Life lately

Sarah shares her distaste for vacation planning.

Abby’s cats are feeling cozy in their new heated bed.

Reading lately

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Sarah read An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green and Abby flew through Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin.

Treating ourselves

We share our favorite ways to treat ourselves, when we are most likely to indulge in treats, and frugal treats we love. Also check out this blog post:Treat Yourself: More Like Defeat Yourself by Mrs. Frugalwoods

Eating lately

Abby has been enjoying frozen chocolate and almond croissants from Trader Joe’s.

Sarah’s whole family loved this enchilada casserole.

If you’d like to join in the conversation, please leave us a comment, email us at friendlierpodcast@gmail.com, or find us on Instagram @friendlierpodcast. Thanks for listening!

Life lately

Abby is loving prenatal yoga, both as a student and a teacher.

Sarah is happy to have invested in pelvic floor physical therapy.

Reading lately

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Abby loved Nicole Chung’s memoir All You Can Ever Know and Sarah finished The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah.

Growing humans

We discuss into everything pregnancy related: what we loved, our biggest challenges, cravings and aversions, favorite splurges, and the resources we recommend.

• Maternity underwear from Kindred Bravely
• Pregnancy pillow
• The Longest Shortest Time podcast
• Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond by Nancy Bardack and the accompanying guided meditations
• Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong–and What You Really Need to Know by Emily Oster

Eating lately

Sarah is thankful the internet saved pizza night with this no-yeast pizza crust recipe.

Abby’s whole family is enjoying chili nachos.

If you’d like to join in the conversation, please leave us a comment, email us at friendlierpodcast@gmail.com, or find us on Instagram @friendlierpodcast. Thanks for listening!

Life lately

Sarah shares a routine that is working for her family: grocery shopping on Fridays.

Abby laments that she is too pregnant to tie her shoes.

Reading lately

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Sarah read The Eating Instinct by Virginia Sole-Smith and Abby listened to Us Against You by Fredrik Backman (the sequel to Beartown).

What we wear

We discuss our clothing buying and wearing philosophy, how we shop for clothes for ourselves and our kids, our biggest clothing challenges, and how we feel about the whole enterprise. Links featured in this episode:

• Buy Nothing groups
• Poshmark
• Kidizen
• ThredUp
• Stitch Fix

Eating lately

Abby enlightens us about the different Girl Scout bakeries.

Sarah made a cozy dish in the winter: cheesy cauliflower potato soup.

If you’d like to join in the conversation, please leave us a comment, email us at friendlierpodcast@gmail.com, or find us on Instagram @friendlierpodcast. Thanks for listening!

Life lately

Abby is using a new strategy to help Plum nap.

Sarah is now organizing her passwords with LastPass.

Reading lately

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Abby read The Cactus by Sarah Haywood and Sarah enjoyed Jasmine Guillory’s romance novel The Wedding Date.

Budgeting

Many people use the new year as an opportunity to reevaluate their finances and set financial goals, so we thought it would be a good time to explore budgets and how they work in our families. We share our budgeting philosophies, challenges, tips, and resources.

• Our episode on finances
• Our Freaking Budget
• Frugalwoods Frugal Month
• Home Budget app
• Personal Capital

Eating lately

Sarah made dragon noodles for an easy lunch.

Abby upped her yogurt game by using the Cabot brand Greek yogurt as a starter.

If you’d like to join in the conversation, please leave us a comment, email us at friendlierpodcast@gmail.com, or find us on Instagram @friendlierpodcast. Thanks for listening!

We are getting ready to put new groups together for the Friendlier Reading Experience. If you are interested in being part of a FRE virtual book club, be sure to sign up by the end of January. We’ll connect you with four or five other listeners and provide a guide with resources for making the group a success.

Life lately

Sarah and Abby recap their holidays.

Reading lately

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Sarah read Becoming by Michelle Obama and Abby read Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens.

It’s all routine

The new year is often a time to evaluate old routines and establish new ones. We share our feelings about routines, what routines we have in our lives, our routine aspirations, and routine fails.

Eating lately

Abby made a strata that froze surprisingly well.

Sarah was inspired by the Great British Baking Show to make her first yule log.

If you’d like to join in the conversation, please leave us a comment, email us at friendlierpodcast@gmail.com, or find us on Instagram @friendlierpodcast. Thanks for listening!

Life lately

Abby is officially debt free!

Sarah shares a milestone: first lost tooth for HP!

Reading lately

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Abby read the first book in a trilogy: The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemison. Sarah read Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver.

New year’s intentions, 2019

We reflect back on 2018, look ahead to 2019, and share some of our favorites from the past year.

• Visible Child article on graciousness and corresponding Facebook group
• Black Panther
• To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
• The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
• The Good Place
• The Great British Baking Show
• Kindred Bravely maternity underwear
• Tub shroom
• Bumble Ride Indie Twin
• LL Bean slippers

Eating lately

Sarah discusses the correct way to make hot chocolate.

