ROMANTICIZING WINTER cozy hobbies nourishing meals self care how to thrive in the cold

You know this time of year can be so hard. It doesn't seem like there's much to look forward to. It's cold outside, it's boring, but we are going to thrive. I want to share how I try to make the most of the wintertime and what we get up to, things that I like to focus on. I find with summer and fall and spring it's easy to just sit in those seasons and really enjoy them, but winter it's really easy to try to fast forward to March to April, go into spring mode, but I want to enjoy it. It does feel slightly hypocritical making this video when I live in Texas because we don't have that classic snowy winter. It's not absolutely frigid outside, but I will say it's pretty ugly. It's pretty ugly. The grass dies, the trees are bare. I still find I have to romanticize it and make the most of it. Starting off with some bright colors. I love to wear bright, fun colors, especially January and February because you got to bring the color when you don't necessarily see it out your window. And we're going to head out and about. I'll share what we get up to. Stop number one is picking up a coffee from a new coffee shop. This isn't technically new to me. I have had it once before. A friend brought it over, but it was the best cold brew I think that I've ever had. It's called Good Company. I don't know if this is the only location or if there are more. I've never actually been in, so we're going to grab a cold brew because I still like cold coffee in the wintertime. And thinking of indoor activities, this is my favorite time of year to work on little home projects. So over the last couple of months I have been sourcing some frames, different pieces for an eclectic gallery wall. I've really been thrifting and going to antique stores. So we'll see if we can stop at an antique store, but I am going to go to HomeGoods. I'm at a place now where I have specific sizes that I'm looking for, specific styles to work around my thrifted ones. So we're going to see what they have. Delicious and the branding is adorable. Back home, I'll share my haul. I am definitely good on frames, I would say. I found such great ones at the antique store, especially this oval one. I love the shape. This blue frame, I love finding blue accents when you're looking at the kitchen. This beautiful gold one that also has an oval shape. HomeGoods was actually closed. They were restocking things, but I stopped by at home next door. Prices here were amazing. So a little gold one. I like how this one had soft edges and this pretty brassy looking one. I just set everything out together and I am realizing that I want to keep the gallery wall just photos. These things I'm definitely still going to use throughout our house. We have a lot going on. I think it's also throwing me off because we have just random pictures in all these frames. Adding other things in the mix, maybe besides that fan, simple things like that, but definitely not the clock. That's just too, too much. I love leaning into seasonal cooking. Just cooking those warm, hearty soups, pastas. Such a great time to bake. Just the best indoor activity. So I actually got some things to make lasagna soup because I love a soup, but if I'm making it for dinner, it has to be hearty and I haven't made lasagna soup in a while. So I'm going to throw that stuff in the crock pot. To really make it a hearty meal, I'm also going to throw in some of these sourdough rolls before we eat tonight. These are from Wild Grain. They have a bunch of sourdough, pastries, breads, pastas, pizzas. Everything on their website is just delicious. They have chocolate croissants. They'll have apple cider donuts, but we got a margarita pizza in this box. They have just fresh baguettes. Everything that you could ask for and the best part is everything's made with a slow fermentation process. So it's just so easy on your stomach. I'm so thankful to be partnering with Wild Grain on this video. And I do have a code. You can get $30 off your first box plus free croissants for life by visiting wildgrain.com slash Michelle Reed and use my code Michelle Reed. Everything's baked from frozen. So we'll just stick these in 10 minutes before we want to eat and they will be good to go. You don't have to thaw anything because that's something I'm always forgetting to do. I love having these things in the freezer too. If I'm trying to have some friends over for a little play date, or we're just last minute inviting people over, you want to set out some tasty pastries. Everything is absolutely delicious. We actually ate everything from our box that I was meant to show in this video. So I ordered another one and had so much fun picking everything out. You can get $30 off your first box plus free croissants for life by visiting wildgrain.com slash Michelle Reed and use my code Michelle Reed. So growing up, I always saw my mom take 15 minutes or so to sit out in the sun. And honestly, when I was younger, I thought that always seemed kind of boring. But now as an adult, I get why mom needed to spend 10 minutes to get some sunshine, especially in the wintertime. I actually think it's really nice to be in the crisp air, but getting some warm sun on your face. We're all getting less vitamin D this time of year, but it always feels good just to sit and how to do a workout. I find in the wintertime, I actually work out more because yet again, it's an indoor activity. It warms me up. I think it would be different if I ran outside something like that. But when I go to a workout class, this is just a time of year. I find I do it pretty often. I've been working out in the evening, which I don't love for the sake of our nighttime routine, but I do love for the sake of it helps me sleep burning out just like that little last energy before getting into bed and everything. This is also the most consistent I've been in my workout routine since having my son. And then I'll probably have another baby and we'll start all over again, but that's life. I got one of these bubble headbands, but why do I look so weird? I can't figure out if I'm supposed to tuck my ears in or do this, which I think looks even more ridiculous. Look at my ears. Anytime I try to do something trending, I just cannot pull it off this time of year. I really like leaning into skincare. So I wanted to share some