October Reads

Zero stars = hated it

One star = did not like it at all

Two stars = eh, it was okay

Three stars = liked it

Four stars = really, really liked it

Five stars = absolutely loved it

2-Stars (2)

**Jaws

The movie was SO much better.  The book was very different (Hooper dies in the water cage, but not before he has an affair with Brody’s wife).  They also came home every night after trying to kill the fish each day.  And…the book was kind of vulgar.  I almost gave it only one star, but the actual writing was pretty good.  (owned, donated to LFL)

**If There’s No Tomorrow

Sigh.  I really need to check to see if books are YA before I grab them ha ha.  This wasn’t a BAD book, it just wasn’t for me.  Because it’s VERY Young Adult.  And, don’t get me wrong, sometimes YA is great (Hunger Games!), but this was EXACTLY what you think YA would be….junior in high school who is in love with her best friend (a guy), gets in a horrible car wreck and is the only one that survives, yada yada yada.  It’s very teen-agery.  As it should be, because it’s YA!  Anyways.  Not for me.  But great for someone else I’m sure. (owned, donated to LFL)

3-Stars (3)

***The Complete Book of Clean (non-fiction)

Nothing earth shattering here, but there are some great homemade cleaning recipes and tips.  Plus, it is a beautiful book.  (owned, keeper)

***More Than Just Making It (non-fiction)

I am always fascinated by personal ‘getting out of debt’ stories.  Maybe it’s because I was there once and had to live an extremely simple lifestyle (I used to have to go to the library to use the Internet because I didn’t have it at home and I didn’t have cable because I couldn’t afford it).  Although this book was somewhat preachy (she quotes Bible verses of course) it was really, really good.  She tells her story about how they got into debt, how they lived during debt (she became an expert on feeding their family of 6 on a super ‘bare bones’ budget), how they got out of debt and how they now still live well below their means (even though they don’t have to).  And how dealing with her pride issues was a HUGE factor in their success.  I guess I’m a sucker for a good success story.  Plus, I love learning new ways to save money/cut back.  I get teased sometimes for stacking coupons and looking for deals, but we save a LOT of money that way. (owned, keeper)

***Betty Crocker’s Guide to Easy Entertaining:  How to Have Guests and Enjoy Them (non-fiction)

Ha ha.  I picked this book up for .50 at the monthly book sale at the library.  It’s from 1959, so I bought it strictly for entertainment purposes.  There’s actually a line in there that says ‘make sure you have cigarettes and ashtrays readily available’.  Ha!  I read it because my dog destroyed part of it and as I was attempting to tape it back together I read it.  It also has some recipes.  It was entertaining and completely outdated (which is why it was entertaining!).  (owned, keeper)

4-Stars (1)

****Everyone Brave is Forgiven

Yay!  A 4-star read.  It is fiction, however it is based on the author’s grandparents letters to each other during World War II.  It takes place in London.  It was a quick read, although I didn’t WANT it to go quickly, I wanted to savor it because it was so good.  I just wanted the story to continue.  It was very engaging.  There were some slow spots though, but it still was a fantastic read (at 400+ pages).  Loved it! (owned, keeper)

5-Stars (1)

*****Top 10 Iceland

Okay, so I know this is weird to include as a 'book read', but it's a book, and, well, I read it.  We've always gotten travel guides to places we go from Eyewitness Travel because they are full color, not too overwhelming, and include a pull-out map in the back.  I know that all of these things can be found on the internet, but do you know how incredibly overwhelming it is to research places to go online?  You get thousands of recommendations.  While this is nice, you could spend DAYS or WEEKS even sorting though things to do in every inch of the country.  With these little books, they gather the top 10 places to see, and they break it down by location, by type of 'attraction' (for Iceland, they have the top 10 waterfalls, the top 10 volcanoes, the top 10 glaciers, etc.).  And of course there are restaurants, museums, historical landmarks, parks, etc.  They also have lots of maps, which is helpful.  We are going to spend our time in southern Iceland, so we can kind of rule out anything that is way up north.  It's soooooo much easier than going online and getting sucked into the world wide web for 4 hours at a time and get nothing accomplished.  With these books, you get your little sticky tabs, tab the places you are interested in, and THEN go online to see what people have to say.  It works like a charm.  We did it for France, the UK, Belgium, and Hawaii.  They are great little books.  And they are little enough that you can take them along with you and they fit easily into your bag.

See?  I whipped this one out on the train to France to Belgium when we went:

So I didn't read a lot of books this month, but it was a very busy month. 

Total Books Read: 7 (4 non-fiction, 3 fiction)

Formats:

E-Books: 0

Audio: 0

Real Books:  7

Abandoned books: 0

Estate Sale

Today I was off of work (yay!) and so was my husband. We had left the house to go have breakfast and on the way we saw a sign on our block for an estate sale. I was in a spontaneous mood so I said “let’s go!”. So we went, not expecting to find anything. 

