, but it still needed frequent washing. When I used to swim in my parents' pool as a teen, I could go a while without shampoo, but I needed more leave-in to help with the drying effects of the chlorine. My current favourite products are all cheap. The most expensive things are the shampoo and conditioner which are about $7 when not on sale. My gel is $3 a bottle. The expensive leave-in conditioner and the AG ReCoil I bought are more expensive and my hair looks and feels worse with them than with my $3 gel. I’m using them though because I hate to waste.

I have to say, this post is very difficult to read. You are pregnant and growing a child. Your weight should be the least of your concerns right now. There are many infographics online that show the break down of the weight gained during pregnancy. At the bare minimum, like bare minimum, like least amount, you should gain 30lbs at the end of your pregnancy. And that's assuming you were a "normal" weight to start. If you were underweight, you should be gaining even more. I always get irritated when pregnant women are scared to gain weight. You are growing a person. You NEED to gain weight. My favourite part of pregnancy was being able to gain weight without anyone commenting on it negatively. I gained 50lbs with my first, 40lbs with my second and 40lbs with my 3rd and I don't regret a single pound.

I just wanted to drop this quote here (I put it in my journal too). "‘it’s generally easier to get people to act their way into a new way of thinking than it is to get people to think their way into a new way of acting’ " - Dylan William (Dylan William is a British educationalist and Emeritus professor of Educational Assessment at the UCL Institute of Education) It's something I came across in my Additional Qualifications course that I'm taking. It instantly reminded me of Skwigg and Tabitha Farrar when they talk about doing changing the thinking.

We watched Maid and really liked it. The scary thing is that at one point in my early 20s I was in a relationship very similar to that. Thankfully there wasn't a child involved and I was able to finally leave because I had parents to go back to (eventually anyway. Initially they disowned me because they didn't like the boyfriend which made no sense, but I digress). We also watched The Billion Dollar Code. It's on Netflix. It's a really good limited series about the actually inventors of Google Earth. It's originally in German so it's dubbed in English. We are watching Welcome to Earth on Disney Plus. Super good. Will Smith is the host. The filming is spectacular. We are also watching Imposters on Netflix. It has a really good rating IMDB so we thought we'd give it a shot. It's not bad. We watched Encanto on Disney Plus and Paw Patrol:The Movie. For kids movies, both were really good. Encanto is fantasic. I highly recommend it. On my own I'm working my way through Kim's Convenience. It's supposed to be a comedy but I'm over 10 episodes in and rarely laugh. It's more of just a sitcom to me. I'm also watching This is Us. I think I'm on Season 5 right now. I'm super excited to see that there is a new season of Queer Eye on Netflix! I can't wait to start that.

Way late to seeing Bill Phillips had COVID. It's sad to see this well known fitness icon laid out flat and on machines because of COVID. Ever since COVID started I have heard stories about people who seem to be optimally healthy ending up getting hit hard with COVID. My BIL's cousin got COVID and it hit him hard. His family was surprised because he is a mid-twenty year old who "eats super healthy and runs". For one thing, it surprised me that his age, eating healthy and running was equated this idea that he was "super healthy" and shouldn't have been hit so hard. The ironic thing is that you can be young, eat healthy and run and still be unhealth. I know when I was in my mid-twenties those three things were part of my eating disorder and lowered my immune system. So you just never know. It's great to hear he's doing better.

My experience with aging people is that there seems to be a range of how they accept aging. I see women in particular who start botox at like 35 and dye their hair at the first sight of grey, use filters on their photos, dress really young... and then on the other end of the spectrum there are women who just age naturally and don't put any extra effort into changing their new ageing appearance, including things so simple as not wearing makeup. I personally find myself fall on the "do nothing" end of the spectrum. It's not that I don't care or feel self conscious about my wrinkles, greys and permi-meno-pot, it's just that I know this is my reality and for me, rolling with it is kind of my way of trying to accept it. I'm getting older. It happens. This is life. The next movement should be age-positivity lol.

