Things have been all quiet on the Primitive Roads front lately. Thanks for sticking around through my absence! Here’s a little photographic tour of why the blog has been hibernating…

Entire house got a flooring update, starting with vinyl in the kitchen, dining room, pantry, and bathroom {before and after} | Family visiting for Thanksgiving! Out to breakfast with mom, mom-in-law, and sis-in-law | Painting the upstairs of our house {only the bathroom left to paint…} | New carpet and fresh paint upstairs | Wasn’t our green carpet {throughout the whole house} awesome… | My siblings-in-law helping rip up carpet and prep floors {they are home reno studs! | Me and the parentals bundled up for Coeur d’Alene’s annual Christmas parade and fireworks show | Tim hard at work painting baseboards

Now to link up with Leigh for what I’ve been into this month:

(This post contains affiliate links. You can read my full disclosure here.)

Food Finds

My parents have shared a dangerous food find with us – Talenti Gelato. In the past two weeks, the four of us have consumed 12 pints of their creamy concoctions. The gelato comes in a host of delicious flavors (we have tried 7 flavors), but our top two are Sea Salt Caramel and Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup. We’ve found the gelato at Walmart (yay! because it’s a bit pricey), Safeway/Vons, and Fred Meyer. I think I’ll bring my OB a couple pints tomorrow as an explanation for the extra, non-James pounds I’ve gained since my last appointment.

Another, more healthy, food find that my parents shared with us is from Costco – Sweet Kale Vegetable Salad mix. Before you poo-poo it because kale sounds unappetizing, give it a try. You get a generous bag full of kale, broccoli (like the kind in broccoli slaw), shaved brussels sprouts, cabbage, and chicory plus a packet of poppy seed dressing and a pumpkin seed/dried cranberry mix to add to the greens. It’s a super tasty combination of good for you foods. I like my salads chopped so I run a knife through the greens before tossing with the mix-ins and dressing. I also like it best with a tad more dressing (Brianna’s Poppy Seed dressing is good), extra dried cranberries, and a small handful of sunflower seeds.

After several friends raved about these (gluten free) energy bites, I made them for myself. Just yum. In my head, I’ve renamed them “wonder balls”. How could you go wrong with oats, peanut butter, maple syrup, and chocolate chips?

Made Cranberry Cream Cheese dip (which my family calls Christmas Crack) for Thanksgiving. I forgot the lemon again and used fresh squeezed orange juice instead. Addicting in the best way possible.

Books and Reading

Once again, I have too many books in progress. I’m usually a one book at a time type girl. That’s the problem when I forget to bring a book somewhere and have to start an e-book on my phone to pass the time. Right now, I’m in the middle of:

• Packing Light: Thoughts on Living Life with Less Baggage by Ally Vesterfelt
• When We Were on Fire: A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love, and Starting Over by Addie Zierman
• Embracing Beauty: Practical Style For Every Shape and Season of Motherhood by Trina Holden
• Tell Your Time: How To Manage Your Schedule So You Can Live Free by Amy Lynn Andrews

You can check out all the books I’ve read this year here.

An awesome bookish app I have yet to fully explore – OverDrive Media Console. What snookered me into downloading it on my iPhone was the ability to listen to audiobooks that were available at my local library.

Pinterest Finds

How to make gloves touchscreen sensitive. Perfect for me and my perpetually cold hands!

Gretchen’s entire WordPress series is so very helpful, but I particularly like these tips for refreshing old posts

A broken dryer doomed our towels to a life of smelly existence the first week we moved to Coeur d’Alene. It took me over a year, but I finally did the Pinterest thing and washed them in hot water and 1/2 cup of white vinegar. Problem solved. I didn’t even have to do a second round with baking soda. I will always wash my towels in vinegar now.

Other :)

With third-trimester fatigue setting in, I made a pact with myself that if I kept the house clean, I wouldn’t feel guilty about napping or reading on the couch. For some reason, wearing rubber gloves has made the dish washing element of keeping the house clean much more fun/palatable. I can get the water really hot without drying out my hands. I’m partial to the classic yellow variety.

A friend of ours introduced us to Rhett and Link, who have a YouTube show called Good Mythical Morning (Monday-Friday). Tim and I are now hooked on their quirky humor. They are multi-talented guys. Here are a couple of our favorite non-GMM clips:

• One Direction Caption Fail
• Dope Zebra

The gals over at Pure & Simple wrote lovely posts about the table and hospitality all last month. They are so worth reading. {photo credit}

I gave up on scrapbooking in favor of making Blurb books (see this post for how I like to preserve and print my photos), but the Project Life system could potentially get me back into the scrapping swing of things.