Bookworm

Well the title of this post is a little misleading.  I used to consider myself more of a bookworm, but I have found I've really gotten away from reading.  I'm embarrassed to admit how long it took me to finish Gone Girl - although I have finally finished it!  I am trying to get back into reading more, so today's Let Your Blog Shine prompt of "Make a list of your favorite books" seemed like a good topic!  I figure if start talking about some of my favorite books it just might fuel my fire for reading again!  So without further ado, here are some of my favorite books.
Summer Sisters by Judy Blume.  I'm pretty sure I've talked about my love of this book on the blog before.  I don't know what it is about it, it's pure fluff for the most part.  It's the Judy we all grew up loving as we were coming of age, but it's definitely intended for an adult audience.  I read this book for the first time the summer I was 17 - which is an age that explored in depth for the characters in the book during one section.  I have just always loved this book's ability to whisk you away and make you feel like you're right there on Martha's Vineyard with these girls every year.  It makes you feel all the feels, look at your own relationships and while the ending is sad, it's somehow always been satisfying.  This is one of those summer beach reads that I read just about every year.
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult.  I love pretty much anything Jodi writes, but this was the book that introduced me to her, which is no surprise since I think it is probably her most popular to date. I loved the idea of having the narrative switch in each chapter to a different character, I had never really encountered that form of storytelling before and it really helps you understand each person so much more.  It almost makes you emphasize with even the least likeable characters even more.  I loved that this book also had twists and turns and the ending still gets me right in the feels every time (side note, the movie totally ruined it for me.  I hate the movie's ending - the rest of it was so well done, but the ending.  Boo hiss!) After I finished this book I knew I'd want to read just about anything else she writes or has written and with the exception of only a book or two, she's rarely let me down and while her format is pretty predictable at this point, I find her books still find ways to surprise or shock me by the end.
The Hunger Games Series by Suzanne Collins.  Ok I'll just say this and you can all point daggers at me.  I never got into Harry Potter.  I did finally watch the movies, but the books were just not my thing.  I also never got Twilight or pretty much any other young adult series that eventually came to the big screen - but then the Hunger Games caught my attention.  I don't know what is about it - the concept is so horrific and barbaric when you truly think about it - a desolate world sends teens to fight to the death?  There's just something about the way these books are written that hooked me in from the first line.  And then when the movies started coming out, I was nervous that I would be disappointed after loving the books so much - but at least in my opinion, the movies were done very well and have only made me love this series even more.  So, no hate on those who love Harry or pick Team Edward or Team Jacob or whatever, but I'm all about the Hunger Games.  May the odds be ever in your favor.
Where The Heart Is by Billie Letts. I promise I don't only love books that became movies!  I read this book after the movie came out, my copy even has a picture of Natalie Portman on it, but I didn't even bother seeing the movie until a couple of years ago and I read this book while I was still in college. Anyway, this is a book that I have always loved, the characters are quirky and the story itself is heartfelt and yet intriguing.  It's another go to summer read for me when I just want to read something familiar and I don't want to think too hard.
My Point...and I Do Have One by Ellen DeGeneres.  This is her first book, written well before she had her talk show or anything and it's not a memoir.  It's just pure fun.  It is a lot of her standup material written in book format, but it has never failed to make me laugh.  If I need a quick pick me up I go to this book.  It's hilarious and a very fast read.
I also love reading autobiographies and real life stories and I'll just list a few here that I think are worth a read: Tough Shit by Kevin Smith Yes Please by Amy Poehler Lucky Man by Michael J. Fox High on Arrival by Mackensie Phillips Born Standing Up by Steve Martin Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank The Girls Guide to Homelessness by Brianna Karp Two Kisses for Maddy by Matt Logelin The Wisdom of Big Bird and the Dark Genius of Oscar the Grouch by Carroll Spinney Jim Henson: The Biography by Brian Jay Jones
And finally, a few of my favorite children's books that I'm looking forward to sharing with Ollie or in some cases already have: Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff Curious George by Margaret and H.A. Rey
So there you have it!  A look into my literary world.  Now that I've finished reading Gone Girl I have moved back into the Divergent series and am trying my hand at reading Insurgent again.  After that I think I might look for some more chick-lit as that seems to be my favorite genre for the most part, but there are many other books I have wanted to read so I might have to just make a list and head over to my library!
What are some of your favorite books?

