Anne recently shared 6 things she’s loving for early summer and I thought I’d play copy cat and tell you some of my recent favorite things.

1.Winking Owl Moscato and all the other cheap, yet delicious, deals I keep finding at Aldi. I used to shop at Aldi like eight years ago when I was saving up for our house and living on a shoe string budget but back then I felt like I couldn’t quite accomplish all of my shopping needs and found myself going to too many grocery stores to make it through the week so once our budget got less angsty, I left Aldi behind.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago when I started hearing more and more moms tell me that they were shopping at Aldi almost exclusively. I listed all my reasons for not shopping there: Produce and meat left something to be desired, you have to bring your own bags, they don’t take cash, etc. Well then I found out that the quality of produce had improved, the selection in general was apparently better and not only do they take credit card, they also take Apple / Google Pay. I had to check it out for myself and I was so pleasantly surprised. I’ve been shopping there for a couple of months now and haven’t looked back. One of my favorite splurges is this $3 bottle of sweet Moscato.

2.Fun quasi-educational, kid friendly youtube channels. We’ve been starting our mornings slow with a handful of videos that I carefully curate into a watchlist during random bits of downtime. I get a good half hour to drink my coffee while the kids and I watch an assortment of videos about drawing, science, history, geography or things being blown up in slow motion. I’ll be sharing a full list of our favorite soon but Cartooning 4 Kids has been a big hit especially. My eight year old rushes to grab a pad of paper and pencil now whenever she sees a drawing video come on.

3.Podcasts by the pool. My kids have 30 minute swim lessons every morning for about two weeks this month. It’s not quite enough time to be productive but too much time to stare at my feet. I have a tendency to waste the time playing games on my phone but I recently thought to grab a pair of headphones and listen to a podcast instead. I’m very new to the podcast world – I’m not very good at remembering that they are a thing. But I have to say, it’s been awesome and I hope to listen to them more regularly. My two favorites right now are the Lazy Genius Collective and of course, Anne’s What Should I Read Next podcast. What other podcasts should I check out next?

4.Green tea. I didn’t think I liked green tea until I tried a blend by Harney & Sons recently and was like, “Hey this is actually pretty good!” Of course leave it to H&S to be the one to bring me to any tea flavor – they have historically been one of my favorites. Now I’m on the hunt for new green teas to try and really just tea. I seem to fall in and out of love with drinking tea, but right now it is ON. What’s your favorite kind of tea?

5.Five Dollar Movies. Okay, this is nothing new but we’ve been taking advantage of it this month – our movie theater has $5 tickets for all movies on Tuesdays which is such a steal. We took the kids to see Incredibles 2 and Solo this month – both really good movies. Last night I also found out that with our theater‘s rewards program (which is free to sign up for), I also get a free small popcorn with each purchased ticket in addition to other discounted food stuffs. Seriously.

6.The Who Was? Show on Netflix. Based on those kids biographies with the giant headed illustrations – this show  delivers the same goods but in short sketches about famous people. It’s geared for kids roughly 8+ but manages to hold my attention as well. One of the regulars on the show, Lilla Crawford, was in Into the Woods and she’s terrific on the show. And fans of Archer will be amused to no end at the fact that H. Jon Benjamin, aka Sterling Archer, is the show’s narrator. This information alone got my husband to watch a couple episodes with us.

So what things are you loving right now?