Good morning and happy Saturday! It is COLD here in central Minnesota and it has driven me indoors which is a bummer, but the up side is I love this time of year for house projects and snuggling up with great reads. Last weekend I had an opportunity to do both.
Our entryway to our home was a color that I no longer loved. For a small space it was to dark and the two doors in that area that I had painted were chipped and scruffy looking. In usual “let’s get ‘er done” fashion, I went to the paint store in the morning, had my paint picked out within minutes and that afternoon went to work. I am pretty thrilled with the results so for this weeks Saturday Snapshot, here is my entryway make over:
Before.Before.beforeafterAfter 🙂After 🙂
Yes, I am thrilled with the look. It fresh, clean and makes the area look bigger. As for the audio accompaniment, that would be The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty which I am loving right from the beginning. This one is a treat on audio – love the narration!
Pop on in to Saturday Snapshot and see what others are taking pictures of this week. 😀
Happy Saturday! I have a pretty nice wide open weekend here that I am pretty excited about. Lots of little mini projects I am considering: I have books to put away in the book room, a desk to set up in the office, paint to pick out for the front room and upstairs living room, reviews to write…
Recently I was picked to host a House Party for the Tassimo Coffee Pot. If you are not familiar with House Party, check it out. These are parties on products anywhere from books, to movies, to food, to beverages, to games, to projects. You sign up for the ones you are interested in and if you are chosen to host you are to invite at least 10 people over to share in the product with you. They can be a lot of fun and you are sent whatever you need to put on the party. In the past I have had two parties around books and one on a movie, this was my first branching out.
I wanted to host this party because I knew I would never buy a $165 coffee pot, which is what this model of the Tassimo is. Hosts received not only the coffee pot, but an assortment of coffee pods to use at the party. I was thrilled when I was selected.
I did have the party and it was a lot of fun. At first, I found the coffee pot to be a lot of work to figure out. I did not even get that the coffee pods that came with creamer was a pod you put in the machine after the coffee part to heat and foam the creamer and then the machine added it to your cup. It was one of my guests who pointed that out to me (thanks Brenda!)
As the evening went on, I actually found the coffee pot growing on me. I liked trying the different kinds and the fact that it brewed one special cup at a time. In fact, since the party, I have not used my regular coffee pot. For todays Saturday Snapshot (give it up for West Metro Mommy Reads!) I thought I would post a couple pictures from that event.
Jean and Kaydi really got into it!Brenda and I were fascinated watching it brew
Group photo minus Amy the camera woman!
My overall thoughts: I like the Tassimo and yes I would recommend it. They sent in the package 40% off coupons for my guests if they wanted a Tassimo Coffee pot as well as some yummy brunch recipes. We had a great time!
Pop on over to West Metro Mommy Reads and see what other people are posting pics of this weekend. It is deer hunting season here in Minnesota, my Facebook friends are saturated in pics of family members with their deer (what an odd tradition, to pose with your deer….) LOL
Mmmmm…. good morning! I am enjoying a delicious cup of coffee from my new coffee pot the Tassimo, thanks to House Party. It took a bit to get the hang of it but now… I may be addicted.
SO feel free to nickname me absentee blogger, that’s the way I feel lately. I am seriously hoping to get my mojo back and my hope lies in the winter months when life tends to slow down a bit for me and I hate the cold and wet and snow so I tend to spend more time indoors doing bloggy type things.
You may know I have a weakness for Patterson’s audio books (go ahead, insert your own groan here). Particularly the Michael Bennett series… the one about the cop with the ten adopted kids… I know a bot crazy but I love the story line. When recently offered the latest in this series for review that was a hard YES! One of the things I love about these adios and they are excellent at sound effects.. not cheesy ones… but good ones and set up for the right time. Gun shots, etc… A few years back when I started listening to these books while driving I had a time when a gunshot was on the audio and I seriously thought I was being shot at.
In central Minnesota…. can you imagine? 😯
SO now I am listening to this new one and I am at the grocery store pulling out of my parking spot when the audio makes a crashing noise. My heart stops… I am sure I just hit something….
Egads…. GOOD audio!
I am looking forward to a fairly mellow weekend. There is a 5k opportunity this weekend that I am not signed up for but kind of considering… maybe maybe not…. but books are definitely on the upcoming weekend agenda.
Questions to ponder… do you like audio (Laurel…. be kind! 😉 ) AND do you like sound effects in your audio? Also… what are your plans this weekend. I had an idea for a fun meme to start off the new year with that I am kind of excited about implementing… stay tuned… I will post about it in a few weeks 😀
Good morning everyone! I hope your weekend was (and is still) FAB. I had a pretty sweet Saturday with a little adventure with my hubby. If you do not know, we own an excavating company. My hubby recently won a bid to tear down an old cabin that was condemned. I had heard that there was some old furniture in the cabin and I tagged along yesterday morning to go and salvage (pick?) what was savable. We left yesterday at 6 am, the cabin is about an hour away, and then went cautiously inside as the roof has caved in, the chimney had fallen through and there was a big hole in the middle of the large entryway which was probably once a cool three season porch.
