I'm so excited to be bringing Things I love into the new year! Instead of 4 - 5 separate posts a month about things I love I figured I'd do one with my 4-5 things at the beginning of the month instead!

MINNETONKA LACE UP MOCCASIN BOOTS (BLACK) - Minnetonka is my favorite brand for comfortable moccasins! I love the pair that I bought just to wear around the house to keep my feet warm and I love them as boots. These boots are real suede and last FOREVER! I've had this lace up pair for three years and I had a five-layer-fringe for several years that I lost during a move that I'm excited to replace. They do require a little maintenance, but they are so worth it!

TOTES JILL BOOTS (BLACK) - These are the snow boots I bought for this year after a very serious struggle. Who knew it was so hard to find snow boots? I'll definitely start looking for winter boots earlier next year, the reviews aren't super great on these but they are comfortable and I'm hoping they last me at least through this winter.

LUSH NEW SHAMPOO BAR - I'm so excited to share my hair care routine with y'all later this month, but I couldn't wait to shoutout this bar! I slice my into fourths and only take a fourth into the bath at once, they last forever! It makes my hair so soft and silky. I didn't think I could ever switch to solid shampoo, but now I don't think I could ever go back!

MRS.MEYERS MULTISURFACE SPRAY (HONEYSUCKLE) - We're trying to make a conscious effort to reduce the amount of toxins in our home and a big one for me is I LOVE cleaning with bleach, it's my #1 go to. I've been trying this spray out for a few weeks and while I'm not sure it will completely replace bleach for me, I have been reaching for it more. 

THINGS I LOVE V9 - BOOMERANG MEALS

Y'all, when I say I have found heaven in a box, I don't say it lightly. I say it with the blessing of my very very picky husband who has eaten it more than I care to admit this past couple of weeks.

Let me tell y'all how we happened upon these glorious meals. So we are religious shoppers of the amazing CITY CREEK Harmons (it's a KROGER affiliate) but it is also two story and massive and just everything I've ever wanted in a grocery store. My husband (a very picky vegetarian) was looking for something to take for work and his work freezer has begun freezing the meals that I would make for him every night #bummer so we decided to try some frozen meals and these just looked good and they were on sale. 2/$7.00 so they are at the high end scale of frozen meals. BUT OH LORDY are they worth it.

Our local Harmons carries three flavors ( steak and potato, macaroni and cheese, and spinach and mushroom) and I can honestly say that every flavor is a a 10/10. So much so that we are bi-weekly grocery shoppers and we have went back to Harmons TWICE to restock on Boomerangs. We at our last ones tonight as our date night meal (THEY ARE THAT GOOD!) and my husband is trying to convince me that we need to make a Thursday grocery run.

He would even eat the Steak and potato ones y'all. when I say that is better than my homemade gravy I mean it! It is so dangerous writing this post with no BOOMERANGS in the house because y'all, I might make my husband go RIGHT NOW and get me one.

If you run over to the website HERE there is a coupon and you can see all of the flavors they offer, my husband and I are totally making a BOOMERANGS roadtrip to get more flavors. You need this in your life. This is #NOT SPONSORED but if you're boomerang holla at ya girl :) 

If there's ever a moment where you're like, I wonder if Cris is eating a BOOMERANG, if it is after four PM and then yes I am and I'm probably drinking wine too :)

GO FORTH AND EAT THESE PIES Y'ALL!

THINGS I LOVE V8 - HUJI APP

I'm sure this isn't news to anyone, but I just had to share the app that's bringing me back to my love of lens flares and vintage vibes. HUJI is a phone app styled as a disposable camera circa 1998. The funny thing is, I remember the last time I used a disposable camera, I was in the 5th grade, it was our end of the year field trip to Washington DC and I was given a disposable camera to take pictures of the trip. The funny part is my step dad didn't think any of the pictures were good, so once they were developed he told the guy we didn't want them. I never even saw them.

Haha! Back when we had no clue how photos were going to turn out! Now it is just one snap and instant yes or no. I probably delete twice as many as I keep. Just like that whole DC trip.

Back to this app!

The app itself looks like a disposable camera, no front facing allowed! It is so fun! I was taking that picture of my husband and our pup in bed and it took four tries! The square is sooooo small! I just couldn't quite get the placement right. I've been being more intentional about asking my husband to take pictures of me and when he uses this app, some of the attempts are funny, but occasionally he strikes gold.

I'm also trying to be more purposeful about asking other to get pictures of the two (and three!) of us together and I like the look that this app gives. It's totally my favorite for getting pictures of my boys together!

available on google play and itunes 

THINGS I LOVE V7 - SKILLET SAUCES

I love to cook, cooking is something that soothes my soul. I especially love cooking for other people, which is why when I decided to go back to eating meat after going vegetarian it was really hard on me. You see, my husband still doesn't eat meat. This made eating meals together a lot more complicated. We tried various ways, I would only eat meat when he wasn't around, but eventually it ended up where we were eating two separate meals. Not that I would have minded making a separate meal for him, but it even got to where he would just make something quick, and I kind of lost sight of making the food I enjoyed.

