Happy Easter

It’s been a great Easter weekend. I had Friday off work so I took my 3 year old nephew to the park during the day. It really was a perfect spring day. We walked around the duck pond and threw sticks and rocks into the water.

Today after church, I went to my sister’s house for family dinner. It has been kind of rainy today, but that didn’t stop us from going outside. My niece started playing volleyball on a team this year and they have a net up in the yard so my brother and I played with Livi for a while. LOL we are getting old. It’s not as easy as it used to be. The wet grass didn’t help. After it dried out a bit I jumped on the trampoline with the younger kids. I’m going to be feeling my knees tomorrow.

Apples and Pears

I had my final oral surgery a month ago. At least, it had better be the final. Ha ha…. Anyway, trying to find soft foods I could eat had me making applesauce in my Instant Pot. Oh my gosh, it was good!!!  I have to say I’m not the biggest fan of cooked fruit, so pies and cobblers are something I can easily pass on. This applesauce was just apples, cinnamon, and a little lemon juice and honey. It was like eating apple pie filling but so much better. I will definitely be making it again.

So last night I was looking in my fridge and I still had a vanilla Greek yogurt which I’m not a big fan of that particular flavor. I also had some pears that were going to go bad if I didn’t eat them. So I made baked pears. And…..they were so good! LOL – I really love cinnamon. The recipe said serve with ice cream if you want, but I didn’t have any so I decided to save some for breakfast to eat with my yogurt. Yum! It made a really good breakfast. And it was filling. Now I’ve been rethinking the whole cooked fruit thing, or at least apples and pears. I do like to eat them raw, but now I have some new, healthy ways to eat fruit when I get tired of plain. Sometimes you just need to mix things up a bit.

I’m just really happy it all turned out. I’m really not much of a cook so I always feel so good when I find a recipe that makes me feel like I can actually make good food. Or as one of my favorite food blogger says a Rockstar in the kitchen.

Blue Skies and Sunshine

Spent a great day with 2 of my nieces. We went to SL to see the Utah Symphony and Ballet West II perform Peter and the Wolf.  The girls said they liked it. I know I did. I think they did a fanstastic job.   But then, I’ve loved the music for years. Having the dancers dressed up like the characters during the narration was so much fun though.

Then a little lunch and shopping over at City Creek. Sitting by the fountains in the sunshine was just perfect. It’s a little cool but it felt like spring.

Febrary Odds and Ends

It’s February so birthday shopping month can officially begin. I want to get it done early since I scheduled my (hopefully) last oral surgery for 3 days after my actual birthday and then I’m going to be miserable and won’t be able to eat anything. I’ve decided on 3 or 4 places to donate some money and then I think I’m going to buy myself a new bed. It’s time for the old one to go. I think I’m going to go to a few bookstores with my niece also. I’ve already gotten myself a few puzzles. The bed is kind of major so I don’t know that I’ll do too much more but that is definitely plenty.

In other news, after my trip last December I decided I needed a change in my hairstyle. I didn’t want anything drastic but still wanted it to be enough different that it was a change. So I grew my bangs longer, then had my stylist cut more bangs so they go back a little bit farther. LOL – that was a bit of a shock to get used to, even though it was what I wanted. Then I kept the layers and cut it back to shoulder length. There has been some growing pains trying to figure out how to style my bangs but I’m happy with the change. On days like today where everything worked and I like the way it looks, I’m so happy I went with it. I have had a few complements, but I like it and that’s what matters to me.

Puzzles

Growing up, my family did puzzles. A lot of them through the years. I have great memories of Christmas break from school and we'd do puzzle after puzzle. My mom would just cover the table with a tablecloth and we'd keep them out for weeks. Friends and family would come to visit and just pull up a chair and start doing them with us. The Charles Wysocki ones were my dad's favorite and became a family favorite. Then as I moved out and got older I lost interest. I couldn't sit still for that long and didn't have the patience for all those little pieces. Even so, when my parents cleaned out their house before they moved, I still took about 6 of them for nostalgia's sake. The year my dad died my mom and sister and I did a puzzle for dad at Christmas and that was the first time I'd done one in a long time.


