hello, september 🍂 back in AZ, grocery haul, cozy baking & meal prep!

[music] sucks. I know. Good morning everybody. Welcome back to another vlog. Welcome back to Arizona. We are back for the next like week or so. This is my very first vlog in September. So, happy September. Wow, this is the first vlog I'm filming. Today, actually is September 1st, but I think this is going to be about like a week delayed, but god, I cannot believe we are already into September of 2026. Like, where the hell has the time gone? Seriously, insane. But anyways, we have been here for the last few days. We had an amazing weekend. We had lots of family time. And now we're back into the work week. I had a full day of just like editing and chilling yesterday. And now I really want to have a cozy day today for this vlog. I want to just have an at home vlog. I don't feel like leaving the house. We've been kind of go go go since we got here. Didn't spend that much time at home this weekend. So, I'm just really wanting to like reset my social battery and just chill, get things done around the house. I want to order some groceries. I want to meal prep. I just want to have like yeah, a nice cozy September day. Is it 98° outside today? Yes, it is. We're not going to talk about that. We have air conditioning for that reason. And then also fall is a state of mind. Am I right? It did rain here over the weekend. We had a crazy thunderstorm. We have monsoons here in Arizona. Typically like mid to late summer we get really crazy storms, but lately it's only been at night which is kind of a bummer cuz it's like you don't really get to enjoy it during the day like I used to when I was a kid. Oh, it was the best. So I'm just getting ready for the day because you know when you have like a couple days in a row where you're just kind of bumming it and you like don't feel that fantastic about yourself. So you're like, "Okay, need to put on some makeup. Need to do something to my hair. Need to wear a loungewear outfit, but not like a full like a full committal outfit, you know, but also not be in pajamas. That's kind of where I'm at. All right, let's get changed real quick. There we go. Nice and comfy cozy. We're going to get started on our day. It is 9:13. I think first I need to start some laundry. Actually, we haven't done laundry since we've gotten here, and we had laundry left over from last time we were here, so it's definitely time. Excuse me. Got to do my EOS vanilla cashmere lotion. Throw on some earrings cuz why not? Makes me feel cute. To the laundry room we go. I was trying to run clean Latifah down here. She always gets stuck under the fridge. Putting away our pool bag from this weekend. We spent like pretty much all of Sunday in the pool and it was so nice. The only bit of sunburn I got, you probably can't tell, but it's like underneath this headband. I got like this one sliver that I missed when I was putting on my sunscreen, but I got a little pink, but other than that, it didn't get burnt at all. SPF 50 really is that girl. [music] Bit of reality here. I'm about to start this laundry and I was like, I need to clean this because this is disgusting. all of the splashes from like detergent, fabric softener, water stains, etc. So, let me let me clean this really quick. When in doubt, wipe all it out. Ew. There we go. So much better. All right, now we start the laundry. Set a 41 minute timer, please. All right, I think now I'm going to place my grocery order, plan out some meals, some lunches, some breakfast, some dinners for the week. I kind of already have some breakfast stuff cuz we did like a small little Trader Joe's run this weekend. Nothing crazy, just mostly like snacks and stuff. Um, so I think I'll just grab a few little things and then maybe we can meal prep a little bit and then maybe I'll bake. Baking sounds really nice. It's September. I must. All right, groceries are here. This is what we got for pretty much like the entire week. So, we have a few random things, but we don't have everything we needed. So, filling in the gaps basically. We still use plastic bags here in Arizona, which is so weird cuz in California they don't even have them anymore. And I mean, we'll reuse them. These will go in like bathroom, trash cans, all sorts of things like that. [music] [music] All right. First off, starting with meat, we got some Italian chicken sausage. We just like fry these up in a pan with sauteed peppers and onion and then do like um mashed potatoes on the side. and it's a really good meal. And then like do like a little veg or whatever. So have that. And then we have some chicken, some turkey, etc. in the freezer. Got some eggs, just like a little half dozen for dairy stuff. Some string cheese. These are just like the light string cheese. We got some Mexican cheese. And then we got some Yakult. Those are blue. He has one every day. Then for breakfast, I