Abby made baked brie with puff pastry.

If you’d like to join in the conversation, please leave us a comment, email us at friendlierpodcast@gmail.com, or find us on Instagram @friendlierpodcast. Thanks for listening!

Life lately

Sarah reports back on her cold weather camping adventure.

Abby got to see Hamilton!

Reading lately

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Sarah read There, There by Tommy Orange and Abby read the follow-up to the All Souls Triology: Time’s Convert by Deborah Harkness.

Our Year in Books, 2018

We take a look back at our reading life in 2018: our challenges, our wins, and our favorite books of the year. We’d love to hear your favorite books of the year!

• Fiction
  • Sarah: The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne, An American Marriage by Tayari Jones, and A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
    
  • Abby: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman and This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
• Non-fiction
  • Sarah: Louise Penny’s Gamache series, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Outdoor Design by Charles Montgomery and Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
  • Abby: Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy by Angela Garbes
    
• Most enjoyable
  • Sarah: Crazy Rich Asians trilogy and From Twinkle With Love by Sandhya Menon
    
  • The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang and Hamilton’s Battalion: A Trio of Romances by Rose Lerner, Courtney Milan, and Alyssa Cole
    
• Memoir
  • Sarah: Educated by Tara Westover, I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown, and When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrice Khan-Cullors
    
  • Abby: We’re Going to Need More Wine: Stories That Are Funny, Complicated, and True by Gabrielle Union and Everything Happens For a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler
• Ones that missed the mark for us
  • Sarah: Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer and the Darker Shade of Magic series by V. E. Schwab
  • Abby: The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne
    
• Looking forward to in 2019
  • Sarah: Re-reading Harry Potter
  • Abby: Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny, Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Too by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, and Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne
    

Eating lately

Abby made a shepherd’s pie with her Thanksgiving leftovers.

Sarah made these brownies after a cookie dough disaster.

If you’d like to join in the conversation, please leave us a comment, email us at friendlierpodcast@gmail.com, or find us on Instagram @friendlierpodcast. Thanks for listening!

Life lately

Abby successfully completed her longest solo-parenting stretch to date!

Sarah is headed into a cold-weather camping weekend; wish her luck!

Reading lately

Abby read Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson, the first book of a fantasy fiction triology. Sarah stepped outside her usual genre and listened to the classic novel Another Country by James Baldwin.

Graceful quitting

We share why neither of us are quitting averse, our most memorable quitting (and not-quitting) moments, quitting regrets, gracefully quitting relationships, and our thoughts on quitting books and television shows.

• Freakonomics episode on The Upside of Quitting
• Twitter thread about setting boundaries

Eating lately

Sarah is searching for simple lunches to incorporate into her family’s life.

Abby is looking forward to eating roasted cranberry sauce, both on Thanksgiving and for many days after.

If you’d like to join in the conversation, please leave us a comment, email us at friendlierpodcast@gmail.com, or find us on Instagram @friendlierpodcast. Thanks for listening!

Life lately

Sarah’s loving relaxing weekends with her family.

Abby is struggling with a moth infestation.

Reading lately

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Sarah read How to Be a Happier Parent: Raising a Family, Having a Life, and Loving (Almost) Every Minute by K.J. Dell’Antonia and Abby finished Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi.

Simplicity

With the holidays upon us, we thought it would be the perfect time to take a step back from the madness and discuss simplicity. We share how we try to find it in our schedules, stuff, relationships, and holidays.

• Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne
• Cohesive Home podcast
• Minimalist Moms podcast
• Joshua Becker
• Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston
• Our episode on minimalism

Eating lately

Abby’s happy to meal plan again after not being excited about food in the first half of her pregnancy.

Sarah experimented with adding cocoa to the best chocolate chip cookie recipe to make chocolate chocolate chip cookies.

If you’d like to join in the conversation, please leave us a comment, email us at friendlierpodcast@gmail.com, or find us on Instagram @friendlierpodcast. Thanks for listening!

Life lately

Abby has big news: she’s pregnant!

Sarah is on a spending spree in preparation for winter.

Reading lately

Abby read a duology by Laini Taylor Strange the Dreamer and Muse of Nightmares. Sarah finished the Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. If you want to learn about segregation and housing but aren’t ready to commit to the book, check out this interview with the author.

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Naming humans

In honor of Abby’s announcement, we wanted to share how we chose our children’s names, our naming styles, names that got away, and our favorite naming resources.

• Appellation Mountain
• Swistle
• Nameberry
• One Bad Nugget Facebook Group (must be a member of the One Bad Mother FB group to join)
• Baby Name Wizard Name Voyager

Eating lately

Sarah is loving Dots pretzels and considering ordering in bulk.

Abby made a jazzed up version of the traditional baked potato: fiesta lentil potatoes.

If you’d like to join in the conversation, please leave us a comment, email us at friendlierpodcast@gmail.com, or find us on Instagram @friendlierpodcast. Thanks for listening!