Life | Midwestern At Heart

Book Review: Talking as Fast as I Can – Lauren Graham

After reading about the Mitchell Sisters, I decided to sidestep and read about Lauren Graham. Some interesting things about this book…

I started it years ago.
It was actually bought for my hubby to read. He’s a Lauren Graham fan.
His favorite tv series was Gilmore Girls.
Hubby bought it on audiobook.
He and I were going through it at the same time. Although he may have finished it just before I did…
I actually read this from a hardback book, not off Kindle.
She reads her own audiobook.

Sometimes I start books and read more than one at a time because I get tired of a particular genre. It’s just something I do. If you go read my GoodReads it shows I’m reading more than one book. Honestly, right now I’m reading just 1 book, but still. (more…)

Book Review: Black Roses – Samantha Christy

Wow… If I wasn’t drawn into the other books (which just so you know, I was) this one really got my attention. Holy wow. Holy yum! I was interested to see the storyline for this sister. She made brief appearances in the other books but she was traveling Europe with her friend Charlie. She refused as best she could to come back to the states. Okay, cool… but why. Wow, the why was a little predictable but a little shocking at the same time. Especially at the end. Holy wow!

Black Roses – Samantha Christy (a Mitchell Sisters Trilogy)

HER SECRETS ARE UGLY.
They’ve kept her from coming home.
Now she’s risking everything to return.

She thought it would be a quick trip. Show up. Say the right words. Then she’d be gone. (more…)

Book Review: White Lilies – Samantha Christy

Ah, finally, the next book in the trilogy. And I was right. We were able to learn about the middle sister without losing the first sister. Whew! I don’t have to be sad quite yet about losing my characters. I do have to say, this book threw me for a loop thought. A rather nice/odd loop.

White Lilies – Samantha Christy (A Mitchell Sisters Trilogy)

HER SELFLESS ACT.
Her best friend’s husband.
A twist of fate.

They wanted her to have their baby.
She was never supposed to fall in love with him
… or was she?

A story about unconditional love, heartbreaking loss, and undying friendship. (more…)

Life Lately…

And just like that, it’s the middle of June. I have now slept in my house, overnight, 2 times. WHAT?!?! When did that happen? Well, I’m glad you asked. It happened Friday and Saturday night. Now, here we are Sunday night and I’m sitting in bed at my house. I was in the shower a few minutes ago reminiscing the last couple of months. Wow, it has been a whirlwind.

We have had tball practice, tball games, ended tball, made a trip to Kansas City for a weekend, made a trip to Kansas City for a day, had the last dance class for the year, had dance rehearsal, had dance recitals, had dance pictures, had tball pictures, bought furniture, put said furniture together.

The furniture consisted of (but not limited to) 3 desks, 3 beds, 6 chairs, 1 bench, 1 coat rack, 1 coat bench, 1 storage bench, 2 bookshelves, 1 vacuum cleaner, and whatever else I’m forgetting.

We have slept in our house, put pictures on the wall, restained a floor, put down new flooring, replaced tiles, found new tiles to replace, washed umpteen million loads of dishes, washed 548,912 loads of laundry, most of which happened this previous weekend.

Then we ended preschool, had preschool graduation postponed, had preschool graduation canceled, had flooding, had tornadoes, had more rain, had severe thunderstorms, driven into severe thunderstorms, hid in the basement during tornado warnings, started summer school, about to finish summer school and then… (more…)

Book Review – Purple Orchids – Samantha Christy

Earlier this year I debated giving up my Kindle Unlimited subscription. I wasn’t sure if I was even going to use it again. When you are so wrapped up in home remodeling… Well, we’re closer to being done than not… I hope. So I went on the hunt for a book to read. I had just finished The Beach House and that’s when I saw this. It’s part of a Trilogy, the Mitchell Sisters. I decided to bite. Oh, boy was I glad I did!