The sight of the cabin was actually a little sad as by the looks of all the dishes in the cupboards, papers on the table, etc… it clearly looked like they had intended to be back. A sign hung outside the shed that said “Olson’s Oasis”.
Everything for the most part was in really bad shape. There was an old gate leg table that had warped and split because of the rain that has drizzled on it for years. A few of the key pieces I pulled out were:
This is possibly my favorite find. The table was covered with a plastic cloth so did not become damaged like the other pieces. The bottom needs a little work and of course a whole refinish job but my mom and I used to work on antiques together and I am kind of excited to have the opportunity to do this again.
I love the feet!Not sure what I will do with this but it was worth cleaning up and not being demolished.I think this could be fun to put some love back into as well.
This is some of the highlights. There were a few other lamps, some dishes, chairs, etc… might be something to work on this winter or early spring.
This would normally have been a great post for Saturday Snapshot (which I am linking to anyway even though I am a day late 😀 ), but of course I was out “picking” yesterday morning and didn’t want to wait to post until next Saturday. With my life, you never know what might be new and exciting next.
For those who want to know, I did inquire about the family who once owned the home. Apparently there is only the wife still around and she is in a nursing home out of state. I am hopeful that by perhaps breathing life back into some of these pieces in a way it brings back some of the love they once had.
Enjoy your day! I have a full morning and lots of house cleaning projects to do this afternoon. The weather looks decent – I may try to get a run in as well. And I am reading the book club book, Ladies Night by Mary Kay Anderson and really enjoying it.
Good morning! I am back and I had a blast with College Son in Florida! We came back LATE Monday night, I think I hit my driveway about midnight. We had three full days in Florida and here are a few pictures for recap:
Me outside Harry Potter World at Universal Studios Orlando.
Justin and I having the butter beer
On the Dr Suess Carousal.
I dont want to give all the pics away as I may use them for Saturday Snapshot, but you get the picture… we had a blast!
As for reading, yes, you will be happy to know I did read – book 4 of the Mortal Instrument series and I am hooked HOOKED HOOKED! Starting book 5 tonight and I have reviews to catch up on… especially since when I read book one of this series and reviewed it I said in my post,
While I found City of Bones to be interesting and well written, I don’t see myself diving into the rest of the series. It was good, but didn’t hook me to the point I need to go and get the second book right now! (I don’t quite want to dig out the Spoiler page for this one but did anyone else get a Harry Potter vibe on this one? They are looking for the Mortal Cup…. there is a bad guy trying to get to the cup first named…. Voldermort, I mean named Valentine.)
Mmmmmm hmmmm…. we will be discussing what changed my mind. 😀 That ever happen to you?
Good morning all! Happy November and all that comes with it… the scent of pumpkin, cool walks and runs, baked goods and we break out the crock pots for soups and chili. Just last night I made white chicken chili that was oooooh so good!
I know I have been quite the absentee blogger and I am working on getting back in gear. I have reviews to post, and fun things to share, I just seem to have booked myself pretty solid lately and that is where I am trying to learn yet another step to time management. 😀
What have I been doing? Working out in the early mornings, working on my home when I am not working at my job, volunteering, and training for a half marathon again – now aiming for April. Oh, and today I am excited to say that I am leaving this afternoon to go to Florida with College Son for a fun weekend of hanging out and Harry Potter World (SQQUUEEE!!!!!) will be back Monday evening to Minnesota.
For this week, I have asked Vicki from I’d Rather Be Reading At The Beach to post and host It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? She has graciously offered before and if she says yes, I will post a link on Sunday to connect with her for the meme, and if she can not do it this week, I will post the link up here as usual. 🙂
ANyhoo – enjoy your weekend! My life should slow down a bit once I return. Winter is always my slow time as I do not like cold, wet, and snow. Yeah yeah… I totally live in the wrong part of the world. 😛
Happy Saturday! I have about 30 minutes before I am leaving for the Monster Dash in Crosslake Minnesota. My friend Amy and I did this one last year – a 5k in full costume. Last year she was wonder woman and I was a zombie bride, it was crazy fun.
This year…. well… you will see.
On Thursday of this week we fall our October Ladies Night Out. Twice a year businesses hold this event. You (girls only!) pick up a punch card at a participating business up to the night before the event. Then the day of you have a set amount of hours that you can go these businesses and get your card punched acknowledging that you were there. You have a certain time to turn the card in to a specific business – this fall it was 8:30 pm with as many punches as you can. You trade in your card for one ticket per punch and the next day they announce winning numbers on a local radio station and if your number is called you can win, among other things $1000.00.It’s local and community and fun. Many of the businesses offer horduerves, snacks and wine. Some have samples of products and others have coupons to bring you back into the store.
