Make It Black
Make it Black, BHM and more

1. Make It Black: I discovered this initiative via ColourPop, but many additional beauty brands are participating, including Briogeo, UOMA Beauty, NYX, Morphe, and Maybelline. Founded by UOMA Beauty owner and Pull Up for Change creator Sharon Chuter, the initiative’s goal is to have meaningful conversation around the word Black, which has multiple negative meanings built into its definition. Words matter. 100% of proceeds from Make it Black products by participating brands will support Black founders in the early stage of their businesses. Learn more here and shop the products here. I ordered a few things myself!

Make It Black
Image Credit: makeitblack.org

2. Discover Our Glory: for Black History Month, public academic Rachel Cargle has created a PDF that lists a prompt per day that you can Google to learn about Black history. Most of our schools have failed to teach us the true, complete history of our country, and white people like myself who grew up in very white towns probably learned little to nothing about Black history and culture. I know we’re already about halfway into February, but I wanted to share the document here so you can educate yourself rather than relying on Black people to do the work for you. I know I’ve been learning a lot.

1921 Massacre on Black Wall Street. Image Credit: Library of Congress via daily.jstor.org

3. Survivor: over the past few months I’ve developed a Survivor obsession. This show premiered in 2000 (the year I graduated from college!!) and has now aired 40 seasons. FORTY!! This show has aired almost as many seasons as my age. I watched a little bit of the show here and there waaaaay back in the day, when players became super famous (Boston Rob + Amber, anyone??). But when I discovered that Hulu has 34 seasons of the show, I started watching it from season 1 (Borneo). I’m currently almost finished with season 16: Micronesia, aka “Fans vs. Favorites.” The show is a genius social experiment, and it 100% set the bar for reality competition shows. It’s fascinating to binge and see how the show and game strategy evolve over time. With Paramount+ launching in March, I’m guessing the show will leave Hulu for the new platform, so I might have to subscribe to that in order to catch up on the latest seasons.

Survivor All Stars
Survivor Season 8: All Stars. Image Credit: Medium.com

4. King Arthur Baking Yuletide Cheer Scone Mix: I received this from my mom as one of my holiday gifts and made these scones a couple weeks ago. I forgot to take a photo of them, but they were super tasty! They’re no longer available online, but I’m sure their other scone mixes are good too. I have a couple other flavors I’m going to bake soon.

King Arthur Baking Yuletide Cheer Scone Mix

5. Sweet Nothings Organic Strawberry Smoothie Cup: I got this on sale from Fresh Direct. It’s a mini smoothie cup (3.5 oz) filled with blended strawberry, banana, cashews, chia, seeds, flax seeds, and dates. The smoothie tasted pretty good, but it’s nothing that I can’t make on my own. The convenience factor is nice, though. I’d try another flavor but might wait until they’re on sale again.

Sweet Nothings Smoothie Cup