Coming back from an unplanned blogging hiatus to join the Currently linkup!
Fixing : Dinner a lot more lately! I’ve even (kind of) started meal planning. I want to try making more sheet pan dinners, so if anyone has recipes they enjoy, I’d love to hear them!
Hearing : Charlotte playing! She is playing independently a quite a bit, and it’s so fun to hear her playing with her toys. I just brought a box of my old Barbies from my parents’ house, and I’m getting them cleaned up. I can’t wait to hear her play with them!
Borrowing : More physical books from the local library. I used to only borrow electronic books, but I’m getting back into physical books lately!
Feeling : Grateful!!! We live in a town one county east of Nashville, and our county suffered a lot of damage from Tuesday morning’s tornadoes. Thankfully, our neighborhood didn’t have any damage; we have a lot of insulation in our yard from who knows where, and we lost power for about 16 hours, but we are healthy and safe, and that’s all that matters!!
Recommending : Local businesses, such as my chiropractor, dentist, and a shirt printing shop in the area. We frequent a lot of chain places (Target every Saturday…), but I’m trying to throw more business to the local folks!
It’s the (day after the…sigh) first Wednesday of the month, so it’s time to see what I’m currently up to!
Picking : Books to read for a couple of different upcoming book challenges. Book Challenge by Erin 11.0 released its categories on June 1, and my list for that one is slowly starting to take shape! I’m also going to participate in a challenge by abitaboutbooks on Instagram. It’s her #weread challenge and details can be found here!
Going : To work, home, Target, Walmart. That’s about as exciting as life is right now! 😉
Wishing : For a beach vacation! Fully funded, of course. Heck, since it’s wishing, let’s throw in a new wardrobe for the summer too!
I would not be sad to have this view again…
Wearing : Shorts and sandals! I’m not usually into either of those things because I’m self-conscious about my legs/feet/etc, but this year, I just decided to do what I wanted to, and if people don’t like it, meh on them!
Celebrating : Some fun activities coming up – going to see a live podcast show with my brother, Father’s Day, a luau with Charlotte’s former early intervention group, and WE’RE GOING TO SEE THE WIGGLES IN AUGUST!! Okay, that’s not June, and I have no reason to be so excited, but I totally am! Now watch Charlotte not enjoy it at all!
What are you currently up to? Leave a comment or link up with Anne to share what’s happening!
It’s the first Wednesday of the month, so it’s time to see what I’m currently up to!
Admiring : Pretty spring dresses! I used to have a lot more dresses, but I think they shrunk after sitting in the closet and being unworn for a while…or at least that’s my story for now! Amazon has some cute floral dresses (too lazy to link) and I’ve seen some cute ones in Walmart, of all places. I may have to use a small portion of my monthly “fun money” to start to replenish my dress collection!
Playing : Too many time-wasting games on my phone! I’ve got to delete them if I want to accomplish anything and get my act together!!!
Borrowing : Approximately 17,000 streaming audiobooks and eBooks from the Nashville library! Okay, maybe it’s just 10, but it feels like all of them are available for checkout at the same time, then I have to make the harrowing choice of which one I’ll start first!
Remembering : The early days with Charlotte. Google Photos keeps showing me pictures from the year she was born, and man, what a trip down memory lane!
It feels like she was just born sometimes! Look at that little face!!
Finishing : The academic year at work! Phew!! It’s been a heck of a year, and I’m glad to have a little bit of breathing room during the summer sessions.
1. Celebrate our family’s spring birthdays – We’ve almost done this one! We’ve got one more celebration for Charlotte coming up this weekend, and then we can check this one off the list! 🙂
2. Create a playroom for Charlotte – Not even close! The room still looks exactly the same as it has for the last couple of months! My mom and I are planning a joint garage sale in May, so I think after that, I can make some progress on this goal!
3. Finish a course – I haven’t even looked at any of my courses over the last few weeks. Sigh.
4. Go on an Easter egg hunt – Oh man, this one has been a doozy. It has rained every weekend for the last month! My work egg hunt got postponed and then cancelled. Another egg hunt we planned to go to got moved indoors, so we thought that wouldn’t be fun. This one was a failure, but Charlotte got 3 different Easter baskets yesterday, so I don’t think she’s hurting for candy/treats!
5. Participate in Rachel Cruze’s contentment challenge – I got the journal but don’t plan to start it until May 1 so I won’t be starting on a random day. I think I missed her challenge, but I’m still going to count this one as “in progress” since I’m starting soon!
6. Practice brush lettering – Not yet. I haven’t even thought about this one!
7. Spring Cleaning–Not yet, but I know that as we start moving things to the garage for the garage sale and decluttering, this one will start happening by default.
8. Take Charlotte to the Children’s Museum – We haven’t had a chance to do this one yet. April has been a really busy month, so we will plan a day in May or early June for this one.
9. Take Koopa to the Dog Bakery –We picked up a birthday treat for him from the bakery, but he wasn’t with us because we had been running other errands. I’m going to call this one a partially finished item until we take him somewhere else.
10. Walk a 5K – Not yet! My mom and I went on a short walk last week, and I realized that I have a lot of work to do before I’m ready to walk 3 consecutive miles. It’s hard for me not to feel discouraged since I used to be a lot more in-shape, but that doesn’t help anything!
