Behind the Scenes

It's easy to forget how much work it takes to really run a blog. I have: books to read and review; projects to make, photograph, and write up; plans for the big projects to make for later in the year; scheduling and blog keeping activities to attend to. That's what's been going on this week. It's been a housekeeping week.

I figured I'd catch you up on what I've been doing and what's coming up, just so you don't all think I've been nothing but lazy this week.


This Week...

Progress has been made on some of the upcoming bigger projects.

Part of 2012's display

The Pumpkin Plan for 2014 has been finalized. We officially have our theme nailed down and I've already drawn up the rough sketches. I know that we'll need twenty-eight regular sized pumpkins. (We will totally take pumpkins off of anyone's hands near the end of October if you have extras you want to get rid of.) I have a short list started of the spray paint colors required and the additional items we need. It's looking good. The plan will be revealed on October 1st.

I've already started putting together the Christmas Project Plan for 2014 as well. I still have a few people to figure out, but I have quite the list of items to get started on. The next step is to start making a list of necessary supplies so that we can start slowly picking them up. I can also now get started on some of the bigger projects, so that I won't feel so overwhelmed come December.

Since I was putting together the project list for Christmas, I also started working on next year's A to Z Challenge schedule. The majority of last year's items were previous gifts from birthdays or Christmas, so that will most likely how it will be again in 2015. As of right now, I have items planned for all letters except for J, U, V, X, Y, & Z. Some letters have multiple options. With those ones, it will just depend on which projects I like best for the fit (and maybe how well I can juggle the extras to fit into the six remaining letters).


But, this week wasn't all planning. It was a lot of planning, but not all planning. I have a project currently in the works that I'm hoping to have finished by the end of the weekend. It may not go up in a post for a week or two, but it's taking up some of my time. Can you believe it? Craftiness is happening. I'm a little shocked myself.

I also braved a short return to Pinterest. I piled on some new pins and went through my boards to get some fresh ideas. That helped to get some ideas for the upcoming weeks.

Speaking of...


Coming Up...

I've gotten permission for my photo session to post on the blog, so that got edited and ready to go and will be posted next week. I'm waiting on permission to post the photo rag quilt I finished last week, then it will go up.

The sewing machine is still in the shop, so my original plans of finishing out a new set of hand puppets have been thwarted. They'll have to wait a couple of weeks, but they will eventually make their way to the blog. In the meantime, I'm working on non-sewing projects. I've decided to finally sit down and learn how to crochet, so that will be a task I work on during the Labor Day holiday. It should be an adventure.

I'm also going to be working on some scrapbooking this weekend...something I haven't done in over a year. It's the only hobby that hasn't been crossed off for August, so I'm putting in that effort before September arrives. I'm planning on working on some mini-albums to share during the upcoming month. I have some ideas that I'm really excited to get started on.


You may or may not hear from me for the remainder of the weekend. I'm going to try and pop a post in on Sunday and I'd like to do a project post on Monday, but we'll see what happens. I'm flying by the seat of my pants this weekend and trying to get some relaxation time in along the way. For those of you in the States, have a relaxing Labor Day holiday. For the rest of you...just have a wonderful weekend!

Bout of Books 11: Wrap Up

And then it was all over. Just like that.

Seriously. It feels like Bout of Books just started and now it's over. Bummer. I did manage to get some good reading in and the last couple of days have been extremely nice, but now I have to go back to regular life. Drat.

Darian made it home tonight and scraped together a little more reading before he headed to bed. I was right though, not a single page of reading the whole time he was gone. I'm in no way surprised.

I didn't do the number of challenges I had originally planned to do, but it was just too nice being able to ignore everything but books. And so I did. If only life could be like that every day.

I said yesterday that meeting my goals was going to be a squeaker. And a I was totally right on that, too. Ready to see how we did?

Bout of Books 11: Saturday Update

Today was a productive, yet nonproductive day. It was really quite nice. I woke up via alarm and participated (somewhat groggily) in the Bout of Books Twitter chat. It was quite lively and entertaining and I also managed to glean a handful of book recommendations to add to my TBR pile. Ah, the ever growing pile.

