Good Things List No.80: Garden Planning, New Puzzle, Omega-3 Capsules, Book Reviews and More

A monthly list of good things to see, buy, read and watch. This month’s list includes winter garden dreaming, a national parks puzzle, the best omega-3 capsules, five book reviews and more.

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This new year finds us firmly in the sci-fi realm of books and movies from the past – 2025, right? No flying cars yet, so I think we have to go really far into the future, ha!

We had a lovely holiday season with lots of family and friend time – and now we’re firmly into our family’s next season…a wedding! Our daughter will be getting married in February, so it’s all hands on deck for the next few weeks. It’s a fun and exciting time, for sure.

In honor of the new year, the good things list has a new graphic but the content will be the same – things I’m doing, loving, reading, and watching that I think you may enjoy, too. It’s one of my favorite things to write every month and I think about things you may like all the time because of it – so here we go into a new, only slightly futuristic year!

Good Things List

Early Garden Planning

I jumped on my winter garden planning earlier than normal this year because one of the main catalogs I’ve ordered seeds from for years, Pinetree Garden Seeds, had a free shipping special going through January 4th (if you are subscribed to my newsletter, you heard about this – fill out this form if you’d like to be in the know, too!).

I used the seed needs form from the binder I made using the Garden Success Plan Notebook files – included in the free VIP Library when you subscribe to my newsletter – to create the list of seeds I have and what I needed. This made it super easy to go through the catalog and make my selections.

Other than seeds, I bought something new at Pinetree this year I wanted to share with you – this 12 Year Weed Barrier that has pretty good reviews. You can buy it by the foot and I’m going to use it around our trees and then cover it with wood chips. I’ve tried both cardboard (didn’t even last a season) and regular “professional” weed fabric (queen ann’s lace grew through it in a year), so I’m hoping this actually works! It’s not just a matter of looks (though the weeds around the tree bases are terrible), but the fact that they take water and nutrients from the tree roots.

Our Holiday Puzzle

Every year I like to get a puzzle to start on Christmas Day for us to work on during that typically quiet time until New Years. Last year we did a pretty hard Jane Austen puzzle that was nevertheless super fun to look at with all the Austen book characters.

This year I found a 1000 piece Cavallini Papers & Co. National Parks Map that was educational, too – who knew there were so many national monuments?

I thought with all the different things happening in the parks that it would be easier – um, no. For some reason even the border was hard – which is typically the first thing you complete in a puzzle. Some areas were pretty easy – the title and all the individual pictures. But all that blue! And green! And in the end – all the tiny black park titles at the bottom! After easily putting together the lists of numbers, almost all the other pieces in the lists have some parts of “nat’l park” or “nat’l monument” on it so that in the end, I was reduced to looking at the shapes. (Ha! Now you know I am not a “puzzler” – I just want the cute, easy puzzles!)

It wasn’t finished until New Year’s Eve – but it was still a fun activity. The thrill of walking by and finding a random piece that fits in a harder puzzle sure feels good!

The BEST Omega-3 Capsules

I saw these Nordic Naturals Ultimate Omega pills used by a blogger on Instagram and have been using them for almost 3 months. I had always shied away from fish oil pills because I read that so many of them don’t actually have the right oils and were suspect. And then I didn’t want to experience the “fish burps” I had read about.

These pills are touted to be exactly what they say, with testing “performed by Third-Party Laboratories in the United States, Canada and Norway.” There are crazy-good reviews on Amazon and it was promised (on Insta) that there would be NO fish aftertaste – and there is not!

I take two with either breakfast or lunch and have never remotely had any fishy aftertaste or burps. I also don’t really notice any lemon flavor as stated on the package – but maybe it helps lessen the fish flavor?

But here’s the reason why I will continue to take these: I noticed a lessening of the aches in my joints and knees within the first few weeks of taking them! There are other reasons to get more Omega-3 oil as well – heart health, brain function, and may even help with digestion – but this concrete evidence is enough for me to keep with this supplement.

You can check them out here if you’re interested.

December Books Read

Because I’ve already published my list of the best books I read in 2024, you may have already read about a couple of these December books – two made the list of 12! But I’m copying the reviews here, as well, since I read them in December, along with three other books. (And there are some more good book recommendations in the comments of the best of list – be sure to check it out and chime in if you have some of your own!)