So I resigned myself to eating pretty much the same meal 4 - 5 times a week, chicken breast, usually in the slow cooker, shredded on a bun. It became SO boring. In an effort to spice things up I saw these little marinade pouches at our local Harmons and I grabbed a few. I had all intentions of just throwing it in the crockpot and forgetting about it.

LET ME TELL YOU! By the second pouch, I was butterfly-ing my chicken breasts, covering them in the marinade, baking them with a side of vegetables and having a full meal in forty minutes. With minimal effort.

My husband could tell I was getting all caught up. The packets even come in vegetable marinades and some of the chicken marinades are vegetarian (check the label!) I was able to cook a meal for both of us (one with meat and one without) in forty minutes and it was incredible.

It isn't that I think cooking is hard, but having a couple of these packets in your pantry, combined with veggies (fresh or frozen) and maybe some chicken and you have a fantastic meal. We served ours with couscous, but I've made it with rice and it is just as good.

So if you're in a dinner time rut, or if you just want to try something new, I recommend these!

I will say that I've tried several different brands and the above picture just shows the ones I have in my cabinet and I can say that there have been a few flavors that aren't exactly my taste, but I just keep trying different ones. So go forth, and try new things!

THINGS I LOVE V6 - CRYSTAL HEALING

Lately, crystals have become super ~*trendy*~ but I've been collecting crystals and other beautiful rocks since I was a small child. A lot of people are using their crystals as decor and that's fine too. I enjoy mine as decor too. They are beautiful. I think every single rock that the earth creates is fit for display. Even when I was in the Army on police calls I would sometimes pick up beautiful rocks.

But this post is about some of the crystals that I have and what I use them for!

ONYX - This I have in a pyramid and I keep it displayed because it cleanses my house of negative energy.

CITRINE - This is one of my FAVORITES! I have it everywhere, even in my wedding ring. I have a beautiful raw chunk of it, a worry stone, and a couple of generators. I keep them around to spark creativity and boost concentration. Plus they come in a gorgeous range of golden yellows and oranges.

CLEAR QUARTZ - Another favorite. I have this in a large raw chunk that makes my heart melt. I also have it in a worry stone and a wand. I am obsessed with this wand. I hold it in my hand as I meditate and even when I don't carry it with me I use muscle memory to calm my anxiety.

AMETHYST - I keep this around in a beautiful raw chunk and several generators because it helps with headaches and I'm a chronic migraine suffer.

I have a lot of other beautiful crystals but these are the main four that I use for crystal healing. In the future I'd like to purchase more aquamarine and topaz. I'll keep you updated on my ever growing crystal collection.

THINGS I LOVE V5 - DUOLINGO

Y'all, when I say that I love DUOLINGO, I love it. I love being able to open an app on my phone and spend as little as five minutes learning a language. I OF COURSE, chose Spanish, but there are SO many different languages available. Here are three reasons why you should try DUOLINGO.

REASON #1 - You can start at any comprehension level

When you start the Spanish course, I was able to take a quick test and able to skip the beginning lessons that I didn't need because I already knew them, of course I could go back and review them all that I needed, but it was nice to jump right into learning new things.


REASON #2 - The lessons are broken down into bite sizes pieces of knowledge.

I don't know about you, but I like to take my time and process something. So for example, learning about time, something I didn't know in Spanish, I wanted to go over that lesson a couple times and I earned XP every time I went over it. I now can breeze through it. I wasn't rushed to progress through the lessons.

On the flip side, I could do ten lessons in a day if I wanted to, at no penalty.

REASON # 3 - The whole course is available for FREE!

While DUOLINGO has a paid membership, I've used it for six months for free and I've completed the whole course and I continue to go over lessons that I feel like I am struggling with, or it even has a little refresher button that gives you a lesson at random to just polish up on.


DUOLINGO offers courses not only for English speakers, but for Spanish, Polish, French, Dutch, and so many other languages. There is no excuse not to spend five minutes a day learning a new language! Go forth and enrich yourself!!

THINGS I LOVE V4 - BURTS BEES WAX MELTS

Did y'all know Burt's Bees made wax melts? Did you know they were all natural with only soy wax and essential oils? Well let me tell you. A few months ago I didn't know. But I head the gospel of Burt's Bees and they truly blessed us with this.

Just let me say this is #NOTSPONSORED I have every single scent they make and when I say they make my apartment smell heavenly, they make it smell like a papaya God kissed every single inch of it. I can't get over the amount of scent they give off.