got a couple of these. What are these? Dan Light and Fit yogurts. The toasted marshmallow flavor is really good. Pretty much every single morning I have Greek yogurt with raisin bran and raspberries. It's like really high fiber, low fat, tastes really good, makes you full for a long time. So, I love that. Oh, and then Drew has been into these mush. It's like overnight oats. And these ones have protein in them. Then for produce, we got some shredded carrots because I saw a tuna bowl recipe that I really want to try for lunch. So, I got some of those. We got some broccoli, a bell pepper, two of these yellow squash, summer squash I think they're called. Two um just like russet potatoes, and then a sweet potato. Is this a Japanese sweet potato or just a yam? A royal flush sweet potato. So, those will go back here. We also got some celery and some red onion. I only meant to get one, but they got me two, so that's all right. Oh, and then also a English cucumber and some golden kiwis. Then for some random pantry stuff, I got another one of these light mayonnaise because the one we had in the fridge expired sadly. I got a couple baking things cuz I think I am going to try some baking today. And I'm pretty sure we're like out of most of these. So we have some baking powder, some baking soda, and some vanilla extract. Then I got a can of baked beans, some thin sliced sprouted whole grain bread. Dave's Killer Red is really, really good. Got some white cheddar. Um, what are these called? Rice cakes. A thing of mac and cheese, cuz you know, you never know when you're going to crave it. Some craisins. And some garlic herb and wine marinade. This stuff is really, really good. You should try it. Oh, and then a rotisserie chicken. This is cold. Like it's been refrigerated. Anyways, that's my grocery haul. Those of you who have ADHD will get this. I'm calling myself out here. I was like, "Let me put away my new vanilla extract I got." And then I looked in the pantry for this little spice rack up here and I was like, "Oh, we already have a vanilla extract. It must be close to like expiration or something." I don't see an expiration date on it. But then I looked even further. Another one. So, I have now three vanilla extracts from the same brand. Go to the store. Buy a bottle of hoyen sauce. Open the fridge. Oh no, I have a bottle of hoyen sauce. Go to the store. [music] Buy a bottle of hoyen sauce. Open the fridge. Oh no, I already have a bottle OF HOYEN SAUCE. [screaming] This is just the most me thing ever. I feel like this one has to be old, so I guess I'll just keep this. They last for years, so it's not a big deal, but I'm just like my brain. [music] >> [music] [music] >> All right, speaking of baking, got all of my stuff here now and I am going to bake a banana bread because that just sounds amazing for the first day of September. So, we're going to We had some bananas that Drew's sister gave me, but they turned like black and I was like, I can't do that. So, this recipe calls for four bananas. Maybe I'll save one of these cuz I have some frozen to use as well. So, I feel like I should use frozen for fresh. And these ones aren't like super duper ripe. Are you going to eat any of these bananas or are they too done for you? >> No, I'll let you know. >> Okay, I had a feeling. Let's use one of these. I looked it up and supposedly I am allowed to use frozen bananas for this. In the meantime, we will mash up our other bananas. This calls for four and these are pretty small anyway. So, start with our four bananas. Three like ripe but not super ripe and then one really ripe. Break these up a little. And she is very done. So we'll add her. Oopsies. Now let's mash these babies up. There we go. Then to this mixture, we are going to add one egg, one tablespoon of vanilla extract. This is my infamous teaspoon tablespoon, but this is my big ass tablespoon. Three tablespoon of brown sugar. One, two, and three. Two tablespoon of granulated sugar. And then one teaspoon. See, it says teaspoon of cinnamon. We're going to combine all of this. This is a lot of cinnamon. Holy. Okay. And in a separate bowl, we are doing 1 and 1/2 cups of allpurpose flour. To avoid cleaning two, I'm just going to do half cup, one cup, cup, and a half. And we're going to do one teaspoon of baking powder, one teaspoon of baking soda, half a teaspoon of salt. We're just going to eyeball that. We're going to mix this up and then add it to our wet mixture. Just realized you can't probably see that very well. This little contraption, by the way, I got it during CO to like hold my phone when I'm making recipes. still love it and use it all the time. And this recipe actually doesn't call for it, but I'm going to add some chocolate chips because I like chocolate chips in my banana bread. It's just my preference. Then it says we need to add in our melted butter. I don't have any butter. I