i am an influencer and these are my favorite things

 Hi! I was feeling inspired by the A Beautiful Mess 'Ten Things I Love' posts and wanted to write my own! Here are some things I've been enjoying lately:

1. I've been buying books on Thriftbooks and I'm like hello, why don't I do this all the time? I can't believe I ever bought a book on Amazon in my life. I just bought French Milk by Lucy Knisley and it shipped so fast and was such a good experience that I immediately bought everything else on my list, including 'Are You Two...Together?' by Lindsy Van Gelder, a lesbian Europe travelogue that I can't wait to read. Best thing ever.

2. I just bought this 'no Pyrex in the dishwasher' magnet so that I'll remember not to put my Pyrex in the dishwasher (lol) and I think it's so cute! I can't wait to plop it on the dishwasher and look at it every time I'm in the kitchen. Just a happy little thing to bring me joy. I bought the aqua and pink one (because duh). 

3. Speaking of magnets, I'm watching Girls right now, and I'm obsessed with all the fun vintage magnets on their fridge. I googled 'girls fridge hbo' in like twelve iterations to try to find a picture of this fridge but came up dry because I am apparently the only person thinking about this fridge. This is the closest I got: 

Which like yes, that is some fridge from the hit HBO show Girls, but where is the specific fridge with all the magnets? Anyway, I want a collection of vintage magnets now, so I can emulate this fridge that I can't find online. Here are some cute ones -- there are a lot of them on Ebay and Etsy for cheap, so I'll probably cave and buy them soon.  Cool fridge, here I come!

4. I just bought these cute little toilitry kits for me and Nicole from this Etsy store and I'm stupidly pumped about them. I think I've never had a legit toilitry kit, and having one feels so luxurious. I like these because they're not too bulky and the patterns are so cute. I bought the lemons for me and the cactuses for Nicole. So cute!!

5. Like any person, I make all my decisions based on what journalist and voice of my generation Chelsea Cirruzzo is doing, so when I saw her talking about exercise dresses, I bought one immediately. She mentioned the Halara dress, which I bought - it's 50 bucks and comes in so many colors! There are also always cute Outdoor Voices dresses for relatively cheaper than retail on Ebay, and also on Depop! This is also a great way to find a color that is out of stock if you're searching for a specific one. Also, I can never remember the name 'halara' because it's too close to 'hawala,' an informal money transfer network used in South Asia and the Middle East that I took a class about in college. This is not relatable, but I wanted to share the burden of knowledge. The dresses are cute! I love that they have shorts underneath them (goodbyeeee heat rash) and that the shorts have pockets for your keys and phone. I don't like when dresses have pockets in the structure of the dress because it pulls the dress down weirdly, so I love that they put pockets in the shorts. 

6. Speaking of heat rash, I really wanna try this anti heat rash stick from Megababe. I get truly awful heat rash on my thighs and I've heard this really helps. I'm a little worried that it'll feel weird (I dislike the feeling of things on my skin like lotions), but I think I'll give it a try for hiking. We went on a backpacking trip last summer where my legs (and, sorry to say, my ass) chafed so badly that I had to hike a half mile out of our way to splash cold spring water on my bare ass and thighs at the end of the day and I'm really trying to avoid a repeat. I also have always been intrigued by Bandalettes, which Lauren reviewed on Hobo Mama years ago. They're very stylish and inexpensive and seem to do the trick. At the time she reviewed them, I was still mennonite and they were too saucy for my style, but now they're right up my alley and I really want some.

7. I just found out about the podcast iRewatch iCarly and I truly cannot wait to listen to it. I watched all the Reels on their Instagram and they're so, so funny -- I'm already obsessed with the people running this podcast. Just a fantastically fun idea. I think about iCarly at least three times weekly (I bring up the Cheesecake Warehouse so much), I feel like this podcast is a gift from pod god for me personally.

8. I really found this article about Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld facinating. I have read Any Chua's 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother' probably six times. One summer when I was really depressed, I found it comforting (??? somehow???) and funny and interesting. I still think it's a really interesting read, stuck somewhere between serious memoir and a satire of herself, an exploration of culture and relationship. This New York Mag piece is a wild and sadly unsurprising deep dive into the culture at Yale Law School and all the factors students facing harassment have stacked against them. It was so interesting and challenging, I wish there were seven more articles deep diving into every anecdote in the story. 

9. I am addicted to shopgoodwill.com, the online platform for Goodwill stores to sell nicer donated items. It's very similar to old school Ebay - it's almost completely auction based, and you have to be really on top of it to win the auctions. It's so fun and there is so much good stuff going up on there every day. I bought a really nice camera and a very fancy Kitchenaid blender, as well as a bunch of other bullshit (polaroid cameras, vintage cookstove that does not work but was ten dollars, nice quilt for the bed) before I banned myself because I was getting too competitive. I was setting alarms to make sure I swooped in at the last second and won auctions and it was becoming kind of a problem. Despite this, shopgoodwill dot com is truly magical and I will never buy a new appliance again. 

10. I am very into curating a nice liked list on Depop. It's pointless, but it's so fun. I love scrolling through and seeing pretty things I've saved. It's the best kind of window shopping. 

xoxo, 

evt