After that, I'll be honest...I totally goofed around for a while. I showered and sort of put myself together and then messed around on the internet reading blog posts, checking out Bout of Books bloggers, and playing games on my iPad. That lasted through lunch. It was freaking awesome to more or less do nothing of substance.

I then buckled down and started reading this afternoon...and fell asleep in my book. Oops. This bed is much too comfy. After my brief nap, I did actually manage to finish a book and this evening started on another. So there was progress...just slowly.

I was also going to participate in today's challenge, but I just plain got lazy. The books are upstairs, I'm on the main floor. Ugh. Just laziness. So I bailed out on that and read instead. I'm okay with that.

Only one more day left in the read-a-thon. It always goes so fast. I'm getting closer to my goals, but I don't know if I'll quite get there. I have that one last push to make it there tomorrow. We'll see what happens.

Here's where I managed to get today...

Bout of Books 11: Friday Update

This one is bound to be a short post...for two reasons:

1. I was right and Darian didn't call me with numbers. I'm assuming he didn't read today anyway, so I'm leaving his stats out for tonight. Unless I hear from him tomorrow, I'm going to just leave his stat section out until Sunday. His current stats are posted on my read-a-thon page along with info on all of our upcoming and past read-a-thon's.

2. I'm super sleepy. I keep trying to fall asleep in my book. It's not a bad book, I'm just terribly worn out. It was a long week.

Believe it or not, I did manage to get two challenges completed today. They were both pretty fun. You can find them in a separate post for today.

Now...let's get to the stats before I pass out on my keyboard. I am not guaranteeing any cohesiveness in my thought pattern for this post. I'm even less sure of my ability to construct a legitimate sentence. I apologize in advance.

Elle's Current Stats 

Currently Reading :

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

Minutes Read Today: 125 minutes 

Total Time Read: 709 minutes

Goal: 1500 minutes

Pages Read Today: 125 pages

Total Pages Read: 664 pages

Goal: 1500 pages

Books Finished Today: 1

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult : 4 out of 5 stars

Total Books Finished: 2

Goal: 6 books

Yay! I finally managed to finish my second book. Only 4 more to go... At least I should be able to meet my minutes and pages goal. (As long as I do some decent reading this weekend, as planned.)

How's your read-a-thon going? Are you as happy as I am that the weekend is finally here? 

I'll be back in tomorrow for an update. I may also be back for a challenge post depending on what it entails. I will be doing my best to be around for the Twitter chat that is scheduled for 10 a.m. CST. It means cutting my sleeping in time somewhat short, but I plan on taking part from the comfort of my bed, so that will make it a little easier.

See you tomorrow...and...happy reading!

Bout of Books 11: Friday Challenges

It's time for another challenge post! (Sometimes, I think it would be more entertaining to do this blog as a vlog. You miss out on all the weirdo sounds I make in my head when I write this stuff. Okay...maybe it's just entertaining to me. Moving on...)

I'm in a quirky mood today, so we'll see what happens. I have a feeling that I might go crafty crazy when I get home. So wish my sewing machine wasn't on the fritz... I did schmooze Collin into taking it back over to the repair shop for me, so I should have a fully functional machine here shortly. Yay!!

I'll most likely be updating this post during the day since I most likely won't have time to do both challenges in one sitting. So...be sure to check back at the end of the day to see if I've made any changes.

The first challenge for today is hosted over at Christian Bookshelf Reviews. It's a Book Chain Challenge. This means stringing together the titles of four books to make one continuous piece. Here's her example :

In Perfect Time by Sarah Sundin

(A) Time To Love by Barbara Cameron
Love Comes Home by Ann H. Gabhart

Home To You by Cheryl Wolverton

See how that works?

Alright. Now it's my turn.

Let me tell you, this task is not as easy as it may first appear. But it was fun! So...I couldn't help myself. I have two of them for you.