of my favorites right now for just adding in moisture. I just got out of the shower and I used, I thought I brought it in here. I use the normal skin cleansing oil from primally pure. This is probably my seventh bottle of this. I live by this, but especially in the wintertime, it's very moisturizing. The ingredients are really clean. Castor oil, avocado oil, pomegranate seed oil. And this just takes off my makeup too. I think that's why I go through it pretty quickly. For moisturizer, I've been using the Kiehl's ultra facial cream for also years now. We've probably gone through 20 of these. Eden uses this too. I've also been focusing on bringing my skincare down my neck as well. And anything I have leftover, I'm always putting on my hands because my cuticles are so dry right now. Letting that sit in for a second. But for my body, I really love, this is the primally pure citrus mint body butter. It smells so refreshing. And ingredients too on this, we have organic tallow, organic coconut oil, organic mango butter. Primally pure just has the best ingredients ever, but I will put this on my entire body right when I get out of the shower. And then this I usually do right before I go to bed because I'm going to go in with my gua sha tool. I'm not sure how much of the gua sha tool is really like doing all the lymphatic drainage and everything, but I feel like I notice a difference. This is the plumping serum from primally pure. This is also one of my holy grail products. Pomegranate seed oil, rosehip oil. I have a tendency to grind my teeth. I find that this actually just feels so good on all my muscles back here. I have tried to watch a lot of videos on actually using this too, to be doing the right motions and everything, but I can probably perfect my technique a little bit more. If I have time, I will also try to do this in the morning as well. But I really think that this oil has kept my skin very moisturized this time of year. Not my sports bra, just sitting back here. Not sponsored, but I always have a code with primally pure. It's either read 15 or 15 read. I always forget. I use my code all the time to order products from them because they are just so, so good and my skin really loves them. Also great for baby products too. One of my favorite little evening rituals is prepping our coffee for the next morning. We've been loving our coffee pot coffee, especially in the wintertime. Come here. Good morning. This morning I wanted to share some of our current favorite toys because this time of year I do find we're spending a bit more time inside, playing indoors, and I just went through everything and I feel like we're at a good spot with toys. I really like the advice when it comes to toys of going deep instead of wide. So if your child is really into something, adding to that specific collection versus buying a ton of different toys. Right now we're really into cars, so we have quite a car collection and my parents actually gifted Connor this little garage for Christmas and he loves it. He plays with this every single morning right when he wakes up and it's also nice because it organizes them. We have so much fun at night parking all the cars before we go to bed. Of course books. Books are something that we really try to focus on. I also like having books at a level where he can reach for them really easily. So we have this bookshelf. We've had this for about a year. I really like it. And then in our living room we have them in a little organizer. We also have a bin of these Duplo Legos. He hasn't really been into stacking them and building things yet, but he really likes the little people. He likes to put them in his cars and everything. So I think as he gets older he'll especially play with those. We just got into pretend play too. So we have a little barn that we got him for his birthday. He loves that. He has a Noah's Ark too. He really likes that right now. Of course car tracks. We have car tracks throughout our entire house. We have a play kitchen. That was actually a hand-me-down for my sister, but he really likes that as well. Little play animals. I also have magnet tiles because I love the idea of magnet tiles, but honestly he hardly touches those right now. So I think as he gets older hopefully, but I really like the magnet tiles. I build things with them. We have a scooter, a bicycle, but honestly I'm surprised he really hasn't been into those kinds of things quite yet either, but we do have them and I'm excited to go for little bike rides and scooter rides around our neighborhood. We live on a very quiet street. That was one of the reasons why we bought this house. Hardly anyone drives by, so I'm excited for that phase too. We have a nugget couch. We really get a lot of use out of that too. Building forts. He also likes to use that as like a ramp for his cars. We also got a little play chair and I'm surprised he sits in this all the time. I thought it would be something kind of cute to have out, but he'll read books there, play there. If we're watching a movie, he'll sit there too. It's a little pricier than some of the other ones that I saw, but the shape of it, it just looks like it's really going to hold its shape well. I like that the gingham is kind of gender neutral too, so we can get a lot of use out of it. I put away a couple of the Christmas toys that we'll bring out so they feel new and fresh, but I don't really rotate toys regularly because it's just kind of a lot. We just played around for a bit, so I wanted to share, but I'm about to get myself ready. We have a play date with a friend. We're going to just like a little shopping center where they can run around, have a little picnic, and spend some time outside because it's going to be a sunny day. Fun play date. On the way home, we made a pit stop at Michael's because I got a gift card for Christmas and something I have always wanted to try is paint by numbers, so I found a little kit. I think this was about ten dollars. This is what we're going to try to paint. I think that winter time is such a nice time to pick up a new hobby, just cozy little hobbies, again that help you get off your phone, but also are just fun, more indoor activities. We were browsing around the craft store. I was looking at everything. I wanted to share some ideas if you're someone who wants to get into hobbies, but you're not sure what you want to do. Of