Exceedingly Mundane

I’ve read so many books since the last time I posted a book review, that I really don’t even know where to begin. 🙂 I think my last book-related post was sometime back in June, and I’ve read a lot of books since then. If you’re a member of GoodReads and linked up to me, then you’ve heard all about them before 😀 I have been trying to rate and do a quick review of the books I read over there.

The latest book I read, I will post a link to my review here. That’s because this book is also part of the one challenge I am participating in, Annie’s “What’s In a Name” Challenge. I read most of the books for this challenge earlier in the year, but I still lack two. This book, “The Snake, The Crocodile and the Dog” was my entry for the category of a book with an animal in its title. I think I should get brownie points since the book I chose has not one, not two, but three in its title, LOL!

Here’s the review I posted at Goodreads:

The Snake, the Crocodile & the Dog: An Amelia Peabody Mystery by Elizabeth Peters

rating: 2 of 5 stars
I picked up this book at a library sale (paperback, so just 50 cents), thinking it was the first in this long series by Elizabeth Peters. I mixed this one up with the Crocodile on the Sandbank, which started the series off (this is book 7 in the series). Still, it was easy to pick up who was who and for the most part, what was going on. These are books about famed British Egyptologist Amelia Peabody and her husband Emerson. They live in Victorian England, but spend most of their time on adventures in Egypt, amongst mummies, Pharaohs, tombs and curses.

I’ve learned that I get easily bored with books that go into too much detail on a specific subject. For this book, it was the Egyptology and specifics of archeology. For the John Nance book I recently read (“Saving Cascadia”), it was seismology. With the Robert Ludlum books I’ve read, it’s weapons and guerrilla warfare tactics, etc. I prefer a cursory overview of these things, not the length and width and depth these books go into.

So, this one was just ok for me, not a winner. For once, I won’t feel compelled to collect or check out from the library every book in this series. I can gladly move on to other, lighter books (my favorites being Christian fiction, chick-lit and cozy mysteries).

View all my reviews.

If you’re interested in other books I’ve read this year, I always list them in my sidebar. Here’s the link for all of the books I’ve read so far in 2008, although there are no ratings or reviews, just a plain listing. If you have a question about a book I have read, just let me know! I’ll try to do better in the future with keeping up with my book-related posts 🙂

There are definitely not any vegetarians in our house!

We had our big Labor Day party on Monday, which this year was also a combination “live draft” party for our family fantasy football league, and a Hurricane Gustav hanging out party as well. My dad came up on Sunday and stayed with us, then everyone else came on Monday. We ate a lot of food – ribs, smoked sausage, hot dogs, potato salad, crunchy slaw, chips, spinach and artichoke dip, salmon dip, veggies, cookies and chess squares. We had the live draft, which was a first for us. Then, we all had a good time playing the Wii and hanging out. I think our Wii was on for nearly 11 hours before it was finally cut off 😀

Tuesday I spent cleaning house and today I have to do more of that, plus laundry and a grocery run. It’s still raining here some from the remnants of Hurricane Gustav. We were very very lucky though, the storm went to the south and west of us, so we have only had some wind and rain from it. It’s rained 3 days so far here, and hopefully today will be the last day. We have had no damage though, no trees or even limbs blown down and we didn’t lose power, so that was awesome.

Hope you have a great day!

Deena, a wonderful book reviewer and very generous lady, is hosting a 30 day book giveaway over at her blog, a Peek at My Bookshelf. I’m a little late posting, as it started on Monday. But it’s going on all month, so stop by and try to win some wonderful Christian fiction.

Thanks for doing this, Deena!

I played along to this meme last week, and decided to do so again today. Fun questions! Go check it out here if you want to join in!

Food 4 Thought Friday

Breakfast
If you were given one extra hour everyday – how would you use that time? Oh, probably sleep! I love to sleep and I require a lot of sleep. If not, then I’d probably read a book.

Lunch
What is your favorite season and why? I love fall and winter. Around here, they are basically the same, since we don’t get a lot of really cold weather. After our long, hot summers though, any break is always wonderful and when fall truly gets here (sometimes not till November), then it’s so appreciated. I love the colors changing in fall, the cool nights, burning my Yankee candles, the holidays of Halloween, then Thanksgiving and Christmas, football season, and of course, both mine and Tim’s birthday’s are in the fall. Definitely my favorite time of year!