#1...

#2...

See...fun!

Challenge #2 is to Recreate a Cover. It's hosted by Spines & Covers. 

This one was also challenging in it's own way. You see...I can do crafts, but I absolutely, positively have no drawing skills. So recreations using drawing? Totally out of the question. 

Instead, I'm using my pile of photos to help me out. Nothing a little photoshop can't fix...

Here's what I started with...

And after a little reimagination...

That's Darian at age 5 with my brother, Tyler. Look how little he is! (Darian, not Tyler. Tyler's still pretty much the same size.) This is one of my favorite pictures from when he was little.

Another fun one!

I'll be back later tonight with my updates. We'll see if Darian remembers to call with his numbers (and if he even manages to read today). He's taking off after school. I still doubt there will be any reading. Especially since he says that he won't be reading in the car.

Bout of Books 11: Thursday Update

Oh my goodness...day four almost killed me. And not because of the reading. In fact, I didn't even get to the reading until 10pm. Ridiculous.

It was a long day at work and tomorrow looks to be about the same. I did have a nice, long lunch hour, but I spent it taking care of errands and catching up on my Feedly instead of reading a book. Not a horrible use of time, but not quite what I really intended to do at the outstart of the day.

After I got home from work, I threw myself into finishing up the photo rag quilt I've been working on. I'm delivering it to the woman who ordered it tomorrow (2 full weeks before deadline. Yay!), so it was kind of a do or die situation. Unfortunately, what I expected to take about an hour ended up taking over three and totally wreaked havoc on my hands in the process. I'd be lying if I said that didn't make me a bit grumpy.

While I was tackling that, Darian read for a brief stint and then disappeared. I found him later in the basement playing with LEGOs. Apparently, he decided he needed a reading break.

I did manage to do the challenge for the day. I posted my "If you liked this, try this" post earlier this evening. It's probably not the absolute best I could have done, but I came up with some pretty good books that I would recommend to others, so I'm calling that a win.

Now...let's do some stats so I can crash out before another crazy day begins.

Bout of Books 11: Thursday Challenge Interlude

How a little break in updates? We'll be back (well...I will be. Darian will be in bed.) in a couple of hours with today's update, but for now how about a little book challenge?

Today's challenge is hosted by Lori at Writing My Own Fairy Tale. The challenge is a "like this, try this". That means, I suggest books to read based on other books you may have liked. I'm opting to give you five different ideas for new, fantastic reads. (Oh..and these totally work in reverse as well.)

Ready?

1. If you liked...

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Try...

Where She Went by Gayle Forman

2. If you liked...

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Try...

Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

3. If you liked...

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Try...

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

4. If you liked...

Bossypants by Tina Fey

Try...

Let's Pretend That Never Happened by Jenny Lawson (AKA The Bloggess)

5. If you liked...

This Song Will Save Your Life by Leila Sales

Try...

Amy & Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson

Hopefully there's at least one book in this group that you haven't read and will find some interest in. I enjoyed all of them.

I'll see you in a few hours. Happy reading!!

Bout of Books 11: Wednesday Update

Three days down. Bout of Books 11 continues.

It was a crazy day today. I got a lot accomplished, but the day was not quite what I imagined it would be. I had the day off work today and while Collin let me sleep in a little bit after we got Darian off to school, I spent the majority of my day running crazy -- most of the time working on two things at once.

I finalized the tweaks on my sans-cinnamon zucchini bread recipe and baked another batch of muffins, along with a loaf of bread. Piper then ate half the bread from the cutting board after I left the room. Crazy dog loves zucchini bread.

I nearly finished the quilt I've been working on. I just have some final touches to put on it tomorrow night and it will be ready for a Friday delivery.

I also took and edited photos from a short photo session. I can't tell you more than that for now, but I have been approved to put the results up on the blog here in a week or so.

After all of that, I cooked dinner and then Darian & I (but mostly just I) participated in the Bout of Books Twitter chat. It was a lot of fun and I look forward to the next one on Saturday morning.

