Egg chair reading weather!
Category Archives: House & Home
Tonight is pizza night!
A COYOTE IN OUR YARD!
So this coyote was just in our back yard…playing with and pulling the stuffing out of a stuffed dog toy that our girls left out there. I wish I had gotten a picture of that — but by the time Katie saw it and told me, it had already jumped the fence (this pic is our neighbor’s yard)!
I have definitely seen coyotes around, but they’ve all been small. Tom said this one was HUUUUGE!! Now we really have to be on the lookout when the dogs go out.
A Curious Beginning
My new Crumbl favorite!
It tastes exactly like my favorite dessert!
Cirque du Soleil — Crystal
Another Vettix event!
Ever get a Reese’s Cup without peanut butter?
Now I have.
Wisconsin hospitality!
Katie helped me organize this hot mess!
My bathroom closet desperately needed attention and Katie likes organizing so I had her help me. I got rid of a bunch and reorganized and now my closet is functional again.
Happy National Margarita Day
It’s my day, y’all! Not sure I can drink the whole batch myself though! (I didn’t.)
Want some non-thinker books?
A friend asked me to recommend some non-thinker books for the long weekend!
I have lots, and thought I’d share here, too! All the ones with a hear are actually the first in a series and they’re all good!
All 27 books I read in January!
My reading goal for the year was only 100 (because I wanted to read fewer than last year (because 187 seemed like too many)) but I think I might have to rethink that goal.
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…
I might be sleeping on the couch tonight.
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
Manny’s Carnival Rum Punch
From Drunk on the Job The Misadventures of a Drunk in Paradise: Book #4
This sounded good so I’m saving it here!
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!
Tom picked up our box o’ deer today.
We were somewhat disappointed that we didn’t get any steaks—we must have read the form wrong. But we have lots of ground and the other things we asked for like jerky and sausages.
The bad thing about high ceilings.
We need a ladder to change the clock.
Pre-Thanksgiving 2023
Everyone was coming for Thanksgiving again this year! So Day 1 dinner prep—smoked ribs—started early!
Basket of toys + doggy door
They have a basket of toys. They also have a doggie door. So of course all of the toys end up out in the yard…which means they get dirty and need to be washed. They just all got washed and put back in the box last night.
Quick! There’s the sun!
These days you need to record the sun when you see it so you can remember what it looks like.
The girls helping me read.
Stephen King can feel daunting.
Goodbye, Maine
My last homemade lobster meal from my mom before heading to the airport—a lobster omelette with a side of lobster!
Our last full day in Maine!
Our last fresh lobster dinner—2+ pounders! We couldn’t even finish them so we have leftovers for lobster quiche in the morning before heading to the airport and back to real life!
It rained all damn day
I sat across the couch from Owen and read a book.
Everyone else played many hands of Buck Euchre (Katie learned it and loved it), Tonk, Kings Corners and others I’m surely forgetting. Katie was a card-playin fiend.
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.
Then it was off on another adventure—to my mom’s favorite spot: Pemaquid Point!
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!
