Squeeee! I have a Dream Box!

I wanted a Dream Box back when we were redoing the office…but they are super expensive (and then we figured out it wasn’t what I needed for my business).

Fast forward to Tom finding a used Dream Box on Facebook marketplace and the price was right so I grabbed it! It was 1.5 hours away so it was a little bit of work but she’s home and beautiful in the basement bedroom.

Now to fill it with all my Christmas stuff, crafts, art supplies, Cricut accessories…

MY FINAL 2023 TOTAL BOOKS READ IS 187!

I did a monthly book bracket—which was hard because some months had more than one great book!

That said, my top 12 bracket books of the year were:

  • January – Verity
  • February – Spare
  • March – Winners
  • April – Under the Whispering Door
  • May – In the Lives of Puppets
  • June – The Bones Beneath My Skin
  • July – Housemaid’s Secret
  • August – Dark Matter
  • September – Big Little Lies
  • October – A Man Called Ove
  • November – The Wishing Game
  • December – Never Lie

And the winning bracket book of my year is Under the Whispering Door.

Other books I’d highly recommend:

•Beartown (series)
•Project Hail Mary
•Midnight Library
•The Rose Code
•The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
•Undercover Bromance (series)
•Remarkably Bright Creatures
•The Authenticity Project
•Gone Girl
•Drowning
•In an Instant
•Finley Donovan series
•Thursday Murder Club (series)
•Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice
•I Will Always Write Back
•The Wild Robot
•None of This is True

12 in 12 (2024)

If you’ve been following along this year, you know I’ve read a ton (I’m at 175 and I’d like to finish at least five more in the next 13 days—I passed my original goal of 125 in August). I still have hundreds on my list, but I enjoyed all of the recommendations I got last year—so I did it again! Here are the 12 books recommended to me by 12 friends!

Friday Fave: fresh lobster

I’m in Maine so that means FRESH LOBSTER!

There’s a dock just a few miles from where we’re staying that we visit every other day. If you saw my reel yesterday, that’s the place.

Honestly if I had my choice I’d probably choose a lobster roll, but there’s something about cracking open your own personal lobster!

Lesson learned and Pemaquid Point

Last night we had asked Owen to take out the lobster waste and set the bucket inside the garbage bins (because it was too dark to go too the beach and dump in the water—but it couldn’t stay in the house or be left out where animals could get it.

Never underestimate the non-listening power of a teen brain. This is what we found in the morning. He somehow missed that we said to put the lobster shells IN the garbage bin and just left it on the porch. So then he got the glorious job of cleaning it all up! We all had a good laugh.

Exploring on our beach again!

Then it was off on another adventure—to my mom’s favorite spot: Pemaquid Point!

When we got home, Katie wanted to swim but it was a little too chilly.
Us girls had a nice time catching up on the beach.
Of course, lobster for dinner!

You’ve seen the lobster dinner, now see our dessert! Everyone loves strawberry shortcake!

Lobster, lobster, lobster!

When in Rome…

When vacationing in Maine, fresh lobsters straight from the dock are mandatory. You’re looking at nine lobsters coming in at 18-ish pounds!

Yesterday’s leftover lobster getting made into lobster rolls for lunch!
Katie loved exploring on the beach and looking for sea glass. She’d send us pictures when she found things!
Beth and Kath flew in today for the long weekend!
We dared Katie to touch a lobster again.
Grauntie Rose offering to take Katie’s share of lobster.
Mmmmmmmmm.

Friday Fave: Rum punch

I always thought I didn’t like rum…but as it turns out I don’t like SPICED rum or coconut rum. So when we were on our family cruise in 2019 and our snorkeling with the turtles excursion came with unlimited rum punch, I learned that I actually quite liked rum punch. But it wasn’t really a drink we made ourselves.

Fast forward a bit to our friend David saying he made the best Trinidadian rum punch…and by golly he did. Wow. So every now and again he’d make a batch for us and we actually drank it so much we kinda tired of it. (It was even a favorite drink at the 2022 Hudson Summer Bash.)

But every once in awhile now we’ll have it again…but there’s no way the four of us can finish it these days, so that means we get leftovers! So I know what I’m drinking tonight!!

Are you a rum punch fan?