Month: April 2020

May TBR

Posted April 30, 2020 / Book Lists, Features, TBR Lists / 2 Comments

My monthly TBR feature here shows my progress based on last month’s TBR, my plans for this month, and anything else I might be thinking about from a reading perspective. Sometimes I feature a little poll at the bottom so you guys can help me figure out a certain title I should read from a group of books. Last month’s progress: SIGH. WHAT IS READING?! I go through phases where I read a REALLY good book and it inspires me to read 1-2 more in a row, and then I stop reading for like a week. It’s frustrating as hell. I actually didn’t fully stick to my TBR last month either because I kept switching things around for the Magical Readathon, which I did complete! Woohoo! I also managed to read all of the egalleys I listed in my review copy section, except for one. Another score! Non-Review April Leftovers I had this listed last month for the Magical Readathon (and other reasons) but I never got to them. I’m keeping THE DECK OF OMENS, HOUSE OF EARTH AND BLOOD, and THE ART OF LAINEY on my May TBR, but I’m not sure that I’ll read them… as usual. I’m hoping to get to DECK as soon as possible since I have the audio and physical copy to mix in throughout the month. Review Copies Super impressed that I read all of my egalleys last month except one! This month has a lot of new releases but there were quite a few […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #285: Wish I Read

Posted April 28, 2020 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 4 Comments

Books I WISH I Read as a Teen Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. When I saw the prompt for this week was “books I wish I read as a child,” I knew I had to make a quick swap to the books I wish I read when I was a teen/middle schooler. I have a LOT of books I get some FOMO about when people read new installments of these days. There are so many missed stories that I know won’t hold up now! Here we go. I honestly feel like most of these are self-explanatory! I never read some of the now-considered-YA-classics back in the day and I’m not 100% sure some of them will hold up. I know quite a few will and I could read them at some point (mostly looking at POISON STUDY), but there are so many new books coming out all the time that I just will end up prioritizing those. I’m sad I never hopped on DIVERGENT or MORTAL INSTRUMENTS series when they were coming out because of the movies/shows and the fact that all of Cassie Clare’s books seem to link back into the originals.

The Bright Side (4/24)

Posted April 24, 2020 / Personal / Information / Etc. / 1 Comment

As we’re all going through the same global pandemic with various levels of “stay the F home,” I thought it would be fun to highlight the good things in each week, instead of dwelling on the negatives, the unknowns, and the uncertain future. I tend to do some kind of wrap-up or rundown of my week/month/etc. on Fridays each week (often linking up with Friday Favorites/Currently) so this isn’t too much of a diversion from that. ✨ Too Hot to Handle Good lord. We were inspired on Saturday to randomly start this show. Chris promised we’d watch ONE EPISODE ONLY and we immediately watched three. We essentially watched 2-3 per day until we finished up the show on Monday. Woof. It’s interesting and addicting like Love is Blind but it’s about singles who apparently just love having sex and can’t control themselves. They did a few workshops, which were fun, and tried to get them all to find meaningful relationships instead of just hooking up. Each time people hooked up, money would be deducted from the prize fund. It was so frustrating to watch people constantly fuck it up for everyone else!!! ✨ Erasable Pens for Planning I’ve been really trying to get better about using my paper planner. I still love the digital planner I’m using because it syncs my calendars and includes a lot of my blog-related to-do’s, which I don’t keep in my paper planner. This planner is more about meal planning, prep, and workouts. With everything in […]

Eating Lately via My iPhone

Posted April 22, 2020 / Food & Drink, Personal / Information / Etc. / 3 Comments

Like everyone during quarantine, we’ve been doing a lot of cooking and baking! It’s been so fun to find new meals, work with what we have, and bake tasty (well-deserved) treats. I was inspired by Communikait and her “what I’m eating lately via my iPhone” posts. They’re simple photos of meals she’s had and a little description about the recipe. We made deep dish pizza in a springform pan after watching a video on all the ways to make pizza – it was so fun! I used the classic WW two-ingredient dough (I had to do a 1.5 cup version, using that much flour and yogurt) to get the right amount to fill the pan. I baked the dough in the pan for about 20 minutes around 425 to get it crispy first. I then added my (already warm from the crockpot) homemade marinara sauce (fit about 1.5 cups of sauce too), mixed in chopped pepperoni, and topped with cheese. I put it back in on a higher temperature until the cheese was warm. So good! Yes, I went and made the whipped coffee to try! Without a hand mixer I definitely would never have bothered whisking forever and ever. I used vanilla almond milk on the bottom and the same ratio as everyone else for the top (2 tbsp instant coffee, 2 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp hot water). The pictured coffee had less sugar to try to be healthy but that was a big mistake lol. I made french toast one morning because we had […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #284: Titles as Band Names

Posted April 21, 2020 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 3 Comments

Book Titles that Would Make Good Band Names Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. This is a really fun and honestly kind of easy TTT! I’m excited. Here are some picks of random books from my TBR (none that I’ve read before) that could make fun band names. I always feel like bands have super weird names: some have commas to make the name long and complicated, some have seasonal references or anything about love, some have random people’s names in them… the list goes on. I feel like most of these would be indie rock bands though 😉

The Bright Side (4/17)