I like many different genres of books but WOW… this might have it’s own. Okay, truthfully I think it is put in as a romance and boy did it heat things up. We’ll leave it at that… mmmmk? (more…)

Book Review – The Beach House – Mary Alice Monroe

I am a huge fan of Hallmark movies. Yes, they tend to be totally predictable, but I love them. With all the turmoil in the world, it is nice to watch these movies and just relax. I laugh every Christmas when the drinking game appears. You know, the one that says do this if you see this person in a movie or find someone with this name, etc. You’d definitely be drunk by the end of like 5 minutes. Okay, maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. Ha!

Last year at Mother’s Day The Beach House premiered. In fact, I haven’t seen it since, but that doesn’t mean anything. I recorded it to watch at a later date. Here is where I tell you it was a really good movie. I did find out however that it was based on a book by Mary Alice Monroe, so I went on the hunt for the book. Turns out it was in the Kindle Unlimited app, so I took the opportunity to read it.

If you’ll notice, my last book ended in January. So doesn’t this look funny that it is now April? Well, this was an extremely good book but it was hard for me to get into. It was interesting to see the similarities and the differences, book to film. They always say the books are better and I think this was the case. Although I pictured the movie characters as I was reading the book. (more…)

Just Retired Tiered Cake (Vanilla)

Just Retired Tiered Vanilla Cake

I sure hope you didn’t try to come to my blog last week. I woke up on Wednesday and would have sworn it was April Fool’s Day (by the way, I hate that day). When I came to the blog, it redirected me to some weird website.

It was trying to get me to click on a button to back up my Window’s machine. Well joke’s on them because I don’t have a window’s machine. But whatever. Anyway…

Over the weekend, I was able to knock 2 things off my Baking/Cooking Bucket List. I made a tiered cake which I haven’t done since I took cake decorating classes. And 2, I made a mirror glaze cake.

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Thoughts

Earlier this week when I jumped on Facebook, I saw some live feed about how the Greek’s were celebrating the Orthodox Passover or bringing it in or something. I equate it to Ash Wednesday but I could be wrong there… I don’t know. Truthfully, I have Greek blood in me and wish to know more, but at this point in time I just don’t.

So in the live feed they had dyed flour, blues, pinks, reds, greens. I’m not sure if that is signifcant, remember, I just stated I don’t know much about their traditions. And they were marching through the streets throwing flour. Personally, I thought, wow, that’s cool I want to know more.

I truthfully love learning about other cultures. I remember in my junior high school History class, we actually spent a couple months looking at all the different world religions. Now, when people hear religion and school they throw a fit, but he wasn’t pushing religion on us, he was informing us about all religions. Now not all, because hello we didn’t have that much time, but there were quite a few. I specifically remember, Judaism, Christianity, Islam/Muslim, Atheists, Catholicism, and I think there were a couple more, but remember that was back in Spring 2000.

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Mother Nature is Off Her Meds

I swear! So you know there’s also a Meme going around facebook that says something to the affect, Mother Nature is having a fight, storms out of the room, and then storms back in “And One More Thing.” Yeah, I believe that meme is true on so many levels.

The stupid ground hog (I know, don’t pick on the ground hog) predicted an early spring. It’s a known fact though that he’s only right 40% of the time when he predicts that… just saying.

The night that I went up to paint my bathroom, I hopped out of the truck, not like I was jumping out on dry pavement or anything… I actually hopped out slowly because it was icy out and bam, my butt hit the ground, my right arm slammed into the door, and my left arm caught me with the help of my running board on my truck.

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Book Review: Smokin’ Seventeen – Janet Evanovich

So last year Good Reads prodded me to challenge myself to read X number of books. That number could be anything I wanted. So I bit and chose 12. Well… here we are in the next year. By the way, I challenged myself to 12 books last year. I’d like to brag on myself and say I surpassed that. Yey! Go me!!

So this year it encouraged me to do the same challenge. I thought, well… last year I read 17, so how about challenging myself to 13. Ha! Yup, that was my thought process. I challenged 12 last year so I just added one… why not. There really wasn’t a real reason behind my thought process… But we are remodeling our house so I didn’t know if I would even have time. I mean I have the next year, but how long this remodel will take is anyone’s guess.

Anyway, this one started like December 28 or something… but since I finished it this year, hello, it counts as 1/13 books. (more…)