only have margarine. Don't hate me. We need to do two tablespoons. Let me real quick. There we go. Got our melted butter. In she goes. Buffalo road. It's probably like half a cup. I don't think you should measure chocolate chips. You should just go with what feels right in your heart. I have my Reese tin over here, but I don't trust it cuz like avocado oil, I don't know, sometimes doesn't work as well. So, I'm actually going to put a bit of parchment print paper. And she goes. It looks pretty. Gorgeous. Gorgeous girl. My cinnamon banana bread. I mean, it smells like fall, that's for sure. Here is the before. Just looks like cookie dough, honestly. We're going to put it in for 35 to 45 minutes at 350°. It'll probably need a little bit more cuz it's kind of thick. Actually, it's not too bad. We'll see how it goes. Good luck, little one. I may need to trim some of that paper later. Now, we clean up our mess. [music] >> [music] >> I got nervous, so I cut off as much of the excess as I could. All right, first load of laundry is out of the dryer. Second one's about to go in the dryer. And then I think I'm going to get started on some meal prep. It's kind of a food focused vlog, but honestly, it's just my day today. I've been trying to I mean I don't it's probably going to be a struggle for the rest of my life but with having ADHD I have learned that neurode divergent folks actually struggle with things like food and eating and stuff because and even like going to the bathroom because you don't really pay attention. You're like not in tune with your body's cues until it's like absolute emergency 911 got to go right now or holy I'm starving. I've like been hyperfocusing on this video that I've been editing for the last 6 hours and I'm like going to pass out if I don't eat. So then by the time I usually eat, it's like desperate. And so then I'll end up going for something really really quick, something I don't have to cook, typically like a sandwich or some kind of bar, like something for convenience instead of like maybe pre-making things for myself or like thinking ahead of time basically. And I am a girl who loves convenience. Like that's just always going to be me. But I'm just trying to take better care of myself as you know. I'm in my late 30s. Drew and I were just talking this morning and I was like, "Oh my god, it's September and in 3 and 1/2 months I'm going to be 39." Like, yeah, it's always going to be something I'm working on. But especially over the last year that I've been having health stuff and since I got my gallbladder removed, I'm really just like relearning how to eat and trying to find ways that work best for me and like my SIBO and you know all that kind of stuff. Blah blah blah. No one cares. So I think meal prepping like stuff for lunch might be good. Although sometimes I meal prep stuff and then when it comes time to eat it I'm like I don't want to eat that. So it's like I've got to force myself to eat it. You know, that's kind of the other thing is I can really hyperfixate on like a meal or a snack or whatever it is for a really long time and then I never want to eat it again. [laughter] So anyway, instead of like, you know, a normal person being like, hm, [clears throat] feel like I might be getting hungry soon. Let me go ahead and like start prepping and, you know, figuring out what I'm going to have for lunch. No, not me. I'm ignoring any and all signs. I'm not even noticing it until it's too late, you know, in case anyone else feels seen by that. You are not alone. I know a lot of other people who are neurody divergent experience that we got to eat, you know, we got to nourish ourselves. So, that is what I'm going to work on next. Side note, look what I found over the weekend. We stopped into Ross with our niece like probably on Saturday, Sunday, something like that. And I did in fact find Britney Spears. Curious. It was like $8.99. So, I said, "Sure, absolutely." It's a tiny little bottle. It's perfectly sized cuz I just want to spritz it every now and again when I want to feel something and I'm just so excited about it. Apparently, they have been reformulating these perfumes and like releasing them. So, they're not expired. They're just brought out of the vault, something like that. I do remember there being some sort of like little charm on this back when I had it in probably 2003, but they don't have that anymore. So, that's a little sad, but that smells like freaking I guess it would have been probably 8ighth grade or maybe it was like 10th grade. It just smells so familiar and I love it. So, we will definitely be spraying that from time to time. Also, I think it might since it's September 1st, potentially be time for the changing of the guards. Currently, we are burning off the vine by Bath & Body Works. This candle is phenomenal. kind of smells like rose. It smells like a tomato plant, not an actual