As for Darian, he had a pretty darned good first day of school. We called the school in the afternoon and got his schedule fixed (since he was put into the wrong social studies class), but other than that it sounds like his day pretty much went off without a hitch. Hopefully that trend continues.

Even with all of that, we did still get some reading in. Here are our stats at the end of day 3...

Bout of Books 11: Tuesday Update

Day two of Bout of Books 11...check.

Today was a rough one. I spent most of my day trying to remember that today was Tuesday. I don't know what day I thought it was, but for the life of me I could not remember that tomorrow (well..today by the time I publish this) is Wednesday. Just one of those days.

Work was busy and I completely forgot to take my book with me to work today. Failure on my part since that would've given me at least another 45 minutes of page time.

After I got home and dealt with dinner, I spent a bit of time watching Gilmore Girls and working on cutting seams for a rag quilt I should be finishing up tomorrow. I always watch Gilmore Girls when I sew a big project. It's a tradition for me, I suppose.

Once my hand started getting worn out from the constant squeeze of the scissors, I moved my evening and Darian and I hung out and read together for a bit before he headed off to bed. Tomorrow is his first day of 7th grade. Hard to believe that the little kid who used to refer to the Yeti as the "Barbie Doll Snowman" (abominable snowman in 4-year-old English) is now more than half way through his primary education.

In the end, he's still kicking my can at the current read-a-thon, but I now have a chance to do some catching up. He'll be at school instead of home lounging, so his reading time will be cut significantly. Depending on how much homework his teachers decide to assign during week one, he could be relegated to only his half hour reading time before bed. We'll see. Maybe they'll be nice...

Enough of this blabber. Here's where we are as of Tuesday evening...

Bout of Books 11: Monday Update

Day one of Bout of Books 11 has come to a close. It was a bit of a whirlwind of a day really...I'm not sure where all of the time went.

While I spent most of mine at work, Darian apparently spent most of his reading. As you'll see, he may have underestimated his abilities in this read-a-thon. I don't think he'll have any trouble making his goals at this rate, even with school starting on Wednesday.

I did get some reading in today. I also participated in my first challenge of the read-a-thon, the Book Scavenger Hunt hosted by The Book Monsters. Although I don't think all of my entries made it in before the Central Standard Time deadline (bummer), I still had fun finding books to meet the categories.

Scavenger Hunt Categories by photo: top left - collection of short stories, bottom left - TBR pile, top right - book starting with "B", bottom right - series you love, far right - book turned movie.

Tomorrow should allow me another decent day of evening reading. I'm working a full day, but it's just Dar and me tomorrow night while Collin teaches. That means that's probably the only thing other than dinner that will get done around here (except for maybe a little quilt work since I have one I'm planning to finish by Saturday). Just working to keep them stats going.

Ready to see how we did for day one?

Bout of Books 11: Goals

Yay! It's here! Bout of Books 11 starts TODAY!!!

We are so ready to read! I actually meant to post this last night, but...I've been sucked into the QuizUp app and wasted a bit of time there instead. Oops. But...we are getting started today!!

For those of you not familiar with Bout of Books...

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, August 18th and runs through Sunday, August 24th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure, and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 11 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

Let's talk goals.

Virgin by Radhika Sanghani

 Title : Virgin

Author : Radhika Sanghani

Series : N/A, Standalone

Genre : Contemporary Fiction, Chick Lit, New Adult

Number of Pages : 304

Publication Date : June 2014

Publisher : Berkley

Rating :

I received this book as a free copy from NetGalley. These books are given to me as review copies to read and evaluate. I am not obligated to write a review for any of the books I receive, but it is an encouraged practice. I choose which books I review on my blog and on my Goodreads profile. I do not receive monetary compensation for my reviews. My reviews are always honest...I never lie about books. My opinions are my own and may be positive or negative depending on my feelings about a specific piece. Keep in mind, just because I may like or not like a book may not mean that you will feel the same way.

