Books for The New Year!

Hi All, how’s your 2020 going? Mine is going okay.  I’m trying to eat better and exercise more.  It’s hard to improve yourself, you know?

Below are some great books to help along your resolutions, or just make you smile!

Gratitude with Attitude - How Journaling Thankfulness for Just 5 Minutes a Day Can Change Your Life

 

Gratitude with Attitude: How Journaling Thankfulness for Just 5 Minutes a Day Can Change Your Life by Ronnie Walter ($10.65 USD) — Whether it comes at the start of our day or the end, making time to think about what we’re grateful for is beneficial in many ways. Practicing an attitude of gratitude strengthens our spirit and quiets our mind, even if just for a moment. It provides the peace and zen we long for and need in the midst of busy days and packed schedules. Find inspiration through writing prompts and quotes in this gratitude journal by bestselling author Ronnie Walter. The creator of The Coloring Café®, a coloring series dedicated to stress relief and fun, Ronnie brings over twenty years of successful illustrating and writing to this daily journal dedicated to personal growth and happiness. By using this 5-minute journal to record things we’re grateful for, spot meaningful intentions, and celebrate tiny victories, we create a space to grow in gratitude for what we have and see better who we want to be.

Life Is a 4-Letter Word - Laughing and Learning Through 40 Life Lessons

Life Is a 4-Letter Word: Laughing and Learning Through 40 Life Lessons by Dr. David A. Levy ($16.95 USD) — The path to living a smarter lifestyle is not always smooth. Levy encourages readers to embrace all the feelings his book may bring out as they read his stories, from laughing to wincing, and learning along the way. Discover the power of positive thinking as Levy shares a lifetime journey of personal reflections, growth, and wisdom.

Dive into Dr. David Levy’s latest book, Life Is a 4-Letter Word, and find…

40 autobiographical essays, each one containing a relatable and applicable life lesson
A unique source of both humor and inspiration that reassures readers that life is good
A self-help book for men and women from a published professional in psychology

I'm So Full of Happy Today - The Hygge Wisdom of Children

I’m So Full of Happy Today: The Hygge Wisdom of Children by Martin Andersen and Moira Tuffy ($4.58) — Is there anything more likely to make you laugh and put a smile on your face than the innocent and funny remark of a child? The Danes have a word for the feeling of happy delight that you get from simple things in life, such as the funny things kids say: hygge.

I’m So Full of Happy Today is a heartwarming collection of the remarkably observant, funny and wise things said by children. All of the stories are real and personal, and include the name and age of each child. These playful, sometimes tongue-in-cheek tales straight from the minds and mouths of kids will have you learning, laughing, and sharing the love long after you’ve turned the last page.

The Healthy Teen Cookbook - Around the World In 80 Fantastic Recipes by Remmi Smith

The Healthy Teen Cookbook: Around the World In 80 Fantastic Recipes by Remmi Smith ($12.99 USD) — Who knew healthy cooking could be so awesome and delicious?! This Chopped kid chef and entrepreneur is on a mission to bring healthy food options and easy-to-cook scrumptious recipes to a busy and heavily-scheduled generation of teens. The Healthy Teen Cookbook is not your typical teen cookbook: it’s written “for kids by a kid,” and is filled with tried-and-true recipes with budding cooks in mind, using limited ingredients and steps. Through the colorful, easy-to-read book, Chef Remmi sets out to inspire her peers to adopt healthy eating habits by introducing them to the glorious pastime of cooking. The Healthy Teen Cookbook takes you on a culinary journey across the seven continents, highlighting countries and their top foods. Each section features a map, a full menu (from appetizer to dessert), fun facts, helpful tips, and fantastic recipes―making it a geography lesson, a cookbook, and a social studies class all in one.

