The Friday Five

1. My willpower is nonexistent.

      I caved and ordered the Julep New Year's Mystery Box last week. I saw somewhere online that it would ship immediately so I had it shipped to my mom's house. For $19.99, the box was promised to contain between $100 and $500 in products, including a mystery glitter nail color. One customer's box will include an iPad Mini (Spoiler alert: not mine). I had been disenchanted with some of Julep's mystery boxes, but I hoped it had been a long enough time that I wouldn't get any duplicate colors and that I would get some of the products I've been hoping to use or ones that I've used up and would love to have a new bottle. I was pleased although I did receive some duplicates.I will post later and let you know what came inside. If you are interested in trying out Julep for yourself and becoming a Maven, click HERE and use the code COLOR2012 or PENNY to get your introductory box for just a penny. The current intro boxes feature either two nail colors and cuticle oil or three nail colors. 

2. My little artist

        Owen has been big on painting lately and I love hanging his little works of art on the fridge. He will find his paints in a drawer in his room and will bring the box to me asking, "Paint? paint?" The only downside is that as messy as painting can be, the activity rarely keeps him entertained for more than five minutes (but nothing does recently). So I have to do all that preparation and clean-up for five minutes of free time to do dishes or fold a load of laundry.  Plus, he always tries to sneak and eat some of the paint. Tim snapped this picture the other day when after Owen had a taste of the paint and the evidence was left on his face. Apparently, it didn't taste too bad.  

3. New Year's resolutions 

      I am not one to make New Year's resolutions normally because I am terrible at keeping them. But this year I have two. One will be reading through the Bible in a year with our Sunday School class. Yay for accountability! And the other will be getting our finances in check with Tim. That way we can work together and encourage one another when we want to quit. Our Friday night meetings have been going well and it's so awesome being able to sit down and get on the same page with each other about everything. At our first Friday meeting we sat down and planned out our budget for January. We used a free budget worksheet from Dave Ramsey's website. You can find the budget we are using for free HERE. Its labeled "Monthly Cash Flow Plan." There is also a Quick Start Budget which has fewer categories. 

4. Eat healthy in the New Year

       I haven't been cooking since we've been visiting family and I am excited about getting back into my kitchen soon (and using my new dutch oven!). And of course after all the Christmas goodies and rich cooking, we need to eat a little healthier to make up for all the splurging. So I will be turning to my trusty source for recipes both tasty and healthy: Skinny Taste. She has been putting up tons of holiday recipes lately, but squeezed in there in the middle I found this recipe. Slow cooker chicken black bean tacos. She had me at "slow cooker" and "tacos." 

5. Unassigned reading list

      After the holidays, I want to get back to reading more. I haven't read anything for a couple weeks and I think relaxing with a book before bed might help me with my recent insomnia. I did a little research online to look for some books and here are some of the ones on my radar right now:

• "Reached" by Ally Condie - This is the third book in a trilogy that also features "Matched" and "Crossed." The series is set in a dystopian society similar to The Hunger Games and the Divergent/Insurgent series. It's not my favorite of these types of books, but I feel like I need to see the series through anyway. Basically the series is a story about a smart teenage girl who trusts her government and its system of selecting spouses for its citizens until she falls in love with the wrong boy. 

• "The End of Your Life Book Club" by Will Schwalbe - This nonfiction book is about the author and his mother, who share a book club of sorts between the two of them as she succumbs to pancreatic cancer. I am curious to see which books were the ones they chose to read. How would your reading choices change or not change if you had only two years left to live?

Is there anything else I should add to my "must read" list?