Book Review, Autumn Playlist, Costumes, & GF - a Potluck Post

It's been awhile since I've chatted with you, unless you follow along on Instagram, so I thought I'd give a quick run down on all the little things I've been doing. I call these my Potluck Posts because it's just a little of this and a little of that and lighthearted chitchat.


First up:
I'm pretty happy to report that I am part of my diocesan paper's new book review team. For my first review I wrote about Haley Stewart's new book The Grace of Enough. You can read my thoughts on page 9. If you're a bookish Instagram user you may want to give @catholicpostbookpage a follow.  My friend Katie and I are co-running the account and have some fun things planned.

Also!
If you're looking for a fun podcast with some of my favorite people may I humbly suggest this week's episode of The Gathering Place podcast which features Kendra Tierney. It was such a fun conversation to eavesdrop on and so neat to hear Kendra talk about all the neat ways we can incorporate liturgical living in our lives.



I don't know about you but...
When the leaves start to change and it's chilly outside I crave a certain type of music. I put together this Autumn Playlist on Spotify. It's a pretty varied collection of songs but I hope you like it!



And,
Blessed Is She Advent Devotional is still available for pre-sale. If you haven't snagged yours yet you can grab yours here. That's my affiliate link and if you use it - thank you! 

Funny fact, not every affiliate program allows us to thank the people who use our links but Blessed Is She does and so let me just make it super clear right now that our family always appreciates it when you buy through my link. I know some people use a different link each time you buy something and I love that! God bless you for your thoughtfulness!



Which reminds me:
At the beginning of the month I told the kids that in a few weeks we'd be making our annual visit to a local park for their Halloween activities and a week or so after that we'd be trick-or-treating so they needed to go downstairs to the dress up bins and find their costumes. This is what they came back with:
L is going as Hermione Granger and we've purchased a wand and tie (affiliate link) but need to find a robe.
Ben says he's going as a skeleton investigator, which really just means he's wearing his Doctor Who coat from last year with Jofis' skull mask. We'll see if this sticks.
JF is using Ben's old Batman costume. (affiliate link)
Resa will be wearing a Cinderella dress and slippers. (affiliate link)
Tee will wear Jofis' old spoooooky ghost costume and
MJ will be wearing a super cute lady bug costume sent to us from Kathryn  at Team Whitaker.



And did I tell you:
Recently JF had some blood work done and it came back with two of the three markers for celiac disease. We have to have it confirmed with a scope but we've taken him off gluten and he's already commented about how much better he feels. It makes me feel so sad that he was living with a constant stomach ache and didn't even know that he was supposed to feel better! Poor buddy. We're already dairy, egg, nut, sesame seed, and pea free so adding gluten to the list is a bit demoralizing (I confess I cried a bit) but we can do it. Wish me luck as I try to make a dairy-egg-nut-sesame-pea-gluten free dough that will work for our King Cake, St. Lucy buns, cinnamon rolls, crusty bread, and so forth. My current recipe is free of all those things but the gluten and it tastes so good - I'm just not sure how it will work once it's gf.

So that is what's new here! ♡