Life By Kristen

Five Friday Favorites!

My Friday favorites don’t include any links to random finds around the internet but are favs nonetheless!

In random order….

1. The forecast for next week has the humidity going away (finally!) and some fall temps coming in. I am so pumped for cardigans and sweater dresses.

2. I’ve written before about how lucky I am to have an amazing relationship with my parents, but this week reminded me again just how wonderful they are as people. After some crazy rains midweek that brought some intense flash flooding to my area, my dad went out of his way to check on my house, which thankfully, only had a few leaking windows and a flooded driveway, but nothing major. Last night I had dinner with mom, which was fantastic.

3. I had set the goal of reading fifty books this year, and going into September, I am about seven books behind. If I was counting all the books I read for work related things, I would be well over that number but I decided not to. Currently I’m reading two books ( The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman and Where We Belong by Emily Giffin) and have another to pick up this weekend at the library ( The Next Best Thing by Jennifer Weiner). My book list is VERY LONG and the amount of books on my shelf is immense- I know I will never read everything, but I’m making my way slowly through the titles. The Emily Giffin book is a bit more fluff than I like, but it’s a quick read ( three nights tops). I enjoy Jennifer Weiner’s comedic style in her writing so am looking forward to that one as well. Even though I probably won’t make it past fifty, I’m pretty happy with my pace of reading this year. I’m planning for 2012 to have a big focus on the classics and all those books in high school I was supposed to read, but never did ( or only read the Cliff Notes for!)

4. Monday is my Dad’s birthday, but it’s also my coworker and dear friend Liz’s 30th birthday, which is cause for much celebration. Sunday I am going with her, her fiance and his girls, to the Florence Griswold Museum in Connecticut for a class and day of painting outside. She loves the place and wants to do this for her birthday, plus it knocks off an item on my own 30×30 list!

5. My garden was a hit this summer, though I never got any zucchini and only a few cucumbers, but my tomatoes and basil really took off. I’m going to be spending some of this weekend making some fresh tomato sauce and pesto to freeze, drying some basil for winter, and enjoying the last, delicious fresh caprese salad.

Happy Weekend!