Hello! October is a busy month for us, with multiple family members’ birthdays, the start of the final quarter of the year, and the wrapping up of the school year. I’ve also launched a new theme on the blog, which I hope makes it more responsive and easier to navigate. Please send any feedback my way! We celebrated the kids’ birthdays with a simple meal with family, and pancakes on each of their birthday mornings. They also requested that we bake something for their friends in school – so we did, baking strawberry muffins (and getting very messy at it), which they distributed in school the next day. I’m glad that the school helps us manage the pressures and expectations around birthdays by discouraging and declining to distribute goodie bags; only fruit or simple snacks are allowed. With the end of October comes November: the season of much buying and preparation for the end of the year, and start of the next! I am hoping to be able to tie down what we’ll do for Advent and Christmas soon, so that I won’t be scrambling at the last minute to put something together. (If you’re interested in how we commemorated the season last year when the kids were 1 and 3 years old, I wrote a post about it here. Our nativity playset is also currently on sale). If we settle on what we’re doing soon, I’ll share more in November’s newsletter. About sales and buying mindfullyNovember is a big sale month. Some stores do 11.11, some Black Friday, and some both (?!). The Christmas season of gifting, year-end bonuses, travel and preparation for a new year all increase motivation and pressure to spend and accumulate more stuff. As we approach this season of great temptation and anxiety, I ask myself how I should best prepare myself to face it. Sales can encourage mindless consumption, especially when we get sucked into “good deals” and end up with a good deal more than what we need. On the other hand, sales can be very helpful to reduce costs of items that we require, or can make possible purchases that would otherwise be too expensive. When we first moved into our own home, we made the bulk of our home purchases at 11.11 and Black Friday, saving us hundreds in the process. We had a list of items we were eyeing, and carted them out as they went on sale. If you’re similarly looking to stock up a new kitchen, I’ve shared a list of our kitchen essentials on this post. We’re often reminded to “shop mindfully”, but what does that mean? Are we to be mindful about how much we’re spending, how many things we’re buying, where the products originate, or all of the above? As the season descends upon us, I hope you’ll find some time to calibrate your compass so that you won’t lose your direction in the mass and mess of marketing. About sales and selling mindfullyI want to be transparent and let you know that I will be sharing links and good deals during the sales, as I try to build up this content-making work as a viable secondary income stream for my family. Your clicks and engagement with my content help provide authority to the content I make, and I may earn commissions when you make purchases through my links, like those on my shop my favourites page. It would be incredibly hypocritical of me to promote a simple, pared-down lifestyle on the one hand, and excessive purchasing and grabbing at sales on the other. I feel a constant tension between wanting to promote more and more often so I can build a business, and not wanting to add to the noise and clutter already ever-present on the internet. I try to be mindful about what, where, and how much I promote, and that I only take up collaborations for products I believe in. Yet, I fall short. Thank you for bearing with me as I navigate the complexities and stumble along, attempting to find the better path. May November bring you much rest as you wrap up your work year and prepare for the year-end festivities, and may you find freedom to enjoy the sales season (and score a good bargain)! xoxo, P.S. You’ll hear from me via this newsletter next month, or you can follow along on the blog or Instagram. If this email landed in your junk mail, please remember to mark this my email address as “safe” or add to contacts so that it won’t happen again! If you’re renovating soon,Qanvast has $50 for you. Get $50 cash when you request for FREE interior firm recommendations on Qanvast. How?
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On the blogI’ve been publishing new articles on the blog weekly, and you might want to hop over if you’re interested in gift ideas for 1 year olds, to encourage an interest in nature, or if you’re keen on a good personal story and want to read about my positive natural drug-free birth of my second child. ... & visit my shop page for more recommendations! You're receiving this newsletter because you've signed up to receive emails from me. If you know someone who might enjoy it, feel free to forward this to them or get them to sign up at this link. Thank you for being here! |
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