Then right after Christmas, I was at the store with my sister and saw a 500 piece Charles Wysocki puzzle and bought it on a whim. I cleaned off my table and put it together in a couple of hours on New Year's Day. It was fun. Since then, I've bought a couple more and I've had a puzzle out nonstop. I branched out and bought a few that are not Charles Wysocki. My dad would be shocked. :)  I prefer the 500-750 piece range because they fit on my table nicely but maybe one of these days I'll go get down one of the 1000 piece ones I took from home. I've got a few more on my wish list for my birthday. Who would have thought I'd be loving doing puzzles again? Not me, that's for sure.

Best Books of 2018

Another year, another list of my favorite books...

I read 127 books this year. Officially. Unofficially, I’d add at least 20 books to that number. I caved and got a Kindle Unlimited subscription and started using Overdrive a lot more so I borrowed lot of books I wouldn’t normally read, just to try them. Since I skimmed parts in a lot of them, I didn’t always count it as “read”. Anyway, back to the official list. There are 4 classics and 4 non-fiction on the list. I was going to say that’s 8 books out of my comfort zone reading, and maybe it is, but I think it’s more that I’m realizing that I do like a bigger variety of books, even though I definitely have my favorite genres. Even more surprising is that some of these made my best of list.

Lake Silence – Anne Bishop
I absolutely love the world of The Others and will be so sad when she’s finished writing these books.

From Sand and Ash – Amy Harmon
Lots of tears for this historical fiction set during WWII.

Frederica – Georgette Heyer
This one left me chuckling and I really liked it. I just always want a little more from her romances.

Parnassus on Wheels - Christopher Morely
Such a cute, feel good story about a woman who up and leaves her dreary life to run a mobile library.

The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan-American Highway – Teresa Bruce
This one is a travel memoir that I just loved. I should read more travel books.

The Opposite of You – Rachel Higginson
This is one of the books I couldn’t quit this year. I kept coming back to it for comfort re-reading.

White Night - Ellie Marney
I love EM's writing. This book had me hooked from the beginning because Bo was such a nice guy.

Rough Justice – Kelley Armstrong
Pretty much everything I loved about the series is in this novella, plus none of the things that drove me crazy.

Lethal White – Robert Galbraith
I binge read this series and while parts of it were frustrating, I really liked it and this last book, so far, was great.

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster – Jon Krakauer
I was riveted by this tale, even though it happened over 20 years ago, it’s still an amazing and horrifying story.

Wait For It – Mariana Zapata
This is the other book I couldn’t quit. Huge book hangover. I haven’t actually stopped reading it since the first time.


Ghost Hunter series - Jayne Castle
I binge read a ton of Jayne Castle this year thanks to Overdrive and I can't say they are great literature, but I don't regret it a bit. I even bought my favorite to keep.


Spinning Silver - Naomi Novik
This one frustrated me a bit during the reading, although I swallowed the last 200 pages in a binge. Then I couldn't stop thinking about it.


Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand - Carla Kelly
I started reading CK this year and she wrote some fantastic romances. The characters in this one actually talk to each other a lot.

This Fallen Prey - Kelley Armstrong
This series just keeps getting better and better. I'm so ready for the next book to hit the shelves in 2019. Just in time for my birthday!

Merry Christmas

The good news: we got snow last night! I had about 3 inches on my driveway this morning and it's still coming down. It will be a white Christmas after all.

I was playing Christmas songs on my piano yesterday after church and I ran across the song The Christmas Waltz. I don't remember all the lyrics but the one line "It's that time of year when the world falls in love" got me to thinking about the Christmas's of my childhood and what a magical time it used to be. As opposed to now as a grown up living by myself and dad's gone and mom lives in a different house. I'm not saying it's bad now. But there is definitely a magic about Christmas when you are young. At least there was for me. It wasn't just presents. It was all the traditions of the holidays, from candy making and popcorn cakes, to puzzles, and family and friends. LOL - we still do a lot of that now. I don't know why being an adult makes it feel so different.

Regardless, I'm looking forward to the festivities tonight. My family is having a laid back dinner together and then we'll do presents. I made mom's sugar cookies for dessert. They are the shape of Christmas trees and snowmen and I made frosting so we can decorate them before we eat them. Then tomorrow I'm going to take it easy and enjoy the day off.