101: Books

As part of the 101 Project, one goal is to read 101 new books. Here's my list so far.

1. The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

2. A Touch of Dead

3. Grave Secret

4. An Ice Cold Grave

5. Grave Surprise

6. Grave Sight

7. The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

8. Sharp Objects

9. Dead Ever After

10. And the Mountains Echoed

11. We Were the Mulvaneys

12. Gone Girl

13. Dark Rose

14. Sister

15. The Cutting Season

16. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

17. What Papa Told Me

18. The Highest Tide

19. The Litigators

20. The Rescue

21. City of Lost Souls

22. Souvenir

23. After Dead

24. Dark Places

You can also find out what I'm currently reading here.

Reading Update

If you recall, I checked out three books from the library this past weekend. I devoured The Last Song (Yes, it was sad. Yes, I cried.) in about 2 days, contemplated Cold Mountain for a day or two and then started on The Time Travelers Wife. I'm in love with this book. IN LOVE! I want to have a son named Henry who grows up to be a librarian and falls in love with a sweet girl named Clare. I could do without the time traveling bit though. Maybe I can get through Cold Mountain this weekend. *fingers crossed*

October Reads: Week One

I swung by the library today since I'm out of reading material seeing as I finished Freedom by Jonathan Franzen the other day. (Amazing read by the way!) This week I picked up The Time Traveler's Wife, The Last Song and Cold Mountain. On the way home I realized all three of them have been made into movies and I've yet to see any of them. Next week I think I'm going to try to tackle Anna Karenina and perhaps Mansfield Park.

Things I Can't Live Without

Tea

I keep trying to teach the cats to do this but seeing as they have no opposable thumbs, it's kinda hard.

I wish my tea pot did that!

Tattoos

I'm working on designing my next one. Isn't the detail in this one amazing?! Great movie too :)

Some old school designs.

Books

I've read quite a few the past month (Blog post coming soon)

Heels/Shoes

I'm a firm believer that one can never have enough shoes. And with heels, the higher the better. I've always wanted to be 6' tall!

I LOVE these. And the dresser as well.

I'm not really a soft pastel pink kinda gal. Maybe it's the bow that does it for me.

Cosmetics

Yes, I have spent $40 on eyeshadow before. Does that make me crazy? No. I've been wanting to try out some of Benefit's stuff forever. Maybe I'll buy myself a little gift ;)

What can't you live without?

(All images via weheartit)

Swaptree

Woo swaptree! Seriously LOVE this site. If you've been following my blog for awhile you will know that I'm an avid reader. Ok, maybe that's an understatement. Anywho, I had a bunch of books sitting around that I didn't really plan on reading again so I decided to find a site to swap them on. Introducing, swaptree. And it's not just books. You can swap for movies, music and video games as well. Here's how it works:

You list the books, CDs, DVDs, and video games that you want to trade and the books, CDs, DVDs, and video games that you want to receive and swaptree does the rest.

Swaptree will show you all of the items that you can receive for your items. Clicking on a "Get Now" link next to an item will show more information about both the item and the trader you will be receiving from.

Once the other traders accept, the trade is complete and you will then be provided the shipping addresses where you need to ship your item.

And yes, I totally stole that from their website. So far I've traded some books and a few old DVDs. What did I get in return you ask?

DVDs

The Ghost & The Darkness (I don't know why I like this movie so much. I guess I like saying Tsavo - where the movie takes place - or maybe it's the lions. Oh my!)

Little Fish - Can't wait to watch this. It's got Cate Blanchett in it so it's bound to be good.

Signs - I'm collecting all of M. Night Shyamalan's movies. Too bad Mel has gotten all crazy.

Notes on a Scandal - My all time favorite movie. And the one I have is scratched. Boo.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - Somehow I never purchased the first two movies and it's been ages since I've seen them. Can't wait for this to show up in my mailbox!

Books

Marked by P C Cast & Kristen Cast - Guess who is starting the House of Night series?

Quidditch Through the Ages - Stocking up on all things HP

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - See above

Wow this has been pretty long winded. My point, is you've got books/movies/music/video games to swap, head over to swaptree!

I Hate Waiting!

Don't you hate it when you find a series that's been out for a while and you read all of the books in a few weeks and then you're stuck waiting a year or more for the next book to come out? Yep, I'm in that position. I finished book #10 of the Sookie Stackhouse series this morning at 03:00. I guess I'll grab a few from my stack of books to read for work tonight. Next in that stack: Eat, Pray, Love.

Anyone else have any recommendations?

A Work in Progress

First and foremost, let me apologize for the photos. I took them late last night and the light was obviously less than perfect. With that being said, on with the show.

I checked out the March/April issue of Creating Keepsakes from my local library. I hate to say it but out of every issue, I usually only find one or two layouts that I end up liking. Most of the others just aren't me. I found My Other Passion on page 81 created by Jen Jockisch and immediately wanted to try it. It's bright, it's colorful and it's about one of my passions as well... books! Jen's layout was done in 12x12 but I decided to do mine in 8.5x11.

It all started with some 1" round punches of various colored cardstock and paper.

Jen's background is solid white and I wanted to incorporate books into mine. I opened Word and using the CK Alis Hand font, I added books I've read until I filled the page. I then printed it out on bright white cardstock.

I know I've read a lot of books but I didn't realize how much once I started listing them. This page is about a quarter of the amount of books I've read. Or ones that I have listed on Goodreads.

Once the cardstock was printed I trimmed about 1/4" off each side and about 1/2" off the top and bottom and I also rounded each corner. I decided to use black textured cardstock as my background and cut that down to 8.5x11. I then glued my text page onto my background.

I played around with the positioning of the circles until they all seemed to fit. I then took a photo so I could remember where each one went once I started gluing them down.

Jen had her circles all down the left hand side. I tried this at first and wasn't pleased with the way it looked. (I'm also using smaller circles than she did.) So in the end I decided on a cluster in the bottom left hand corner. It frees up some more space for me to use.

I'm still waiting on a Cricut. Maybe I'll get one for my birthday next month. The only thing I would really like it for is to do letters. Anyways, since I am Circutless I found some stickers that have been kicking around for a while. The were all different colors so I grabbed my trusty old black Sharpie and went to town. These ended up in the top left hand corner.

And so we have our finished-for-now product. This last photo looks so much better than the others. I took it outside this morning in natural light. I still have to take a photo of some of my books and I'll add some journaling as well.

I'll keep you guys posted.

Happy Hump Day!

5 Things Right Now

This shop. (Source)

This lovely gate. (Source)

Love is enough. (Source)

These awesome fabric covered books. (Source)

Dunks. Oh how I miss you so. (Source)