Things I’m Loving Friday #369

Good morning! Happy Friday to Y-O-U! I hope your week is wrapping up on a good note. We have some fun things on the agenda for the weekend — a park picnic with friends tonight and a family trip to the zoo tomorrow — and I’m looking forward to unplugging and enjoying time with Ryan, the boys and Sadie. We’ll be missing our moms but sending lots of love to Florida from afar this Mother’s Day weekend.

Also, I just want to acknowledge that I know this weekend may be a challenging one for many out there so if that is you, I hope you can feel some of my love coming your way. 

As always, I hope you all have a fun and relaxing weekend and enjoy today’s roundup of favorites, Things I’m Loving Friday style!

Things I’m Loving Friday #369

• Strawberry Ice Cream

Though we got really into holiday ice cream flavors back in December, it’s been a hot second since we busted out our ice cream maker and made some homemade ice cream. With the warmer months officially upon us, I’m excited to make alllll the ice cream in our house again this spring and summer! Since we still had a decent number of strawberries left from last weekend’s strawberry picking adventure, we kicked things off in our house on Tuesday with a batch of homemade strawberry ice cream. It was so wonderful and I absolutely loved the recipe we followed. I owe you guys a big thank you for introducing me to The Perfect Scoop cookbook because I have yet to make a batch of ice cream from this book that wasn’t a slam dunk. The strawberry ice cream recipe in the cookbook called for equal parts heavy cream and sour cream which gave the ice cream a slightly tangy taste we all adored. Two thumbs waaay up from our whole family!

• Honeysuckles

Honeysuckles are blooming! Hooray! As a kid, I loved sucking the nectar out of honeysuckles and our boys are all about it now, too. They love pulling the bottom of the flower off and licking the sweet nectar that drips out and it’s one of those simple joys that screams childhood to me.

• LeapFrog Magic Adventures Globe

One of Ryan’s best friends, Pete, was so thoughtful and generously surprised our boys with this LeapFrog Magic Adventures Globe. Pete said he knew our boys would love the globe after seeing his two nephews fall in love with it as they learned lots of facts and increased their geographical knowledge. Fun + Learning? Sign our boys up, please! Well, clearly Pete knew what he was doing because the globe was an instant hit. It comes equipped with thousands of facts and is incredibly interactive, offering unique games and a stylus that allows the boys to participate and learn more about places, world cultures, landmarks, animals, mountains, oceans, rivers, languages, currency and more. I swear I am learning just by listening to them play with this thing!

• April 2021 Top 10 

In an effort to be better at taking the time to analyze some of my analytics, I’m going to try to share a short recap once a month in my Friday posts that highlights my top 10 blog posts and your top 10 favorite finds from the blog + Instagram! Hopefully this will also help you check out some blog posts you might have missed or help you easily locate an item I’ve mentioned in the past that got buried in blog/social media mayhem.

Note: This top 10 list excludes all of my Things I’m Loving Friday posts since I’m assuming those of you checking in on Fridays likely already saw those posts! 

Blog Posts: 

• 7 Months Postpartum with Baby #3
• Three Minute Egg White Oatmeal
• Easy Orange Juice Marinated Chicken Thighs
• Greek Yogurt Rotisserie Chicken Salad
• Jax Beach Spring Break 2021
• Mother’s Day Gift Guide 2021
• Best Paleo Chicken Thigh Marinade
• Week of Weeknight Meals: April 2021
• Sunday at Rowan Wild + Dan Nicholas Park
• Easy Coconut Granola

Your Favorite Finds: 

• AGOLDE Parker Vintage Cutoff Shorts (The DMs have started rolling in about these shorts and I’m so glad so many of you are loving them, too!!)
• Baby Bjorn Bouncer (One of my most-used baby items. I just wish we would’ve had it for Chase and Ryder, too!)
• Teether Tubes (Rhett is a teething machine and is obsessed with these.)
• Sharpie Gel Pens (Two thumbs up for these pens! They write well, don’t smear and have a super comfy grip.)
• Amazon Aviator Sunglasses (My favorite affordable sunglasses. I have three different colors!)
• Gold Heart Necklace (My necklace has been sold out for months but this one is super similar. Love the open heart design.)
• Oball Activity Arch (I attach this to Rhett’s stroller and Bjorn Bouncer and he loves it. So entertaining and you can easily swap out the toys to keep things interesting.)
• Mom I’m Bored Activity Book (A dry erase book perfect for entertaining kids while traveling.)
• Aerie Denim Tie Romper (Love this one. So cute with a tee or tank or even as a bathing suit coverup!)
• Gold Beaded Bracelets (This was bestseller from the Shopbop sale!)

• Friday Flashbacks

Cardio HIIT Workout (A seriously sweaty workout that requires zero equipment!)

Refreshing Green Smoothie (Packed with veggies, fruit and fresh mint!)

Question of the Day

What is one thing you’re loving this week?