Dinner
Are you a tight squeezer, a delicate hugger, a back patter, a hand shaker, or a hands off completely person? Well, I guess it depends on the person. Before I met Tim, I was a hands off person, since that’s the way I was raised. I don’t come from a hugging type family. But Tim does and I’ve learned to like it and accept it through the years. I’d say I was more a delicate hugger, I guess (cute terms!)

Midnight Snack
Have you ever gone skinny dipping? If so where? No way Jose!

Recipe for this Week (instead of your recipe for life – what is it for just this week?) Always be prepared. 🙂

This is an odd “Question of the Day“. But, I think it’s a universal topic for most women.

My question is this – do you shave your legs every day? It’s a big thing with me. I have to shave them every day. If I’m sick or just totally lazy and don’t shave my legs, then I absolutely cannot go to sleep at night. It feels like a big hairy caterpillar on my legs, and they poke into my other leg or cut Tim or something. I can’t get comfortable if they haven’t been shaven. So, even though I’m not fond of it, I shave them every.single.day. 365 days a year. I am not sure if it’s just me, so leave me a comment and let me know. Do you shave your legs every day? If so, is there a reason, or just hygiene? If not, does it not bother you?

Oh, and I use a Venus razor these days. I gave up disposables a long time ago. I use Skintimate shave gel, mostly because I can buy it in 3 or 4 packs at Sam’s Club. Gotta keep plenty of razor blades and shaving gel on hand. Since, you know, I have to shave my legs every day. 😀

Have a great day! If you can, after reading a blog post like this, LOL!

Spotted on a rain-filled, muddy trip through the woods last Saturday, at my in-laws. It’s dark, but can’t you tell what it is?

We also saw two hawks, several wild turkey, and a whole lot of deer. Beau was out running beside the truck, and he went off in the woods chasing the deer. He was a happy, happy dog when he finally came back. His tongue was hanging out, but he had a huge grin splashed on his face 😀

One of my favorite places to go is food type stores. I love regular grocery stores, gourmet grocery stores, warehouse clubs (because Hello, I am a “gatherer” to the nth degree, so buying food in large quantities makes me unreasonably happy). I love browsing in local kitchen stores (we have two nice ones here, Choppin Block and Everyday Gourmet), chain stores like Williams-Sonoma, etc. You get the picture.

So, it goes without saying that when we go on vacation, and we’re near one of my all-time favorite stores, Harry and David, I always, always, always make Tim stop. It used to be that I’d have him take me to scrapbook stores, but those days are mostly in the past. These days I’m all about food. We stopped at one on our weekend getaway a week ago, and I was actually really good. I could have easily bought a ton more stuff, but I try to keep it reasonable. Their stuff is expensive, but it is so good. I’ve never had anything from Harry and David that I didn’t love.

Here’s the link to what I bought last year on vacation, and it’s fairly similar. Instead of the grilling sauces this time, I picked up a couple of premade dips – mozzarella dip and spinach/artichoke. Football season is upon us and I was thinking game day food 😀

Here’s what we got this time around:

Yummy, yummy in my tummy. Two bags of Moose Munch, two kinds of salsa (Habanera for Tim and Very Cherry for me), spinach & artichoke dip, mozzarella dip and triple berry blend jam. I was really good, wasn’t I?!

Another weekend out of the way, hard to believe it’s nearly the end of August. We spent the day Saturday at my in-laws, celebrating my mother-in-law’s birthday. It has been raining here since then, off and on. It rained almost all day on Sunday, so we spent a lot of time watching TV, playing the Wii and watching movies. We watched Vantage Point, which we saw when it first came out in the theater. Then Tim watched an older movie without me, The Forgotten. All in all a good weekend 🙂

Monday means it’s back to the grind. I do a lot of cleaning on Mondays. Every Monday morning, I do a big cleaning of the kitchen, breakfast room and laundry, commonly known as Beau’s space. He is allowed on the ceramic tile, so needless to say, this area gets pretty dirty. I sweep it every day, sometimes two or three times a day, and I mop with my Swiffer sporadically throughout the week. But on Mondays, everything gets taken out and it gets cleaned top to bottom. If the weather is nice (not freezing cold, not burning hot, and not raining), then Beau is relegated to the deck for the hour or so it takes to clean everything. If its rainy like it is today, he gets shoved out in the laundry room:

He hates being out there. He seems to be a bit claustrophobic at times. He’s always SO happy to come out!