The Crafty Gardener - Inspired Ideas and DIY Crafts From Your Own Backyard

The Crafty Gardener: Inspired Ideas and DIY Crafts from Your Own Backyard by Becca Anderson ($16.33 USD) — The perfect gift for any gardener! Gardening allows us to live in a much more human way, grounded in nature and connected to Mother Earth and all she provides. It adds pleasure to your life and gives you a sense of calm. With your garden, you are quite literally growing a bounty of blessings. Lifelong gardener and bestselling author Becca Anderson has put her love of crafting and of gardening together in this book of inspired DIY ideas. Along with gardening tips and secrets for growing flowers, herbs, and veggies, Anderson shares dozens of how-to’s in this delightful guide on making candles, potpourri, bath salts, essential oils, floral waters, tinctures, liquors, pickles jams, and even fountains, birdhouses, and fairy doors. Even if your garden is just a hanging basket of cherry tomatoes or a windowsill filled with herb pots, you will still reap the benefits of gardening.

 


There are so many good books to get the year off to an amazing start!  Are you reading anything helpful for fun currently?

 

 

 

Holiday Gift Guide 2019 — Books for Gifting

Hi all, I’m back with another gift guide.  This time it’s books!

I have put together a list of fun books that make great gifts.  I love to give and receive books, they are so much fun! Read on to get some ideas!

Just Peachy

Just Peachy by Belinda Smith-Sullivan ($ 14.49 Hardcover, $10.99 Kindle) — Chef Belinda Smith-Sullivan, granddaughter of Mississippi sharecroppers, is the go-to resource for everything peaches. Not only does she provide perfect peach recipes, but she also has information about the variety of peaches, history, growing and growers, as well as festivals. There are approximately 70 recipes for breads, breakfasts, appetizers, soups and salads, entrees, desserts, peach pies, sauces, preserves and condiments, and drinks in this beautifully photographed cookbook.

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A Baker’s Passport: Recipes for Breads, Savory Pies, Vegetarian Dishes, Tarts, Cakes, and Cookie Classics. (Original-Fourth Edition) ($39.99) — Travel the world with A Baker’s Passport, a road trip of baking classics in their homelands. With over 225 sweet and savory recipes and lively photographs, Pastry Chef Susie Norris takes you on a tour of regional baking through the world’s great culinary capitals. This technique-driven baking book for home cooks offers well-tested recipes for classics like Quiche Lorraine, Black Forest Cake, Moon Cakes, and Creme Brûlée. A Baker’s Passport, based on the award-winning culinary travel blog, FoodMarketGypsy.com, brings stories of the world’s great baking traditions home to you.

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The Making of Outlander: The Series: The Official Guide to Seasons Three & Four by Tara Bennett ($31.49 hardback and $) — From its very first episode, the Outlander TV series transported its viewers back in time, taking us inside Diana Gabaldon’s beloved world. From the Scottish Highlands to the courts of Versailles to the shores of America, Jamie and Claire’s epic adventure is captured in gorgeous detail.

Now travel even deeper into the world of Outlander with this must-have insider guide from New York Times bestselling author and television critic Tara Bennett. Picking up where The Making of Outlander: Seasons One & Two left off, this lavishly illustrated collectors’ item covers seasons three and four, bringing readers behind the scenes and straight onto the set of the show. You’ll find exclusive interviews with cast members, including detailed conversations with Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan (on-screen couple and real-life friends), as well as the writers, producers, costume designers, set decorators, technicians, and more whose hard work and cinematic magic bring the world of Outlander to life on the screen.

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Holiday Jubilee: Classic & Kitschy Festivities & Fun Party Recipes by Charles Phoenix ($19.39) — You’re invited to celebrate America’s favorite seasonal traditions like never before. Ambassador of Americana Charles Phoenix mixes and mingles spectacular vintage Kodachrome slides of New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas with his eye-popping, original recipes for epic edible centerpieces and party pleasers from his colorful Test Kitchen―including his legendary Cherpumple creation! Be prepared for your imagination to be inspired and your holiday spirit to soar!

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Create: Tools from Seriously Talented People to Unleash Your Creative Life by Marc Silber ($13.38 paperback and $10.49 Kindle) — Creative conversations from some of the world’s top photographers, filmmakers, Grammy award winners, TED presenters, actors, CEOs and more!

