Simple Meals + Honest Book Reviews + Practical Living
If you’ve been feeling the pinch lately, you’re not imagining it. Groceries cost more. Household staples cost more. Everything feels heavier—financially and logistically.
Today I want to share 12 very simple swaps we’ve made around our home—mostly in the laundry room, kitchen, and bathroom—that save money over time and feel better for our family and the planet. None of these are extreme. None require perfection. They’re just small, practical shifts that quietly add up.
My entire family loves this chocolate chip cookie recipe, we’ve been using it for years. It’s so quick and easy, and it’s so much fun to whip up a batch or two with my almost 3 year old son on a random weekday morning. It’s actually the perfect cookie recipe to bake with toddlers.
I absolutely LOVE this salad in the wintertime, it’s on the weekly rotation. Pretty easy to throw together and oh so satisfying. The orange is such a fun burst of flavor in the dark months of winter.
Hello old friends! We had another baby! We welcomed baby #3 in September 2022, and if I don’t type out the birth story now, I might forget even more details, so here we are. As the title of this post implies, the birth didn’t quite match the vision I had for us… but in the end, we’re both happy and healthy.
Summer at home with little kids can feel like a beautiful, chaotic blur — especially when they’re constantly asking for snacks. To help our days flow more smoothly, I’ve found that a few simple Sunday habits go a long way. These six tasks aren’t complicated or time-consuming. They’re quick, realistic, and they truly help reset our home — and my mindset — for the week ahead.
One of the quiet joys of parenting small children is discovering which books actually earn their place on the shelf. Not the ones that look beautiful or feel aspirational—but the ones that get pulled down night after night, the ones with cracked spines, memorized lines, and children who shout, “Read it again!” before you’ve even finished the last page.
This post is a love letter to those books. These are the picture books and early readers that have held our family through toddlerhood, preschool years, sick days, early mornings, and bedtime rituals. Some are funny, some are tender, some gently teach emotional literacy, and others are just pure delight. None of them are accidental favorites.
Below, I’ve fleshed out each book (or series) with a few thoughts on why it works so well—especially for young children—and what makes it worth returning to again and again.