We just finished 9 Perfect Strangers. It was just okay. My husband and I both agreed that if it was more than just a mini series, we probably would have stopped watching it after the first season. It just didn't do anything for us. We are currently watching MAID. I'd heard mixed reviews on it, but I really like it. I'm catching up on This Is Us. Netflix recently added a season (season 5 I think?) and the notification for that made me aware that I hadn't watched the one before it. I also started Grey's Anatomy Season 18 this morning. I'm about 5 episode behind. I wasn't super thrilled with the first episode. We are watching the new season of Survivor and The Great Canadian Baking Challenge with our kids. They are both great shows.

There are grade 3 students playing Squid Game at the school I'm supply teaching at. It's shocking to me that they even know about Squid Game. I haven't yet watched it myself but everything I've read says it is 100% not for kids. And yet, these kids have not only watched it but are playing Squid Game at recess!! Shocking,

Oh my god it looks amazing!! What a diference!

I haven't revisited this lifting program since I last posted. I just wasn't feeling it right now. I'm sure I'll come back to it at some point, but now is not that point.

@Tonya !!! So good to see you post!! How have you been? I love move with Nicole as well! She has some really great yoga/pilates workouts that I've enjoyed before.

I did the Month 1 Upper Body Gym workout this morning. It was straight sets just the like lower body workout. It consisted of 1 arm DB flat bench press, 1 arm lat pull down, 1 arm z-press (ie shoulder press), 1 arm DB rows, 1 arm assisted push-ups, 1 arm rear delt flies and lateral bear crawls. The only thing I wasn't really able to do on the gym workout was the 1-arm lat pull downs. It was way more upper body work than I usually do both in terms of exercises and sets/reps. Since I'm crunched for time in the morning, I did it as super sets instead of straight sets. I didn't love it, but I also didn't hate it. Two workouts in though and I'm not very excited about this program. This may have been more of an impulse buy than a genius buy. Either way, I'm sure I'll make sure of some part of it.

I did my first workout from the program this morning. It was a lower body unilateral and core workout. She provides a dynamic warmup each month that has some mobility drills in it. I started with that. Well, technically, I started with 5 min on the stationary bike just to warm-up/wake up my body (I workout straight after waking up). So: stationary bike 5min, mobility work and lower body workout. The total time for all of that was 40min and I didn't do the rest times as prescribed nor did I do all the prescribed sets. The warmup and workout weren't too bad. I was a bit annoyed at having to link to videos for every single exercise though. The videos are password protected so when you click the link you have to load the page for the password, enter the password, then load the next page with the video. Under circumstances where I have unlimited time on my hands, this wouldn't have irritated me so much, but I'm under time restraints in the morning and really felt like I was wasting my time watching exercise videos. To fix this, I'm going to go through the workout and watch any necessary exercise videos the night before instead. I remembered (too late) that I used to have to do the same thing with ZGym workouts. Even though I workout at home, I did the gym version of the workout and it went fine. There were B-Stance squats, B stance hip thrusts, 1.5 rep RDLs (My lower back did not like these!), single leg box squats, single leg DB hip thrusts, single leg BW hip thrusts and then palloff presses. It was a lot more than I usually do in a lower body workout which is why I did about 1 set less of everything than was prescribed. I'll update with thoughts after I do the first upper body workout on Friday.

The kitchen layout and finishes you choose look awesome! I agree that white will match better than stainless steel. I have stainless steel appliances and hate them haha. They are a pain to clean and immediately get dirty again - at least they do in my home with three young kids. When I was a child my parents renovated their kitchen. It took over a month from start to finish and we lived in and ate at our home during that time. It was an adventure to say the least. My parents were very creative with their fridge-less and stove- less meals.

I really love this most recent design. It's beautiful! The wood backsplash is something I've never seen before and it's really beautiful.