Briarpatch Bests: November
Where we recap a month's worth of things we read, watched, listened to, and bought.
Welcome to our Monthly Digest, where we recap a month’s worth of books, podcasts, recipes and more. Christmas is coming and the elves are back (Jazzy and Wendy Soup, respectively). Michael Bublé and Mariah Carey have thoroughly defrosted and the fridge is loaded with Christmas Tree Cakes.
November was a long, hard month, marked by deep loss for the Winchesters and annoying life stuff for the Storeys. But we persevered and found joy where we could including a fabulous Chicago trip for the Winchesters and everyday glimmers for the Storeys—like a Sunday night at the beach over Thanksgiving break.
Praise God football season has concluded as it was mostly abysmal for the Briarpatch teams. Betsy graced us with a weekly update on our paid episodes and they were rarely positive.
If you’re wondering how we approach the holidays, we did a whole series earlier in the fall and all our Christmas thoughts can be found here. Speaking of Christmas, if you’ve ever thought about becoming a paid subscriber, consider putting it on your holiday wishlist — annual subscriptions are $5 off all off December! It’s very easy to gift a subscription (this is how BKS got started supporting our favorite California chef, Caroline Chambers). Click here or send this to a friend to easily gift a paid sub!
An Encouraging Note from the Paid Tier:
You ladies are a dose of sunshine in my inbox! I savor each episode and it’s part of my “me time” each week! I love your sweet friendship even though you don’t live close to one another. I have a best friend who lives far away and you remind me of our friendship! I love all the links and recommendations! Thanks for sharing your lives and experiences, it’s a treasured part of my week!
- Friend of The Briarpatch
📚 Reading
BKS: I finally finished Conform by Ariel Sullivan after starting an ARC months ago. It was fantastic and I immediately bullied KNW into reading it. I read Grace and Henry’s Holiday Movie Marathon, which I absolutely adored! I finished The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion Volume II—still into this series and highly recommend if you like historical fiction. And lastly I read The Christmas Fling by Lindsey Kelk which is exactly the holiday romp it sounds like.
KNW: In addition to reading our November Book Club pick, I flew through Conform, Ariel Sullivan’s debut novel, and promptly texted half a dozen friends to tell them to read it. While this is cheating because I didn’t read it this November, if you haven’t read A Winter in New York by Josie Silver add it to your holiday stack. I read it two Novembers ago and still think about it, especially this time of year. Josie also penned One Day in December, which is well worth your time if you missed it in 2018.
📺 Watching
BKS:
My children live more exciting lives than I do, so they saw Wicked: For Good while I still have not.
LAS and I are suckers for a good Ken Burns documentary so we’ve been watching his latest on the American Revolution on PBS. 10/10 for history buffs and documentary enthusiasts alike.
We finished the Dancing With The Stars finale and KNW’s sentiments sum it up for me down below. We love this show and can’t wait for next season.
We have also very slowly been watching the latest season of The Great British Baking Show which all the Storeys enjoy. The season has wrapped so feel free to binge on Netflix at your leisure.
On our radar for December: Zootopia 2, The End of an Era doc, and me finally seeing Wicked: For Good….
KNW:
I spent Thanksgiving quarantined at home with a sick little one so I powered through quite a few Netflix holiday movies in between drawing baths and pouring Gatorade. Consider this your Christmas Wrapping preview guide:
Champagne Problems is set in Paris and gave slight Emily in Paris vibes but without the wild fashion. 3/5
A Sprinkle at Christmas is terribly named but a delightful Christmas version of You’ve Got Mail. 4/5
A Merry Little Ex-Mas is a walk down memory lane. Cher? Sabrina the Teenage Witch? It was everything I want in a cheesy holiday romcom. 4/5
Royally Yours, This Christmas was fine but if I were in a royal Christmas movie mood, I would probably go back and watch A Christmas Prince or the Princess Switch. 2.5/5
My children aren’t really movie kids, but we had some ‘forced family fun’ by watching Zootopia over the Thanksgiving break — a little preparation for a potential field trip to see Zootopia 2 in December. We all survived, but I am going on record to state that kids movies are far scarier than 8-year-old me remembers, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to get them to the actual movie theater to catch the sequel.