The October one offers a bonus: a costume contest. Ooh we were all about that. Here are our pictures (thanks Saturday Snapshot!)
That’s me!
My friend Amy as Medusa (she really gets into her work!)
My friend Kerri “Legs” The Flapper!
We had a blast! We didn’t win in the costume contest but it was still a great time and there are still a couple other contests going on so we will see 🙂
I posted these delightful pics today for Saturday Snapshot, click the link and check it out. It is a lot of fun!
Good morning all! At least it is morning here at the time of this typing in Central Minnesota. We have had the heat on for a couple weeks now and as much as I dislike the cold and really do not like the upcoming snow… I am trying to embrace the season.
I have dived into some good books as of late and wanted to share what I have been learning, a few fun facts from the books. I believe you can learn something from all books – fiction and non fiction alike.
Fascinating to me, I just recently finished listening to Dr. Sleep by Stephen King. I had to give this one a try as this is the continuing story of The Shining. What I learned was that Danny (the little boy in The Shining and the now grown up protagonist in Dr. Sleep was a character that stayed with King all of these years, nagging at him with the “what ever happened to him?”…
In Anything That Moves by Dana Goodyear I learned about Kopi Luwak, the expensive coffee that is made out of Civet poop. Mmmm hmmm…. I couldn’t make this stuff up. I have also learned that we live in a strange STRANGE world where “extreme eating” is a thing and the more unusual the better…. I think I will pass on the cricket tacos and live octopus. 😉
In Billy Crystal’s Still Foolin ‘Em, I learned about his incredible relationship with his wife and daughters, his love for baseball, and his ritual before doing the awards shows.
From The Mortal Instrument series (my current guilty pleasures) I have discovered I really really like the name Jace…. AND I wish I had powers like the Shadow Hunters. 😛
In other news… I have recently been added as part of the awesome Bloggers Recommended group! This is a group of Bloggers headed by Nicole from Linus’s Blanket and Jen from Devourer Of Books. They put out a monthly newsletter of hot titles coming out that month that great bloggers have recommended as must reads! I am new to this and just getting my feet wet. I submitted my first recommendation for the November edition. You can subscribe to receive it here and you can check out the website here. 😀
I am excited to say that I finished the book club book, Giants In the Earth (all 500+ pages!) last night. I feel kind of like a rock star! It started out super slow and I thought this is going to hurt…. but on Friday evening I sat down to really work at it and did not emerge for 5 hours.
Now, my reward is back to what I was reading before I had to move on the book club read, City of Glass by Cassandra Clare.
My summer and book requests did not mix so I had pretty much resisted the offers that were coming in because I honestly knew I did not have time for them. It was sad to see an empty mailbox – free of books day after day but it really was for the best. It is fun now as I have started saying yes again, to see the books come in and I am so excited to actually be able to sit down with a book again.
Here is what showed up this week:
Prey by Andrew Fukuda – I ordered after reading the first one!
Anything That Moves by Dana Goodyear – I am super excited about. I love food memoirs.
Before I Met You by Lisa Jewell – looks good!
Theory Of Remainders – from Winter Goose Publishing
Flo and Wendell – not sure how I got that one but here it is 🙂
SO thats what is new in literature here. I have work to do (again) in the book room… it needs a little TLC, perhaps tonight after I return from my board meeting.
Good morning! How are ya all doing this Saturday? It is cold and damp here in Minnesota. There is still a possibility of snow and I am hoping that is not true. If any of you know the author Sandra Brannan, here is one of the pictures she posted on Facebook from South Dakota yesterday:
Yeah… I am seriously not ready for that. They were hit with a big storm.
Anyhoo… enough of that. This past week our kick ball season came to an end. Yes, yes… kickball…. like in grade school. Big red bouncy ball… we kick it and run (try to run) the bases. Its not always pretty…. it is usually fun.
The group I play with are a mix of friends and we have played for the last 4 years now, possibly more. I missed last year as my schedule was just too full… but I was back this year and it was a lot of fun to be back.
There are about 16 teams and we stitch out each week and play two or three games on Tuesdays.
Most of the team… we were missing a couple subs (missed Paula, Andy! 😦 ) and a few regulars – Greg, Dawn and Jon.
My friend Amy and me. Amy is also in the Bookies book cub which just goes to show you… us readers do more than read. 🙂
These are my pics for this weeks Saturday snapshot sponsored, hosted, supported by: West Metro Mommy Reads. Stop over and check out what other people are posting pics of this week and feel free to write your own post as well. 😀
Today I plan to go to St Cloud (about an hour away) and look at their costume shop. I need a few things for book club this week and I have a Monster Dash coming up October 26th that I want to see what would be good fun running wear.
Book Journey 