Monster Read-a-Thon Wrap Up & BOTY Bracket Update

Another read-a-thon come and gone.We both did very well with this Monster Read-a-Thon. I'm pretty pleased with the results. We both made (and in most cases exceeded) our goals. Yay! Now we have a week off from read-a-thon madness until we take on Bout of Books 11 beginning on the 18th.

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, August 18th and runs through Sunday, August 24th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure, and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 11 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

Oh...and a little bonus today. After my stats, I'll be including the update to my 2014 BOTY Bracket. Darian was supposed to have his for posting as well, but he headed to his mom's place today without getting his randomization all finished, so his will have to wait until Bout of Books week.

But before we move on to the next read-a-thon, let's see how we stacked up with this one...

Monster Read-a-Thon: Update 3

We made it through our 24-hour read with a few modifications. The biggest? We did get up and reading at a decent hour (10 a.m. as I predicted), but - as expected - Darian didn't make it very far and crashed out at 11:30pm. So we broke our 24-hour read up into two 12 hour reads, the second of which is currently underway. 

Even with the curtailed movement, we still busted out a lot of reading yesterday and had a decently good time. I got some ideas for our read-a-thon and even more ideas of how we can make a more fun read-a-thon next time. I'll be implementing those for our read-a-thon after Bout of Books 11, which I expect will be Season's Reading's Fright Fall Read-a-Thon.

We ate some junk food, did some outdoor reading at the park, and had a few other themed activities that I'm not going to share quite yet since I'm going to use them to design our read-a-thon fun for Fright Fall. At that point, I'll announce them and you're more than welcome to play along.

The goal for today is to...well...meet our goals. It's the final day of the Monster Read-a-Thon, so it's the final push. We're both doing pretty darned good. Darian has only his page goal left to make. He's hot on it's heels. I have my books and pages, but it's looking pretty likely that I'll hit one (if not both) of those goals as well. Yay for making reasonable goals!

Here's where we are as of this morning...

Monster Read-a-Thon: Update 2

And here we are, back again. It's now officially the weekend, so now the serious reading can begin. The last two days weren't quite as productive for me, but there was still movement on the reading front. Yay!

Darian and I plan to start our 24-hour read-a-thon phase tomorrow morning around 9 a.m.. (Knowing us...it really won't start until 10ish.)

I've been racking my brain to try and come up with some ideas for tomorrow to keep things fun, but I'm not doing well. Other than the fact that we have snacks and we'll be moving our reading to a few different locations, I haven't been able to come up with anything special that won't just feel like I'm making us do more work than reading. I still have a few hours to come up with something amazing, so we'll see. Oh well. It will honestly be nice just to relax and read for a while.

I've cleared the weekend pretty well for the read-a-thon. I got all of the sewing that I needed to have completed this week finished by dinnertime. That means that I really don't have to do any work on the quilt until Monday. Even better? I should still manage to be done about a week earlier than the planned deadline if things keep progressing properly.

Let's see where we're sitting heading into the weekend...

Monster Read-a-Thon: Update 1

It's been a minorly eventful couple of days. I am happy to report that my personal progress on this read-a-thon is much improved over the last two we have participated in...so that's something. Some other things have not gone as smoothly.

On Tuesday afternoon, I was sewing away contentedly, enjoying some Gilmore Girls while I sewed quilt squares, when my machine decided to have a seizure. That's the best way I can describe it. The needle started trying to initialize, but instead would shimmy back and forth uncontrollably. In response, I pulled the machine apart and cleared out the amassed lint thinking maybe this had gummed something up. Nope. No improvement.

One frantic call to a local repair shop later and I hopped in the car with the machine to deliver it for some TLC. The shop I used (Johnson's Sewing Center) was amazing and they fixed my spastic machine overnight. There is still a little repair work to do, but they got it functional for me since they knew I was working on a time sensitive project. I just need to drop it back off when I'm done and they'll finish up fixing some timing issues on some decorative stitches for no additional charge.