About a month ago, we decided that the next time we go to Ikea (February) we were going to buy more flatware. We just simply don’t have enough and run out and we’re always short of forks when they are in the dishwasher. Welllll at the sale I found a really cool set of NICE Japanese flatware priced for $20.  I loved the look of them. After checking to see if all of the pieces were there, I showed them to hubby and he liked them as well. The price tag was $20. I picked them up because there were other people milling around and I wanted to protect my great find!

Then I found this cool looking thing that was a super heavy little piggy bank. An OLD bank. From Southern Chicago. There was just something about it that I really liked and I’ve been wanting something to corral our change upstairs. The price was $5.

So hubby asked if we could get both items for $20 instead of $25 and the lady happily said yes.

When we got home we looked up our items online and discovered that the silver was going for $225 and the piggy bank was going for $125!!!  Crazy! We aren’t going to sell our items but it looks like we got some good deals!

I’m glad my spontaneousness worked out well this morning!

Fête

We had a party (fête) last night at our house.  We invited everyone from our French group over after the meeting.  It was a 'thank you' dinner for our 3 French class teachers.  

We have a lot of people in our group that are allergic to cats and dogs, so we held the entire party in our backyard and on our sunporch.  I contained the cats in the laundry room, and the 5 dogs were contained upstairs in our library (more on that later).

This whole type of thing is sooooo out of my comfort zone.  I have social anxiety, I don't do well in large groups, etc. etc.  We don't entertain often.  But when we bought this house, we loved the outside and immediately thought it would be a great space to entertain.  And I really wanted to do something for our French class teachers.  So I started telling people about it to keep myself accountable to following through.  Then I made up invites and REALLY made it official.  

It turned out really, really well.  

I only had time to snap one photo before everyone came over.

After meeting, we rushed home and had about 15 minutes to put the cats away, put up the gates, feed the dogs, take the dogs out, put them upstairs in the library, change, light the candles, fire, lights, etc.  I had gotten downstairs and stepped outside, snapped this picture and then our first guest arrived.

We set up all of the food in the sunroom.  We had hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, pasta salad, macaroni salad, a green salad, vegetables, chips & queso, s'mores, cake, bottled water, La Croix, hot tea, hot chocolate with marshmallows, and adult beverages for those who wanted them.  

We had the fire pit going, long skewers for roasting marshmallows, and chairs both outside and inside (for those who got too chilly).  

Dinner started around 6:30.  We prayed, ate, drank, ate some more, and then presented our gifts to our teachers.

We got them teacher mugs, little notepads and pens that say 'thank you for shepherding us'.

I also put together little bags for the wives with some chocolate, a little notepad, and a pocket mirror like this:

I loved these little mirrors so much that I got one for myself.  

We had 28 people come, which was great.  I was expecting between 20-25!  But we had plenty of food and lots of fun.

So....we decided to put the dogs upstairs for a few reasons.  We didn't want them to be able to 'see' what was going on because they would get all riled up.  And we really didn't want them to hear anything either.  So the most logical place was upstairs. However, when Watson gets nervous he chews things up (anything stuffed, blankets, etc.).  So I didn't want them in the bedroom.  So we put them in the library.  My first thought was 'well the only thing he could possibly destroy is my books and he's not interested in those.'  Ha ha.  I spoke too soon.

He destroyed one book.  Betty Crocker's Guide to Easy Entertaining: How to Have Guests and Enjoy Them.  Ironic, isn't it?  THAT'S the book he chose.  I had to laugh.  I'm glad he left my Jon Krakauer books alone.  AND, there was not a single accident in the room and they were up there for about 4 hours.  So I was pleased, even with my destroyed book.  And the book is still readable.  I taped the ripped off cover back on.

So last night went really, really well.  But I am SO GLAD it's over!!  It was a lot of work.  And now I feel like I can relax!  In fact, after I eat my lunch of leftovers, I plan to take a nap.  :)

October

Ah…October.  I don’t ever remember October as being that busy in the past.  But this year it’s a doozy!!  Such a doozy that it’s already October 22nd and I'm just now blogging about it.

October 1^st we had our Circuit Assembly in English (which was great by the way).

October 5^th I had an all-day work thing at a local elementary school.  It was fun, but super tiring.  Also, hubby had a French part.

October 8^th we had our Annual Meeting.

October 9^th we hosted a Fantasy Football watch party at our house.

October 9^th – 13^th – Balloon Fiesta.  This doesn’t really have MUCH of an effect on me, however it required me to be to work at 5:30 or so to avoid sitting in traffic for an hour.  Which meant I had to get up each morning around 4:45.  Ugh.    

October 10^th I had a dental appointment after work which took forever.

