A Few Things | March 4

Personal updates, links, and recommendations.

Personal Update

I finally shared a tour of our primary bedroom! You can see images here, and you can get all the details here — including how I painted instead of dyed the bed skirt, and floor plans of the Tall House. The feedback has been so kind.

Our kids are in the middle of a two-week school break. We love the French school schedule — it’s basically 6 weeks on, 2 weeks offs. Normally, we embrace the long breaks, and use them to take a road trip and do some exploring — in fact, a month ago we started planning a road trip to Germany for the break. But then I realized I’m feeling too overwhelmed right now, so we changed our plans and decided to stay home.

Instead, the kids made a plan for the break: they’ve been having movie marathons and reading marathons, and they made a list of meals and recipes to try and have been doing a lot of cooking. Also: we’ve made a goal to have Betty’s college applications done before this school break ends.

We have two birthdays this week, so for a little adventure, we decided we’ll drive into Paris on Wednesday to celebrate. It’s not a full roadtrip, but we also love spending a day in Paris, so no complaints.

In The News

-From PNAS — I had never heard of this before, but apparently there’s a new carbon-removal method, where you grind up basalt rock and distribute it on agricultural fields. People are excited about it because the infrastructure is already in place to make this happen, and the potential scale is enormous.

-From VICE — A new study found that AI models consistently escalated to war and would deploy nukes without warning in a series of conflict simulations.

-From The Washington Post — Senate Republican blocks bill to protect IVF after Alabama ruling.

-From the BBC — Why South Korean women aren't having babies. South Korea has the lowest birth rate in the world, which continues to plummet each year.

-Related, from The Cut — Can Parents PreventTheir Sons From Sliding to the Right?

-Also related, from Salon — Being married to a man adds 7 hours/week to women's household labor.

What I’m Reading/Watching/Listening To

This weekend we went to see Dune. It was showing at our local theater in VO (“version originale”, which means the movie is shown in the original language — in this case English — with French subtitles). We love when there’s a blockbuster in VO at our little movie theatre, because we can walk to it, and tickets are only 6 euros. Often, for a big movie, we need to drive to the nearest big city, Caen, about 40 minutes away, so it’s always fun to have an easier, local option.

As we geared up for the movie, we watched Dune 1, and the kids made Duneral Potatoes and Snickerdunedles. Duneral potatoes are just funeral potatoes (a Mormon comfort food), renamed by our kids for the movie.

We really enjoyed the movie. I can already foresee Dune movie marathons in our future.

Shopping

There’s a big sale going on at DermStore. A few favorites that the Design Mom community has been raving about:

EltaMD UV Clear Broad-Spectrum SPF 46
$43 — get 20% off with code REFRESH

DHC Deep Cleansing Oil
$16 — get 20% off with code REFRESH

Sunday Riley Good Genes All-In-One Lactic Acid Treatment
$122 — get 20% off with code REFRESH + $15 Gift

COSRX Advanced Snail 96 Mucin Power Essence
$25 — get 20% off with code REFRESH

PCA SKIN Collagen Hydrator
$59 — get 20% off with code REFRESH + $50 Gift

Oribe Dry Texturizing Spray
$52 — get double points + an Oribe Gift

Current Projects

Last week Ben Blair and I hit a major deadline for our parenting book: Our editor transmitted the manuscript to the copy editing team! The copy editors will have the manuscript for a few weeks and then send it back to us with suggested edits. And no, we still don’t have the title nailed down.

Timing-wise, having the book with the copy editors right now is perfect, because I’ve got to give all of my attention to Alt Summit — we’re two weeks out! I head to California on Thursday the 14th. Lots to do between now and then. I’m going to try and start my packing right away.

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That’s all for now. I hope you have a lovely week. Feel free to comment on anything I mentioned above, or whatever’s on your mind.

kisses,
Gabrielle