Summary Sunday: Mother's Day Edition

Me & my amazing mother.

Well Happy Mother's Day everyone! I'm getting to this post a little late, but only by about an hour. I call that okay. (Just pretend with me...okay?)

The major reason for the delay is some blog surgery I've been undertaking this evening. It's still not all complete, but I've gotten a few of the big things taken care of.

1. I've truncated my posts from the last month and a half. Upcoming posts will all be truncated. The reason I've gone this route is two-fold. First off, to protect the blog from having content stolen. This isn't really the primary reason, but it's an added bonus. The real reason I'm doing it is to clean up the home page. Now when you come to the main page, you can easily scroll through the posts without feeling like you're scrolling for eternity. It just looks a little nicer.

2. New header. This one took me a while. I've altered the header to go from the blocky thing that Blogger stuck me with to a more rounded and softer looking logo. I've also added the dotted outline and changed the font. Minor changes overall, but I like it much better.

3. Tabs with drop down menus! This one is my favorite. It still has quite a bit of work to go, but the basic structure is complete. This took a lot of research into programming...something I'm not terribly skilled at. But now you can access a lot of things very easily by going straight from the menus. I'll be working on this more, but it may take me a while since I'm focusing on Bout of Books this week. Don't panic if you follow a tab to a blank page for now. It will get there, I promise. Bear with me...

Now...let's see what else I accomplished this week...

Posts I Posted: The busyness continues. I posted four book reviews this week. Wowza. I'm pretty sure that has never happened over here. In cased you missed them, the chosen books were:

The Undiscovered Goddess by Michelle Colston

Where She Went by Gayle Forman

Blackbird by Melanie Schulz

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

I also talked about the wrap up of the A to Z Challenge and gave my postmortem breakdown of how it all went for me.

I gave my wind up speech for Bout of Books...which starts tomorrow (well, technically today)!! I listed out my goals for the week and also enlisted Darian to join me. We're both pretty excited.

And...the biggest news of the week (for me at least)...I announced that I will be hosting a blog challenge this year! I do my Book of the Year bracket every January, but it's time to get some company. So, I'm asking all you book devouring bloggers to join me for the 2014 BOTY Bracket Challenge. We'll be building our brackets until December 31st and then having those books duke it out in the first few weeks of January. Head on over and sign up! And don't let the lack of a bracket hold you back. I'll be putting out sample brackets for everyone to use here in a couple of weeks.

Recipes I Tried: Shopping got completed last week, so our meal plan is underway for the next few months. That means cooking...and new recipes! We tried two new ones this week. Both were pretty good. I'll be sharing my tweaked versions of the Banana Pepper Roast and Spaghetti with Chicken, Kale, and White Beans down the line. You know I can't just follow a recipe. I have to mess with it.

Books I Read: I didn't finish anything this week, but instead continued reading A Shining Space by Ailsa Fabian. I should be able to complete it tomorrow (today) as the first book in my Bout of Books reads.

Projects I Worked On/Finished: This week, I got just a little bit more self-sufficient. For the very first time ever, I made homemade chicken stock. I was pretty darned proud of myself. It's fairly simple so I'll be sharing that process down the line as well. I also worked quite a bit on blog stuff in preparation for the current construction project and made my mom a Mother's Day card. Not horrible. A fairly productive week.

Favorite Pin of the Week: Okay...no spilling it, but my favorite Pin this week is one that I'm planning on using towards at least one birthday or Christmas present this year. It's this adorable Elsa dress (you know, from Frozen) made by Carissa at Carissa Miss. She gives the whole tutorial. It's just awesome. You need to go check it out.

Alrighty...now I need to head off to bed. Work tomorrow followed by the start of a whole lot of reading. I'm super excited to get Bout of Books rolling!