February Monthly Musings // From The Inspired Abode
This month started out with a fun girls’ day – spending the day on a duffy boat in Orange County to celebrate B’s baby boy! Half baby shower or “sprinkle” and half just an fun excuse to get together before life gets busier. Kel worked so hard on planning & it was such an amazing time – highly recommend a day on the water with friends – it’s good for the soul ✨
… and for all those who celebrate, happy Super Bowl weekend & happy Olympics! B is hosting Super Bowl again this year, and we can’t wait to eat all of the Super Bowl snacks today! In Olympics news, we admit we’re not huge fans of the winter games, but we’re looking forward to watching figure skating & ice dancing – with some with skiing & snowboarding too!
Since January was quite busy for us, it took us until the end of the month to put together our vision boards for 2026. Like many of you, we’re reflecting on the year behind us, setting intentions for the year ahead, and trying not to carry too many lingering to-dos into the new year – and if you still haven’t written down your goals or made your vision board, don’t even worry! We love the idea of a spring reset too ✨
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links we can’t stop sending each other, products, links, current faves
Whenever Cam and Avery are at B’s house, they’re always asking for “auntie’s oat bars,” so B finally asked Kel for the recipe and now we’re passing it along to you!
Kel has been trying out the Zoe Health app to focus on more protein & fiber, and now we are both hooked! We don’t go crazy with making it super precise, but it’s been helpful as we move toward our health goals post-Function blood testing results.
We’ve been wanting to upgrade our Apple Watch bands to feel a little more elegant on the daily, and this one feels elevated but the price tag is not!
what we’re watching
There is so much new content we are excited to watch this month!! New seasons of Shrinking, Bridgerton, and Paradise. And we’re also looking forward to Love Story after seeing this trailer – the casting for JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette is spot on! Plus, Eternity (the movie we’ve been wanting to see but never made it to the theatre to see) will be streaming on February 13th.
We saw The Housemaid in theaters for a sister date & loved it!! We had kept meaning to read the book beforehand, but we’re kind of glad that we didn’t because it was all a TOTAL surprise. B had her hands on both sides of her face for most of the movie for more reasons than one….#iykyk.
While we were at the movies, we saw the trailer for the new Hunger Games movie (streaming on Peacock!) & it reminded us that we still needed to watch the prequel that came out in 2023. We both watched with our husbands the next night and B said it was like perfectly spot on with the book, which is always a plus!
Speaking of Tom Blyth, we also watched People You Meet on Vacation on Netflix. B’s algorithm is all just people who didn’t like the on-screen adaptation and K’s algorithm is showing her the opposite. We’re in that latter camp – we think we enjoyed the movie more than the book! Now they just need to make Emily Henry’s Great Big Beautiful Life a movie & we’ll be thrilled.
what we’re reading
While we haven’t made any of the recipes yet, we’re so excited for Jenn Lueke’s Don’t Think About Dinner cookbook to turn us into meal-planning masters. We don’t know her personally of course, but we’re so so proud of her success – and it’s such a bundle of knowledge, she really does deserve all of the praise! Kel has been following her since she maybe had 1k Instagram followers, so very very proud of her.
Taking notes on this blog post from Chris Loves Julia about how their family has created a routine to make their mornings as stress-free as possible!
Kel is finally almost done with Exit Lane by Erika Veurink, and it’s such a nice read. It’s so refreshing to want to keep flipping the pages, and we decided we only want to read books like that this year – so good for the soul!
what we’re listening to
We’re big fans of Liz Moody as you’re likely figuring out, so naturally we loved her podcast with 12 tips for living your happiest & healthiest life – all with snippets from some of her top episodes.
We also had fun listening to this conversation with Caroline Chambers on Jo Piazza’s podcast (the author of The Sicilian Inheritance, which we both enjoyed!). We love Caro’s cookbook What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking, and we would LOVE to join her mom-friend group just a few min down the road in Carmel Valley if she’s taking applications ;)
Somehow we’ve never listened to one of Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcasts, but we decided to kick it off with her chat with Ina Garten. We just love both of their energies – in different ways. And we are just now realizing while finding this link for you that there’s a YouTube version with video to feel even more connected.
what we’re eating/drinking
We’ve added two new recipes into our go-to dinner rotation & we are excited to share in the hopes that you enjoy half as much as we do. These crispy & cheesy black bean tacos (we eat them as quesadillas for ease) and these sheet pan Mediterranean salmon bowls – SO good!
We finally tried Lana in Solana Beach while some girlfriends were in town & we enjoyed it! It wasn’t especially memorable, but we loved the easy parking & ambience.
This is such a toddler mom thing to say, but we are so happy that Island’s (yes, that Island’s) now allows their happy-hour menu to extend to regular seats & is not just bar/lounge only. They have quite a few apps on the HH menu that we have yet to try, so very excited that our go-to, pre-6:30pm dinner time is in line with this new discounted menu. (They also have a loyalty program that we only discovered because Kel actually looked at that part of the menu & the number of $10 rewards we’ve been missing because they don’t advertise it at checkout is wild.)
We also need to give a shoutout to our OG chain-restaurant fave, CPK (California Pizza Kitchen) who also has a great happy hour (basically half-price spinach dip!!) that they extend to regular seats.
little joys
Getting into puzzles! B’s husband got us a puzzle for Christmas, and it’s been much more addicting than we expected! We decided it’d be so fun to have a dedicated puzzle table in the future for any time we want a little challenge.
Planning our annual girls trip with our California friends! ✈️ It’s not until November, but we’ve decided on Nashville. Send us all the recs – it’s been 10 years since we’ve been!
Watching our 2 1/2 year olds kiss the ultrasound photos of their baby brothers/cousins & swing them around to dance with the babies 🥹
Creating our 2026 vision boards – we feel like so many of our goals & aspirations for 2025 came true, and we can’t wait to see what this year brings! ✨
We’d love to know what you’ve enjoyed watching, listening to, eating, drinking & what you’ve been eyeing and are looking forward to. Let us know in the comments section or send us a DM on Instagram – or better yet, join the group chat when you sign up for our newsletter! You can also follow us on Pinterest to see what inspires us & our abodes!