Time for a new mindset. Many of us think of creativity as something distant and incompatible with daily life―a skill that artists get to use, but not the rest of us. Maybe you feel like a land-locked surfer, yearning for exhilarating rides. Or maybe you live for the few hours a week when you can take photographs, paint, or write. It’s time for a new mindset. Create shows you how to rediscover the artist within you.

Live a more creative life. People who make a living in the creative arts know that there is a cycle to unlocking the imagination. Visualize, know your tools, work your craft, refine, share. When you tap into this cycle, you’ll find ways to operate at your highest state in all aspects of life.

Find your creative purpose. Overcoming the barriers to innovation is easier than you think. Marc Silber, best selling author, award-wining creative and educator, shows you how to avoid the traps of procrastination, overthinking, and self-doubt. The exercises in Create are specifically designed to help you find certainty and confidence in self-expression.

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It’s Your Weirdness that Makes You Wonderful by Kate Allan ($13.41) — Step into a state of mindfulness: Depression and anxiety are topics that can be uncomfortable to talk about, but that doesn’t mean they should be avoided. If anything, it means we need to be more aware and have more conversations about them. With the help of her adorable illustrations, art blogger Kate Allan (known through her remarkably popular Tumblr blog as “The Latest Kate”) urges us to be mindful of our mentality.

Work through anxiety and depression with the help of enlightening words: Allan, who suffers from anxiety and depression herself, understands what it’s like to deal with feelings that are difficult to fight through. In this book, she provides the personal kind of encouragement that she herself needs to hear. These encouraging words, along with writing prompts, can help readers sort through and express their feelings.

Practice self-love through self-care: Kate Allan’s creative journal meets us where we are―in the midst of the feelings that say we’re not enough, we can’t handle this life, we won’t make it. Her whimsical art and simple words lift trampled spirits and combat thoughts that lead us to believe our weirdness makes us weak. Young and old, we are encouraged to love ourselves exactly as we are.

 

 

Summer Book Roundup

Hi all!  I hope you had a great weekend!  My daughter is in town this week, and we’ve been having fun!

I’m back with a book roundup.  I haven’t done one in a while.  I’m featuring a few books I have received to review.  They are all fun summer reads!

Little Lovely Things

Little Lovely Things — An unremarkable morning commute mutates into an unthinkable tragedy for one family, when Claire Rawlings makes an ordinary decision that results in disaster for her and everyone she loves.

A wife, mother, and soon-to-be-doctor in her final year of residency at University of Chicago hospital, in a race to drop her beloved daughters off at daycare and make it in time for rounds, Claire ignores the troubling signs of an allergic reaction. Finding herself speeding down the highway, on the brink of losing consciousness, she’s forced to pull over.

Moments later, she wakes up on the floor of a gas station bathroom.

Her car – and her girls – have vanished.

A deftly crafted page turner that is as heart-wrenching as it is bursting with life and love, the story of LITTLE LOVELY THINGS unfolds in four distinct voices: devastated yet strong-willed Claire; Moira, the Irish Traveler turned transient abductor who is thrust into instant motherhood; soulful Jay, a recovering alcoholic whose grisly discovery brings him to the center of the tragedy; and finally Andrea, the scrappy take-no-prisoners, wildly talented tomboy who knows only enough to know she doesn’t know the truth of her past.

With an action-packed plot, a deep well compassion for its characters, and thematic chords concerning the wisdom and power of nature, strength of the human spirit, and connectedness of us all, LITTLE LOVELY THINGS marks the arrival of a powerful new voice in the current contemporary fiction landscape in Maureen Joyce Connolly.

Radiant - Eat Your Way to Healthy Skin

Radiant – Eat Your Way to Healthy Skin — For more than 20 years, Hanna Sillitoe suffered from severe psoriasis, eczema and acne. They dominated her life and shattered her confidence. At times she even resorted to wrapping her skin in clingfilm to stop her clothes rubbing against her raw skin. When her doctor told her the only remaining treatment was chemotherapy, she started researching diet and skin, and ultimately changed her life, cutting out caffeine, alcohol, sugar, dairy and wheat, with dramatic results.