Lots more cleaning on the agenda for today. Tonight, I’m going to make something I haven’t made in a long time. Very little cooking involved, as I’m taking the easy way out. It’s called Tortellini with Portobella mushrooms and I am using a jar of alfredo sauce, so it won’t take more than about 20 minutes. I’ve made a homemade sauce before, using low-fat cream cheese, which is good and probably a ton healthier, but I’m going to take the easy way out tonight. And of course, you know its a pasta dish, which is NOT Tim’s favorite, so I don’t make it often. In fact, we probably haven’t had it in 2 or 3 years, but I’m looking forward to it. It has portobella mushrooms, which I love (Shhh, don’t tell Tim there’s no meat!). The recipe is here.

Hope everyone had a nice weekend and is having a great Monday, getting the new week off to a great start!

I used to do the Friday Feast, but there haven’t been any new questions in over a month. I always have trouble with the Friday Fill-in ones, but I saw these two today over at Annie‘s, so I thought I’d swipe them and play along!

The first one is called Know and Tell Friday:

1. Are you right- or left-handed? right-handed

2. Any nicknames you have (or have had) and the story behind them? Stace, always. My sister Suzanne used to call me Ace, and Tim calls me Boog or Boogie. It’s a terrible story – we were in the store, Walmart, I think, and he decided to embarrass me and called me “BOOGER” at the top of his voice at the end of the aisle. Everyone turned to look at me, so I acted like I didn’t know him and turned and went to another part of the store. It evolved from there to “Boog” or “Boogie”. 🙂

3. Do you need to do laundry right now? No, I’m about caught up. I did several loads a day the first couple of days we were back from vacation. I’ve also washed Beau’s towels and bedding, the guest bedroom towels and sheets, our towels and sheets, all of our new clothes we bought on vacation and everything else in the last few days. I might take the day off from laundry!

4. What CD is in your CD player/music on your iPod right now? The last thing I listened to on my iPod was Daughtry. My SUV has a 6 disc changer and my favorites are Dierks Bentley and Brad Paisley.

5. How/when did you learn to ride a bicycle? I can’t remember! I only had one bike growing up and haven’t been on one since I was probably 12 or 13. I don’t even know if I can ride one now! 🙄

6. What is your favorite weird food combination? I like to dip things like fries, chicken strips, etc in mayonnaise.

7. What is something you have that is of sentimental value? An antique loveseat that was in my grandmother’s family. My KitchenAid mixer – it was the last gift I ever received from my mom before she died.

And the second one is called Food 4 Thought, and you can play along here:

———————————————————-

Food 4 Thought Friday

Breakfast
Are you a morning person or a night person? I’m definitely not a morning person. I’m not a huge night owl, but I do lean toward night owl more than early bird. Is neither an option?

Lunch
Do you like to shop? If yes, for what? Alone or with others? I don’t like to shop for shoes or purses. Not at all. Not fond of clothes shopping but it’s ok if Tim goes with me or my sister. I do like shopping for food and household stuff (I know, call me weird). I love going to Target and the bookstore though

Dinner
What is something that really motivates you? Hmmm, not coming up with anything off the top of my head. Tim is the driven, Type A in our house. I’m more lackadaisical about things.

Midnight Snack
What is one thing you look forward to each day? Being home, seeing Tim, playing with Beau, reading, the simple things in life.

Recipe for this Week (instead of your recipe for life – what is it for just this week?) Be Happy!

I’ve blogged about this before, but it is worthy of blogging about again! I’ve been using the MyPoints reward system for a little over five years now (my how time flies when you’re having fun!) and I have nothing but good things to say about them. I started out slow, just reading emails and taking surveys. It’s easy to get points that way, although it does take a while to build the points up in your account. In the last couple of years, I’ve taken advantage of their shopping rewards – you go to the MyPoints site and if there’s a merchant you want to order from online, you simply link to that merchant through MyPoints, then go ahead and place your order. You earn points for your purchase, usually a certain number of points per dollar. I’ve built up a lot of points through the years, and I now average $50 or $75 a year in gift cards. You can redeem your points for gift cards to places like Walmart, Target, BarnesandNoble.com, Amazon.com, Sears, Penney’s, Kohl’s, Lowe’s, Bath and Body Works, restaurants and movies, and a myriad of other choices. I’ve always received my gift cards and have never had any trouble with this program, so it’s one I always recommend.