tomato. Smells heavenly, but it's like, you know, we're trying to set the fall vibe here. I don't feel that I'm quite ready for leaves yet. It just Well, hold on. It's so good, but it's too spicy. It's too spiced for right now. So, I think what I'm going to do is this Bath & Body Works whipped honey and vanilla. It has a pumpkin on it. It has like that perfect like transitional scent. It's mostly Yeah. just sweet vanillay. But I'm excited. So, we're going to light that one up. And then I do think I might potentially put this candle in our bathroom. I think this was from Target like years ago. Kind of like Yeah, it is pumpkin scented actually. You like how I was trying to show that to you? I'm going to put this out in our bathroom. Just stick this right here next to our soap. Let's put this one over here. I will burn it shortly. Oh my god, I'm so excited. Drew and I have been dying laughing. One of our friends, like a friend of a friend, basically shared this on his Instagram story and Drew and I watched it no less than 15 times and literally we were crying tears last night. [music] It was so funny. It's this woman in I think it said it was in North Wales and she was going on this like zipline thing. Let me just show you some of it. My god. Wow. [screaming] I can't feel my feet over there. I'm dead. So, anyways, that's what we've been doing off camera. He was going, "Oh, [laughter] whoever that woman is made our week truly spectacular." Banana bread is out of the oven. It's resting. It needs to cool like a lot. I think I ended up putting it in for yeah, like close to an hour, honestly. And now I am going to prep slash make my lunch cuz it's already 12:30 now. It's just taken a little longer than I anticipated. So, I am going to do some chicken salad. I've already washed all of my produce and I'm kind of just using some of the things that I bought, but also some stuff that I just like had in the fridge because I need to use it up. So, we're going to do a little bit of apple. I don't mind when chicken salad has apple as long as it's finely cut and it doesn't it's not too much. And I'm going to do a couple pieces of celery. I got out three and washed them, but I probably won't use them all. I also just realized I don't have any nuts. I would prefer like some sort of I don't know, almond, pecan, even walnuts, but forgot to get them. But it's okay cuz I'm using a like uh what you call it? Rice cake as my vehicle, if you will. So, like that's got some crunch. It's not going to get chicken. I just realized my chicken spreader that I have I brought back to California, so I can't use that right now. So, I'll have to do the fork method. All right. So, we're going to add some of our chicken to the bowl. Maybe like half of it. And we will do some craisins or you can use raisins, golden raisins. And then we're going to do some light mayo. You can use Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, blended cottage cheese, whatever you want. I'm also going to do just a dash of mustard. This is actually honey mustard, but it doesn't taste like honey mustard. It just tastes like mustard, but like a little dash of that. Makes a world of difference in the flavor. And of course, salt and pepper. This is always better after you let it sit. So, I'll taste it and see how I feel. And if it's not good, maybe I'll have it for lunch tomorrow. Oh, I also want to prep while I'm doing it. I love this strawberry and raspberry iced tea. It's unsweetened. It's decaf or caffeine free and it's really good. I'll take two bags actually of this container that had like a juice in it or something and we've been using it ever since. Go. And that'll cold brew and turn into this really pretty like pink tea and I'll have it with dinner. And there we have it. There's our big old batch of chicken salad. I think I'm going to have this tomorrow. No, I'll have it today, but it'll be better tomorrow. I'm just going to put them on our rice cakes. If you're an onion person, then like onion would be really good in this. I'm just not. I want to be, but I'm just on it. Then I'll have the rest of this rotisserie chicken for something else. And then my chicken salad for tomorrow. See, look how pretty this tea is getting already. It's going to be gorgeous. And then I'm actually going to have a couple chips on the side. We got these over the weekend. These are the Trader Joe's deli sandwich chips. They kind of taste like pickle, mustard, whatever. So, I'll have a few of those on the side. They were out of autumn crisp grapes, which I'm devastated about. So, maybe I'll have like another kiwi. Sure, why not? And there is lunch. Looking pretty good. I'll give my chicken salad a little taste test. Pretty good little chip. Delish. All right, I just cut into the banana bread. It is looking so delicious. So, I got to have a little bit for my lunch dessert. Obviously, I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty