I Love You, Ronnie

I finished reading this book last week. It was a quick read for in between my book club reads.

I enjoyed this book very much. It contained numerous letters written fby Ronald Reagan to his wife Nancy Reagan with Nancy narrating through out. She explained what was happening while each letter was being written.

Ronald Reagan wrote the sweetest letters to his wife through out their times apart due to conflicting schedules and travelling but the letters also continued even while they were together.

The book ended with Ronald Reagan's public address about his Alzheimer's diagnosis.

It was an extremely honest and heartbreaking ending, but it was a great book.

The Help

I thoroughly enjoyed The Help By Kathryn Stockett.

I was reading this book every chance I had. Mostly because it is quite a few pages and I needed to make sure I could finish it before May 4th, for the book club, but also because I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen with each character.

Each of the 3 characters that is followed through out the book have such strong personalities and qualities, it feels like you really know them. The descriptions of the houses and the weather are so detailed you can almost imagine being there.

Kathryn Stockett did a great job personifying the characters realistically that it felt like non-fiction, she really understood what was happening at that time in Jackson, Mississippi. She created a beautiful story.

I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a good read.

Productive Weekend

So the Miranda concert was awesome!! Ross bought me this cute t-shirt in a light pink. White was sold out in my size, and they didn't have black. I would have gotten the black if they had it! The name of Miranda's tour is called Roadside Bars and Pink Guitars. It was fun! It was low key, no costume changes, no fancy set, just good, fun music, and two pink guitars!!

I finished reading the fifteenth book of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plumb book series. It was a quick and fun read as always! Grandma Mazur has to be my all time favorite character!! I wanted a fun read between my two book club reads because I don't always like to read serious stuff. These Stephanie Plumb books have me laughing out loud. I try to pace myself, so I always have one of her books to read if I need a good laugh. Luckily I still have to read number 16 and the 'between the numbers' novels!

I have started reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett for my book club. It is a long book, I will have to read it at every free moment in order to finish it by May 4th for our meeting, but I am loving it!! The book is told from 3 different points of view, 2 are from maids who work for white women in Mississippi in the 1960's and the 3rd point of view is from a white woman that wants to change things. I'm not very far into, a little over 100 pages (the book is almost 500 pages), but I am already loving the characters and can't wait to see where they take me!

I also got to walk through a house that Mike is looking at buying. I can't believe we are old enough to be home owners!! I hope it's everything he wants it to be!!

Reading List 2010

I attended my first ever book club yesterday evening. It was a small group of 5, but we still had a great discussion. I'm really glad I decided to go, and look forward to next month's meeting!

We complied a list of books to read for the rest of 2010, we each picked two books. I picked probably the fluffiest of all of them (I like fun, easy reads!!!). I picked The Help and Have a Little Faith, I hope they are good!

I thought I'd make a list of all of our picks on here so if anyone is looking for a new book to read these are some options, and this way I will always have a copy of the list!

May: The Help By: Kathryn Stockett

June: Same Kind of Different As Me By: Ron Hall and Denver Moore

July: The Great Divorce By: C.S. Lewis

August: Home Safe By: Elizabeth Berg

September: A Wrinkle In Time By: Madeleine L'Engle

October: 50/50: Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days By Dean Karnazes

November: Letters From a Skeptic By: Gregory A Boyd and Edward K Boyd

December: Have a Little Faith By: Mitch Albom

The Weight of Heaven

I read this book for a book club I am going to try out. The book club is being put on by a group in my church. I went to another event held by the same group, 'the not so youth group', group and it was a horrible experience. It was a game night, and everyone there was complaining about their spouse, or kids, or being pregnant. I could not relate, and I was extremely irritated and annoyed listening to all of the negativity. I decided the group was not for me.

Then I got an email inviting me to join their book club. I'm thinking it will be a group of different people, some may be the same, but hopefully there will be some other people to even out the group. I decided I would read the book and if I liked it, I would check out the book club meeting.

