Back to School is one of my favorite times of year. Besides being a school supply nerd (give me those freshly sharpened pencils!), I also love being back in a routine. Getting back into that routine can take a little bit of practice though, and I like to set myself up for success by getting prepared for the season ahead. My friends at Christmas Tree Shops and That! recently invited me into their store to check out some of the fall trends, and while I was there I did a major stock up on supplies for back to school lunches. I thought I’d share a few of the things I keep on hand to make lunchbox packing fast, fun, and affordable!
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This post was sponsored by Artkive as part of an Influencer Activation and all opinions expressed in my post are my own.
A few weeks ago I shared on my Instagram stories that I was filling up a box with Jane’s entire year’s worth of preschool artwork and sending it off to Artkive to test out their Artkive Book process. I got so many messages in response asking for my review once the book arrived because it sounds like a lot of us are in the same boat! Just like at our house, many of you also have endless piles of precious preschooler artwork that pull at your heart strings (but also take up so much space!).
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The Beautycounter Friends + Family sale is running this week, so I’m sharing my top 10 favorite products in this round up today! From makeup to skincare to sun protection, these are all of my tried-and-true clean essentials beauty essentials. You can read more about how I started my clean beauty journey and became a Beautycounter consultant in this past post, and get my top-ten list below! 
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Last week my friend Sarah Waldman — a fellow food writer and my go-to-gal for clean beauty advice — and I hosted a little chat on IG Live. We talked all about how we both got on our clean beauty journey (read more about mine here) and then dug into some of our favorite products. We specifically chatted a lot about winter skin — and both of us have very different skin types so I thought it was interesting to see the products we both love and a few of the unique items she recommended that weren’t on my radar — Sarah loves the face oils, I’m a serum gal! You can go back and watch the entire interview on my instagram page, and I thought I’d share a few of the highlights from it in a blog post. Scroll down for some of our favorite clean beauty products for winter (and PS: new customers can get 20% off their orders right now — just visit beautycounter.com/katebowler to shop!)
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I’m kicking off another year of my annual reading list — it’s a running list of every book I’ve read with a brief recap and mini-book review. Last year I didn’t meet the goal I set, I fell short because I had a hard time focusing at night and was juggling a lot during the end of the year (weren’t we all?!). I’m just starting to get back into the reading groove and it’s such a good way for me to escape and power down at the end of the day (and fingers crossed that later in 2021 I’ll get to do some vacation reading if we ever get to travel again!). One of my goals this year is to focus on diversity over quantity. Instead of setting a goal for the number of books I want to read, I’m challenging myself instead to read from diverse authors, perspectives, and genres. See everything I read in year’s past on 2018’s list, 2019’s list and 2020’s list for more book inspiration and scroll down for my current reading queue:
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The snow is coming down outside, and I’d venture to guess lots of other parents like me are trying to figure out how to entertain their kids this morning. I love a seasonal DIY project, Jane loves a seasonal DIY project, and we both had a really fun time making this one for Valentine’s Day: recycled heart crayons! We have a big plastic container in our playroom that holds all the random crayons — broken crayons, crayons from restaurants, crayons from craft kits, crayons that somehow ended up in the bottom of my purse. With a little bit of prep work, a silicon mold, and some color sorting, we recycled the abandoned crayons and melted them down into festive heart shapes to share with our friends. 
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One thing is for certain this year: our celebrations and holiday look quite a bit different. I’m hopeful though that this slower season will still elicit tons of joy, new traditions, and the making of memories we’ll have for years to come. As we kick off the holidays, I’m taking a more purposeful approach to how I entertain, cook, gift and celebrate – with a huge focus on shopping small and local. Which is why I’m super excited to announce a big project I’ve been working on – a #shopsmall virtual holiday pop-up with my friends at UpNext. I’ve partnered with UpNext and eight of my favorite small batch brands to create a holiday gift guide that features curated and limited-edition products for gifting and entertaining. I’m sharing a little bit more about each brand in today’s post, there’s a little something for everyone in this small batch collection!
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It’s been quite a few weeks since my last download, so I have lots to share! Kicking off the new season with some fun recipes, a few mini book reviews from my reading list, a guilt-free educational kid’s iPad game we have been loving, and lots of affordable (and cozy) fall style finds — scroll down to read more! 
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If you’ve been following along with me this year you’ve heard me share my love of Little Leaf Farms! I’ve been lucky to partner with the brand on tons of recipe content this year using their fresh, crunchy lettuce that is grown right here in Massachusetts. I rave about the tasty produce, but another reason I’ve long admired the brand is that they put sustainability at the forefront of each container of lettuce they grow and sell. I had the opportunity to visit Little Leaf Farm’s greenhouses last week to tour their facility and chat with CEO Paul Sellew all about sustainability and how their lettuce gets from seed to store. 
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Over the last few years I made a commitment to myself to get back into a groove of reading more regularly. I was stuck in a bad cycle of ending my days with mindless TV and endless instagram scrolling, so I set a goal to start reading every night instead. It was a huge shift and now has become a part of my routine that I look forward to daily — a great motivator to turn off my phone, get lost in a good book, and power down my brain. I ended each year with a massive review of all of the books I read (see 2018’s list and 2019’s list) and this year I thought I’d do something a little bit different. I’m sharing a running list of my mini book reviews as I go, because 2020 just calls for escaping into a story more than years past, you know? Scroll down for my list and reviews, and let’s see if 2020 is the year I finally beat my reading list goal! 
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