So, that leaves me with one failure, two in-progress items, and seven not even started tasks. Eep! Here’s hoping that the other participants have fared better than I have so far!
Have you made a Spring Bucket List? How is your list going? Let me know in the comments or link up with your own post by clicking the button below.
I’m a couple of days late posting this one (and on a Saturday at that!), but I read an above average (for me) number of books this month so it took way longer than usual to get all of the links and pictures together. Oops!
It started out okay. Actually, it was decent enough that I texted my mom and asked her if she had read it because I thought I had remembered seeing it on her Goodreads feed. She gave me a vague answer, and as I got deeper into this book, I found out why.
This is easily the worst book of the year for me (and that’s saying A LOT after my review of Little Womenlast month!). The author is whiny and spoiled, and their solutions to problems are unrealistic. I don’t know what she was trying to achieve by writing this…unless it was to bore people to tears. I finished it just because I had hopes it would get better. Spoiler alert : it didn’t. Plus, there is a very uncomfortable, way too long section about goat breeding. You have been warned. Do not recommend to anyone with a pulse or eyes.
After the rough start to my reading my month, I was pleasantly surprised by this one! I know that it has received mixed reviews, but I really enjoyed it! It has a couple of twists to it, and I’m a sucker for books that have a “tying up the loose ends” epilogue. I would recommend this one to anyone who likes quirky mysteries!
I enjoyed this one too! I did have a bit of an embarrassing moment with it though. Will and I were out shopping one Friday evening when Charlotte was at my parents’ house for a sleepover, and we went to a game/comics store that he likes. I sat at some of their tables so I could read while he browsed, and the employee asked me what I was reading. No, it wasn’t awkward at all saying the title of this one and trying to summarize it! My own embarrassment aside, I would recommend this to anyone who likes YA books with smart and funny females. I haven’t watched the Netflix movie yet, but I plan to soon while the book is still kind of fresh in my mind!
Oh look, another one I really enjoyed! I didn’t know what this one was about, but I had seen it come up in a lot of these linkups, so I was eager to dive in, and it did not disappoint! Recommended for anyone who likes stories about family secrets or revenge.
The first book ended with a bit of a cliffhanger, so I was ready to see how it was resolved. Unfortunately, that was just about the most interesting part of this one. I know that I’m not the target audience for this book/series, but I didn’t enjoy this one nearly as much as To All The Boys…Recommended but only because once you’ve finished the first one, you’ll have to know how the issue at the end of it gets resolved!
I listened to this one, and it was narrated by Reese Witherspoon, which made me like it more than I probably would have if I had read it. It had some cool ideas in it, and I definitely enjoyed the southern topics, especially the section about Dolly Parton (side note, I ordered this shirt a couple of weeks ago, so I’m a bit of a Dolly fan!). Recommended for anyone who likes southern charm, hospitality, and/or Reese WItherspoon.
I liked this book a little better than the second one, but the first one is still my favorite of the trilogy. I did like the way some things were wrapped up in this one, and I would recommend it to everyone who wants to finish the series and know what happens to Lara Jean and company.
This one was recommended by one of our student workers, and I was interested since it takes place in Nashville and the topic was intriguing. It took me a while to get into it, but the last part of the book was pretty interesting. Recommended for those who like books about tough topics.
I don’t know why I checked this one out, but I’m not gonna lie…it was a little more than I could understand! It’s about multiverses, and there was a lot of science language in it, so I couldn’t keep up with what was going on sometimes. However, I wanted to finish it because there is a mystery in it that I wanted to see concluded. Recommended for fans of sci-fi…who might actually understand more of it than I did!
On the plus side, I taught an instruction session at work a couple of days after reading this, and one of the students said he was doing his research paper on multiverses, and thanks to this book, I knew what he meant! I think he was a little shocked that I could define it for him. In your face, random student!
Another mystery/story with a twist. I enjoyed this one, even though I saw a lot of Goodreads reviews that said they figured out what the twist was pretty early on in the story. I totally didn’t, so if you read this, let me know if you were on team figure it out or team what the heck happened (my team!). Recommended for fans of female-centric mysteries.
I listened to this one instead of reading it, and I think the audiobook made it seem much longer than just plain reading it would have been. I liked it, and Litt had some fun insights and stories from his time in Obama’s White House, but there were some sections that just dragged on and on for way too long. Recommended for anyone who likes to look behind-the-scenes at things or for anyone who needs a little dose of Obama in their lives!
My last book but definitely not the least this month! This book hooked me from the first page! I chose it for my six-word title category in the Erin 10.0 book challenge, but the only reason I chose it was because it had been recently returned at work and had the correct number of words in the title! I had no idea what it was about, but I’m glad I took a chance on it! Recommended for fans of science fictionish stories or unconventional love stories.
Phew! All of this book talk made me tired!
Total for the month : 12
Total for 2019 : 39
Have you read anything good lately? Leave a comment and let me know!
This book hooked me from the first page! I chose it for my six-word title category in the Erin 10.0 book challenge, but the only reason I chose it was because it had been recently returned at work and had the correct number of words in the title! I had no idea what it was about, but I’m glad I took a chance on it! Recommended for fans of science fictionish stories or unconventional love stories.