Weekly Roundup: A Home Decor Update

A weekly roundup: Home decor and NYE hijinks, eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  Let's kick it off with that home decor update.

Home Decor Update

For the second year in a row, we went to a friends' house for NYE.  Last year our friends were raving about their potato ricer, so we got one.

This year, our friends had gotten some new home decor, and as soon as I saw it, I proclaimed to Hubs that we were going to need to copy them.

In order to show you what it is, let me take you to our downstairs powder room and demonstrate a decorating tip that I picked up from Young House Love a billion years ago: always keep your spare TP prominently displayed.

Here is the spare roll sitch now:

Right after I announced to Hubs that we needed to have Shaun the Sheep TP holders, I saw him on his phone with a screen full of shopping sites where one could purchase them.

The next morning Hubs got busy with the 3D printer, which had been silent for the past few days.  I asked him what he was up to and got an evasive answer.

By that afternoon our new flock had moved into the powder room.

Stay tuned to see what new gadget/decor our friends get in 2026 that we will learn about at the next NYE party.

The other very interesting thing that I learned at the party is the age gap for 6-7 (SIX-SEVEN!!!).  Our friends' sons are 13 and 16, and every time that those numbers came up, which somehow happened quite a few times over the course of the evening, the high school/middle school crowd roared and the adults tee-hee'd.

The boys, now aged 18 and 20, sat there in stony silence and at one point cringed.

Eats

On Monday, Hubs and the boys went on a day skiing trip a few hours away.  The weather was awful, which meant that they had the resort mostly to themselves, so they had a blast while Doggo and I hunkered down at home.  The solo night meant a chance to try something new for dinner, in the form of Rainbow Plant Life's salt and pepper tofu.

It was excellent, though IMO the yield is about 2.5 servings instead of the four servings advised in the recipe.  Unfortunately, the leftovers were much less stellar, so the next time I make it I will scale down.

Workouts/Wellness

Once the arctic freeze cleared out, I got back on the trails for the hiking challenge.

One concern with winter hiking is that several of the routes have stream crossings.  If there isn't a lot of rain, the streams get down to nothing, but if not they get higher.  This was how the stream on one particular route looked last year when the water was high.  I splashed through it as quickly as I could and had slightly damp feet for the remaining three miles of the hike in 40 degree weather, which was NDB.

Here was the scene this year, in much colder temps when wet feet would have meant an instant turnaround.  I was very thankful for the hikers who had gone before me.  There were just enough logs and rocks to make it possible to balance on the branch and keep my feet dry.

Sleep wise, I have a mixed bag to report.  I've taken melatonin nearly every night this week, and had a few good nights and a few "not good but at least not as bad as I was having before" nights.  It's great for getting me to sleep, but less good at dealing with the Three O'Clock Hole.  A friend gave me a couple of CBD gummies to try, and since I have them in hand I'm going to try them out starting tonight.  And yes I read comments and I take notes, so I've ordered a magnesium supplement so there is another plan of attack on the way.

In the past I've had sleep problems due to not being able to turn my brain off at night, and for that listening to sleep meditations is magic. But whatever is causing my sleep woes now, it's not that.

More to come!

Watching

The next five Alfred Hitchcock movies!  The older the movies get, the shorter they are.  I'm forcing myself to get the draft of my next recap post written before watching any more.

Reading

Two really, really good books completed, another excellent book in progress, and the first DNF of 2026!

Discontent by Beatriz Serrano was excellent.  It's not entirely dissimilar to Sky Daddy, just minus the fetish about planes.  It's about a woman coping with career burnout by watching YouTube videos and taking a few drugs here and there.  Things come to a head when she has to give a presentation at her company off site retreat and the result had me ROTFL and wiping tears from my eyes.

I mentioned that I was taking my time with Best Laid Plans and only reading one chapter a day...well there are nine chapters so the journey is at an end.  Hold that thought and I'll say more in a minute.

I started another audio book while hiking.  People in the financial independence movement love J.L. Collins and I am no exception.  I've heard him on so many podcasts and checked out his blog, and now I am finally reading/listening to The Simple Path to Wealth.  As expected, it is excellent.

So what was the DNF?  In spite of where I live, Buckeye was not for me.  I read the first chapter and was on the fence, and last night I started reading chapter two and encountered a long descriptive passage about nothing, and promptly put it aside and checked out the next book in the Alphabet series: Q is for Quarry.  I'm not opposed to a long book when there is a good reason, but I was getting "I wrote a long book because I can" vibes.

[Sniff...there are only nine books left in the Alphabet series, including Q.]

Takeaways from BLP and goals/planning

In the past I've been more inclined to use electronic planning tools, since my phone is always with me and a piece of paper is not, but there are exceptions.  Back when I was working, my job was to pay people, which is not a deadline that can be missed and also something that you have to set aside time for in advance, so I found it useful to have a monthly paper planner on my desk with the start and due dates written out and staring up at me.

Now that my job is filling my days with things that I want to do, I still have a big ol' monthly planner on my desk so that I don't schedule a trip at the same time that I have at home things planned.  I *could* do this all on my Google calendar, but there are some things that it's just easier to jot down rather than to schedule a meeting for online - all of the family birthday parties that we have this time of year are a good example.

Starting on Jan 1, I've started a very informal kind of daily journal where I note down things that I'm working on each day - what I do with the info is TBD but at least it exists which is the first step toward doing something with it.  I also started a 5 Year Line a Day journal. The five year journal is too big to take with me when I travel, but I trust myself to keep the notes electronically and then write them in when I get back.

As far as writing up a goal list, I do have a running Apple notes list of things that I want to do (a great deal of the list was populated while hiking), and right now that's good enough.  I may get more formal later on, but this is a start.  The point is that I have a place to transfer things from my brain to a more permanent place that does not have memory lapses or problems sleeping, so my brain trust is waiting for me.

Stuff on the Internets that I tried IRL

I raided this WSJ stocking stuffer gift guide for the holidays and found two hits:

A fun solitaire game: Q-less.  It's an abbreviated one person Scrabble game, and I got two sets for people in my life who like such things.  In the process of buying it, I saw that there is also an app for that, which I tried out and found that I am also a person who likes such things.  The free version only lets you play one game a day, so it's a perfect way to play with words for a few minutes and then move on with life.  BTW, it took me about a week of trying before I was able to win a game, but I've been fairly consistent since then.

A fun two or more players game: Chronology.  We've played this as a family and also at the NYE party.  It's an easy to learn but fascinating game where the cards have historical events listed on them and you build a timeline.  As each new card is played, you have to guess where it falls on your timeline, and the first player to acquire 10 events wins.  The easy to learn part is key for me.

And finally, the WSJ had an article that I can confirm is accurate for both last year and the previous 30 years: In a Wild Year for Markets, Investors Who Did Nothing Did Just Fine.

Peace Out!  How do you store your spare TP?