Posted April 17, 2020 / Personal / Information / Etc. / 2 Comments

As we’re all going through the same global pandemic with various levels of “stay the F home,” I thought it would be fun to highlight the good things in each week, instead of dwelling on the negatives, the unknowns, and the uncertain future. I tend to do some kind of wrap-up or rundown of my week/month/etc. on Fridays each week (often linking up with Friday Favorites/Currently) so this isn’t too much of a diversion from that. ✨ Fast and Furious Movies Just when this was all beginning, Chris and I borrowed all of the Fast and Furious movies from my parents to watch at home. AND IT WAS THE BEST DECISION. I had seen the first 3-4 when they came out, got behind on a movie or two, and then never went back to watch them because Paul Walker’s death seriously upset me. I’ve only FINALLY been able to watch and it’s still so bittersweet. These movies are utterly ridiculous but so, so entertaining. The bond that they all share throughout the movies, the people in the crew that join them (Tyrese, Ludacris, Gal Gadot, and more!) — ugh it’s all so good and just perfect for this time in our lives. I definitely got sadder and sadder as we approached the seventh movie though. ✨ Pandemic-Related Meal Prep YouTube I’m not sure why but I always love watching meal planning and prep videos! This was probably sparked from my desire to find healthy YouTube channels and/or people who followed […]

ARC Reviews: The Honey-Don’t List and The Happy Ever After Playlist

Posted April 16, 2020 / Book Reviews / 1 Comment

I’ve said it many times before that I came aboard the Christina Lauren train pretty late – I started reading their books with THE UNHONEYMOONERS, which seems to be their first full departure from the straight-up romance novels they were writing earlier. They’ve shifted toward rom-coms with evidently less sexytimes. I’ve seen a lot of people move away from their books as a result, preferring their earlier works, but I enjoyed their latest releases (the first and only books I’ve read by this pairing). THE HONEY-DON’T LIST centers around characters dealing with a “if-Chip-and-Joanna-Gaines-had-major-issues” kind of situation. The married couple in question, Russell and Melissa, became famous through their design skills and have been only increasing in popularity over the years. When Russell starts misbehaving and creating a potential PR nightmare, their two assistants have to wrangle everything and keep them on track during their book tour… a book about marital advice, nonetheless. Carey and Jim have different reasons for working with these two and dealing with the trainwreck, and also have very different feelings about how to do everything (at first). This was cute and enjoyable – another “just what I needed” read for me. I’ll say that I definitely thought this was going to be a bit more enemies/rivals-to-more but that element was practically nonexistent. There was a tiny bit of friction for like three chapters but I found that Carey and James quickly became friendly and more. The two of them were pretty meh overall too… They […]

Quarantine Goals and Habits

Posted April 15, 2020 / Goals & Planning, Personal / Information / Etc. / 6 Comments

I shared on Twitter the other day that I downloaded an app (Habitica – feel free to check it out but that’s not what this is about, nor is it my favorite thing. It works though.) to track some of the daily habits I really want to accomplish. Habits, goals, and little to-do lists all rolled into one. Everyone is approaching this weird time in our lives in a different way. Chris works in manufacturing and, as of right now, is still considered essential. I am thinking there will be some time off in his future (fingers crossed), but right now I’m alone in quarantine, working from home each day. He doesn’t get to join in in the craziness of actually being home 24/7, which sucks for both of us frankly, but there are still some quarantine-ish things he has to deal with anyways. Daily Habits I thought I would break my goals down into some categories, expand on them to include broader “during quarantine overall” kinds of things beyond the daily habits I want to keep. But, the main things I plan to do EVERY day are: Get outside If it’s nice out, this means spending some genuine quality time on the porch, going for a walk, or on the front step. Even if it’s horrible, rainy, and cold out, I need a minute or so of outdoor time still. That could be greeting Chris on the front porch under the awning or walking to get the mail. Be […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #283: Book Talk

Posted April 14, 2020 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 7 Comments

Books I Enjoyed But Don’t Talk About Enough Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. I did a post similar to this a while back where I discussed some of my favorite four-star reads that I don’t yell about as much. I usually will talk about my FAVORITE books and the five-star reads, so it’s nice to shout out the books you just ENJOYED quite a bit and don’t discuss as much. I decided to focus mostly on books from the end of 2018 or beginning of 2019 since it’s easier to get into 1-2 book spreadsheets and sort for four-star books 😉 Excellent Four-Star Books Needing Love Click on the cover to read my review

The Bright Side (4/10)

Posted April 10, 2020 / Personal / Information / Etc. / 1 Comment

As we’re all going through the same global pandemic with various levels of “stay the F home,” I thought it would be fun to highlight the good things in each week, instead of dwelling on the negatives, the unknowns, and the uncertain future. I tend to do some kind of wrap-up or rundown of my week/month/etc. on Fridays each week (often linking up with Friday Favorites/Currently) so this isn’t too much of a diversion from that. ✨ Someone Great I’d been really good about watching the Netflix rom-coms as they came out (Chris doesn’t care about watching them with me), but I kept putting this one off for no reason. I LOVED the chemistry of this cast! I decided to watch right before work one morning and it was a great way to start the day. It was a bright spot of the week; I laughed and smiled throughout the movie (a little less so at the ending but that’s okay). ✨ Spotify and YouTube I’ve always enjoyed music but I haven’t been as focused on it post-college. I got back into reading and started listening to audiobooks, and then I added podcasts to my routine too. Music fell by the wayside except for during work hours. Now that I’m home all day, I can listen to music loudly when I’m not on calls. I can also keep some casual YouTube videos on in the background! Usually these are about fashion/Amazon, meal prep, ASMR and other lowkey videos. The playlist […]