Thank you! We love our church and truth and biblical doctrine are preached from the pulpit. Our teaching elder is also very good at detangling biblical and political beliefs and calling it out when he sees it. I'm having a hard time with the private beliefs of attendees/members and friends. What I really need to do is to realize that I can't change or convict anyone. I can only control how I react. Just typing that out to you is helpful, so thanks!!!

Thank you for this. My anxiety stems from the fact that IRL for me is like living in a comment section of a political article where I feel like I'm living in the twilight zone and am the only person with a reasonable view of things. I've already muted almost all of our FB friends, but I can't escape every conversation when I see people IRL. Reconciling my friends' conflating political beliefs with biblical ones has been hard. It's always been hard but these past few months and especially the past couple of days has been incredibly hard.

I LOVE Escape to the Chateau but I can usually only catch it when I go back to England. How are you watching it over here? That show makes me realize that my romantic ideas of a fixer upper are not really romantic. HA HA HA.

I usually say Covid, but often say Rona. I usually say it when someone in my family coughs or sneezes ("is that you Rona!?!") I'm originally from England, though, so I have a dry sense of humor.

What shows do you normally watch? That will help with knowing what to suggest!

That sounds really fun!!! I definitely wouldn't have them use china in that situation either. I'm not sure if you thought I was implying that YOU should do what we do. I certainly wasn't! Obviously, that wouldn't work in your situation but it works really well for us. 😉

If we do I just use our china plates. It's very rare that we have people drop by especially unannounced. That may be common where you are, but it's very uncommon here (based on my informal thinking about our area and people that I know, HA HA HA!) We "school" during the day or are out of the house so both of those mean we're by ourselves and DH travels and is not at home a lot. If I had a situation like you have then the set up I have now wouldn't work for it. For our situation, though, it works wonders!

Hopefully this works as it's my first time posting a photo here! DH and I also keep our favorite coffee mugs next to our plates and wash them out after each use.

I love mine! I went with Fiestaware because I could let each family member pick a color that they would exclusively use. We cut down on all other dishes (though we have some china put away that we get out when we have guests). It's been really helpful in cutting down clutter and knowing who has left their dish on the table. LOL! Everyone just washes their dish and puts it back in the cabinet when they're done so it's ready for next time.

As long as it has an automatic shut off then I think they're pretty much all the same at the lower prices. I mostly just drink black tea, however. A good friend has the kettle with all of the different boiling temperatures but from what I remember she was saying it was expensive. I'd just go with a cheap version and call it good. I just got mine from Walmart and we use it about 15 times a day (not an exaggeration). It's held up well as did our previous kettle that lasted 10 years.

I love pavlova so I voted for that.

Ha ha ha!!! Thank you! Now, I'll get a cuppa tea and settle in.... j/k 😁

You'd think that'd be common sense, right? Unfortunately, I know of a few families here who have been going about their business and not quarantining while a family member is positive. It's horrifying.

Yeah, fair enough! I can see how that would be annoying as well all have our things that push us over the edge. ☺️

In my family we say Cuppa tea? That means "do you want a cup of tea?" In other instances, though, we could say "I could do with a good cuppa" and everyone knows that means tea. So I guess we say it both ways, but it always sounds like cuppa. 😁

I'm from the north of England and cuppa is how we slur together the words "cup of" every time we ask if someone wants a cup of tea. 😂

meh-ree maybe? Rhymes with very but the emphasis is on the first letter (as opposed to the ending). I'm originally from England so my Anglocized-American accent is strange anyway.

This week 3 of my friends tested positive and 2 other friends have said they are "sick" but are canceling Christmas travel because of it so I suspect it's probably Covid (they're Covid deniers). This is after being possibly exposed to a positive covid case of which we were also exposed to and were the only ones who quarantined (we were essentially made to feel like we were over-reacting). Sigh. I can't trust friends/people here to actually quarantine their whole family if one of the members are sick so I'm having to make some "hard" decisions about church and get togethers (easy decision to make but hard on the kids as we're the only ones not participating. I'm weary of having to defend myself. Double sigh.)

Thanks for these! I ordered the bookshelf tracker bookmarks for tracking my books next year.

We live in Florida but DH was supposed to fly a plane to Pennsylvania yesterday, but his flight (and the flight out this morning) got canceled so we got to spend an unexpected night with him at home. When I took him to the airport this morning it was in the low 30's (with a feels like of low 20's). We're thin blooded to to us it was really cold! I love seeing the photos, but I don't miss snow. We spent 3 years living in Alaska so I've spent some time shoveling, LOL! Stay warm and safe!

Here as well. I'd add Cup of Ramen, and pop tarts to that also. I often put those out for treats for our youth group (along with other candy and bits and bobs) and they're always the first things gone.

Someone posted this on FB a couple of days ago, but the best part was the comment from their friend underneath it which was along the lines of : That promise only held true if we could stop, collaborate, and listen and we're not doing any of those things... 😉

We spend less. We've cut down our budget for financial purposes due to the pandemic. Before it was a very healthy budget and now it's a budget that's not yet bare bones but allows for me to get a couple of convenience things if I have to. I'd like to get it down to bare bones and that's my goal in the new year.

This is very much the feeling here, unfortunately.

I had to check where you're located (it's not by me) because we've had a very very similar situation here, right down to the basketball teammate testing positive December 4th! People here are making me feel like I'm being ridiculous for quarantining. Others who have been affected are not telling anyone and not quarantining. I'm seriously re-evaluating friendships over it. It's super sad.