course, I always love scrapbooking. I share scrapbooking all the time. It's a very just low pressure activity to start. I pretty much scrapbook every single month. I like to do a couple pages and print out some photos and piece them together. Really, really fun. Connor has a baby book that I also like to work on. Also, if I'm talking words because I bit my tongue and it hurts so bad. I found this little graphic on Pinterest. It says reading a great time to start a new book, painting, journaling, playing a sport, learning a dance, embroidery, writing, crocheting. I actually tried to learn knitting I think last year around this time, but it never stuck. It was so hard for me for some reason. I would love to get back into that though because that would be a dream to be able to knit a scarf or a hat, make friendship bracelets, build a puzzle. The reason why I wanted to try painting, I think coloring is kind of similar, is I want to find an activity that's easy to do while Connor's awake. This might not be very practical because I have a feeling he would want to join me, which is fine if he wants to paint his own thing, but I have a feeling I'm going to get into doing this myself. Playing board games, building legos, pottery, gardening, bird watching, learning a new language, candle making. That would be so much fun to learn how to make candles. Felting, shelling, volunteering, learning a trade, horseback riding. I actually just texted my sisters that I really want to go horseback riding because I always wish that I was a horse girl when I was younger, so I was really good at riding horses. That's my alter ego, is being a horse girl. Soap making. So there are so many different ideas of things to do. Some are obviously more expensive than others, but like I said, this kit was $10. As an adult, it's easy to just stop doing hobbies like this, but I really appreciate them now when I have a little bit of quiet time while Connor's asleep or we're just hanging out. It's nice to have something to do. I'm hitting pause because I think Connor's gonna wake up any moment, but this has been so relaxing. I can't wait to keep adding on to it. Obviously, it looks like a whole lot of nothing right now, but just wait until it looks like that. This is incredibly unrelatable if you're in a very cold winter climate, but it's a beautiful day outside today, so we are gonna make some chalk. I actually ran out of chalk. We don't have any. I did this in the spring last year. It's so easy. You just need cornstarch, water, and some food coloring. Do not use gel food coloring though because it will stain your concrete, your sidewalk, but it is so much fun. You can paint it. I'm gonna whip this up and it'll be a fun little afternoon activity. What a great activity. I kid you not, that kept him entertained for an hour, which for a toddler is really good. A family coming over tonight, this is especially the time of year where I love just cozy gatherings at home. Essentially, we hang out on Wednesday nights and we trade off who makes dinner, so it's nice. You get to try something new every other week, have a night off cooking dinner. Tonight, we're grilling steaks, so we're watching the anniversary movie. We have already seen it in theaters, but the guys haven't yet, so we'll see what they think. It definitely had us on the edge of our seats when we saw it in theaters. In the last six months or so, I feel like I have been a lot better about just asking to hang out with people and inviting people over more. I think sometimes you can get so in your head of thinking other people are busy and just feeling lonely but not really doing anything about it, so this is your sign if you've been wanting to spend time with someone, you're feeling bored, you're feeling lonely, just text someone. Ask if they want to come over, ask if they want to hang out because chances are someone else is lonely too. Basically, every night while I've been cooking lately, I have to run outside because the sunset is so beautiful. That was such a nice time with family, but I remembered that I wanted to share something at the end of this video before logging off for the evening, and that is some of my favorite comfort creators, specifically on YouTube. I'm just a YouTube girl. If you've been here for a while, you know I've been on YouTube for longer than a decade. I just love a cozy YouTube vlog when I'm doing things around the house. Before I go to sleep, I pretty much watch other YouTubers before bed every single night, and I have to say I'm very thankful that most of my favorite YouTubers also happen to be my friends over social media, which is really nice. So, of course, all of my friends on YouTube I do watch. I'm just gonna go through my subscriptions. For mom stuff, I love Victoria Morris. I mean mom stuff, but she also does other stuff too. The coziest vlogs. Her daughter's a little bit younger than my son, so it's kind of nice to relate in that way. She lives in Colorado, which we love Colorado. We're actually planning a spring road trip to Colorado. I love watching her YouTube videos, and she just has a very calming presence about her too. Of course, Abby Aslan. Love her videos. My friend Rachel. She also just moved too, and that's such a fun time to like tune in to someone's channel. I'll try to link everyone down below too. Jenna Hong. If you're someone who likes to journal, I would highly recommend Jenna's channel too. Motivational, but in a cozy way. Kristy Zurm. She posts a lot more on Instagram. She does have some YouTube vlogs. She also does a relaxing mom content that I really enjoy watching. She also just had a second baby, and she had her first around the same time I had Connor. Carter Sullivan. Love her videos. I especially love her home videos. Home projects, thrifting. Beth Grace Moore. Especially for mom stuff. Love her page. I've talked about her quite a bit. My friend Kat. Kat Schultes also does a lot of mom videos. If you are into exercise, running, definitely check out her channel. My friend Madison. She also does cozy mom vlogs. Love her channel. How many times can I say cozy? I'm sorry. And honestly, there's so many more that I can share, but I am very tired, and I know Aiden is ready to go to bed too, so. Here's to looking forward to spring, but also making the most of winter. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Bye friends.