Now free from all skin complaints, Hanna is sharing her methods. Beginning with a juice cleanse, Hanna’s plan then moves on to a range of delicious, skin-loving meals including Turmeric and Ginger Chia Pudding, Immunity Ramen, Beet Burgers and even Clean Tiramisu. There is also a selection of homemade beauty products such as Avocado and Honey Facemask and Rosemary and Lemon Salt Scrub. Uplifting and inspiring for those who have been searching for an answer to their skin woes, Hanna’s programme is also suitable for people without specific complaints who just want to improve their overall health and complexion. A recipe for good health and clear skin, from the inside out.

The Big Book of Missouri Ghost Stories

The Big Book of Missouri Ghost Stories — Reader, beware! Turn these pages and enter the world of the paranormal, where ghosts and ghouls alike creep just out of sight. Author Troy Taylor shines a light in the dark corners of Missouri and scares those spirits out of hiding in this thrilling collection. From a headless ghost who stalks the aptly named “Murder Rocks”, to a large hairy monster that roams the banks of the Missouri River, there’s no shortage of bone-chilling tales to keep you up at night. It’s even rumored that the devil himself came to St. Louis in 1949, but nobody knows for sure if he ever left. Around the campfire or tucked away on a dark and stormy night, this big book of ghost stories is a hauntingly good read.

I live in Missouri, so this was a fun book to get!


What books are you enjoying this summer?  I’d love to know!

Holiday Gift Guide 2018 — Books Gifts Part 2

Hi All!  Still going strong with my gift guides! I know I’m still shopping, and being an Amazon Prime member means I can get almost anything in two days!  All of these books are on Amazon and most can be purchased on Kindle.

The books in this guide are all about health and fitness.  I did lose a few pounds in 2018 and are hoping to do even better in 2019!

Active by Holly Davidson
Totally Buf by Libby Babet

Active by Holly Davidson — We all want to feel fit, healthy and strong, but with today’s fast paced lifestyles it can be hard to find the time or motivation to exercise. What if there was a way to find the fitness that’s right for you — workouts that will fit into the time and space you have available? Holly Davidson is a top personal trainer who works according to the fundamental belief that fitness is within each one of us, and we can find it wherever we are. She has used her years of experience to devise an exercise program that is varied, flexible, and fun in her new fitness book

ACTIVE: Workouts that Work for You (Kyle Books; January 2019; Paperback; $16.99)
Totally Buf by Libby Babet
Totally Buf by Libby Babet

Totally Buf by Libby Babet ($19.99 USD) — The BUF Girls are Australia’s revolutionary new team of fitness and nutrition gurus for a new generation of healthy-minded, empowered women. Being a BUF Girl isn’t about competition, body image or comparison, it’s about friendship and community, healthy bodies and healthy minds, and inspiring, supporting and celebrating all women.

THE BUF GIRLS ARE:
LIBBY BABET #ATHLETEMAKER
CASSEY MAYNARD #CURVECREATOR
ALICIA BEVERIDGE #BUTTKICKER
SIAN JOHNSON #BOOTYSHAKER

Together, the BUF (BEAUTIFUL, UNSTOPPABLE, FEARLESS) Girls are on a mission to show women everywhere how to get healthy and fit – and stay healthy and fit – through easy and simple steps.

This 6-week plan (one focus habit each week) will completely transform your health and wellbeing, with core fitness, nutrition and mindset tips that every woman can implement in their day-to-day lives.

With over 100 recipes (including vegan and vegetarian options), easy exercise and nutrition tips, TOTALLY BUF will give you all you need to be a BUF Girl.