So some back story, for Christmas my mother-in-law gave me that beautiful Scentsy warmer and a few packs of wax, but they only stayed scented for like one day (I never turn my burner off) and I was going through a block a week. It sucked and it only scented the kitchen where my warmer lives. I decided I was going to go to Target to save some cash and buy off brand wax melts, to be honest my husband spotted these first. We bought a pack of every scent. I am STILL using them. Two cubes lasts a week! That means a whole pack can last a month!!!!

Frugal ladies rejoice! Not to mention, we are trying to consciously reduce the number of chemicals in our house, but I just hadn't kicked the candles, but between my diffuser and these beautiful white cubes of smell good, I don't own a single candle.

So go forth, make your whole house smell like heaven!

THINGS I LOVE V3 - DIFFUSER BLENDS

Let me preface this by saying I don't sell oils, I don't buy from MLM companies, I just like to use them in my diffuser because I'm over the toxicity that is candles. (I use the lid of that candle to fill my diffuser!)

So without further disclaimers. My favorite diffuser blends.


MORNING WAKE UP BLEND

3 DROPS GRAPEFRUIT OIL
2 DROPS EUCALYPTUS OIL
1 DROP PEPPERMINT OIL


MINDFULNESS AND GROUNDING BLEND

2 DROPS HIMALAYAN CEDAR WOOD OIL
2 DROPS PATCHOULI OIL
2 DROPS FRANKINCENSE OIL


SLEEPYTIME BLEND

3 DROPS LAVENDER OIL
2 DROPS EUCALYPTUS OIL
1 DROP FRANKINCENSE OIL

WELLNESS BLEND

2 DROPS GRAPEFRUIT OIL
2 DROPS LEMON OIL
2 DROPS CLOVE OIL


So those are the basic four blends that we use. I run my diffuser all day. First thing in the morning I put the morning blend in and depending on the day I'm having I put the mindfulness or the wellness blend in. At night I put the sleepytime oil in.

If I'm having a lazy day and I don't feel like mixing a blend together in the morning I will always put a citrus oil in and during the day I like something with a earthy smell, so maybe clove and always always lavender at night. Usually we pair the lavender with something because my husband doesn't like the smell of lavender but he likes the smell of eucalyptus, so those two are my go-to for night time.

I don't know if I 100% buy into the whole essential oil healing thing, but they smell good, and I like it when my house smells good. so who knows :)

THINGS I LOVE V2 - ALMOND OIL

So I know everyone and that girl you barely remember from high school is shilling oils for some Multi-Level Marketing company, this ain't that. This is a story about moisture and lack there of.

Story time!

So I have fairly long hair, I've been growing my hair out since I was eighteen. Around that time I had it cut to my shoulders but I would dye it mercilessly, flat iron it, curl it, everything. That is when I heard about the Rinse-Only-Method (ROM) where you only use water to wash your hair and a boar bristle brush to comb the natural oils your scalp produces through your hair. My hair grew long for years. Fast forward, I'm 20, my hair is to my breasts, I swear of any type of heat to my hair and my hair is gorgeous, but I decide to bleach the underside of it and then dye it bright red. My hair is fried. I cut about four inches off of the fried hair.

But soon after I enlist in the military, throw a bottle of box black over my hair to cover it and start shampooing my hair again. You get really sweaty in the military and I needed to wash my hair with more than water. I still don't use any heat even though that means going to formation with wet hair some days. I don't care. My hair begins to get healthy again. I met a man who said I should never cut my hair.

Several years later, in an act of rebellion from a toxic relationship, I cut 6-8 inches off of my hair. It was so freeing. I had to let this literal weight go, and I did. My hair was looking great, and it felt the best that it ever had. I began to grieve my hair. I remembered from my crunchy days that almond oil promotes hair growth. I started deep conditioning once a month with almond oil.

HOW TO DEEP CONDITION: I wet my hair, root to tip, and warm the almond oil in a bowl, a couple tablespoons depending on the length of your hair. I pour the warm oil onto my paddle brush and brush it through, especially massaging it into my scalp and ends. I wrap my hair in a towel for about an hour and then shampoo as normal.

Fast forward six months from the drastic cut, my hair is still pretty long, I'm being pretty dramatic, it it still lower than my shoulders, just above my breasts at this point. I ease off on the deep conditioning and my hair is beautiful. About two months later, we move to Utah, the land of hair moisture dreams differed (again, joking!). I notice that my skin is beginning to be dry in places and oily in others.

Confusion hits, so hate me if you want, but my skin has always been perfect. I never need extra moisturizer. Ever! Not anymore. I remembered that I can use almond oil on my face. My skin begins to calm down, but if I miss a day or two my skin gets flaky around my mouth and chin and greasy around my T-zone.

