🌌 SUMMER NIGHTS + FAIRY LIGHTS (with pics)

Sharing resources and conversations that have gotten my gears turning on tech habits and their impact on our health, relationships, and overall sense of well-being.

They cover the gamut of focus, attention, addiction, habit creation, habit change, satisfaction, anxiety, connection (and disconnection), parenting, psychology, and more.

This isn't a challenge that will go away or solve itself.

The more we can intentionally direct our own attention and energy in any given moment, the better off we'll be.

the analog catalog

☀️🧶🍫

🦁 Headbands. Houston summer = living inside someone’s mouth. Headbands have carried this curly girl through. Soft and stretchy ones make my no-effort hair days feel intentional. Bonus: my boys steal them for basketball. Sporty style icons.

🦫 Buc-ee’s (sounds like "Bucky's") for pit stops. IYKYK, and if you don't, imagine Disney, Costco, and a gas station had a baby. Noey met a real-life (in mascot costume) Buc-ee this year. Terrifying, then thrilling rite of passage. Snack faves: cranberry pecan chicken salad and, always, candied pecans.

🍿 Reese’s drizzled popcorn. WHO KNEW? This salty-sweet snack was the sleeper hit of our giant family holiday pantry (Costco bins galore). Not nutritious, but definitely delicious. One of the first snacks to go "out of stock."

🧶 Crochet-all-day life. I first learned in the early 2000s (my mom taught her mom and her own Nana, then it trickled down to us). My sister revived it this year, packed supplies for our big fam trip, and we went to town. I currently specialize in misshapen rectangles (tiny rugs? doll blankets?) because I refuse to think or count. Process > product for me with this hobby, 100%. The edges fall where they may.

🃏 Just One. New fave for game nights -- across generations. WE LOVE IT. No stressful rules or scorekeeping, and folks can swap in and out without impacting flow or fun. (If you have tiny tots, you can draw pics instead of writing words.) ⭐️ 4.8 stars, well-deserved.

💡 Backyard ambience. We skipped our fam return to Oahu this summer and poured love into “Ourlani” instead. Solar tree lights, firefly landscaping lights, and floating fairy-light beach balls ... oh my. When the sun goes down, the vibe is straight out of The Princess and the Frog. I can only hope Mama Odie would approve.✨

media magic

🎶🍿🎧

📺 Building the Band on Netflix. Family fave. It led us to swing over to the latest season of American Idol (Hulu/Disney+), which I haven't seen in years. Love watching people discover and own their voices at every age and stage.

🎶 Slack Key Guitar on Apple Music. My preferred audio chill, before, during, and after my solo trip over the rainbow earlier this month.

📻 Honorable musical mention goes to Apple Music's 90s country playlist, a staple in my childhood rotation. Nothing like The Chicks’ “Wide Open Spaces” to spark a cleansing cry as baby adults leave the nest(s) for college and beyond… and Alabama’s “I’m in a Hurry (and Don’t Know Why)” certainly hits different as an adult! Downloading to use as our alarm / perspective check as we head out on school days.

📚One in a Millennial by Kate Kennedy, host of the Be There in Five podcast. Fave book of summer. Like an audio scrapbook of memories I forgot I had access to. I LedOL multiple times and was delighted by the specificity of her pop culture references as a mid-80s baby growing up in suburbia. If you think I'm a metaphor-mashup-loving-word-nerd… just wait. I’m usually a 1.5-2x listener, but I listen to Kate at 1x bc I don't wanna miss a thing. Ordered the hard copy as a cross-reference bc I appreciate the verbal scrapbook vibe that much.)

🎞️ “Lose Yourself” sung by 331 movie clips! Have you seen this “CinemaSings” vid by The Unusual Suspect that went viral (likely months ago)? Jadah sent it to me and I had to include here bc WHAT?? And there are more, like Spice Girls’ Wannabe. You gotta click.

next up on the simple pleasures list: CALENDARS?

🍎🗓️✏️

Kiddos are back in school, the cootie fairy has paid her first visits, and calendar-ing has now become my fave pretend Olympic sport.

For the first time ever, I have workshops and events mapped out for an entire YEAR - on a rolling, repeatable basis. ♻️ (Watch for more on that soon :))

Once I had creative commitments locked in, I added open houses, orientations, b-ball practices, and approximately 357 elementary school fun runs.

(Even sent calendar invites to aunts, cousins, and grandparents so we can rack up the laps and stack the odds in our favor.)

In other words: I am no longer effing around with last-minute scheduling when the events we care about are often VERY predictable from month to month and year to year.

Can you relate??

By penciling almost everything into its tentative time slot, "I have all the time that I need" becomes a self-evident fact, not a wishful thought.

scheduling = devoting. ❤️

More on that in a pod episode I've yet to record.

For now, I sure hope you've enjoyed this roundup.

If you're feeling inbox-social, do tell:

What's one simple pleasure you've savored this summer?

Click reply to let me know. For real. I read every email.

Add that to the list of my fave simple pleasures. 💌

P.S. Some of these are affiliate links, shared to spare you the search. If you buy through them, a tiny commission may come my way to fuel future simple-pleasure scouting. Thanks for that. I take this mission seriously. 🫡

P.P.S. Because I like having pics in our emails, here's a bonus collage to illustrate some of these simple pleasures and MORE:

top left: 🧶 crochet supplies

top center: 🦎wanted poster for the gecko / mascot of Shaka Tacoz on Big Island

top right: 💞 mommy 'n me vibes

left: ☀️ radiance!

center: 🕶️ headband practice at kua bay

right: 🌿 epic morning view

bottom left: 🖤 sand (he)art

bottom center: 🤤 malasada mountain, a core culinary memory

bottom right: 🧚🏻‍♀️ pool lights on display

Hi 👋 I'm Nikki (Elledge Brown).

Writer, podcaster, and creative advisor for brilliant women who love their work, their people, and their alone time.

As a professional overthinker who believes strongly in INTEGRITY > BALANCE, it's my nerdy pleasure to create and share tools, questions, and frameworks that make it easier to feel good about how we’re showing up — on paper and in practice.

Around here, living like a whole human is the way.

That's what we call On Her Terms® living.