🐻‍❄️Lil Treasures #206: Cute Polar Bears and The Multipurpose Friend

We're talking motherhood, corn dogs and Shakespeare

🎄Happy December 1st, friends.

The halls are decked! The day-specific shopping days are behind us! (Although, I’m still getting emails saying otherwise from the GAP). I’m gearing up for a month of magic and stress and parties and I both can’t wait for the festivities and am also feeling existential dread over all that must be accomplished.

But in better news, we’re coming up on the second Sunday of Advent (edit: JK Advent starts this Sunday I have no idea what day it is), and I’m really enjoying spending this year with The First Advent in Palestine as a companion. I’ll talk more about it below if you still want to jump in. For now, we have treasures to attend to!

This week’s treasures:

🚫 I didn’t know when I birthed my eldest daughter that I also created my biggest hype girl who was willing to throw hands at anyone who stood against me.

🍟 Need a fun gift idea for your food-loving friend or boss? You should check out French Fries & Barolo, a new 5-week masterclass from Bri McKoy on how to pair food and wine.

🎭 A thousand high fives to Dame Judi Dench for casually quoting a Shakespeare sonnet off the cuff.

🕯 If you’re joining me for Advent this year in our journey through Kelley Nikondeha’s book The First Advent in Palestine, don’t forget we have the cool opportunity to chat with Kelley about her book on Thursday, December 7th at 7pm CT! You do not have to have read the book to be a part and it’s free for anyone to join. Click here to register and you’ll receive both a link to submit questions and a link for the live stream!

🐉 We crowned the Best Saints in Show over on this week’s episode of Faith Adjacent! We talked about a plethora of different saints, including one that was famous for defeating dragons. Don’t miss the chaos on this episode! You won’t regret it. Probably.

📵 If you rode the bus to school in the 80’s or 90’s, get ready to go back in time to the prehistoric era of mornings spent at the bus stop kicking rocks or picking leaves off of bushes because well, there was nothing better to do, was there?

👯 Shout out to all those moms out there making it work and propping each other up in the midst of the chaos! In my life, some of the friends I have made in the trenches of raising toddlers and tweens have kept me laughing, kept me fed and helped me keep my sanity. If you have people like this in your life, this post is for you!

🧑‍🎄 This week on The Swipe Up+, I unleashed my powers of suggestion in a post about stocking stuffers for the lady of the house. If you’re usually the one (doesn’t have to be a lady) who is making the magic and filling the stockings in your house with lovely trinkets and lotions all the while your stocking lies limp, I’ve got some fun ideas for you this year! You can join The Swipe Up+ to get access to the goodies.

🍻 Katelyn Beaty’s most recent essay called No Woman Can Crack the Evangelical Bro Code hits on the uphill battles so many women who work in evangelical institutions have to fight. Speaking from my own experience, this can be absolutely maddening. You can read this post and more of Katelyn’s writings over on

The Beaty Beat

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📷 Major props to this guy who did the work for us so we could be taking our pictures the right way.

🐻‍❄️ And to round out our treasures for the week, this video of polar bears playing with bouncy balls is so cute I could throw up.

The best memes!

Enjoy your weekend, pals! I can’t wait to dig into your bright and beautiful comments so make sure you drop yours below👇 See you next time!