There is a chance that my speed control is going completely out, but I won't know for sure until I take it back and the head honcho can look at it. I will seriously cry if this is the case. I love my little EuroPro. For now though, I'm back in the swing of things and my quilt is coming along pretty well.

As for reading, I've done alright. I got a bit done while sitting in the doctor's office yesterday and Tuesday's sewing machine breakdown afforded me a little extra time as well. Initially, the plan was to get this post up last night, but life intervened. Instead, we went to a local small town rodeo for the evening. It was nice to go do something as a family (even if Darian acted totally bored the whole time).

But...better late than never. Here's our reading progress so far...

Monster Read-a-Thon: Goals

It's back to the books! Today marks the start of The Pick-Your-Thon: Monster Read-a-Thon/Review-a-Thon hosted by The Book Monsters. We'll be reading!

The goal (for me) is to do better than I did for the last two read-a-thons we participated in. By do better, I mean being more realistic about my goals and do better at reaching them, not necessarily reading more. I say this because I am working on another custom project at the moment.

Amidst all this reading, I'm sewing a custom photo rag quilt for a set of siblings who want a special birthday gift for their mother. So far it's going well. Now...the trick is to balance my time between sewing, reading, and all the other good stuff.

Darian's goal is apparently just to read. He set his goals based on how he did last time, so once again he's aiming higher than me. I have no doubt he'll do well. He's already packed in a handful of hours to my one and change.

Here's what we hope to accomplish...

Easy Custom Dog Bed

This is Mischa...

Mischa is a holy terror. She's a German Shepherd/Border Collie mix officially, but we have our suspicious that she might be Australian Kelpie. Either way, she's full of energy, loves to herd us all, and gets herself in to a pile of trouble.

Including destroying my favorite pair of shoes...

Chewing on her ball prevents most destruction.

So she sleeps in a crate. She is not trusted. I will admit that she has mellowed significantly since we first got her and she is getting better at a year and a half old, but still...she is not trusted.

Before last weekend, she slept in this.

Source

It had been lined with some towels, then we added an old pillow. She loved that. And then someone forgot to put her chew toy in the crate with her, she got bored, and she chewed a hole in it. Fluff EVERYWHERE. Dead pillow.

A few months ago, I bought her a new (used) crate from a local buy/sell/trade group. It was in okay shape, but needed some work. It was missing the floor tray, had some rust issues, and the prior owner had not cleaned it as well as I would have before selling it. (We bought it at night when it was dark other than their driveway porch lights so I had a little surprise by the light of day.)

I went to work scrubbing and cleaned off the junk crusted to the bars. It took me a couple of hours, my laundry scrub brush, and some white vinegar (along with some pretty good hose blasting). Once that was done, I gave it a good coating with black Rustoleum paint.

Other than a small dent in the door (and the missing floor tray) it was good as new.

Last Saturday, I gathered up four extra pillows from around the house and four pillowcases. The pillowcases were flannel ones from a set that, while soft, never quite fit the bed right so we never used them. Luckily, the set came with four. Perfect.

I attempted to iron the pillowcases flat so I could line up seams. That was a joke. Nice try. These cattywompus cases weren't having it. Since this was for a dog bed (for my own terribly destructive dog) I quickly got over the need for perfection. I sewed the pillowcases side by side in pairs and then sewed the bottom seams of the pairs together.

Weirdo fabric. Refuses to lay flat and smooth.

I stuffed a pillow in each case, finagled the whole thing into the crate, and folded the case ends under to try and keep devil dog from getting directly at the pillows.

That didn't really work, as she has already chewed holes at the edges of a pillow seam three times, requiring minor Frankenstein surgery. I'm still mulling options to make this habit stop. I contemplated adding buttons, but I'm afraid she'd swallow them. I'm not about to deal with the nightmare of four zippers. So for now, this is how it's staying. I'll keep patching pillow seams as needed.

She hasn't destroyed the cover yet, but we'll see.

So far, she's liking the extra space and her comfy new pillow. Now we'll just wait and see how long it takes for her to destroy it.