MOISTURIZING WITH ALMOND OIL: Using a reusable bamboo pad, or a disposable cotton pad (no judgement!) apply a coat of almond oil to your face, allow to set for about thirty to forty-five seconds and wipe off the excess.

My breakouts went back to zero and my skin returned to normal. Happy days! Back to my hair, my hair was frizzy, the ends seemed fried ALL THE TIME! Even though I don't use heat, I hadn't dyed my hair, I was at a loss, so I started deep conditioning once a month again, and after the deep condition, for about a week, my hair felt great. Then, it was back to being a dry ass hot mess.

So I started deep conditioning once a week and glory be, my hair is back to being soft and beautiful. It is prayers answered. In the summer time, when the beauty of Utah is sucking the life out of my skin, I even ditch my lotion for almond oil. I didn't realize that growing up in the deep south, the land of humidity with make me so used to moisture, but ya girl needs it, and almond oil provides it.

Now my hair is about an inch away from my waist, the longest it has been in my whole life. I still trim the ends about every 8-10 weeks and I hope to continue to grow my hair long and strong.

I usually buy my almond oil from GNC but I'm sure if you buy it from anywhere that it is 100% pure you will have the same glorious effects, now go forth and moisturize!


*side note, while I do my beauty routine, my little sidekick is always close by :)

THINGS I LOVE V1 - ROBOT VACUUM

I never thought I would be one of THOSE people, you know the ones who owned a robot vacuum, you see the ones advertised on TV for like $1000 and I just can't justify spending that much, especially when my first vacuum was a house warming present and the only vacuum besides this one I spent $40 on at target. I loved that $40 vacuum, it was bag-less, it worked, but I hated the cord. Plus it was loud, it scared Simon, and when we moved into this apartment, we left it with my mother-in-law. I had all intentions of replacing it with an identical model, but then the Amazon Prime Days happened, and my husband really wanted a robot vacuum. The rest, is history.

Meet the ILIFE A4s Robot Vacuum Cleaner, we named ours Brobot (bonus points if you get the reference). Brobot has changed our life. He is priced at $170, but with the sale we only paid $134, WORTH EVERY SINGLE PENNY. He isn't a super fancy model, more of a no-frills, he doesn't memorize your house, doesn't come uncalled, but when I tap his little head, the shiny silver button, he comes to life and cleans for about an hour and a half, or until he is full, and then goes to his home.

Usually I turn him on first thing in the morning when I'm doing laundry, it helps when I'm walking around, that way I can pick up any cords that he might suck up. If he does get caught on a cord he will beep really loud a couple of times and his light will turn red. Then he will shut off. That's it. He doesn't pull chargers out of the wall or anything. He seamlessly goes from the carpet in our bedroom to the linoleum in the rest of our apartment, he even climbs onto our shag rug. Very rarely, it is too hard for him to climb, so I lift him up and he cleans away.

A word of caution for my fellow long-haired beauties out there, you need to flip your robot over and cut the hair out of him every couple of runs. I do it once a week, and I run him three times a week. I have a picture of his belly and I'l explain better. The circle in the middle is just a wheel but to the left and right (I call them his feelers), they catch hair and need to be cleaned, along with area inside of the yellow piece. The yellow piece pops right off, and the tube comes out and I just take scissors and cut my long hair off of it, and it looks brand new again. They do send you spare parts, but I've had Brobot seven months and he is still brand new.

The only thing I do plan on changing out soon is his filter, the bottom trap pops out and needs to be emptied every time you run him. Sometimes he can't run the full 90 minutes because he gets full. If it ever just stops in the middle and doesn't make it home, it might be too full to continue, I've had a few unfortunate times when I forgot to run him all weekend and come Monday he gets full before he's cleaned the whole apartment.

So a few drawbacks, we only have a one-bedroom apartment and it takes him 90 minutes to clean it, I'm sure if you have a bigger house you might have to run him twice, we actually want to buy a second one when we move.

During the sale there was similar model that also mopped the floor that a family member bought, theirs have quit working, while Brobot is still running strong, but I do wish he did a little more. Ours does have a timer, where you can set it to come on at say, noon every day, but I wouldn't turn it on and leave the house because there is no guarantee it will get clean. I have used the feature a few times with luck, but once I turned it on and my husband forgot to pick up his phone charger and I came home and Brobot was stuck under the bed.

Sometimes he gets caught in the furniture and it is a little annoying, he doesn't always find his way out and turns off, so I have to come get him from under a chair and turn him back on. Also, our pup likes to hide under the bed, and Brobot really terrorizes him.


Overall, I can not sing the praises high enough, $134 and I can mostly turn it on and forget it, yes there is a little babysitting it occasionally, but if I'm already up and walking around the house, it is just a quick nudge.  I can live without my Brobot!