full, but we must persevere. Okay, here it is. Here's our masterpiece. I'm just going to eat it. H. It's not very sweet and it has a really strong It's like more spiced than sweet. It's definitely not bad. Yeah, I'm not going to recommend this recipe. Um, it's a little dry and it's really heavy on the cinnamon and I do wish that it had just a little more sweetness. That could also be the bananas that I used. I'm going to give it like a 6 out of 10. But like it's still good. Just compared to others I've made, I've had better. All right, all my laundry is done. We have sorted everything and now going to put it all away and then I am actually going to go review my final video from my editor Tara who I love so much like genuinely the most talented editor I have ever worked with so wonderful and has made my life so much better over the last couple of years working together. She has to scale back on editing work. Our final video together she just sent me so I need to go review that. And then I've been triing with a couple of new editors. I've got to make it make sense financially. And thank you to everyone who has reached out and has like sent me emails and stuff. And um yeah, like I'm I'm going to be deciding whether I want to just edit myself and kind of get back into that and save a bunch of money a month or work with one of the people that I'm traveling with. Either way, it's all going to work out. So now I'm gonna head to my office and do that. That might be it for work for the day. So, I really want to read my book. I want to get back into my book and I want to finish it like soon cuz I have so many other books that I want to read. So, we will see about that. I recently got this shirt at Tilly's and I matched with my niece cuz she loves matching. And so, we wore them to the mall last weekend and we got so many compliments. Almost every store we went to, people were like, "Oh my gosh, I love your matching outfits." And she absolutely loved it. It was so cute. I will match with her for as long as she lets me because I know the time will come where she doesn't want to anymore. So, I am enjoying it. I think that's everything. Let's go do a little bit of computer work. [music] All right, got all that work done and now I'm going to sit here and start reading. I've got my little bowl of Percy pigs. I have a mixture of Percy's and Revery Percy's. It's just the best. And I'm going to dive back into my book for a little bit. [music] I could just kind of feel it. Or maybe I was imagining it. Who knows? But people in the crowd were like, "Really? That's the Australian line. >> All right, everyone. It is much later now. It's like 9:00 and Drew and I have just been sitting here eating dinner, watching TV. We watched Escape to the Country, obviously our comfort show. We switched between that and Grand Designs. Both absolutely flawless TV shows. Love them so much. Um, and then we watched the Ray Gun documentary on Netflix. It just came out. By the time you see this, it'll have been out for like a week or so, but it's like the untold docky series that they do a bunch on a bunch of different people. We've watched Lamar Odum one, a couple other ones. And this was for Ray Gun, and it was well, it was I have a lot of thoughts about that, but I don't need to join the millions of other people that have dogpiled on this woman. But yeah, I mean, anyway, actually, we started watching a show, Drew's mom told us about it, and it's on HBO. It's called The Mortician and we've watched two out of I think the three episodes and it is a true crime documentary about a I don't know how to describe it without spoiling anything, but it is about a longstanding funeral home/mortuary in Los Angeles that had some shady things happen. And it's been jaw-dropping. It's been really It's It's definitely not like if you're into maybe more of the lighter true crime, don't watch this. This is like very gritty, very disturbing. Like that's the only way I can describe it. Just very disturbing. Um and just insane. Like the things that people do. It's just like gh yuck. So we need to finish that. Um but yeah, that's kind of like overall what we've been watching recently. I did get a decent chunk read of my book earlier. I got up to like I think I'm like 50% done with the book now. I'm going to head upstairs, take a shower, dive more into my book. hopefully get a little bit more reading done before I fall asleep. And I guess I'm going to end this vlog here. So, this has been yeah, very at home, very chatty. I hope you've enjoyed it. I feel like a tingling of the fall vibes coming on, but I mean, it still very much feels like summer to me because it is. But I still enjoyed like doing a couple little things. So, yeah. I hope you guys enjoyed this vlog. Thank you so much for hanging out with me and I will see you guys very soon in my next vlog. Bye. Heat.