Why do I blog about this today? Because a couple of days ago I received a letter from MyPoints, with my claim code for Amazon.com. I’ve been saving my points for most of the year, and I finally “cashed” them in on a $50 gift code to Amazon.com. Now, I just have to decide whether I’m going to order more books or maybe a new Wii game! I will have enough points in another month or so to redeem for a $25 gift card, and I’ll have to choose then where to get it from. Probably Target, you can never go wrong with that place!

If you don’t participate and are interested, let me know and I’ll send you a referral link. It helps me out to have others sign up under me, so this is a shameless self-promotion post as well 😀 It really is a good program, and I have never had any problems with them. I don’t mind reading the emails or taking surveys for the points, and I don’t mind linking there first to do online shopping (not every place I order from is linked there obviously, but a fair amount are). Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll send you an invitation 😀

Have a great day!

We just got back from our weekend getaway, so this is still in my head. Can you believe that while we were gone, I actually thought of a Question of the Day! This one is about your travel toiletries – do you check to see what the hotel has available or do you just go ahead and pack your own? For example, if the room has a hair dryer, do you pack yours anyway? If the hotel has a certain line of products in the room (shampoo, conditioner, lotion, soap, etc) do you just use what is there, or do you pack your own?

I’m a pack my own kind of girl. Of course, I am also a “take everything but the kitchen sink” kind of girl! To be fair, we mostly drive places so I am able to pack more and take more. When we fly, I do try to pack less and might forgo the hair dryer and a few things. But overall, I like to take my stuff with me. I have mildly sensitive skin and prefer to take my own facial cleaner and lotion. I don’t mind using the soap provided in the hotel and usually do. I also prefer to take small travel bottles of my shampoo and conditioner – since my hair is color-treated, I prefer to use my regular stuff.

How about you? Do you take all of your travel toiletries with you, or do you just use what is in the hotel? And if you don’t use it, or just use part of the container … do you leave it behind or take it home with you? Leave me a comment and let me know 😀

Have a great day!

I didn’t post ahead of time that we were leaving, but Tim and I just got back from a short vacation. I have blogged in the past from our vacations, but this time we left the laptop at home and just went away for a couple of days. I didn’t even really take a lot of photos, which is odd for me. For one reason, we went somewhere we’ve been many times before. The other reason is that it rained about half the time we were gone and I just didn’t want to lug my Canon DSL around in the rain and icky weather. I haven’t transferred my pictures yet, so I don’t know if I’ll have any worthy of posting!

We went down to our coast (the Mississippi Gulf Coast, that was devastated during Hurricane Katrina) and then over to New Orleans for the long weekend. We had a good time, ate way too much good food, and just generally relaxed and enjoyed ourselves. We had booked a room at the Hard Rock Casino on our coast, and by the time we got there to check in, we were told that the type of room we had booked (king, water view) had already all been taken, so they were upgrading us to a complimentary suite! I was very excited 😀 It doesn’t take much to psych me out, you know! I had never stayed in a suite before, so I really enjoyed it. We had a living room (with 42″ plasma TV and JVC surround sound system), a separate bathroom for the living area, the bedroom with its king size bed, 42″ plasma tv and floor to ceiling windows overlooking the strip of hotels and construction. We had another room that was floor to ceiling windows overlooking the gulf with its jacuzzi tub and yet another plasma TV. I had 3 sinks to choose from to stand or sit in front of to put on my makeup. We had another room for the shower, which had 3 shower heads and was entirely tile, with a bench and was all glass on two sides. Very cool looking 🙂 We had a private balcony that we sat out in the morning and drank our coffee (made in the Keurig in the room). Anyway, I really enjoyed it!

We had some good seafood while we were gone. We stopped at a local joint in Pass Christian, right on the beach and had lunch. We had crab claws with remoulade for an appetizer then grilled mahi-mahi sandwiches. In New Orleans, we had shrimp poboys and then our customary dinner at Landry’s. We love Landry‘s and always go when we’re in town. I had the jumbo lump crab cakes with risotto and Tim had the Shrimp Fresca, which was really probably better than mine (he let me have a bite!). We were full, but since it was vacation, we got Bananas Foster for dessert 😀

We did a little shopping and a lot of walking around, and we even did the unthinkable and watched some TV in the hotel rooms! We watched a lot of the Olympics and the Saints preseason game. I had to see Michael Phelps swim and get his gold medals!