Currently in February

It's time again for one of my favorite link ups of the month, Currently with Anne of In Residence and Jenna from Dearest Love.  I love this monthly check in of what we're up to!
--Currently I am--
Hearting - My Boys.  Always.  I could not love them more - especially when Ollie drags a book over to Nate and hands it to him and is like "Read?" And my sweet patient husband reads Mr. Brown Can Moo about ten times in a row.  I heart them both so much.

Reading - Gone Girl.  I have every intention of finishing it before I watch the movie.  I am enjoying the book, I am not enjoying that I'm not making the time to read it as much as I want to.  Lately I am just crashing at night instead of taking even ten minutes for reading and I'm sure part of that is we're not turning the TV off as early as we could or should be.  I need to change that!

Pinning - Lots of recipes and outfit ideas as usual.  I made a dessert I had pinned for the Super Bowl this weekend - S'mores Cookie Cake.  It was very good - but VERY rich.  They recommend serving it warm because of all the marshmallows and I can understand why.  I did enjoy it but it was so sweet it almost made my teeth hurt, not sure if I'd make it again.

Eating - Other sweets besides my S'mores dessert - I totally had to go buy the Red Velvet Oreos yesterday.  And they're pretty darn good.  I think my heart still belongs to the Birthday Cake flavor as far as the "special" Oreos go, but the Red Velvet ones are pretty dang good.  I also found Strawberry Cupcake Boom Chica Pop.  It might sound weird, but oh my goodness....new favorite flavor.  I think I might need to join a gym...ha.

Anticipating - SPRING!  I am just not a winter girl, sorry.  And we're not even having a bad winter this year, but I just miss all of our outdoor activities pretty hardcore right now. I can't wait for walks, disc golf, eating on patios and just being out in the fresh air.  It will be here before I know and I'm sure I'll lament about how fast time is going!
So that's what I'm up to this month!  What are you currently doing?  And make sure to check out Anne and Jenna's blogs for other Currently posts or to link up your own!

Friday Five - Oliver's Favorite Books

We've been making it a point to read to Oliver pretty much since he was born.  Nate even brought me a book to read to Ollie when we were still in the hospital - Oh the Thinks You Can Think by Dr. Seuss.  We would kind of read to him when he was a newborn, but we started making it part of his bedtime routine by the time he was about 3 1/2 to 4 months old.  It's been fun watching him actually start being interested in the books - he'll let you know if he doesn't like a book you're reading, he'll try to close it or he'll whine.  But if he sits still or even starts to giggle when you open up the book, you know you have a winner.

He mostly loves his board books because he can grab them and help turn pages and well, chew on them and stuff.  I thought for fun I'd share a Friday Five of his favorite books.  One of these is a new to us book, the others have been on repeat for quite awhile now!

He loves all the Sandra Boynton books for the most part, but his favorites right now seem to be The Belly Button Book and Moo, Baa, La La La.  He has enjoyed Barnyard Dance too and many nights we read the Going to Bed Book as the last book of the night.  
I find it almost funny that he'll actually sit still for Hop On Pop - it can be a long book, but I think he just loves all the words in it.  It's fairly fast pace too, which is kind of another requirement in his books.  He doesn't like it if we're not turning the pages very fast!
Another Dr. Seuss favorite of his is Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?  Again, lots of silly sounding words and it's a pretty quick read.  The copy we have is a board book too that is nice and small, so he can grab it pretty easily.
Finally, we have The Pout Pout Fish.  I think I've talked about this book on the blog before.  We tend to read this one to him on days he is a little on the cranky side, but it often works to cheer him up. Spoiler alert - the fish does get happy at the end!
Overall we find he really does like stories that are engaging, a little faster pace, lots of color and fun words.  There are others I didn't mention like Brown Bear, Brown Bear and Goodnight Moon that have been favorites for awhile now.  He really loves the Curious George cartoon on TV and we now have a bedtime book based with George that he seems to like.  And again, you can't go wrong with Sandra Boynton.  I'm just so happy he enjoys being read to and flipping through his books - we hope that means he will be a good reader eventually!
Any moms care to share your kids favorite stories?  We could use another Christmas gift or two!

