Scrapbook Pages

I finished scrapbooking our Thanksgiving family get-together.

My nieces and nephew:


Zoe:


Ereina:


Trey with his Grandma:


Jono and I:


The Family:

Birthday fun

I've always been interested in miniatures and dollhouses. I'm not able to have one at this point but they are fun to look at. ThinkGeek has cubicle playsets that you can decorate and set up as your own miniature office. They're pretty funny! For my birthday, Jono got me a set.







Pretty funny, huh?!

Dreaming in Technicolor by Laura Jensen Walker

Dreaming in Technicolor: The Sequel to Dreaming in Black & White by Laura Jensen Walker

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was another great book by Laura Jensen Walker. In this sequel to Dreaming in Black & White, Phoebe finds her boyfriend halfway around the world back in England while she wonders why she's living in Hicksville doing reports on emus. Inspired by an elderly woman's zest for life, she grabs a friend to cross the ocean and visit England herself.

Laura Jensen Walker is one of my favorite authors. Her books are fun yet heart-warming and uplifting. This particular book didn't exactly end the way I expected. But it was a good ending and made sense for the story.

Awards and Memes

It's been a bit of a crazy week - with the Monopoly game night last weekend, then I was sick on Tuesday and on Thursday celebrated my 35th birthday.


I also received an award from Sunny at That Book Addiction.

Here's the criteria:
These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.


I'm not going to pass this on as I've seen it around the blogosphere, but wanted to thank Sunny for giving it to me.

I was also tagged by Violette at The Mystery Bookshelf for the 6 Things that Make Me Happy meme.

The rules are to link to the person who has tagged you. Then write down six things that make you happy. Post the rules, tag six others and let them know you did it. Then tell the person when your entry is complete. Here are my answers (in no particular order):
1. My cats - Mocha and Storm. They are adorable, affectionate, playful and curious. When I take a nap, they curl up with me. Storm likes to sit on my lap when I'm reading. They bring me so much joy and entertainment.

2. Coffee - particularly a Starbucks caramel macchiato.

3. Reading. I've been a reader my whole life. Books make me happy. Reading about books, looking at books, buying books, reading them.

4. My husband. He loves me unconditionally, listens to me when I need to vent, likes to spend time with me, and cracks me up.

5. Scrapbooking. It brings out the creative side of me and lets me have fun. And I like to look at the completed pages. It's a great way to showcase pictures and remember people and events.

6. Relaxing watching TV or movies. Sometimes it's nice to just do nothing and kick back.

I'm not going to tag anyone, but feel free to play along.

2009 Monopoly Game Night

Otherwise known as Monopoly Bowl III. We also celebrated Jono's 40th birthday.

The versions we brought:


Jono with his cake (hockey theme):


We had a really great turnout - 20 people. So 5 games were played with 4 people each. The versions that were played were Planet Earth, Star Wars Episode I (a 3-d version), Here and Now World (with credit cards), Star Wars classic trilogy, and Chronicles of Narnia. Jono played the Star Wars Episode I and I played the Chronicles of Narnia.




It was so much fun! People seemed to really have a great time. This was our 3rd year in a row holding this and we had some new people this year that hadn't come before. They seemed to really enjoy it and hopefully will come back again next year.

The winners:


Yes! I actually won! I usually do terrible at Monopoly but somehow I won this year! I was ecstatic!

The whole gang (minus the photographer-John, who was one of the winners):

Book #6 and Not Reading Much/Cat Hilarity

I'm not reading a lot these days. Mostly due to being low on energy and exhausted a lot of the time. By the time I get home from work, I don't have the energy to do much reading. Then on the weekends, while I do get some reading done, I'm tired from the week and like to sleep a lot in between loads of laundry. So my reading has been slower than I'd like, but I remind myself that reading is supposed to be for fun and a hobby and if I'm too tired to enjoy it, then there's really no point. I don't want it to become a chore or something I have to do.

#6
Title: The Purpose Driven Life
Author: Rick Warren
Date Started (if known): Dec. 26, 2008
Date Finished: 2/6/09
Rating: 4.5/5
Date Published: 2002
Genre: Christian Non-Fiction, Christian Living
# of Pages: 319
Where obtained: Own
Reason for reading the book: wanted to; Read It Again Challenge, re-read
Short Blurb without spoilers:
This was a re-read for me. Took a bit longer than the 40 days it's supposed to be read in. This is a great book taking you through the different purposes that we have in life. We are all made unique, with specific gifts and abilities. This book helps me to re-focus on why I'm here and that this life is temporary.

Tonight is our annual Monopoly game night and we're turning it into Jono's 40th birthday as well. So I'll be picking up his birthday cake and going over early to decorate with a banner and some balloons. We are taking 17 of our different versions (we have 32 versions along with the Make-your-own version that we haven't done yet). It sounds like we'll be having a pretty good turn-out (this is our 3rd year doing this) so it should be fun. This morning was hilarious with the cats. We had several of the versions we wanted to take in our bedroom closet. It's a nice-size walk-in closet but we have turned it into a storage closet that is not at all organized so it's not functional or use-able. We try to keep the cats out if we have to go in there for something as there are just piles of stuff. Today we decided to let them come in and check it out while I was grabbing games and taking them out of the closet for taking tonight. They are so curious about everything that it's a pain to try to keep them out of stuff. They were both very excited about getting to explore this place that they usually aren't allowed into and both were meowing in their excitement at these new things to check out. We should have gotten pictures as it was hilarious to watch them climbing on stuff. Storm made her way into an empty box and was just hanging out in the empty box. Mocha was climbing all over everything. When we were done, I had to pick up Mocha to get her out and shoo Storm out of her new box. It was quite entertaining to watch them.

Cubicle Decorations

Jono turned 40 yesterday so I decorated his cubicle at work in celebration.







I did it as a surprise Friday afternoon as he had taken Friday off. It was supposed to be him walking in on Monday morning to discover it. However, he had left his thumb drive at work and wanted it for the weekend. I was unable to talk him out of stopping to get it as we were on our way to dinner. So I went in with him to see his reaction. :-) He liked it.

Medical Mystery Challenge Book Reviews

Please use this post to leave comments with your book reviews for the Medical Mystery Madness challenge.