We made it to another Friday! Can the mere fact that we're heading into the weekend be one of my favorites? I'll answer that. YES!!! To celebrate, I'm sharing another round of my Friday Favorites.

1// Sunday sermons.

I really, really love our home church. One of the big reasons is because our pastors consistently knock it out of the park with their sermons. Our church is currently doing a series called -ism, which focuses on the various -isms that affect our spiritual and practical lives (legalism, moralism, rationalism, etc.). Last week, Pastor Dan preached about materialism, and WHOA BABY was I convicted! I took the outline of his sermon home (so did Dan, actually), and I'm pretty sure I need to have it tattooed onto the back of my hand. Under the point of "dissatisfaction," Pastor Dan observed that a lot of us fall into an "If only, then I" type of thinking. I had observed this in myself recently, so I felt like the Holy Spirit was tapping me on the shoulder saying, "See?! See?! You need to stop this."

For example, I've recently caught myself thinking:
If only we could afford a housekeeper, I would feel so much more rested and relaxed.
If only I had one daughter, the house would be (a bit) quieter, and I wouldn't feel so lonely.
If only we had a finished basement, I could entertain more.

And on and on. Chatting with my girlfriends at Bible study last week, I was comforted to know that I wasn't the only one who felt convicted by Pastor Dan's sermon. You can listen to it HERE. So good.

2// Letting things sit in your [online] cart.

While I'm still under the conviction of being materialistic, I thought this would be a good tip to share. Now that Dan and I have the bulk of our Disney-planning behind us, I am working on gathering supplies and figuring out how to transport them (and ourselves) to Florida. I was consulting several packing lists, and I added lots of items to my Amazon cart. Here's where I did something kind of amazing (for me). I looked at all of the items in my cart and thought, Huh. That's a lot. I wonder if we're actually going to need all that. And--wait for it--I did not check out. I let all that stuff sit in my virtual shopping cart, and I came back to it a couple of days later. At that point, I reviewed the cart and deleted several items from it. We're visiting Disney World in November, so buying some inexpensive ponchos made sense. However, I realized that this misting fan and these cooling towels are probably for tourists who are visiting Disney in the heat of summer, not late autumn. So--POOF!--out of my cart they went.

This is a good trick if you happen to love fashion a bit too much. (Ahem.) Sometimes, I'll read a fashion blogger's post about "the most versatile denim jacket" and think, Well, golly, I need a versatile denim jacket! I will probably add it to my cart, but odds are good that I will not check out right away. (Full disclosure: this is probably more due to being constantly interrupted by tiny male humans than self-control, but there is some self-control involved in there.) Most of the time, if I remember to check my cart at all, I will decide that I don't actually need that denim jacket after all. But scratch that if it involves...

3// Leopard print shoes.

You guys. After searching for at least five years and trying on dozens of different kinds of leopard print shoes (including some spendy ones), I finally found some from Old Navy that I love! If you follow me on Facebook, I chatted about them in this post and concluded that they probably run a bit big. I got a little greedy and thought I would strive for perfection and order size 8.5. As soon as I tried them on my feet, the familiar pinched toes reminded me that I had actually tried these Old Navy flats before and rejected them for being uncomfortable. So! I love these flats, but they are NOT true to size, as I originally thought. Size up a half-size. (I almost never need size 9, but the size 9 works for me here.) The good news is that they're on sale right now, but the bad news is that they seem to be sold out in a lot of sizes. Check them HERE!

4// The BEST teeth whitener.

When you name your blog after your favorite caffeinated beverage (ahem), and you also guzzle at least a cup of slimming oolong tea a day, your teeth are bound to get a little dingy. (Friends, if you've seen me checking out your teeth recently, it's because I've been admiring them, not because you had a bit of broccoli stuck in them or anything. I thought I had better clear that up.) I had found a whitening toothpaste I really liked, but they seemed to have reformulated it and it has not been working very well lately. For you crunchy granola types, I also tried using activated charcoal, but that was messy, I didn't really notice a difference, and I was worried I was wearing away the enamel on my teeth. I consulted an old post from my favorite beauty blogger (who has since quit blogging, boo!) and discovered this whitening gel. I love it because it only sits on my teeth for five minutes at a time (versus all night like the stuff from the dentist's office), and the results are ah-mazing! I use a Q-tip to apply it to my teeth, and I pop on some old whitening trays I have in my bathroom cupboard from at least a decade ago. (You don't have to use trays, but I figured I would as long as I had them.) I'm only a week into using it, and my teeth are noticeably whiter and brighter. I am definitely keeping this in my makeup bag forever!! (So I can keep drinking coffee, of course.)

5// Graphic novels.

I'll admit it. I was kind of a literature snob. No way was I going to let my kids skate by reading comic books (or graphic novels, as we referred to them in my Children Literature course in college). My children were going to feast their eyes and treat their brains to rich literature, like Misty of Chincoteague, The Jungle Book, or even Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. Then I started teaching my second child to read, and I had to choke down a big ol' piece of humble pie. He's solidly at "grade level." (But, mamas, be blessed by the truth that "what age your child is when s/he learns to read fluently [whether at age 4, or 7, or 9, or even older] doesn’t bear on their ability to read well later on. Early readers are not consistently better readers when they are adults." See Sarah Mackenzie's FABULOUS Instagram post HERE.) But I digress. Anyhoo, even though this child's reading was "at grade level," I could tell there was no joy in his reading. As a mother, a lover of books, and a writer, this absolutely broke my heart.

I consulted Sarah Mackenzie's booklists and sought out enjoyable books for early readers. I also heaved a giant sigh and borrowed comic books from the library (Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, and Tin-Tin). For the first time EVER, this child was actually requesting time to read and devoured the graphic novels voraciously. This was a HUGE victory for both me and my child. I am still trying to find a series to hook him onto (I'm trying Mercy Watson, Encyclopedia Brown, and A to Z Mysteries), but I'm going to celebrate this victory for all its worth in the meantime!

What does your weekend look like? Dan's parents offered to watch the boys Saturday night, so we're trying a new restaurant. My birthday is Monday, and I'll also be going out to dinner then as well! I think I'm getting spoiled!

XOXO,
Kristin