Good Things List No.57: Christmas, Word of The Year, Best Lip Healing, Books & More

A monthly list of good things to see, buy, read and watch.

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So here we are in 2023 – whew. It occurred to me that I used to think the year 2000 sounded so far away (okay, aging me…) and now there are full-on adults who’ve never been alive in anything but the 2000s.

Life is weird sometimes.

Okay (reigning in the thoughts…) lets talk about good things! I’m hoping that your Christmas and surrounding activities were life-giving to you and brought you joy.

I was thinking about the little December traditions I continue to do (decorating, cooking, baking, stockings, brunch, etc.) even though our kids are grown because they are just that to me – life-giving and joyful.

They remind me of the past, help me to enjoy the present, and give hope for the future when we can do them all again.

My circumstances may change – and the world certainly has – but we can still invite people to our Christmas brunch. I can still deliver cookies or a jar gift to friends. I can wrap silly little gifts for our stockings (yep, I wrap up gum and soap…).

And feel the love and connectedness this brings.

Our little family traditions are helping me to finally start to understand why the Bible shows so much about traditions and remembering. They remind us of how God has been there in the past, is with us in the present and gives hope for the future, too.

Obviously you can see that the turn of the calendar year has made me a bit introspective! But it’s all good – and I guess I want to remember God and cherish the times we make with others all year long (more on this below in my word for the year!).

Good Things List

Christmas 2022

I love how our farmhouse’s porch is lit up during December! It feels so welcoming in a sea of darkness.

Although hard to get a good photo, I also had candles in all the windows which you could see when driving up to our house. I’m leaving them up through January because I still need a little light and they make me happy (our Edison lights around the porch roof also stay up year around).

A reader asked me to show what the presents wrapped using my gift wrapping system look like under our tree – I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of that.

Here they are – all color coordinated and easy-peasy. Some of the boxes were wrapped 20 years ago and I can remember where I got the paper!

I also made the tags one year with stamps and glitter and we reuse those from year to year, too.

My daughter and I enjoyed our Christmas morning Peppermint Mochas before heading to the living room to open our stocking gifts.

We both (yes, even my daughter) think they are better with the peppermint added to the chocolate instead of adding a peppermint syrup. You get all the peppermint flavor without the super-sweetness.

I give all the ratios for both the standard and lower-sugar mochas here (or hot chocolate – it does’t have to have coffee added).

Have you tried making your own yet?

Word of The Year

I used to choose a word of the year to go along with my goals, but haven’t really felt inspired the past few years.

This year I read on (in)courage that you could take a quiz to help you define your word for the year and I thought I’d try it to see what word would come up and if it would mean anything to me.

You guys – sometimes God works through online quizzes!

The word was “rooted” and I nearly had tears in my eyes when I realized this was something I had been desiring for the past few years and was flailing about instead.

I added the word to my goals page in my Flexible Planner along with a sticky note of Colossians 2:6-7 (in part, “continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up).

Then I prayed and thought of how I’d start the year in a way I wanted to continue to live “rooted” and a 52-week Bible reading plan came to my attention through Ann Voskamp’s site.

So I downloaded the plan and bought the companion book (52 Weeks in the Word: A Companion for Reading through the Bible in a Year) and have already carved out time in my morning routine for longer Bible reading.

I’m so happy I followed my curiosity for that quiz, that God met me where I am and that I have an overarching word to help refocus me through the year.

Have you chosen a word for 2023?

Smooth Winter Lips

For the last year or so when the weather changes from warm to cold and I spend more time inside heated areas (which I’m so grateful for!), my lips have been getting so dry that they flake around the edges and feel like they are going to split at the corners when I yawn.

At first I thought it was a vitamin B issue (I’ve had that before), but it went away completely when we were in Hawaii and started up a few weeks after coming home, so yeah, not a lack of vitamins. (Side note: I also hardly ever used a tissue in Hawaii – curse you, cold weather!)

I tried all the specialty lip balms – and even straight on vaseline – regularly applying them all through the day. It only kept it a bay.

Enter Aquaphor Healing Ointment. This magic stuff is what finally healed my lips completely and since I’ve been using it this last month at night, I have NO painful corners or flaking.

During the day I use regular lip balms and the ointment only at night before bed.

I probably wouldn’t have tried it, though, since it doesn’t seem like it’s for lips, but a fellow blogger wrote about it and so I’m sharing it with you in case it’s something you need, too.