October 12^th  hubby had a French part

October 13^th practiced at the KH for part of our French Graduation

October 14^th French Graduation!  Yes!!!

October 19^th I had a talk in French (the 6 minute one).  Hubby also had two meeting parts, one in English, one in French.  

October 22^nd Duke City Marathon - hubby ran a 5K!!

October 26^th I have another dental appointment

October 28^th we are having a gathering at our house to thank our French Teachers.  There will be about 25 people coming.

I have 15 work meetings scheduled so far for the remainder of October, and these are just the ‘regular’ weekly/monthly meetings that I have.  More will pop up.     

I’m trying to get as much done now as I can for our French gathering next weekend.  I have the gifts, most people have signed the cards, I have lists going of who is bringing what to the gathering, what I still need to get, and small things around the house to get done.  Oy.  It's a lot of work.  I'm looking forward to it, but I'm also looking forward to it being over with.  

Today though, my mother-in-law and I knocked out a big item on our list...cleaning the window tracks and windows in our sunroom.  Our gathering will be held primarily outside and in our sunroom, which totally opens up to the outside.  

Anyways....the sunroom door windows and window tracks have been neglected.  So today, we cleaned them.  It was quite the job!  But they look sooooo much better.  Since the doors will be open, I wanted the tracks to be nice and clean.  And now they are!

I ordered 96 feet of string lights that should be arriving tomorrow.  We hope to get them hung tomorrow evening (around the sunroom).  Hopefully it will turn out like what I have pictured in my head ha ha.  I'm glad they'll be here before the party though!  I hope the weather cooperates.  But we will have heaters in the sunroom, and plenty of space if we need to move the chairs in there.  And the fire pit will be going because we're having s'mores (of course).  And also a hot chocolate station!  :)

So October has been a crazy, crazy month.  November should be quieter….I hope!

Iceland

We’re going to Iceland!

I’m not sure when my fascination of Iceland began.  At least 5-6 years ago.  Anytime I would see a beautiful picture or a beautiful scene in a movie, it always turned out to be Iceland.  So I wanted to go and see it for myself.

Plus, my favorite musicians EVER, Of Monsters and Men, are Icelandic.  They are Indie/Folk.  They’re awesome. 

So I talked to my husband and he was interested too.  Yay!  But then we ended up going to France, Belgium and the U.K. in 2015, which was great.  However, we can only afford one international vacation every 3 years or so (which is still a luxury, I realize).  So when we started thinking about our next international trip in 2018, we discussed either Iceland or Ireland.  Because Ireland is on our list too.  But, Iceland won out because of the great deal we got on tickets.  We are going ‘off-season’ (May), which I believe is why we got such a great deal.  It will be a late anniversary present to each other.

A few fun facts about Iceland (from Wikipedia):

*The population of the entire country is 335,000 (most of which live in the capital, Reykjavik).

*It is the most sparsely populated country in Europe.

*There are volcanoes, geysers, hot springs, lava fields and massive glaciers.

*It runs almost completely on renewable energy (geothermal & hydropower).

*It is at the juncture of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans (it is just a few degrees south of the Arctic Circle, and one of its smaller northern islands runs through the Arctic Circle (yeah…it’s up there).  This pic gives an idea of how far north it really is. (what were we thinking?!?)

*The interior of the island is uninhabited.  Most people live along the coasts.

*The official language is Icelandic, however English and Danish are both mandatory subjects taught in school and both are widely understood and spoken.

*The state church is Lutheran

*Icelandic people have a deep sense of community and are very happy people.  They are also very healthy and have one of the highest life expectancy rates in Europe.

*Icelanders are avid consumers of literature.  They import and translate more international literature than any other nation and they have the HIGHEST NUMBER OF BOOKSTORES PER CAPITA IN THE WORLD.  Blown.  Away.  (until my husband pointed out that they probably only have like 10 bookstores because of the small population.  Dream crusher!!  Ha ha)

*Most of the cuisine is based on fish (mostly cod and haddock), lamb, and dairy products, with little to no utilization of herbs or spices (hmm).  Traditional dishes consist of cured shark, cured ram, flat bread, dried fish, and dark rye bread.  There are not a lot of fruits and vegetables because of the climate.  The main meal of the day is dinner, which is usually fish or lamb as the main course.  Boiled or mashed potatoes, pickled cabbage, green beans and rye bread are prevalent side dishes.  Coffee is popular at all times of the day.  The signature alcoholic beverage is Brennivin (‘distilled wine’).  It is a type of vodka made from distilled potatoes and flavored with either caraway seeds or angelica.  It’s super potent and has earned the nickname Black Death (because of the taste, not necessarily the alcohol content).  There are many alarming things in this paragraph.  Ha ha. 

But….we aren’t going there for the food (thank goodness).  We’re going there to relax, soak in some natural hot pools, and to see some pretty, pretty things.

I can’t wait!