Morning!  The best laid plans right?  In my head I was going to be up and at work by 6 am this morning.  I was going to have many things ready as I start training my replacement this week (yes, I am morphing my position at work – a good thing, no worries).  However, instead I slept like a log and didn’t open my eyes until moments ago.

Yes I have heard of alarm clocks.

Annoying things…. I don’t recommend them.  😛

Anyway I can not even tell you all the balls I have in the air right now because, well I just do not have the time – BUT before I fly out the door I had to have coffee and coffee means I write this post…. because this is my sanity moments of the day.

And I need this.

Like a vitamin.

The weekend was fantastic, I had so much fun at the Book Festival and I do plan on fitting that in again next year.  It’s hard to imagine what this was going to be like as the only “festival” related to books I have been to prior to this weekend was BEA, and well – you just can not compare the two.  Now that I have seen it, I know how I can do it better next year.  For one, I would be sure to sit in on several of the panels so I can hear what these bookish people have to say.

As I fly out the door there are a few pics I did not use in my weekend posts and I wanted to add them because they are just fun.

That’s it – I am out!  Have a lovely day everyone!

Good Morning!  I am still in the hotel in Minneapolis, but barely.  I am packed and ready to go out the door as soon as this post goes up.  However – first something totally random.

A confession.

You may remember that during BBAW (Book Blogger Appreciation Week) a few weeks ago I did a giveaway a day for the event.  The giveaways were for a few of my favorite things (yes, yes… cue the music…).  I did a giveaway with a large bar of Lindor Truffles.  Mmmmm hmmm…… Lindor Truffles.

Anyway, my winner and I were chatting last week and I had to apologize for the delay in my shipping as well as explain what happened.

I …

uh…..

ate her prize.

……

Twice.  🙄

Yes.  I ate the first one…. bought a second one, that night ate that one…. and when I bought the third I had the mailing package ready to go so I could purchase it and pop it in the bag and then the post office without having any time alone at all with the chocolate.

I guess that’s what happens when you try to give away your favorite things.  😳

Yesterday I had a blast hanging out with different Book Bloggers.  Reagan from Miss Remmer’s Reviews and I started our morning at a wonderful coffee shop by the event and met us with Kim from Sophisticated Dorkiness, Ash from English Major’s Junk Food, and Alea from Pop Culture Junkie.  We had fun talking books and blogs before we walked over to the big event.

So much fun!  Right away Alea found herself in line for a book signing with Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.  I have never read any of these books, but found the price to be right so purchased the first book.  SQQUUEE!!!

As the day went on I had the chance to talk to a few other authors I have read/and or reviewed.  I seen Colin Sokolowski, author of The Accidental Adult.  I didn’t get a chance to get a picture with him, but I did have a chance to talk to him about his book and how it was going.

Here are other connections I made throughout the day.

For lunch, Joanne from Jo Jo Loves To Read was able to join us.  We also met up with Liz from Consumed By Books and she was a new blog for me to check out, which I spent time on last night thinking it was brilliant.

I hope you check out all of these amazing bloggers I linked to here this morning.  We had so much fun.

I will post later when I get home about the panel!  Saving that one for a separate post 😀

Good Morning from the Twin Cities!  I am in our hotel room with Reagan (Miss Remmer’s Reviews) HELLO PEOPLE!!!!!

(If you had any idea how many times I repeated HELLO PEOPLE and waved to my computer screen while trying to think of what to write next…..  )  😛

ANYWAY…

Last night Reagan and I met up with Joanne from Jo Jo Love’s To Read along with her lovely daughter, and Michelle from Red Headed Book Child.  We ate at a lovely restaurant called Caio Bella and had a great discussion around books, and blogging, and whatever else we could think of.  What a blast!  Thanks girls!  That was so fun!!!

Today… errrr… now, we are off to coffee to find Kim from Sophisticated Dorkiness and Ash from English Majors Junk Food and Alea from Pop Culture Junkie. Then…. the Book Festival!  WOO HOO!!!!

GAH!  I mean… morning!  I have been packing this morning and getting ready to leave for the cities right after work.  This means instead of planning my morning time with you, I have spent it finding my camera charger, a sweater, something casual, something nice…. GAH!

HOWEVER – before I run out the door to the gym I wanted to stop, have a half of cup of coffee (yes – that is unheard of I know!) and share with you this event going on right now:

I stumbled on to this and unfortunately have not had a lot of time to explore it so I can not tell you all lot about it, however I can give you the website so if you care to you can check it out.  It sounds interesting to me.  It is called The  Novel:  Live!

That’s my time.  I will try to stop in on Twitter tonight once I am in the hotel room and settled in the cities.  Twitter ID:  bookjourney

I will give updates throughout the weekend of whats happening at the festival.

G’ Mornin’!  We are here again!  This week has flown by so quickly!  I had such great plans of what I would get done earlier this week and now…. here it is Thursday and between work, work outs, and meetings…. yeah.  I pretty much have accomplished nothing.

Tomorrow after work I leave for the cities to meet up with Reagan (Miss Remmer’s Reviews) and throughout the weekend, 5 other book bloggers from around the area.  That will be fun.  We will all be at the Twin Cities Book Festival and just yesterday I received questions from the panel I will be on:

1.  What do you see as the biggest change to reading and books of the last 5 years? Please name one good and one bad.

2. Based on that, what is the biggest challenge to what you do each day as a books professional/avid hobbyist?

3. What needs to change for the book business to be all it can be?

4. How do you personally decide what to read next? What is your “reading strategy?”

There are great questions and I would to hear your take on these if you have any.   I am excited and nervous to be on this panel.  I know it will be a lot of fun and I am hopeful that all the book bloggers I am with have a chance to meet some incredible authors and publishers.

