Wednesday, June 26, 2013

What Books Have You Read?

I got this from my sister, Kelsey.  Here is: Kelsey's List

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.
Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses!


1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (all)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell         
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger 
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot 
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare 
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl 
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Read=18
Not bad, but as an English, Literature, and Creative Writing student, you would think I would have read more of them.  Kelsey has read 34!  She is a reading machine.  :)

Monday, June 10, 2013

Projects!

I have been having a really fun time lately doing projects to decorate our house and make it feel more homey.  I revamp some things we already have, and get a lot of things from D.I. and then fix them up.  That way, it doesn't cost very much.  Here are some of the results!

I have had this toy box for as long as I can remember.  Originally, it was bubble gum pink.  Then, in the summer of 2004, I got really "creative" and started painting random things all over it.  I should have taken pictures of all sides of it; you would really get a sense of the transformation.  
 Here it is now, all one color:
We are using it for storage under our entertainment center now.  And I am still planning on adding a cushion to the top of the box, in a colorful print, so more pics on that later.

These next items are ones I found at D.I., like this picture frame.  I thought it was really interesting to look at.  This picture was taken after I removed the ugly floral print that was in it before, so this in and of itself is an improvement to the original.
 And I love the end result even more.
I liked how this thing was a little unusual looking.
 I repainted it and hung it right inside our front door for our keys.
I was really excited when I found this twelve by twelve frame, because it was a completely blank canvas.
 Justin and I picked this cool bird print off of Art.com, and I painted the frame the same blue to match the "pink box" and the tones in the print.
I forgot to take a "before" picture of this frame, but it was just a plain brown frame.  I sanded it down and painted it.  I like how chunky it is, and how the greens in the background of the photograph play off the frame color.
Our living room furniture is all browns and blacks, so I really wanted to paint everything to be bright and happy.  The colors I am using are ones that I pulled out of a bright, multi-colored area rug we bought.  I think once I get all the pictures hung, they will play really well off of each other.

This is the cutest wagon I found at D.I. and I just had to get it.  I didn't really know what to do with it at first.
 But look how cute it is with a couple succulents planted in it!  I just pray I don't kill them.  They are supposed to be very hard to kill...but that's never stopped me before, unfortunately.  :)
It's been a blast to remake things into my own style.  I still haven't really hung any of them yet, so that's the next step.  I will post pictures of how they all look when I do.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Ciaran!

I wanted to update everyone on Ciaran.  He is 10 months old (tomorrow) and he is my little smarty-pants.  This isn't always a good thing, let me tell you.  He has figured out how to take the outlet covers off, and how to pull Jude's legos apart so they are in even smaller pieces.
But, it's really fun how much he has started mimicking us.  Whenever I point to a toy across the room and tell him to go get it, he points at it and starts babbling.  Yesterday, Justin was leaving for work and he kissed Ciaran goodbye and Ciaran made the kissing sound at the same time!  What a cutie! 
His favorite toys are balls; anytime I bounce or toss a ball, he gets really excited. He loves to play catch with us.  No, really, Ciaran DOES play catch.  He throws the ball to us and we throw it back.  I am amazed by him every day.
He loves being outside.  Any time anyone opens the front door, he makes a beeline for it.  The other day, it was raining pretty good and I let Jude go out in it for a little while.  And, sure enough, Ciaran wasn't far behind.  He sat in a puddle and started splashing away in it.
He has four teeth now, and it wasn't fun for anyone getting them ha ha.  (I'm laughing so I don't cry.)  He is also still really clingy to me, which gets old at times.  But, it's still nice being the one person he wants all the time.  I love this kid so much!

Monday, May 13, 2013

What I Wanted to Do For Mother's Day

Take family pictures!!!

 Look at my adorable boys!

Best 6 years of my life!

Sunday, May 5, 2013

My Graduation!

I had a wonderful graduation on Saturday!  Let's take a look, shall we?

Where's Jesse??
It's almost my turn!
Getting my diploma (...holder)!
I love love LOVE Ciaran's expression in this pic.
And, yes, in this pic, too (Ciaran didn't want me to put him down ever again after our traumatic 1 1/2 separation).  FYI, the medallion I am wearing is for the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences and the beads are for the English Department...woot!  woot!
With my Dad and Keshia!
Check out the Dads representin'!
And with Jake and Annie!  And, yeah, Ciaran again.
Our Family!
I want to thank everyone who came out to support me, and for those who couldn't make it but really wanted to be there.  I got tons of words of support and congratulations from so many people, not to mention cards and gifts.  Thank you all!

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Putting All the Kids to Bed

Or, uh, all the Superheroes.  Either way, Jude has them tucked in tight.  Good night, Batman, Iron Man, and Mr. Freeze.

Being Healthy

We love our chips, we love our treats, and we love love our soda.  We are not in denial about anything; we know we are addicted to these things, but it hasn't been a problem because we kind of like being addicted to these things.  They are delicious.  Being addicted to salty, sweet, bubbly yummy goodness is awesome.

BUT (there's always a "but"?) I have realized that it is impossible to get Jude to eat well if Justin and I aren't.  If there is bad stuff in the house, it will somehow find its way into this little boy's mouth.  I don't really know how it happens because I always resolve not to give him any of it.  But, when parents are eating something delicious, it seems kind of rude to be like, "here, child, eat spinach.  It's good for you.  It's not good for me.  Just for you."

So, Justin and I have decided that it is time we started eating better.  Starting now, we are not buying soda, chips, or candy of any kind.  We are substituting with water (none of us drink enough water, and I know for a fact I get dehydrated all the time), crackers, and fruit and veggies.  Also, we are switching from delicious white bread to not-as-yummy wheat bread.  Ugh.

Surprisingly, I think Justin, Jude and I all like fruit, veggies, crackers, etc.  But, when your body is used to eating other crap, it has to adjust back to being satisfied with healthy things.  I have discovered you have to eat a lot more healthy things to feel full...or maybe our bodies need to adjust to not being filled up so much, too.

So, here's to Day 1 of being healthy for our kids (and of course, for us).  Wish us luck!
(I already miss soda.)