The first meeting is tonight at 7:30 and I will be going. This book was amazing. The Weight of Heaven by Thrity Umrigar was fantastic. I've never read a book quite like this one. Thrity Umrigar is an Indian woman, she wrote this book about an American couple who moved to India when the husband had the opportunity to transfer there for work.

It is an amazing story of loss, hope, love, despair, and irony. I really enjoyed it. I am hoping by joining the book club, I will be introduced to many more great books that I normally wouldn't read on my own, and I will fit in with the group a little better than I did at game night!

Friday Night Knitting Club

LOVED this book!! It was such a great story, and I'm happy to learn that there is a sequel. Seriously, whether you knit or not, this is a very touching book about a group of women who unexpectedly grow fast and strong bonds. It's really a great book. To learn more or buy the book click here.

Books!

Paperbackswap.com is one of the greatest inventions ever! It is a great website to trade books. Any kind of book, cookbooks, children books, fiction, non-fiction, anything. You simply set up an account with a user name and password, post 10 books you are finished with and start shopping. The books you request are free to you, you pay nothing, not even shipping. If another person requests your book, you pay the shipping and mail it out to them, shipping is around $2.60 per book. Not bad at all.

The only downside is that you can only request books if you have credits, and you only get credits if people request your books. After you post your 10 books to start up your account, you get 2 free credits to get you started. I have never ran out of credits, but I can see how that might be a problem.

I highly recommend checking it out. You can look through the site and see what books are posted before you sign up. You might like it!

ban.do

What do you think about this?

At first I wasn't sure, I'll admit it. I really like it a lot, the colors, the concept, I'm just not sure it's practical for day to day wear. Then I thought about it more, and I don't think it's made for day to day wear. I would wear these for my wedding (if I have one) I'm not sold on the veil so I think one of these would be a great alternative.

I even think these ones would make beautiful bridesmaid pieces or a great option for a high school dance or just to get dressed up.

These can all be found here, and they are all for sale, along with many other great pieces. Enjoy browsing!!

New Cookies

I recently purchased a new cook book for JoAnn Fabrics. It was in with the $5.00 books. I got Cool Girls Guide To Knitting and JoAnns for $5.00 and it was a great buy. Pretty basic patterns but perfect for a beginner. So based on that good find I thought this cook book would be decent too. It is all for baking, I love baking, not just desserts but all kinds of food, and this book features a variety of dishes. It's called Greatest Ever Baking or something. I decided to try a recipe and chose a basic cook it was called Vanilla Cookies. The recipe wasn't very detailed, I think the butter needed to be a little melted, softened was not soft enough, and all the instructions said were 2/3 cup butter diced. So when I decided my dough was never going to hold together I put it all in the microwave, all of it, and then tried to get it to stick together, it finally worked and I was able to roll it out and cut cookies out of it. This is what they looked like right out of the oven.


I tried one, not very good, so I found some frosting in the fridge and raided the pantry for decorations and Ross and I decorated cookies, Mike even got in on it as well. And this is what they looked like decorated. Much prettier, but still not too tasty.


I don't know what my problem has been lately, but nothing is turning out very well. My last 3 attempts were failures. I made a couple pumpkin pies...forgot the sugar...yup, eww. Next endeavor, we got a new cookie press from Pampered Chef, so I decided to try it out and found a recipe online that involved jello to make the cookies a little fruity...not good. We threw away almost the whole batch.

I started on Weight Watchers again and made some brownies that are only 2 points each. Those actually turned out, so that's good. The recipe is scary but easy. It is a box of low-fat brownie mix and a can of black beans. You put the entire contents of the can of beans in a blender and grind them up, add the puree to the dry brownie mix and that's it. I put mine in muffin tins and cupcake papers to get the suggested serving size on the box of brownies and baked them for 26 minutes. Amazing really, that a combination like that would even be thought up, but it's genius really at how good the brownies are!