I have to run… this cold, or virus, or whatever I have going on has run me down to the point I am sleeping later and not having as much time in the morning as I usually do to hang out and enjoy that extra cup of coffee.  😛

Have an awesome day everyone!

😀

Good Morning!  Wednesday already can you even believe it?  I feel like the days are flying by and now I am only two days out from going to the Twin Cities for the Book Festival and Book Blogger Meet Up!  WOW!  I will talk more on that yet this week 🙂

Last night my book club met and reviewed The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.  Every October we read a Classic and this year we thought it would be fun to wear old-time hats.  My search went on after work yesterday where my goal was to go for the whole look.  We have two great second-hand stores in town and my first stop found me the best shoes for the look – in fact they looked a lot like the shoes on the book cover which to me was “SQQQQUUUUEEEEE” worthy.

However, my first stop had nothing for vintage hats.  SO…. I hit the second stop (one of my faves) and they had MANY vintage hats.  So I grabbed a couple of dresses and about five hats and of to the dressing room I went.  I left with the hat you will see in the pictures and a dress that you will not.  The dress was so awesome – black with a pick trim and lace around the bottom, it would have been perfect but was a size to small.  It was so cute and I can use it in the future and was such a low price that I could not pass it up (plus now it is an inventive!).  Maybe with a little luck by Halloween we can see that dress!  Or, err….. shortly after.  😛

We had a wonderful meeting and good food.  The way we choose our books for our next read is that we each are allowed to nominate one book.  Then we go around and we each get two votes and the book that receives the most votes wins.  This was our nominations:

The Boticelli Secret by Marina Fiorato

The Butterfly Garden by Chip St. Clair

The Recipe Club by Andrea Israel

The Wishing Trees by John Shors

Rough Country by John Sanford

Everything is Beautiful by Katherine Center

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

The Help by Katherine Stockett

I know right?  Look at that selection!  It was so hard to choose!  A few of these are currently on my shelf to be read!  The winning vote went to The Boticelli Secret.  That will be our November Bookies book club read.

I am off to work and then Group Power and tonight a planning meeting for Honduras.  It’s hard to believe out trip is really only about 6 weeks out.

I will leave you with a couple of pics from last night.  This is not the entire book club, just the ones who wore hats.

Have a super Wednesday everyone!  😀

Morning.  I am feeling a little ill.  I am hoping to shake it as I work today, and have book club tonight.  Every October we read a classic and this years pick is Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.  We are all suppose to wear an old-time hat in honor of the classics, but I am really hoping I can pull off a whole classic ensemble. As of this moment however, I do not even have a hat.  😛

“Hello?”

“This is procrastination calling.  Congratulations!  You are our number one customer!”

*sigh*

I love that our book club likes to take things to the next level and it makes for great memories of our discussions and our year-end reviews.   I must be a team player.

Today after work I will take a buzz through a local thrift store and see if they have anything that inspires me.  If I could come up with something like this I would be thrilled:

Ok I am out of here.  Have a super day and hopefully tomorrow I will feel awesome and have something way more intelligent (or at least funny) to say.  😛

Mornin….. *groping to find coffee cup*.  How ya’ all doin’?  *said in a deep froggy voice like I had smoked a pack of cigarrettes*  (Apparently when I am tired I abbreviate any word I can).

Here is my recap of the Read-A-Thon.  It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed just sitting aside a day of no big commitments other than to relax at home and read.  I didn’t plan well on the snacks and by early afternoon I ran to the grocery store for a little variety of good reading snacks, however I listened to audio there and back so I was still “plugged in”.

I started out strong and was cleaning up a few partial reads I had going.  By the time I got to SOLD by Patricia McCormick I was laying down and well… yeah… I fell asleep about 4 pm until about 4:30.  Woke up, finished the read and then made dinner and chatted with hubby for about an hour.

I ended with The Bell Jar and read that until I crashed again on the couch and this time knew I was done.  I got up and went to bed.

So over all, I completed 5 books and half of the 6th.  The Bell Jar is my book club read for our Tuesday meeting so that will be my focus this afternoon.  It is our classic read that we do every October so I need to also search for a classic hat to wear to this review.

During the Read-A-Thon I was able to get out and visit a few blogs, but not many as I was focusing on the reading.  I participated in some of the challenges and was a winner in one!  😛

Later I hope to pop over and see some of the new people who stopped by to say hi and “you go girl”.  A special thanks to Jill and her Cheerleader Squad – I think I was cheered for about  6 times throughout the event and that was pretty cool.

And since this song has been in my head every time I felt like quitting yesterday – I will pass it on to you and hopefully it will get stuck in your head and I will be set free.

Well… that’s my time… shower and off to Church.

Have a super Sunday everyone!!!

Good morning!  COFFEE CUP is in my hand, and have masked my face (for no other occasion than I am home and going anywhere for a while so why not?)

Yesterday I had a wonderful evening with my friends Cindy, Heidi, and Sara.  We went to St. Cloud which is about an hour away and shopped a little bit and then ate at Mongo’s before we came back home.  YUM!!!

Today is the Dewey Read-A-Thon if you were totally unaware of it – it’s not too late to pop over to the site and add your name to the 300+ readers today.  It’s pretty exciting!  I have an assortment of partially read books that I hope to work my way through today as well as a couple I have been waiting a long time to start.  I know I am planning big… but I can dream right?

I will put up a post shortly here that I will update throughout the day.   I will let you know what I am reading – what I have finished, pages… and maybe a few other randoms that I will change out throughout the day.

Oops!  8 minutes to go time… I need a coffee refill and to prep my starting post 🙂

Have a wonderful day everyone – I hope you get in a bit of reading time too 🙂