reading

Looking back over what I've read in the past couple years, my reading has taken a major turn toward the classics. For several years, I didn't read much fiction at all, even though I've always been a lover of stories. It is so difficult to find good, meaty, non-crass/non-filthy fiction by modern authors, though, which is part of why I just didn't bother there for awhile (the other part being that my kids were little and I had precious little time to read during those early years of their lives).

Then, a couple years ago, I read all of Jane Austen, one after another. I then moved on to The Count of Monte Cristo (my favorite book of all time ... so far ;) and I was completely hooked on classics! So, 2012 involved an ecclectic mix of books for me, but my favorites and the ones I remember best were definitely the old ones.

Here's a Goodreads screenshot list of books read in 2012:

cover	title	author	avg rating	rating	shelves	date read	dateadded
	The Hobbit	Tolkien, J.R.R.	4.17		read [edit]	Dec 29, 2012[edit]	Nov 25, 2012	edit view »
	The Moonstone	Collins, Wilkie	3.87		read [edit]	not set[edit]	Nov 25, 2012	edit view »
	Mortal (The Books of Mortals, #2)	Dekker, Ted *	4.09		read [edit]	not set[edit]	Oct 20, 2012	edit view »
	Forbidden (The Books of Mortals, #1)	Dekker, Ted *	3.97		read [edit]	not set[edit]	Oct 20, 2012	edit view »
	Emily's Quest (Emily, #3)	Montgomery, L.M.	4.08		read [edit]	Nov 25, 2012[edit]	Oct 20, 2012	edit view »
	Emily Climbs (Emily, #2)	Montgomery, L.M.	4.11		read [edit]	not set[edit]	Oct 20, 2012	edit view »
	Emily of New Moon (Emily of New Moon, #1)	Montgomery, L.M.	4.08		read [edit]	not set[edit]	Oct 20, 2012	edit view »
	A Tangled Web	Montgomery, L.M.	3.87		read [edit]	not set[edit]	Oct 20, 2012	edit view »
	The Westing Game	Raskin, Ellen	4.03		read [edit]	Jul 30, 2012[edit]	Jul 25, 2012	edit view »
	Anna Karenina	Tolstoy, Leo	3.98		read [edit]	not set[edit]	Jun 30, 2012	edit view »
	Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life	Eliot, George	3.89		read [edit]	not set[edit]	Jun 14, 2012	edit view »
	The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment	Burroughs, Jeremiah	4.43		read [edit]	not set[edit]	Jun 14, 2012	edit view »
	The Boxcar Children (The Boxcar Children, #1)	Warner, Gertrude Chandler	4.01		read [edit]	Jul 25, 2012[edit]	Jun 14, 2012	edit view »
	A Celebration of Children	Schaeffer, Edith	4.14		read [edit]	Oct 20, 2012[edit]	Jun 14, 2012	edit view »
	Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine, #1)	Riggs, Ransom	3.71		read [edit]	Apr 09, 2012[edit]	May 11, 2012	edit view »
	North and South	Gaskell, Elizabeth	4.10		read [edit]	Jul 25, 2012[edit]	Apr 25, 2012	edit view »
	The Night Circus	Morgenstern, Erin	3.99		read [edit]	not set[edit]	Apr 25, 2012	edit view »

Clearly, I did not like Middlemarch, haha!

I also read Dracula this year. Loved it. After that I started looking into the history of vampire lore and it is pretty interesting. And I read The Hunger Games trilogy, which was obviously amazing.

This year, I have plans to read more classics! I'm currently reading James Michener's Chesapeake (very good, especially since I've been teaching U.S. History this year) and then I want to read Les Miserable, before I see the movie. And The Great Gatsby, also before seeing the movie.

You can see all of my Goodreads here. I'd love for you to "friend" me! I often pick books based on the recommendations of my Goodreads friends. I also joined a reading group on Goodreads, called Classics without all the class, which you too can join. Should be fun, although I know reading every month's selection won't be possible. They also have a podcast, which you can find on iTunes under the same name. I hope to get to January's selection, but I definitely want to read February's since there is a new movie out that I've heard is great!