Nemours Reading BrightStart!

Thanks to a lovely blogging friend, I was referred to a program offered by Nemours (www.nemours.org) that they are launching called Reading BrightStart!  I had an opportunity to attend a webinar for bloggers introducing the program and brand new website and Nemours provided me with a Reading Readiness swag bag full of goodies for me to test out with Oliver, including several new books.
The Reading BrightStart! initiative is a program designed to help build great reading skills from birth up to age 8.  This new website launched by Nemours is fantastic and has many tools to help parents with activities, book suggestions, preschool screening and development by age.  There is also a section of articles for parents that cover a wide range of topics pertaining to reading development as well.
Nemours says they launched this program to help parents help their children.  In the promotional material I received, they are quoted as saying "parents are crucial in providing the building blocks for early childhood literacy." I could not agree more - both Nate and I were read to as children from a very young age by our parents and we both had above average speaking skills and reading levels by the time we began kindergarten.  
The Reading BrightStart website is extremely easy to navigate and I love that they break things down by age group.  I can go to the site and select a tab for 6-11 months, which is the age group that Oliver currently fits into, and it gives me a list of pre-reading milestones he should be achieving at this age and suggestions on ways to help these milestones along at home - as well as warning signs to be aware of if it were to appear he was not hitting these marks.  Thankfully he is doing well so far and is right on track for his age.  I look forward to using this site more and more as he grows as I feel it's an outstanding resource for reading readiness and development!
We are firm believers in reading in our home.  We have been reading to Oliver since he was born and while a big reason we do it each night and at naptime is to help him settle down for sleep, we also know that it is helping his brain develop and learn as he grows, even if it's just a simple Sandra Boynton book that we're reading to him.  And he loves it.  It makes my heart feel so happy that he does!  

If you are a parent of a child up to age 8, I highly recommend checking out the Reading BrightStart website (www.readingbrightstart.org) and I want to thank Nemours again for the opportunity to learn about this wonderful resource and for the awesome reading readiness swag bag - Ollie's new favorite book is Green Hat, Blue Hat by Sandra Boynton that we received thanks to the swag bag! 

Book Review - Jim Henson: The Biography

If you've been a reader of my blog from the beginning, you probably know I'm a huge Muppet fan.  And if you're a new reader, well, first of all welcome and secondly, you should know that I'm a HUGE Muppet fan.  I can't explain why other than they are something that resonated with me in childhood and I've loved them ever since.  The creator of the Muppets, Jim Henson, is one of my all time idols, heroes, what have you. And I cannot believe he's been gone from this world for 24 years.
Last year, a book was released that was the most comprehensive biography ever written on Jim Henson's life.  It is simply called Jim Henson: The Biography.  I knew this would be a must read for me and it went on my birthday list last year.  My sweet mother-in-law is a librarian and is always happy to purchase books as gifts, so this was one of my gifts from them.  And then a week after my birthday Oliver was born and my days of leisurely reading were interrupted for a bit!

I finally settled in to start reading the book sometime in January before I returned to work and well, it took me until this week to finish it.  Yes it took me seven months to read it.  There were several reasons for this and not all of them are because of Oliver!  It's a rather long, detailed account of his life.  When I said earlier that it is to date the most comprehensive biography of Jim Henson's life ever written, I mean it.  And while I love biographies and autobiographies and I love and adore Jim Henson - I could only read so much of this and then needed to switch to some fluff or something else for awhile.  But it still is a fantastic read and I'm so glad I had a chance to read it and that I own my copy so I could take the time to read it at my own pace.
It was written by Brian Jay Jones - an author who was simply a fan of the Muppets from the earliest days - and was quoted as saying "heck, why wouldn't I choose to write about this subject?"  He received great cooperation from the Henson family as he did research and interviews - and was even able to access some of Jim's personal journals that went from his youth to practically the day he died.  So, this book definitely covers everything about Jim's too brief life on Earth.  We learn a lot about his youth, his family and events that impacted him throughout his life.  His entire career is covered at length, including his own thoughts from his personal writings, things he was proud of and things he wish he had done better with. All of his work is covered from Sesame Street to Muppet movies to The Dark Crystal and beyond.  There is an entire chapter dedicated to the behind the scenes process of the deal he struck to sell the Muppets to Disney - mere weeks before he would pass away.  And finally the last chapter covers at length the events that led up to his untimely death in May 1990.  
The writing style is pretty approachable - again my only complaint, if you could call it that, is that there is SO much detail on each page.  While every word is fascinating, as I said before, sometimes I had to step away a bit due to information overload. Again, I'm not just a "casual" fan  but even I learned things I never knew before.  And after reaching the end, I'm just as sad as I was when he died that he is no longer with us.  
I think it's a worthwhile read if you are a Muppet fan like myself.  You may find yourself a little bit bored if you are not, but I think even the most casual of Muppet fans would appreciate things in this book.  I also think you could pick and choose what chapters you wanted to read, for example, if you find you mostly are interested in Jim's involvement in Sesame Street, you could simply read the chapter on the Sesame days.  I am sure that I will even go back and read bits and pieces at times, I'm sure I missed things on the first go round.  Overall my rating is two thumbs up!