I watched the Dancing With The Stars finale and have a lot of thoughts: Robert is precious, and I can’t believe Alix didn’t win — her final three performances were fun and flawless. Watching Dylan Efron grow over the season (his surprise dance made me cry) warmed my heart. Jordan and Ezra were such a fun pair and let’s give Elaine all her flowers—what a comeback for Meredith Blake! Whoever did the casting for this season knocked it out of the park and have set quite a high bar for next season.
College basketball is back and our house is rejoicing!
🎧 Listening
Executive decision to leave ‘audio’ books in the ‘reading’ section; we’re choosing to define listening as podcasts or other auditory content consumed.
BKS: Real talk, I don’t know that I’ve listened to anything super new this month. I will share a few of my favorite Christmas music listens, like this, this, and this. And at the tippy top of my TBL (to be listened…is that a thing?) is the CHD with Whitney Leavitt and Mark Ballas. I saw the dance they released with the interview and it was REMARKABLE.
KNW: I spent a lot of time in the car in November and listened to a lot of music and Marco Polos. I did manage to catch Ariana Grande and Ina Garten on The Good Hang Podcast and thoroughly enjoyed both interviews.
🍳 Cooking
BKS: Listen, there is nothing to write home about here. I’ve been rotating brainless crowd-pleasers and we’ve recently begun splitting some dinner duties around here and I’m excited to see how that goes. One of my goals for 2026 is to monthly meal-plan—not because I’m committing to a month’s worth of meals but because I think having a list will help with decision fatigue and almost serve as a default when I need it. I’ve shared this before but the MVP of this month is the Damn Delicious Korean Beef Bowls. Honorable mention to this dip I made for Thanksgiving.
KNW: The Winchesters plead the fifth for November meals. Pretty sure we survived on Chicken Taquitos and Christmas Tree Cakes (please do me a favor and put your cakes in the refrigerator). I did have a fantastic Chicago Style hotdog when we visited the Windy City over Veterans Day weekend and managed to make a slightly soupy but delicious pecan pie for Thanksgiving. Here’s hoping December gives me slightly more cooking bandwidth, and if not, there is always January…
🛍️ Shopping
The three best things we bought in November.
KNW:
These cheerful packing cubes fit perfectly in AGW’s suitcase and hold a ton. WPW got the blue and orange version. I’m quite impressed with the quality. They should last us for a few years.
Dare I say I have found my new favorite mascara? I’ve been on the hunt for a Trish McEvoy adjacent option that is slightly more budget friendly. My eyelashes aren’t the best and I feel like I’ve tried every drugstore option out there. This Merit tubing mascara will be a repurchase.
I have tried and really enjoyed a number of different Versed products and just repurchased this $20 moisturizer. I put it on at night and think it wears like a much more expensive moisturizer.
BKS:
Teenage boys have to be the hardest category to shop for and maybe the gift I’m most excited to give this year is for a 13-year-old in my life. I got this ramen and snack box from Etsy, and I think it’s going to be a huge hit! It looks like all that’s left is their Ramen box which I think would still be a fabulous choice.
I needed a new pair of jeans (literally wore a hole in my favorite pair). I ordered these from Quince. This was my first Quince purchase and I’m here to tell you, they are fantastic and you won’t believe the price!
Listen, it’s cold and flu season, which means it’s humidifier season. I ordered this little fish that floats in your humidifier tank and keeps it clean. OBSESSED.
In case you’re new around here, we do one of these emails every month and have a nice little archive now. You can find them here on our website.
Our last Briarpatch Book Club pick for 2025 is I’ll Be Home for Christmas by Jenny Bayliss. We were debating between a few different current holiday novels and picked this one because we both enjoy Jenny Bayliss novels and liked the cover the best out of our three options. We’re nothing if not super professional around here. Join us on Wednesday, December 17th at 9 p.m. EST for a festive holiday Substack Live and book discussion. As always, the live is for all subscribers so join us! A replay will be shared with paid subs on Friday.
Thanks for hanging out with us in this little corner of the internet. We love it so much and hope you do too. Happy December. Happy magic making. Happy we’ve almost made it to the end of 2025 — praise the Lord!
Love,
Kristin + Betsy
If anyone else is on a Holiday Movie Marathon, and has suggestions for me to did to my queue, let me know!