Friday Five: 3.29.19

What a week! I had such high hopes to knock so many things off my to-do list this week, but I ended up getting struck down with a migraine for three days of it…sigh. I still managed to crank out three blog posts, though, which I’m proud of!

Check out my Friday Five this week:

1. Homemade Grenadine

My cousin’s wife is one of coolest people I’ve ever known for about a trillion reasons, but one of those reasons is that she went to culinary school after completing her bachelor’s degree just to learn how to feed her family. She had no true intention of using her culinary skills for anything else. HOW AMAZING IS THAT?! When I was at her house last week, she sent me home with a jar of homemade grenadine. She’s been casually reading The Bar Book by Jeffrey Morganthaler and decided to test out his true grenadine recipe. IT HAS NO CHERRIES IN IT, which is crazy to me, but it tastes amazing in my ginger ale Shirley Temples! Instead, it has pomegranate juice, unbleached sugar, orange blossom water, and pomegranate molasses in it. You can find the recipe and more info here, if you’re interested!

2. New Backpack

Florence is known for its amazing leather market and that’s where my sister is studying abroad in Italy! While there, she took us through multiple leather shops and the two markets, which all smelled amazing. Ryan ended up getting a nice briefcase with a strap for work and I snagged an AMAZING leather backpack! It’s big enough to fit all my external drives, my massive headphones, my iPad, chargers, and my laptop in a case. I am so impressed with it already and it is SUCH a grown-up upgrade to the North Face backpack I’ve been dragging around from coffee shop to coffee shop for the past couple years.

3. Sudoku

I stopped by the Dollar Tree a couple weeks ago to check out their Easter goodies and ended up buying myself a little Sudoku book for $1. I used to love Sudoku as a kid and thought it would be fun! It sat on our kitchen counter for two weeks until I got hit with a migraine for three days this week and needed to keep myself away from screens (a major trigger for me). I plowed through half of the book already and it was so helpful to keep myself distracted! Plus, I love that my finance roomie, a numbers guy, thinks Sudoku is super challenging. 😂My advice? Go get yourself a $1 Sudoku book and keep it handy.

4. Our Belly Baskets

Back in August of 2017, I bought two of these belly baskets. I think my intention was to class up some of my plants by throwing less-than-beautiful pots inside of these baskets. I ended up not loving the look and since then, they’ve served different purposes around our home. One serves as Penny’s toy chest and makes her huge toy collection look put away, but still is accessible for her. The other one just recently got thrown around a taller plant again. The IKEA basket that used to house this tall plant wasn’t speaking to me anymore, so it got repurposed in the guest room and this belly basket is now proudly working in our dining room. I spotted this cute basket that seems to be a similar size/look, $12 cheaper, and is still on Prime.

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5. MY TULIPS!!!!!

I forgot that I planted leftover tulip bulbs from a photoshoot two falls ago!!!! This is the best surprise ever. Right after the massive wall of snow finally melted around our fence, I spotted the little shoots and got so excited! It took Ryan another day or so, but I saw his initial reaction and his face totally lit up too! Ahhhh, tulips. Always a great decision after long, cold Iowa winters. Can’t wait until they bloom!

I’m excited for another weekend spending time with my roomie, Penny, our friends, and at church. I’m crossing my fingers we can knock a few projects off our home improvement list as well. 🤞🏻It ought to be a good one! What do you have planned for the weekend? I’ll take some inspiration!