Book Review: Eternally 21

Hey guys!  I decided to do a different sort of blog post today due to being off waiting in line for a CD that comes out once a year in our area (more on that tomorrow) and then to an OB appointment before coming into work.  So, I thought I'd give you a book review of a book I read this summer that I think some of you would get a kick out of!

The book is called Eternally 21 (A Mrs. Frugalicious Shopping Mystery) by Linda Joffe Hull.  I would describe it as kind of a fluffy sort of mystery.  It's a very entertaining read - and I'm not one who usually likes mystery or suspense.  This book has just enough of those elements while still being overall fun.

We're introduced to Maddie, a 40 something mother of twins whose husband is known as "Frank Finance" on a local news program.  Frank has lost all of their money in a ponzi scheme, but asks Maddie to help keep up appearances that everything is normal so he does not lose his job.  One way she does this is by starting a bargain blog and using the alias "Mrs. Frugalicious."

The book begins around back to school time and Maddie is heading to the mall to scope out bargain shopping tips for her readers.  She stumbles into an "Eternally 21" store (total play on Forever 21 I'm sure) and ends up accused of shoplifting by the store's very cranky manager after disagreeing over some coupons. Things get worse then when the manager ends up dying in front of Maddie and other staff members.  Before she knows it, Maddie finds herself being brought in as a potential suspect - and ends up sneaking around the mall questioning other employees to try to prove her innocence.  Of course, this all comes to a head right around the time her husband has an opportunity at a new television deal that could solve all of their financial woes - so she has to keep her problems under wraps at home which leads to some sticky situations there as well.

All throughout the book she gives her "Mrs. Frugalicious" tips which just made me laugh because of all the thrifty bloggers I know.  You'll all think she's preaching to the choir - and in fact I think we could teach her a thing or two about thrifty shopping.  Besides that though, she's a likeable character and you'll find yourself hoping beyond hope that she is found to be innocent.

Again, it's mostly fluff, but I think it has just the right amount of intrigue to keep it somewhat suspenseful and page turning!  I highly recommend it!  There are going to be other books to follow in this series, so I'm anxious to check those out as well!

For the love of Orange

So due to technical difficulties with my lousy camera, this is the only picture I got of my outfit today.  Sad panda.  Oh well. I wanted to share it because I learned that today is "Wear orange for bully awareness" and while I didn't originally choose this outfit for that reason, it's definitely a cause I can get on board with.

Shirt - Zulily

Dress as skirt - Merona, Target

Necklace - S&D

Shoes - Xhilaration, from Lori

I'm actually reading a fascinating YA book right now about the topic of bullying - it's called Eleanor and Park and it's very good and thought provoking.  I became interested in it when I learned that a school district in our county chose it as the summer read for teens,  but then parents got a hold of it and demanded it be banned because of language used in the book. The controversy went so far that a talk to be held with the author at one of our county libraries was actually cancelled.  I think it's a shame - it's a very good book so far even though I am only about halfway through it.  I think it's an important read and yes, there is some tough language, but it fits with the tone of the book.  I'll have more thoughts on this when I finish it I think.

And the other thing about orange?  I am still crazy in love with Orange is the New Black and we only have a few episodes left.  I am going to be in withdrawal when we finish that show!!  Have any of you watched it?