Sprucing Up

The day after the day after Christmas, 2020

Today, I refreshed the bathroom, finished some more thank you notes, got a free coffee, and tried a new hash brown recipe.

The hash browns

Long story short: Chrissy Teigen's crispy bacon hash browns recipe in Cravings works like a charm. My husband and I went to church this morning (drive-in mass due to the pandemic: American ingenuity at its finest) and got home thinking of breakfast. We tend to fall back on simple breakfast tacos: bacon, scrambled eggs with cheese, and salsa/sour cream/cilantro/whatever toppings we can locate all on a tortilla. [Special shout-out to Trader Joe's green dragon sauce, which we will sincerely buy cases of if it's ever discontinued.] So today, we started down the breakfast taco path, but I wanted to try one of the new recipes in one of my new cookbooks, so I started grating some potatoes.

While we had the bacon cooking on a sheet pan in the oven, I grated half of two potatoes (perhaps wasteful, but I am nervous about grating when the thing I'm grating is almost finished up), minced up another piece of bacon, melted butter, and basically followed her recipe exactly. It was ultimately a fairly simple, bacony latke, and I have ZERO complaints. Recipe rating: A. Greasiness rating: good heavens.

Thank you notes

Today we've been married for six months. We had a tiny wedding in June 2020 due to COVID, and I could recommend what we ended up with to anyone. So for about six months, we've had various forms of thank you notes on the brain. First, it was our wedding gifts, then to our families for all of their help, then it was a later batch of gifts and well-wishes, then we got into the holidays. I think part of the newlywed glow may be caused by a more-consistent focus on gratitude than one usually has.

Shortly after we were married, I ordered monogram blank note cards from Amazon, and I've been replenishing our supply regularly as we run through them. They look nicer than the cheapest level of thank you notes that you can buy in bulk, but they're not hyper-personalized and wildly expensive. I've been very pleased with them.

Anyway, today we worked on writing up most of the thank you notes we need to send for the Christmas gifts we've received. Gratitude just makes a day nicer.

Also, I'm thankful for my Dunkin app giving me a free drink today! I got a large latte, which is my ostentatious drink if I ever get something other than black coffee.

Bathroom refresh

Today, I switched up the shower curtain and changed the bathroom accessories in the master bathroom. I also gave it a deep clean which it's been needing. I smile each time I pass the door to that bathroom now because I see the fun, new floral shower curtain and much more of a gleam!

Today's delights

• Using the UV spectrum desk lamp to combat some seasonal gloominess;
• my free Dunkin;
• crispy and greasy hash browns;
• smelling some bread my husband is baking right now; and
• focusing on how much we have to be thankful for, with our too-generous families and friends.

Delight in something today, Audrey