Here I am in Minneapolis… enjoying my coffee with my good friend Suzette. We leave for the conference in 15 minutes. We had a great night last night…. ate a wonderful dinner at Jake’s Restaurant with 4 of the other girls in our group.
Off to the Excel Center for a morning of music, books, inspirational messages, and fun! I will be back this afternoon with updates pictures – and I am sure a book or two.
Today I am up and packed! After I finish at the office at 2 pm, I am coming back home and my friend Suzette is picking me up to head to St Paul for The Women of Faith Conference. This will be my fourth year in a row attending and it is so much fun! Great speakers, music and many of the speakers have books so I get to do a little book shopping as well!
This year I will be attending with 22 girls from our area. I usually pick up a set of group tickets the previous year and then sell them to friends and acquaintances. In 2007 and 2008 we had 36 girls each time, with the economy the tickets were a harder sell this year and so we have a smaller group.
Tonight we are in a hotel – hanging out, hot tubbing and hopefully I will sneak in some reading as well. Tomorrow starts the conference and then it ends on Saturday at 4 pm and we head back this way. Laptop and Coffee Cup will be attending as well so I will be active all weekend.
If you have ever wondered about Women of Faith conferences, I highly recommend them. They travel all over (see map here) and it is just a light hearted, funny at times, and positively high energy weekend! Last year we were jumping up and down to Jodi C Mullen.This year we have Steven Curtis Chapman, “American Idol” finalist Mandisa, Nicole C. Mullen, Sandi Patty, Lisa Whelchel (from TV’s “The Facts of Life”), Sheila Walsh, Patsy Clairmont, Marilyn Meberg, Luci Swindoll, and more!
I will be around today and throughout the weekend. I have reviews that must (must!) be posted! Have a wonderful day!
Only a few minutes this morning as I am now back to being alone in the mornings as Chance has gone back home after
his month stay with us. No more rushing to the school by 8 am each morning, no more getting up to get a cup of coffee and he is already waiting for me at the table, no more 14 year old under foot every day at 3:30 pm asking what I am doing as I read or blog or….
yeah. I miss him already.
So this morning holding on to Coffee Cup and basking in the fact that it is 8:30 and I am still sitting at the table wondering how much longer I can push the getting out out the door to get to the office by 9:00 am…. ahhhh quiet mornings! I haven’t blog hopped a whole lot this morning as I had a review to post for a tour and had a couple finishing touches to put on it. I actually had two that were due up today, so if you have a moment, please check them out:
Football Is For Lovers (yup. I was a bit surprised on this one too)
The Financial Lives Of The Poets (a laugh out loud look at one persons financial destruction and his attempts to get it back)
Last nights book club was a lot of fun and a lot of great food! We reviewed A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and it was a great discussion. I am going to post that review tomorrow as I already have the two reviews up today. Oh – and yes, I still need to post my fall recipe that I mentioned in yesterdays meandering…. this afternoon I should be able to do that 🙂
Have a great day all!
Tonight is my book club review of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. I had procrastinated on reading this book and wound up 
cranking out about 4 1/2 hours of reading late last night to finish for today. Tonight everyone meets at my house for a potluck meeting based on foods in the book… my favorite meetings! Thanks to a little help from Natasha at Maw Books, I will be serving Minestrone and I think Straka as well since I am in charge of the main dishes tonight – it will be fun to see what everyone else brings!
Speaking of recipes… my meandering this morning was over to My Friend Amy’s blog where she is having a Fall Recipe Exchange. Fall is just the season for foods that bake and things that simmer on the stove… I think there is nothing like walking into a home that has just baked bread, or pie, or has had a big pot of yummy soup on all day and that house is filled with mouth water ing scents…
Ok… now I am hungry! 🙂 Have a great recipe for this time of year? Stop over to My Friend Amy’s and add it to her linky – oh and be sure to check out all the other recipes as well. I hope to put mine up later today….
Have a wonderful day all! I will be touching base again in a couple hours when my Tuesday post goes live and then again later today with a recipe and possibly a giveaway post!
Coffee Cup and I were sitting here at the table this morning thinking about the next couple of weeks and plans for the “while I am away” posts. While putting some thoughts down on paper I was also thinking about how I do book reviews and what I can do to jazz them up a bit. I currently start with a one line sentence that sums up some feelings I had on the book…. its like my signature trade mark or something. Then I have the book cover and the book information… then my thoughts on the book, and I finish with author information and links to author websites, blogs, etc…
There are two things I have been considering adding to my reviews.
