NOVEMBER FAVORITES {2017}

The beginning of November this year was hallmarked by a major lifestyle change for me (two changes really). I'd successfully completed my 100 Days Sober Challenge and was then tasked with figuring out how and if I wanted to reintroduce alcohol into my life. (You can read all about my experience here.) I have started drinking again but it feels completely different that before I did my sober challenge, and I'm still a bit on the fence about how I feel about it. Expect a vlog post in the future about how my relationship with alcohol has changed. I also, for about the first time in a year, reopened myself up to the idea of dating. After spending such a long time feeling quite positive about being a single person, I thought it would be fun to give this whole dating thing a whirl. Originally, I had an idea that it would be fun to go on a series of blind dates and record my before and after thoughts on my YouTube channel; however, two practicality issues got in the way. 1) It was much more difficult to find people to go on said blind dates with than I thought it would be. I suppose it's just not really in vogue anymore, and my particular friend group was coming up a bit short on strangers to set me up with. 2) I ended up going on a date with a guy (we'll call him Minessota for now) and than we went on another one, and another one, and another one... and my enthusiasm for the idea of going on dates with other guys (particularly as a blind date) dissipated.

With all the upcoming holidays, November has felt like it was mostly spent preparing for December. Sorry November. I did, nevertheless, find time to take on another one of my month-long challenges in November. I did No Shopping November (you can read all about how that went in my blog post about it) and it was a bit rockier than I anticpated. Despite not shopping for the month, I did manage to still find a few things that I enjoyed over the month, mostly previously purchased products that I hadn't gotten around to using yet. Check out the video below for a list of all my favorite things from the last month. Have any recent favorites of your own you think I should check out? Leave them in the comments section below!.

P.S. Did I mention I launched a whole cooking blog and second YouTube channel in November? You can check out recipes from the Gretchen's Plate YouTube and Instagram here. And subscribe to my new YouTube channel to get all my cooking videos.