Five Things Friday (One You’ll Want to Know About Before Spring Break!)

TGIF, friends! It’s a five-things Friday kinda day today. And one of those things is something you’ll want to know about prior to spring break and the summer travel season!

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INSPIRED BY: Ben Ham Images

Family in South Carolina introduced me to both the work of and the man behind Ben Ham Images. Influenced in style by Ansel Adams, Ben Ham’s pictures are photographed using vintage wooden, large-format box cameras that give his works their distinctive style.

While he has captured landscapes in the Rocky Mountains, Pacific Northwest, Italy and more, the images taken around the Lowcountry of South Carolina are among my favorites. His sense for light and mood leave me simply awestruck. If you head south this year, be sure to stop in at one of his galleries in Bluffton or Charleston, SC. Your eyes and psyche will both be in for a treat!

SNACKING ON: Home-Made Popcorn

What’s better than popcorn as an evening snack? There are so many flavors and it keeps you full! But who wants to ingest all the chemicals in those microwavable packs? Not me. Enter the Salbree Microwave Popcorn Popper. Add some good-quality kernels to this little silicone wonder and in 3-4 minutes, you’ve got a healthy snack. We use a spritzer to lightly coat popped kernels with olive oil (or butter if you want) then flavor things up with these seasonings from Kernel Seasons. The butter and white cheddar are our personal favorites!

PROTECTED BY: Global Guardian Air Ambulance Card

As our travels take to progressively more isolated and less developed locales, health care if we become sick or are in an accident becomes more of a concern. Enter Global Guardian Air Ambulance Card. On a tip from a friend, we joined this service prior to our Egypt trip and I’m really impressed with what the company offers!

While often purchased ahead of an overseas trip, their representative stated that benefits are most often used here in the US. Whenever you or one of your covered members is hospitalized as an inpatient more than 150 miles from home, The Air Ambulance Card will arrange and pay for both ground and air transfer to the hospital of your choice.

• NO medical necessity requirement.
• ANY FACILITY, NOT “the nearest appropriate facility”.
• NO pre-existing condition exclusion.
• Your annual fee is all you ever pay! NO claim forms or deductibles.
• Applies in the US and worldwide, you just need to be 150+ miles from home.
• Medical, trip insurance plans and credit card coverage do not offer these benefits!  Read the fine print. 

Their family plan covers 2 adults between 16-75 AND up to 5 dependent children under the age of 25! At a $385 annual premium, that’s a great deal if you’ve got a large family!

FASCINATED WITH: FYRE

Won’t lie – it’s been a struggle this winter to find engaging content on TV. Even shows that are getting great reviews from others just don’t seem to be resonating here. An exception would be FYRE – a Netflix documentary detailing the story about the 2017 music festival debacle made famous via Instagram.

Watching how an event of this magnitude could fail so spectacularly, even early on in the planning process, yet continue to the stage of accepting guests was utterly riveting. And hearing about what Billy McFarland (the festival’s founder) is doing now? Appalling!

ENGROSSED IN: Some Good Books

I’ve always been a voracious reader and one of my favorite things to do on a cold winter evening is to light a fire in the fireplace, grab a glass of wine and cuddle up in some blankets with a good book. I’ve come across a couple recently that merit sharing.

Iris & Lilly: The Complete Series tells the story of two sisters growing up in the 70’s in a family of 14. The first part of the trilogy focuses on their childhood and it brought back tons of great memories of the comparatively simple life we led in the decade of groovy. Books 2 and 3 are a bit more raw. One of the tragedies of life is that so often we don’t really know the consequences of our actions/decisions until we’re already knee-deep in those outcomes. The full series is long, about 600 pages, but a highly recommended read.

Another winner that I just finished up is The Keeper of Lost Things.  Always a sucker for a tale of redemption, this book did disappoint in stoking my need to believe that people, life and circumstances always have the power to change.

I just started Trespassing: A Novel a night ago and so far it’s proving to be a real page-turner. When Micah Cavanaugh disappears after his three year old daughter Elizabella tells her mother that something dire will happen to her father soon, Veronica is left wondering about all she doesn’t know regarding her husband. Or is her family history of schizophrenia playing tricks in her mind? I’ll be finding out the answer to that this weekend when I hopefully finish this book up!

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Other recent books that I’ve read that I rated as 3’s on GoodReads are The Couple Next Door and The Lying Game. Both a bit far-fetched/illogical thrillers but entertaining enough reads for a cold winter night!

Until next time…keep cultivating a simple, stylish, and satisfying life!