The Plan, Kendra Adachi. I read this from the library mainly out of curiosity from the advertising angle of being “time-management for women” and because I’ve found Kendra’s other books to be helpful. It was..interesting. Not really what I expected. There was a lot of mindset talk, a lot of patriarchy talk, and quite a bit of menstration talk – and way too many acronyms. While I’ve always taken the approach to time management as finding a system that works with you and the life you want (not what someone else tells you) – hello, Flexible Planner – I found this section of the book to be somewhat off-putting. There are days the schedule you’ve planned just doesn’t work for whatever reason – this is LIFE, whether you are a man or a woman. Being able to pivot and not let it derail you is important, and I’ve always found it to be a sign of maturity and acceptance – being kind to yourself and giving grace. The actual planning section of the book is basically what I’ve written about with The Flexible Planner – think about what you want your life to look like (yearly or 5-year hopes and dreams), set a few meaningful goals that will move you forward, write down the steps to take quarterly, and review them occasionally. Not revolutionary, really, but obviously good methods that many have mentioned over the past few years.

An Unfinished Love Story, Doris Kearns Goodwin. I’ve loved the other history books I’ve read by this author and this story of her and her husband’s experiences in the 1960s intrieged me. It wasn’t quite what I thought it would be – I think from the title I thought it would be more about their marriage with the issues of the day as a background. But the unfinished love story is what she views as the progressive policies that were championed by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations that have still not come to fruition, though much of what we take for granted now was started in the 1960s (this is what I think of the title, anyway). No matter your political bent, the inside view of these administrations during the upheaval of the 1960s – racial equality, Vietnam war, free love – is fascinating.

Rising Sun, Michael Crichton. After being disappointed in the Crichton-Patterson book, Eruption, Brian and I listened to this classic 90s thriller that has many of the Crichton-book things we enjoy – a good mystery, cutting edge science and tech, and a riveting plot. However, it’s pretty graphic (the initial murder which is revisited through video footage often) and there are long expositions that go into too much detail that often stop the plot. Some of them are about technology at the time (mainly video) but most are about how the Japanese are taking over the US and how the US isn’t doing anything about it. From a 2024 standpoint, this is pretty laughable.

Prayer in the Night, Tish Harrison Warren. After seeing this on someone else’s book list, I put a hold on it at the library. I’ve been savoring it all through the month of December and, spoiler – I’ve ordered my own copy so I can highlight and mark it up to my heart’s content! If you, like me, sometimes struggle to pray – to find any words at all – from grief, struggles, and doubt (all very common, btw), then you may enjoy this book, too. The author, an Anglican priest, bares her very real struggles and grief in a dark time and shares how a specific liturgical prayer – the Compline – helped her through and how it can help all of us. It’s a deep dive into the different parts of the prayer, “for those who work, watch, or weep.” It’s affirming, hopeful, and is encouraging me to regularly pray using the Book of Common Prayer. This has resonated: “Inherited prayers and practices of the church tether us to belief far more securely than our own vacillating perspective or self-expression…To sustain faith over a lifetime, we need to learn different ways of praying.”

The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year, Ally Carter. This was the last book I read for the year – and it made my best-of list because it was so delightful that I will remember it for awhile – I may even reread it next Christmas to start a tradition! The hero and heroine are two writers with the same publishing company that we think don’t like each other and our heroine is definitely in competition with the hero. But through each of their viewpoints and the backstory that’s peppered throughout the book, we see this “hatred” is not really the case. And this is all set around a mystery in a snowed-in British manor house of a wealthy mystery writer (see the Agatha Christie tones?) when she disappears and dangerous things start happening. A who-done-it and a sweet romance all rolled into one? I’m there for it!

Watching

Wicked, theater. We had seen SO many trailers for this movie for so many months that we weren’t really that interested. But it was the only thing playing that the whole family wanted to see for a post-holiday outing. And we were pleasantly surprised!! There are lines and songs that made us laugh and a number of cute inside jokes. It was light and fun and really well done, from a movie standpoint. Brian really liked it too (and he was really not interested, ha!), so I’m not surprised it’s getting good word of mouth!

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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