The Break Room No. 17


The break room no. 1 May 2019

Pour yourself a fresh cup of coffee, get cozy, and let’s take a well-deserved break and catch up about November 2020.

My Recent BuysBest tips to weatherproof your doors

  • At the beginning of the month, I shared a few weatherproofing tasks I did around the house on Instagram stories. I ended up adding these corner pads to our front door to block out any drafts and I completely replaced the sill on our garage door with this new one. Now the cold air (and any critters!) should stay out!November 2020: adding homemade items to our kitchen
  • Now that our kitchen is in the “finishing touches stage”, I’ve had a lot of fun searching for a few new decor pieces. I ended up getting this vase and these ceramic nesting bowls for our glass cabinets. I also picked up new soap dispensers, glass coasters, and a winter candle.The new soap dispensers in our kitchen
  • Christmas is just a few weeks away (say what?!) and I bought us some matching family pajamas. I just couldn’t help myself! We actually already had these pajamas for Rory (we have lots of pjs from this brand because they’re so soft), so we decided to buy the adult pajama pants for us. I can’t wait to wear them on Christmas morning.Holiday cards from Minted
  • I also sent out our Christmas cards on Friday. I always like to get them sent out on Black Friday so I’m done with that daunting task before the holidays really begin! I ended up going with these from Minted and they’re fantastic! I highly recommend uploading your own address book too. That way you don’t have to handwrite any envelopes.

Finn’s FavoritesOur butcher block in our kitchen island

This month, Finn had a blast buying some new items for our kitchen. (Also, how about that sneak peek picture above? Yayyyy! Full reveal coming next Monday.) We purged a lot of our old kitchen stuff when packing everything up before demo day and have replaced things slowly, with intentional items that are high-quality.

  • I got rid of a lot of our expired and outdated spices and replaced them with this kit. Not only are the bottles nice to look at (wait til you see our spice drawer in January!), but they have so many awesome spices to choose from. This would be a great holiday gift!
  • Now that we have a dishwasher again, we’ve been cleaning all of Rory’s bottle parts and mealtime essentials in these cleaning bags.
  • I did a lot of research when it came to replacing our baking sheets. These baking sheetsย  are restaurant quality with great reviews and an affordable price tag.
  • Take your frozen pizza to the next level with this baking stone. ย It is also great for bread, cookies, etc., but for us, it’s been a game changer for pizza.
  • It’s so hard to organize lids in a kitchen cabinet. This universal lid fits all of our pots and pans, so it’s the only one we now use.

The Click List

Gift Guide 2020

Last week, I shared our Annual Gift Guide! It’s always one of my favorite big projects of the year. You can read all about it in this blog post and shop it below or click here.

Finn Family Updates – November 2020

It was definitely a strange month for us, and the entire world, really! We started with the chaos and uncertainty regarding the election and ended with Thanksgiving, during a pandemic.Adding storage with a built-in bench and dining nook

Because of the pandemic, we had a very small Thanksgiving. We were grateful to be together and healthy and we plan to stick in our little quarantine bubble until the world is a tad safer. Rory 7 month sold

I feel like Rory really grew up this past month. She is just so active, so chatty, and so happy!

She said her first words ย – “baba” for bottle, with “mama” a close second. Sorry, Finn, “dada” still hasn’t really happened yet. She is sitting up on her own, rolling all over, and is getting ready to start crawling. Rory playing at the parkRory is also allllll about that food life.A look at our fall video 2020

We started baby-led weaning at six months and she has been loving it. (Basically, Rory eats what we eat, instead of eating only purees.) I’m planning a big post about our eating experience in January, to explain how it works, the tools we use, etc. rory eating spaghettiBut, so far, we’ve been having a lot of fun with it and there is nothing this girl won’t eat. Carbs are definitely her fave, just like her mama. The girl goes wild for buttered toast and pasta with meatballs! And we’ve since learned that the best thing we can do is to strip her down to her diaper when eating because things get soooo messy! Our November 2020

We put our Christmas decorations up over the weekend (I’ll share a holiday home tour soon), and I’m really enjoying this season with Rory. It’s just so magical with her and I’m excited to experience all of our holiday firsts together as a family of three.

Casey


The Year of Casey

Hey there!

Iโ€™m Casey Finn, the voice behind The DIY Playbook. I’m a Chicago gal teaching you how to design, DIY, and maintain your home…by yourself! Learn more about me right here.