Sunday SELF - C. 🍝 A. 💐 R. 📝 E. 👗

romantic meal & 1/8 priced natural fiber clothes

Author

Jaclyn Kirby
March 01, 2026

Hey 💌

Sunday SELF - C. 🍝 A. 💐 R. 📝 E. 👗

February Recap!

Below are last months faves for Cooking, Art, Reading, and Enthusiasm/ what’s bringing me joy lately.

🍝 Cooking: Roasted Red Pepper Vodka Pasta with Parmigiana Bread Crumbs

I struggled to decide on a Valentine’s dinner this year. I wanted something new, something romantic, something I’ve never had before… to create a moment at home that felt more elevated.

This roasted red pepper vodka pasta is what I chose and I think it nailed the exact experience I was looking for.

Not the prettiest, but she was good.

🍝 Roasted Red Pepper Vodka Pasta with Parmigiana Bread Crumbs

*I pretty much copied this recipe from Half Baked Harvest, but with a few small tweaks of course…

  • First, homemade pasta always instead of a package. (2 ½ cups small farm freshly milled grain, 4 eggs from a small farm or your backyard chickens, salt. Let the dough sit for 30 minutes then roll it out super thin, fold up like an envelope, and cut into strips.)

  • I didn’t buy any jars of roasted red pepper because they have additives and who knows where those peppers came from. I just bought 2 red bell peppers and roasted them in my oven, removed the skin and blended them into the sauce with an immersion blender.

  • I bought a high quality Russian vodka and used only ¼ cup instead of ½ cup like the recipe says.

  • Next, and very important!, Panko breadcrumbs are a crime against your body. Instead blend up some toasted (or stale) homemade sourdough bread to make the breadcrumbs.

  • Raw milk instead of coconut milk. Nothing against coconut milk and if you don’t have a great small farm raw milk source then I’d definitely stick with coconut milk over pasteurized milk. My raw milk source is just better than store bought coconut milk.

Also, I revisited these Valentine’s chocolate truffles for dessert and this time I topped them with dried rose petals and orange zest 😍 so perfect 🌹🍊

💐 Art: Homemade Flower Bouquets

In winter!

In early February it was starting to feel like Spring. Sunny, 70 degrees, the first wild daffodils popping…

I was outside admiring the bright calendula and borage that have stayed thriving around our wine vineyard all year and I got the urge to search for some gems around the yard to make my own bouquet for Valentine’s Day.

& it turned out so cute!

Now in hindsight, I realize how lucky I was to collect these early Spring blooms because they truly were just giving a quick sneak peak…

Right after Valentine’s Day we got our first snow of the season and it was a much crazier storm than expected.

Everything got completely covered in white, tree branches snapped under the weight, and we lost power for 4 days.

It’s amazing how resilient plants are. The fact that the calendula and borage were still blooming once this all melted off them is wild.

Having this bouquet on my table as the buckets of snow fell down served as such a cute reminder of how pretty Spring is about to be around here 🩷

I’m planning on having a much bigger flower garden this year than ever before, but seeing how simple it is to make a pretty bouquet even before any of those seeds have been sown was so satisfying.

📝 Reading: My Journal From 1 Year Ago

The messiest handwriting days are when I’m most in flow.

Rereading my journal from this time last year is just the reminder I needed to show that I’m doing enough and I’m on the right path.

It’s continued proof to me of how things work out in a version of what you focus on.

And it all happens so quickly and naturally that it’s easy to forget that I am constantly living the life that my younger self dreamed of.

This is another page from early 2025, 6 months before I got pregnant but I still knew exactly where I was headed.

👗 Enthusiasm: Natural Fiber Closet For 1/8 the Price

For the past two years I’ve worked to gradually replace everything in my closet with natural fibers.

Starting with underwear, then lounge and workout wear…

I’ve committed to only buying 100% natural fibers so that with time, I’ll be able to get rid of everything synthetic.

But with how expensive some of these organic clothing brands are, this process can feel never ending and I hate looking at my clothes every day and feeling like so much of it is not me at all anymore.

It was starting to feel like it’d take forever to have more than just a handful of clothing items that fit who I am today, the one who feels icky attending a bridal shower in a polyester dress, but hasn’t yet spent the $250+ on a brand new organic cotton or linen version…

However, this month it seems I’ve turned a corner and drastically leaped miles from where I was in this area.

I started using Poshmark to buy natural fiber clothes at like 1/8 the original price.

I’ve had Poshmark for years, trying to sell my old prom dresses and Kate Spade purses from middle school, but I’ll admit, I was a little pretentious about buying used clothes.

And I still honestly feel this way about lounge and workout clothes, those I like to buy new.

But on Poshmark, you can sometimes find items brand new with tags like this cashmere robe I got that is sold on Quince for $200 and I paid $60.

And for dresses and cute clothes to wear outside the home, the lower price is totally worth buying second hand.

Idk why I thought Poshmark would only have like Princess Polly, Zara, and H&M… probably because that’s all that I’m trying to get rid of by selling on there.

They have all the popular organic brands like Pact, Quince, Cleobella, Christy Dawn…

I bought a simple everyday summer dress that is $108 on Pact and I got it for $25.

Also, you can search “organic cotton dress” to discover new brands.

For my baby shower I was looking everywhere online for a cotton or linen dress but they were all over $200… Then I looked on Poshmark and found one from the brand, Spell, which I had never heard of before. It was $250 and I got it for $63.

And once you get the clothes and wash them yourself in your own nontoxic detergent (I just use baking soda and unscented castile soap), then hang them out in the sun to dry and recharge, they feel perfectly new ✨

What are your highlights from the past month? Reply and share with me 🫶

🤍 Jaclyn