Buy Here: Aquaphor Healing Ointment tube (also comes in a smaller size for a purse). Note: you don’t want the lip repair – while good, that is more of a typical lip balm and it’s the ointment that works better.

December Reads

I finished 100 books in 2022! I didn’t really have that goal, but when I saw I was close, I started upping my reading game to see if I could make it, lol.

This included listening (half the books were audio) when I was doing all.the.cooking during the month and reading longer at night instead of watching a show.

Here are eight reviews of books I read in December – look for a list of my favorite books of the year soon!

The Lost Husband, Katherine Center. This is one of this author’s backlog that I found on Hoopla looking for something light to listen to while baking. I’ve found Ms. Center’s books to be a fun read, but with some depth and interesting characters. This is about a widow who moves with her two children from her mom’s house where they had been staying to a farm to help out an aging aunt. She’s a city girl, so you get to see her navigate a working farm, let her children play, and make new friends. There’s a bit of a mystery on a couple fronts and while the ending isn’t tied up in a bow, you see how things are going to go. Not my favorite Katherine Center work, but good (and I always appreciate her more subtle “closed-door” approach to romance).

Thank You For Listening, Julia Whelan. I had this on hold from the library for months – it’s been on a lot of people’s Instagram feeds and I’ve heard the buzz. Julia Whelan is a favorite audiobook narrator and I enjoyed her first novel, so I was looking forward to this. It delivered a couple of super interesting characters that I didn’t expect and a storyline that kept me coming back for more (of course I listened to this as Julia read it herself). The behind-the-scenes of audiobook narration was hilarious at times and super interesting. The main character was broken and I keep thinking about her weeks after finishing this – which you know means it’s pretty good. I wish there were less graphic scenes and less swearing, but it’s definitely not as much as other books.

Elvis and Me, Priscilla Presley. Okay…how to put this? I felt kind of icky after listening to this read by Priscilla. I was interested in this after watching the Baz Luhrmann Elvis movie, but man did it seem like Elvis chose a 14-year-old so he could groom her to be just what he wanted. He messed with her mind, manipulated her parents (whose objections were sound and sane), introduced her to drugs and alcohol, and left her alone for days/weeks at a time. And to think this is portrayed like a wonderful love story. I could easily see why this ended in divorce.

Journey to Munich (Maisie Dobbs 12), Jaqueline Winspear. Although I’m still bummed the author chose the path she did in books 10 & 11, I’m continuing to read every now and then because I find the history, characters and mysteries of the books to be engaging. In this book, Maisie gets back to familiar territory for her in solving a mystery/crime though the setting of Germany in the beginnings of the Third Reich’s advancement was chilling – and super interesting at the same time.

The Bodyguard, Katherine Center. This is the newest book by Ms. Center and I waited months for this from the library, too. I can see why it’s so popular – I was immediately drawn to the main character, abrasive as she was in the beginning. It’s like a reverse Kevin Costner-Whitney Huston Bodyguard, where the female is the tough bodyguard sent to protect a famous actor from potentially threatening fans. Some scenes just made my jaw drop (how could her ex say those things in front of her coworkers??), and the fish-out-of-water part of her learning to live in disguise on a farm was a favorite. Pretty sure this will make my year-end list for a fiction book I just really enjoyed.

Managing Expectations, Minnie Driver. This is a sort-of memoir that is told through a series of essays that start when Minnie is in elementary school. It jumps quite a lot and I found I had to google things to figure out the backstory (that just helped me make more sense of things). But I did enjoy the book and Minnie’s way of wording things and how she looked at the world. Her reflections on fame and how it fell on her hard and fast in the 1990s was interesting, too. Towards the end it became a bit too much of “me, me, I, I,” if you know what I mean, and I found myself not really caring anymore. Until it came to the last essay on her mother’s death experience which had me tearing up. If you’ve watched things starring Minnie, you might enjoy this, too.

Watching

Spirited with Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrel, Apple TV+. I was super surprised how much I liked this fun musical (yep!) that is a different take on Dickens’ Christmas Carol. Brian and I saw it in the theaters and then streamed it with our family on Christmas Day since we had enjoyed it so much. Did you see it??

That’s it for another addition of the Good Things List!

If you’d like to see more of what I’m enjoying, you can check out all the Good Things Lists here. I’d love to know what you think – if you’ve tried any of these or what you’d recommend. Leave a comment below with your thoughts!

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