 

Low Carb Express by Annie Bell
Low Carb Express by Annie Bell

Low Carb Express by Annie Bell — Adopting a low carb diet doesn’t mean you have to deprive yourself of delicious food. Author of Low-Carb Revolution, award – winning food writer Annie Bell offers a speedy update to this diet, revolving around fresh, seasonal ingredients with her latest cookbook

LOW CARB EXPRESS: Cut the Carbs with 130 Deliciously Healthy Recipes (Kyle Books; January 2018; Trade Paperback; $19.99) . Every recipe lists the carbohydrate and
protein values and can be made in 30 minutes or less. Chapters include: Bread, including a low-carb Rosemary Focaccia and Sesame Parmesan Crackers; Eggs and Frittatas, which features three Omelet Pizza recipes; Protein Pots such as a Chicken, and Chile Pot with Miso Dressing; Very Veggie, including a zucchini noodle salad; the Sweet Satisfaction of Papaya Creams and Chocolate, Date, and Orange Mousse; and more.
Beat Your Bloat by Maeve Madden
Beat Your Bloat by Maeve Madden

Beat Your Bloat by Maeve Madden — Being honest about bloating is something Irish-born blogger, model, and fitness guru Maeve Madden has never shied away from. In fact, her social media channels depict her real-life battle with IBS and PCOS, as well as adult acne. Her transparent, “no filter” approach is a proven hit and she has gained her more than 140k Instagram followers as a result. Our increasingly stressful lifestyles and poor diet choices means people are crying out for relatable, informative, and inspirational advice.

BEAT YOUR BLOAT: Recipes and Exercise to Promote Digestive Health (Kyle Books; January 2019; Trade Paperback; $16.99) covers Maeve’s personal journey to achieving a healthy lifestyle and shows how you too can transform your digestive health and fitness. Chapters cover Getting Started, Beating the Binge, Cut the Cravings, Rescue Remedies, and Consistency Not Perfection, and provides guidance not only on how to beat bloating but also on achieving body positivity.
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What do you still need to get this year?

My Current Summer Faves!

Summer is flying by this year!  It has been a long, hot one.  My youngest daughter starts high school in a couple of weeks and my middle daughter goes off to college.  It’s crazy!

This summer I have been loving the items below.  They include a cute quotation book on friendship, Biotin chews to help my skin, a fresh new summer perfume and fun holographic nail polish:

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The Joy of Friendship: A Thoughtful and Inspiring Collection of 200 Quotations ($12.50 USD) — The greatest gift in life is friendship. The Joy of Friendship celebrates these all-important relationships by exploring the nature of friendship, how it forms, and how it endures. From childhood friendships to lifelong best buddies, it is the friendships we build along the way that defines who we are and what our lives are about. As Aristotle said, a friend is “a soul living in two bodies.” The Joy of Friendship collects this and other wisdoms to help you better appreciate those who make your world a better place.

NeoCell Biotin Burst Brazilian Acai Berry 30 Chews ($11.96 USD) — All natural formula bursting with delicious flavor. Acai Berry for protection from free radical damage. Having beautiful and radiant skin has never been so easy- or so delicious. NeoCell Biotin Bursts deliver high absorption beauty nutrients in delectable, gourmet soft chews.

I’ve been taking these for about a week.  I like the berry taste and the fact that they are chews instead of pills.  They are fun and easy to take.  My skin has been looking pretty clear lately.  I don’t know if it’s too early to see results, but I will continue to take them!

Philosophy Pure Grace Endless Summer ($49 for 2 fl. oz EDT) — summer is a state of mind—and a new limited-edition fragrance. This fragrance celebrates the sultriest of seasons with delicate layers of iced lychee, exotic pomelo and warm musk, conjuring calm and a carefree sensibility with a single spritz.

I have been loving this during the summer.  It’s citrusy and fresh at first, then the musk gives a sultry finish.  I received this in a set that includes a body lotion, but the set doesn’t seem to be on sale any more.  You can get the perfume still.  And I definitely recommend it!

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The gorgeous nail polishes shown above are The Morgan Taylor Lacquer Platinum Collection. 

The claim for this is that it embraces pure excess with rich textures, effects, and an extended-wear formula.

“With Platinum, we wanted to give the wearer an indulgent experience by creating shades, effects, and textures straight from their wildest dreams,” explain brand namesakesMorgan Haile and Taylor Daniel.

These are so gorgeous!  I love all of the shades, but especially Disco Days, a mint green and Glow all Out, a rosey coral shade.   They wear best with a top coat.

What new summer products have you been loving?