Speaking of reading, I snapped a shot of my little bookworm this morning. This is the kid who fought me every. step. of. the. way. and made me think I just wasn't cut out for homeschooling when I was teaching her to read. Ha! Look at her now :)

Thoughts on the New Year

Happy 2013!! I hope your year has started out awesome :) We stayed home on New Year's Eve, but it was in no way boring! Casey bought a second hand fire pit from someone he works with. I thought we would freeze out there after dark, but he proved me wrong, the fire put out plenty of heat and the kids thought it was super awesome. Not as awesome, though, as the giant Jenga game Casey made out of 2x4s. Ha! It was fun. We stayed up late (not the kids, we're not quite there yet) and watched the ball drop and kissed at midnight for the first time in many years. I think since Natalie was a baby.

I don't usually have much trouble putting together a list of goals for the New Year, but this year I just don't think I need any added pressure to accomplish more things. After much prayer and pondering, I think what I need is quite the opposite; to slow down, to not expect so much from myself, to find balance in what I have going and to learn to do just one thing at a time. I'm still praying about what this will look like in each area of my life so I won't go into too much detail for now :)

We started our second semester today and for as much as I was admittedly dreading it, it has been such a nice day and it feels amazing to get our routine back! Wowee, we were getting lazy ;)

One thing I would like to challenge myself to do this year is to take daily photos of our everyday life, a sort of 365 photo challenge. This one thing doesn't stres me out, it excites me. I love taking pictures and taking pictures of my daily life here at home truly helps what can sometimes feel mundane and unimportant feel beautiful and worthwhile. There are so many joyful moments in everything we do here and having started this just yesterday, I feel like I'm already taking more notice of those moments.

 The record was a gift for Casey from me. I found it on Amazon. What can I say, we connect over Paul Simon ;)

As for the blog, I am so excited about this year! You might have long ago realized that this is not a blog with just one genre and although I love talking about sewing and sharing sewing projects, my life is much more than that. I'm excited to share some health and fitness experiences and some encouragement in that arena. I haven't done much of that because I think I've felt that it would come across as kinda vain, but it's on my heart that there are moms (or non-moms too) out there that need to hear that a busy mom, former sugar addict and physically lazy person CAN lose weight, learn to love healthy foods and become a home exercise enthusiast. I am proof and I should share :)

As I take pics of our daily life here too, I know that more blog ideas will be forthcoming. For example, what do you feed your kids for lunch? I have acquired quite the repertoire of great and easy non-recipes for easy meals for lunch or when you lack time or when Daddy's out of town. So I should share those too!

Anything else you'd like to see more of here?? What are your New Year's goals??

How I did it: DIY Barbie house

I managed to get some better photos of the Barbie house and wanted to give a little how-I-did-it info. Here's the finished product in better light:

 Basically, we just bought an $18 particle board bookshelf at Target. Casey used a belt sander to sand it down and I grabbed some paint we already had in the house and painted the outsides and top a yellow color and the inside side walls turquoise, which consequently is the same color I used for their beds.

 For the flooring, I found 12x12 scrapbook papers at Hobby Lobby. The woodgrain could not have been more perfect and I love the black and white tile look for the kitchen! I used glossy finish Mod Podge to stick them on and seal them. You can look up online all kinds of tips for applying mod podge to paper and avoiding air bubbles, but I tried a few ways and still got some bubbles. I thought it looked awful until I put the top coats on and really, they pretty much disappeared.

 For the windows, I simply measured and drew the frames onto white card stock. I then glued those onto the cloud background paper. On the lower windows, I also cut out the wave paper, to make it look like a beach house.  I Mod Podged the windows on too.

 I started out using papers for the back wall too, but the backing that comes with the bookshelf was flimsy, had creases and needed sanded. The paper wasn't sticking. So Casey went to home depot and got a thin board cut to the right size. It cost $5. I then picked out fabric for the back wallpaper. It worked sooooo much better! It went on with no air bubbles and it was plenty big enough so I didn't have to piece it together like I would have with paper.

 The "carpet" upstairs was some printed felt, also from Hobby Lobby. It's much stiffer than felt, though,  it's kinda the weight of Peltex. I made the zebra rugs out of a leathery like 8 1/2 by 11 sheet at Hobby Lobby.

One more note to add: rather than using the little shelf holder pegs that came with the bookshelf, Casey bought the L-shaped kind so they could screw in and the shelves won't flop around and the kids can't move them.

That's it! It can be as easy or as time-consuming as you want it to be! With the furniture I scored on Black Friday, our total was less than $60. The nice wooden Barbie houses and even most of the plastic ones are much more than that!