When we got home, we were really sorry to find that our niece, who had been house and dog sitting for us, was sick. She had been throwing up the night before we got home, and was not feeling well at all. So, now we’re going to try to get some Sprite and saltines and Jello in her and get her to feeling better 🙂

It’s good to be back even though I have a mountain of laundry to tackle. I also had 200 new email messages and almost 400 new posts in my Google Reader. That is going to take me a while to catch back up. Hope everyone had a great weekend and will have a wonderful week!

A couple of weekends ago, I made a new cake recipe! I love to bake, but don’t do it much in the summertime. The whole, run the oven at a high temperature for nearly an hour and heat up the kitchen thing 😀

I saw this recipe for a Butterfinger Cake posted over at Stephanie’s blog, Punkin Press, and decided to try it. Good stuff!

This cake is similar to others I have made. I love doing this kind of cake in the summer, they always seem light and refreshing. For a lemon flavor, I often make my mom’s Lemonade Cake (in a bundt pan). I’ve also made this Strawberry Daiquiri Cake which is really good. I seem to make the Honeybun Cake more in the fall or winter, but it’s good too. All of these have the same thing in common – when the cake comes out of the oven warm, you poke holes in it and pour a glaze or topping over it. A couple of them are topped off with Cool Whip or a type of icing.

Enjoy!

I blogged recently about what topics you’d like to see some posts about, and several of you said that you’d like to see some new recipes. I glean recipes from other blogs and cooking sites. So, some of you lurking or visiting here might see your own recipes or some you’ve seen at other blogs. I don’t claim any of them to be original, just recipes I’ve found online that sounded good, we tried and liked! I do try to give credit where credit is due 🙂 Anyway, I’m trying to use my crockpot and stovetop more in the summers. I really hate turning on the oven when it’s so hot, and so I either use my toaster oven or try to cook things on the stovetop. I’ve tried a couple of new skillet dishes lately that we’ve liked. They are not fancy or gourmet by any means, just good old fashioned comfort food!

The first one I tried came from Shawna, who said it was originally a Pampered Chef recipe. It’s for Skillet Lasagna. I don’t have a photo of the lasagna, but it was good. I’ll definitely make it again. It makes a lot for the two of us though. We had leftovers for lunch several days afterwards!

The next one came from Amy, and is a homemade version of Cheeseburger Macaroni. Tim loves Hamburger Helper cheeseburger macaroni, but I try to stay away from too much processed stuff. They’re great time savers, but I have a lot of time to cook and most of the time, I enjoy it. I do take shortcuts though, like everyone else. I do a lot of stuff from the freezer, like frozen eggrolls and never make my own!

Anyway, here’s the Cheeseburger Macaroni:

The second time I made it, I tried to make it even healthier and instead of using the canned soups, I made my own. For the beef broth, I used the Better Than Bouillon paste and made broth that way. Instead of using a can of Campbell’s Cheddar Cheese soup, I found a substitute online and tried that. I think it was probably healthier, but it did mess up a lot more dishes. I’m not sure either of us could tell a difference, so that was good. I just had a lot more pots and pans to wash after making the soup and broth!

Lastly, for good measure, I’ll repost a couple of links of other skillet dishes I’ve made lately. These are not new to me, many of them I’ve been making several years. But they are tried and true in our house and something I make periodically. The first is for Sloppy Joe’s – I don’t like Manwich and I never have. So, I’ve been making this recipe for years. I usually use ground turkey these days, and I just sort of wing the sauce. I’ve found that one 8 oz can of tomato sauce is not enough for us with two pounds of meat. I usually use one 8 oz can for 1 pound of meat, because we like our joe’s very sloppy!

Another winner around here is my skillet Hamburger Stroganoff. I’ve also been making this many years and we like it. I think it’s the sour cream!

Hope you find something that you want to try. Again, these are nothing special, just easy dishes to do in a big skillet on the stovetop. We’re big on comfort food around here, there’s no gourmet chefs or eaters in this house!

Have a great day!

My two favorite males in the whole wide world! Oh, and this picture could also be captioned “Beau and his favorite human being, Tim” 😀 You’d never know that that dog was my birthday present almost two years ago. He literally runs by me to get to Tim. He follows Tim everywhere. Me, he barely gives me the time of day!