Today marks the advent of a new column here on Homemade Banana! I’ve been searching for a way to share my favorite random internet finds, large and small, with you and I’ve settled on High Five—a quick list of five things I’m loving this week.
Can you tell that I’ve been watching an unhealthy amount of The Great British Baking Show? To be fair, at this time of year my mind is always on baked goods, but my recent Netflix binge has inspired me to a be a little more creative, a little more daring, a little more…extra.
I have a Goodwill addiction. More specifically, I have an addiction to wandering around the housewares section of Goodwill, culling the crowded racks for glimmering bits of Depression glass and crystal, pretty old candy dishes and antique cake servers. Whenever I’m in need of a shopping fix, but I don’t want to spend a lot of money, I take myself on a date to Goodwill, where I can leave with a clutch of new treasures for a cool 20 bucks.
On a recent such shopping trip, I unearthed a particularly good passel of decanters (including a beautiful crystal one—score!). I’ve been wanted to restyle my bar cart for the holidays, and I love the idea of decanting some of the less-than-beautiful bottles of vodka and rum I have and displaying them in pretty vessels with bespoke labels to match.
image via @lemon_laine
Last year on Black Friday, I was just a month shy of completing my year of no shopping, and keeping tabs on all the incredible sales felt like more than my self-control could bear. This year, I like to think that I took into account the lessons I learned from that time of austerity and spent the weeks leading up to today thinking about the recurring things I wanted, doing research to find pieces I loved and then culling that list to the bare minimum. Rather than a feeding frenzy or a complete dearth of purchases, my spending today has felt very measured, and I’m super excited about the pieces I have coming my way!
This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #ToraniSauceObsession #CollectiveBias
When I was a kid accompanying my mom on her morning coffee run, there was nothing I loved more than seeing a cafe well stocked with Torani syrups. My drink of choice at the time was the Italian soda and I loved having different flavors to choose from: raspberry, blackberry, blueberry—the world was my fruit-flavored oyster.