Friday Faves Edition 50

Friday.

I hope that you all have had an amazing week so far! My teenagers finally went back to school this week. Hallelujah! We have finally made it to Friday and I’m sharing some of my faves for the week.

 

Friday Faves.

First off, I just want to say “thanks so much!” for showing up each week to read my Friday Faves. As my blog has evolved, I find that I have more things that I want to share (i.e. travels, 30-day challenges, photography) over the course of the week and Friday is the main day where I’m able to update you all with what’s happening in my daily life.

Essential Oils.

In December, I mentioned that the hubby had purchased some essential oils for my diffuser as one of my Christmas gifts. I read many of the daily articles at mindbodygreen.com and had read this article which shared how tea tree oil and eucalyptus have been clinically shown to kill the airborne flu virus. It also states that lemongrass and cinnamon bark work at battling the bacteria in the air (and yes, I did peruse the medical articles that they used to state this).

I don’t often get sick, but I also like to take precautions to prevent it. According to the EPA, most Americans spend 90% of their time indoors, where pollutants can be 2-5 times higher than outdoors. I try to spend time a lot of time outdoors, but winter and I don’t really get along. For that reason, I’ve been focusing on cleaning up our indoor air. I had already seen some diffuser blends that included lemongrass and was planning to add it to my collection. I went ahead and picked up tea tree oil (which is supposed to be great for acne…luckily, I don’t have that issue) as well.

Are you a fan of essential oils?

Crafts.

I’ve shared before that I am not a crafty person. However, I really, really want to be a person who crafts. In fact, I mentioned in this post that I had bought a wooden dowel and some rope and was going to try my hand at macramé. That was over a month ago and the dowel and rope still sits on the kitchen counter! Occasionally, some teenager will pick up the dowel and swing it around while I frantically tell them to put it down before they knock a glass off of the counter or break a window.

But just this week, I was at the library (making plans for my February Challenge) and saw a book on macramé on the new release shelf. I took it as a sign to get moving on this craft project. Have you ever crafted with rope?

Dreams.

Okay, so I don’t often share my dreams publicly. Sometimes they are a little cray, cray. I usually always tell them to my husband because I need to verbalize them to try to read the clues. Is this something I’m processing? Is this old baggage? Etc… I realize some people don’t put a lot of stock into dreams. Which is probably another reason why I don’t share them.

Journaling dreams.

If a dream really strikes me as strange, I will journal it. Usually, it’s in snippets, like it’s seen above. I don’t try to write neatly…I may go back and add more things I want to remember about it… My notes aren’t censored or edited (I realize “liver” isn’t the proper term, it was just the best way to add a small notation). I’m only actually sharing the photo of the writing because it’s still hard to fully explain the strangeness of the dream. This dream was on the late evening of 1/9/18 or early 1/10/18. I can tell because there are some notes around it about my Two Years of Blogging post.

Written below in my journal is another dream that I had the same night. One of the reasons that they struck me as needing to be journaled is because my notes end with hearing a man say my name and me waking up (like, for real, waking up). Then I heard the bells ring (that the dog uses to let us know he needs out) and yet he was in a dog crate. I lay there awake with the irrational part of me thinking somebody was in my house and the rational part of me thinking no it’s probably between 2 and 4 in the morning and if somebody were in the house, the dog would be barking.

Processing dreams.

So back to the strangeness of the dream. The princess in the country, I did not know. Her sister asked me to help with the bird. The princess was getting married and she loved this pet bird of hers. There is some other strangeness about when I tried to put the bird into its cage…thoughts I had… whatever. The dream shifted to me being in a space to watch the procession of the Prince’s wedding. I can tell you that was Prince Harry. I know why I had that part of the dream. It’s 99.99% likely that my mother and I will be flying into London (please share recommendations of what we should see!) when we take our trip in May (in fact, I’m booking our trip after I finish this post).

You may be asking yourself why this strange.

More to the dream.

Yesterday, as I was looking at places we want to tour in London and about the wedding (I will be there near the wedding, but not actually the day of) and discovered that Princess Eugenie has recently become engaged. No, she and the Prince aren’t having a double wedding, but they are planning to be married at the same location as each other. And in the dream, I knew that the person other than the Prince wasn’t at exactly the same ranking (she’s farther down the line for the crown) and it seemed as though it were a cousin. The part that my husband found strange is that while looking around google maps for where we think we want to stay in London, I stumbled upon a road that appears to be near Buckingham Palace called Birdcage Walk.

So that was my crazy experience yesterday! It’s okay if you don’t see the oddity of it. I’m entitled to my strangeness. I still haven’t quite figured out if there’s any relevancy between the two. Just keeping the intricacies and originalities of all parts of me as real as I can 😉

Do you pay attention to your dreams?

Shopping.

On a much lighter note, I went shopping this week. It happened to be a melancholy day for me. I did feel much lighter after meditation and writing this post. I went to Target looking for some things I needed to clean my hardwood floors. I got sidetracked by the fact that they had bathing suits in stock. Since I’ll be spending spring break in Aruba, I need some swimsuits. Not too long ago, Target introduced a line of bathing suits that sell the tops by bra size. This works out much better for me. However, in the past, they’ve been sold out of my size by the time I think about buying bathing suits (which is never in January). This time, I found plenty.

Clothes.

I don’t usually take photos in the dressing room (that’s not 100% true, but it’s usually only to send them to the hubby for a second opinion).  While there are some bathing suit snaps, they aren’t being shared. Nope. I snapped the pic above because I loved the sweatshirt. It’s saying was so perfect. human • kind be both. The shirt was a little too wide and made me appear to have no waist. They didn’t have a size down so I took the picture to look for it online. I’m a little concerned that a smaller size may have shorter sleeves. I have a love/hate relationship with long-sleeved clothes.

Is there an article of clothing that you have a love/hate relationship with?

Theater.

One of my super exciting pieces of news is that the hubby and I are going to see Riverdance next week. We saw it live when we were dating and now are going to the 20th Anniversary World Tour!

And that’s the week so far.

Music.

This week’s song is by a band, Frenship, that I shared a few weeks back. I don’t normally choose a song which has been viewed by so many.  Usually, I’m looking for under the radar music. However, after sharing that song, I stumbled upon this one. Not only do I like the song, but the real reason I’m sharing is also that I found the dance in the video absolutely moving. If you aren’t a fan of contemporary dance, then you may not get as swept away in emotion as I did, but it’s lovely nonetheless.

I hope that you all have an amazing weekend and a wonderful upcoming week.

I’m off to book some travel plans and I’ll be sure to share all about them next week!

Let your light shine!

Amy