There's truly nothing like Christmas in New York City! The holiday season brings a magical atmosphere, and NYC transforms into a winter wonderland brimming with Christmas cheer. If you're looking to immerse yourself in the holiday spirit and explore the most festive spots, here's a guide to all the NYC holiday moments not to miss! The city's holiday decorations are unparalleled, and nothing captures the essence of the season quite like the stunning Christmas trees in New York. I'll share the top trees to visit for the perfect Christmas photos and why New York is so incredibly addicting during Christmas.

Last year I read three memoirs written by men, this year I read six newly released memoirs written by women. I don't have to be their biggest fan to read their book, but they have all had interesting lives so I wanted to learn more about their story. I know lots of people don't rate memoirs because they don't want to rate someone's life, so I will just give you a little synopsis of their story. 

2025 will be my 10th Dry January! I always stock up on Black Friday sales so here is everything I have talked about on my blog and restocked. This year I only purchased from Lyre  directly from their website to get the sale pricing but they are also sold on amazon. I'm on my way to NYC today to see the Christmas decorations and take a live peloton class!

As someone who loves watching Dateline and listening to the Crime Junkie podcast, I have been reading mystery books for about 10 years now. This year I did something different and researched upcoming new releases and put them in my queue at the library so I was often number 100 in the wait list, but then I constantly had 5 books at home that I had to quickly read in 3 weeks before they were due. Mystery authors typically release a new book every year. I'm finally at the point where I think I can create a list of my favorite authors and only stick to them, that will be the plan for next year.  Life is too short to read books you don’t enjoy reading. I want to start DNF (did not finish) bad books liberally. This year I wanted to finally be able to vote in the Goodreads best books of the year poll as having read most of them in the mystery category. But as it turned out, I read so many (bad) books this year and yet only a few of the books I read made it to the Goodreads annual poll, so I'm going back to my previous method of waiting for the poll results in December and only reading the top winner books.

Qatar had been sitting at the top of my travel bucket list for five years ever since I read an article claiming that Qatar Airways' Qsuite was routinely ranked as the number one business-class experience in the skies! Qatar's capital Doha is much less known than it’s neighbor, Dubai, but I felt the two cities are pretty similar now having traveled to both. Doha is more quiet and understated, and that is exactly what makes it so special. There are few tourists there as it seems quite undiscovered. Qatar is one of the richest countries in the world so it is well-designed and modern, and tourists can feel safe exploring, even solo like I did. Qatar is a hidden gem in the desert! The skyscrapers all have a futuristic design each one unique from the next with innovative designs mixing traditional Islamic motifs with modern aesthetics. Qatar is becoming the next Dubai. Qatar also has a rich cultural heritage, is famous for historically being pearl divers and hosted the FIFA World Cup in 2022.