1. I would like to add a section called “What did I learn?” It is a staple question in our book club discussions and I am surprised I hadnt thought to add it to my reviews here. Fiction or non fiction – there is always something you learn while reading… it could be a new word, how to do something (or how not to do something), it could be a fact about a city or state or animal…. in the case of my recent review of Swimsuit, I learned that you never NEVER open a door for anyone who says they are delivering flowers to you! (LOL)
2. The second thing I thought would be fun is to have what I call…”the book in action”. Not just the cover pic… but also one of my copy… if I read it on a boat, or on the deck, by a camp fire or in my chair…
So that is what the Coffee Cup and I are up to this morning…. trying to plan ahead and to imrove on what we already have going to keep this little corner of the internet up to date and hopefully interesting… 🙂
I woke up this morning to something I am just not ready for…. something I am not sure I am ever really ready for….. but it is what it is…
Snow
I cant remember having snow this early before. I am kind of just fighting the urge to turn around and go back to bed and see if it is all just some sort of wild dream. Yet … with Coffee Cup in hand… I stare out the window and know it is all too real.
This morning I am off to Breezy Point (about 20 miles) to set up for our Missions Banquet that takes place tonight. We have a great Silent Auction this year with a Spa Package, A golf package, and we also have tickets “on the glass” to different Wild games. Should be fun! If I have time I have a post coming up yet today about books and covers…. I will be interested in hearing from readers about that.
Have a great day – stay warm wherever you are!
How pathetic is this blog this week? 🙂 I mean seriously… the last few days all I have had time to post is my meanderings….. today I have a low key afternoon – I should be able to catch up on the review that should have went up yesterday, giveaways that need to end…
ANYWAY…. This morning I am driving Chance to school and it is 28 degrees. 28! I am wearing a long sweater jacket that I am hoping makes me look super cool like Neo in The Matrix (but of course more feminine).
I think it is funny that 28 degrees today is nothing like 28 degrees in March. Now I am wining that I should have started the Durango earlier so it would have been warm when we got in. I have the heat on and the windowns up tight. I complain all the way out of the driveway about the cold and how Minnesota and I are not friends at this time of year.
On the flip of that…. after a long Minnesota winter of temperatures dipping way below zero, icy roads, shoveling sidewalks and the decks…. 28 degrees in March is like a heat wave. I am outside that time of year in capris and a t shirt…. loving the crisp after winter sun and praising all things that are green or soon to be green.
I took a picture of this gorgeous tree on my way through town this morning…. perhaps looking at it occasionally will help me get through the long cool (who am I kidding?) COLD days ahead….
Whats the weather like in your corner of the world?
Never really completed what I had hoped to yesterday. Busy day… went to a poorly done movie last night, All About Steve. Yikes. A little funny…. but really not so much.
I was mentioning on Twitter last night that I am in a reading slump….the books I had prepped to read this week all feel heavy… does that make sense? I am sure they are great reads… I think its me. I think I have Readers Block….;) With the business of the banquet this weekend and Chance with us and everything… I just think my mind isn’t wrapping around some of these books.
Last night I picked up a different book from my shelf…. Receive Me Falling by Erica Robuck. I cautiously opened it and read the first few pages. When I put it down for the night, I knew I wanted to know the what next… “Whew!” That’s a good thing! Hopefully that will break up the readers block…..
Today I work, then spend the rest of the day prepping the auction baskets for our Missions Banquet that takes place this Saturday. Hopefully the baskets wont take all night! I have now been up for two hours… still unprepared for my day – just getting the last of the payroll in and hoping to sneak in a few minutes here to prep this post and make sure my review is ready to roll yet this morning.
“Readers Block” ever happen to you? What did you do about it?
Is it just me… or is morning coming faster? Or should I say is it morning or still Twilight? It is still dark out but I am still due up to get ready for the daily school drop off and then the office. Today awaits me about 4 hours of mandatory videos on a new program we are rolling our the end of this month so with joy…. I am enjoying my pre-office time with you and Coffee Cup.
This morning I opened an email that kind of made me smile. Ok… really made me smile. I just love how movies come up with all the little extras you can purchase. The great ones have t shirts, notebook covers, board games, pens, pencils… and yes. Even dolls.
Ok… seriously… this cracked me up a bit. I don’t know why, obviously it is a good likeness so kudos to Mattel. yes, there is a Bella too but not as close a resemblance I didn’t think. Without the Edward doll next to her I am not sure I would know she was Bella.
I just wanted to share this today as I like to share the ones that remember folks – they were books before they were movies! 🙂 HIgh five to Stephanie Meyer. I am off for now but will be back later for a book review.
I would love to hear if anyone has purchased any other movie related paraphernalia. We have Harry Potter Scene It
here and Star Wars Monopoly. Oh yes…. I am so proud. LOL 🙂
Have a great day everyone!
Mornin’
. Little groggy… I was up until 12:45 a.m finishing up The Cinderella Society. I kept thinking after the next chapter I would stop… but then no…. and then the next one… and then it came to the point that really – I didn’t have all that more to read and why would I leave such a little bit?
At 12:45 am. I closed the back cover… completely satisfied with the book and my choice to complete it.
Of course now… I am in the office with Coffee Cup and just a wee bit fuzzy. I am going to write the review and it should be up in a couple hours. It is not the longest I stayed up to finish a book. I think a few years back I finished After Anne at about 2 am…. could not – would not put it down until the bitter, heartbreaking end. (That’s another story) 🙂
So readers – whats the longest you have stayed up to complete a book?
Book Journey 