Hello! Happy Monday! Tomorrow is Cinco de Mayo, and it is probably my favorite holiday outside of Thanksgiving, so you can bet that I’ll be patronizing a Mexican restaurant in my neighborhood and also grabbing some to-go margaritas after work to celebrate with. I’m hoping that this time next year, we can all be back at our favorite catinas celebrating!

The weather this weekend was absolutely glorious, so I spent a lot of time outdoors—I went on hour+ long walks each day and it was really nice to get out and enjoy my beautiful neighborhood. For a while, I was walking the same route, but recently, I’ve mixed things up, and discovered some beautiful corners and homes I had never seen before. I really enjoyed my walk last Wednesday, as it was raining a little bit, so there weren’t that many people around and it was just really peaceful. When I was commuting to work, I walked in the rain all the time, obviously, but now I pretty much hangout indoors if the weather is bad, so it actually felt nice to get out and about in the rain.

I’m feeling good going into this week, and hope you guys are too! Here are five distractions that I’ve been loving lately—would love to hear what is keeping you distracted in the comments below! x

01. THE BAKER AND THE BEAUTY

I think I’ve watched more TV in quarantine than I did in all of 2019, so needless to say, I’ve been on the hunt for new shows like once a week. I found a really cute one streaming on Hulu (it airs on ABC!) called The Baker and The Beauty, which is an American remake of an Israeli show. There are only three episodes out right now—it airs on Mondays—so it’d be really easy to catch up to real time if you’re looking for a new show. The premise is cute: Daniel works at a bakery owned by his family and one nights he finds himself partying with an Australian supermodel. They have an instant connection and the story follows their adventures from there, along with some other storylines of other family members. I look forward to another new episode this week!

02. TO-GO COCKTAILS FROM PEARL DIVE

On Friday afternoon, I took a long walk after work and decided to treat myself to a to-go cocktail from Pearl Dive. They’ve got a whole list of Quarantiki Cocktails they are selling in Carpi Sun style pouches, which is great marketing since people are walking around with them everywhere! I opted for the strawberry daiquiri and it was absolutely delicious (and strong)! You do have to buy food to purchase the alcohol, but in addition to their whole take-out menu, you can grab a bag of potato chips for $1 or a slide of pizza for $2, so they make it really economical. While I am ready for the opportunity to eat at a restaurant again, I do hope to-go cocktails are one thing that survives the quarantine!

03. WATCHING OLD HOME VIDEOS

Five years ago, I did a partnership with Legacy Box and got most of our childhood home movies digitized. In addition to sending us DVDs, they also sent us a thumb drive with everything on it so it was easy to upload all the files to our computers. (I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t have a DVD player anymore!) During this time, I’ve loved watching old videos and going through old photos—it’s so fun to revisit good times and remember things I’d long since forgotten. It also makes me want to remember to take videos—I feel like I am really good at taking photos, but oftentimes, videos fall to the wayside, especially when I’m with family.

Now I want to get the rest of our VHS tapes digitized so we can have our complete collection saved for years to come! (If you want to take advantage, it looks like they are running a huge 50% off sale for Mother’s Day—I was really impressed with the quality of digitization and plan to use the service when we do the rest of our VHS collection.)

04. GETTING REFUNDED FOR MY FLIGHT TO FRANCE

I think everyone I know at this point has had a vacation go to the trip graveyard as a result of the pandemic, and while I have no doubt I’ll travel again when this is all over, I would much rather have a cash refund than rack up more flight credits. I got an email late last week that my flight to France at the end of May—RIP to our European girls’ trip—was cancelled outright, and in these wild times, that was actually great news because it meant I could get a full refund. While I thought calling United would be a project that lasted several hours, I was actually pleasantly surprised because I was connected with an agent within 10 minutes and she was able to process a full refund for me. While it will take up to 30 business days to appear on my credit card statement, I’ll take it! Now if only Banana Republic would refund me for the order I sent back nearly two months ago…

05. MY DAY JOB

Over the last two weeks, things at my day job have been really busy, and honestly, that’s been one of the biggest distractions I’ve had in this quarantine. At the onset of Coronavirus, things were also really busy, but then they slowed down—and I’m not going to lie, some of those days really dragged. But now that things have picked back up again, it really feels like time is flying and the time goes by much more quickly. We’re launching the big project we’ve been working on later this week, so we’ll still be sprinting until then, but hopefully, after it’s launched, things will be busy—but maybe with slightly longer lead times! I know so many people are out of work or furloughed right now, so I have been extra grateful for a job to fill my time and pay my bills.

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I’d love to know what distractions you’re loving—drop me a comment below so we can all enjoy!