kdlb-pad

Pile

Working on a pile for a garage sale at Sarah's this weekend.

Pile

QotD: Book Recommendations

Where do you get recommendations for new books to read?

Mandie and the Secret Tunnel (Mandie, Book 1)

My favorite resource is actually looking at what other authors write for other publishing houses that I like.  I've been reading books by Bethany House Publishing since I was 8 years old, when my mom first bought me a Mandie book.  She read Janette Oke (tagged books), the first few books of multiple series, and then when I got old enough, I bought the rest of the books to those series and read more from the library.  So now, it's easy to recognize the spines of other Bethany books on the library shelf.  They have expanded their number of authors all the time, and so that makes for a larger selection too! 

As far as my novels go, I don't tend to read what other people are reading, so it's not as easy to just skim through sidebars here at Vox.  So things like going to the bookstore and browsing the aisles is a good way for me to learn of new authors that I may not have heard of yet.  This is true in the crafting/knitting area, and the Christian fiction (tagged books).  I did used to troll the romance aisles, but I just can't find anybody I love as much as my favorite Romance author, Jude Deveraux (tagged books), so I stopped trying.

When I'm trying to see what new knitting books I want to read, I like to go  to a site that sell knitting books and see what is the most popular, like Knit Picks' bestseller list.  Then I search for those on the library site to see which ones we actually have.  General crafting books or cookbooks (other book loves of mine), I'm more likely to go browse the library shelves until I find something interesting and somewhat current.

I organize my reading here on Vox, and then in the last year or so, I've enjoyed working on author pages on Wikipedia (my wikipedia profile has some links) to keep up the book lists and info about the authors I'm enjoying the most.  I tagged all of my books here on Vox with the series name and the author name so it's easier for me to see them when I'm looking to remember what books I've read from which author or whatever.

I'm interested to see if anybody in my neighborhood answered this qotd, it was definitely interesting to me!

Me in car

I got all cute and starry for a trip to costco this morning. It's always a momentus occassion, especially when we haven't gone in a while.

Me in car

i heart mac and cheese...

Tillamook Mac & Cheese Contest

http://tillamookc...

The third annual Tillamook Macaroni & Cheese Recipe Contest has evolved from past years and will be held during the cold weather months when comfort food is on everyone’s mind. No longer seen as just a simple, family meal, macaroni and cheese has many gourmet varieties. Last year saw more than 1,...

I saw an ad for this on a recipe site, and it totally caught my eye.

1. I :heart: mac and cheese.
2. I :heart: Tillamook

I mean, hello, we went to the Tillamook factory on our honeymoon and twice again since. :D  It's my fav cheese to eat, too.

Now my mac and cheese isn't super fancy, so I wouldn't win, but I love that they have recipes from previous winners on the site.  What a fun contest idea :)

meal planning last week and this

My favorite new trick for shopping and planning is to take a piece of printer paper and fold it in half.  On one side, I write my meal ideas, and on the other side, my grocery list.  The meal ideas are divided into boxes with the main dish and any side things that go along with it.  I try to write more ideas than I need and then E and I narrow it down, and then I have more for next week.  My grocery list is roughly written up like the order of the store, but that is easier said than done when filling it out. :)  In the middle of the page, I put my coupon envelope.  I've been trying to clip more coupons to save money, and the easiest way to keep track is to actually write the coupon list (with expiration) on the outside and then cross them off as I use them and it can be used as many weeks as I want.  Also, before I start writing my list, I evaluate what is most on sale that week at Safeway and try to plan meals around that.  Between that and the couples, it is a nice money-saving idea.  So this whole thing is working super!

• Pear Apple Omelets (allrecipes, added apples for some of the pears) with grilled hash browns on the grill.  Unique, but it got a little burnt on the bottom (my fault, not the recipe) so I'd be mre careful in the future.
  
• Mexican meal, including burritos with rice, fajita grilled veges (peppers, onions, bit of fresh garlic), grilled chicken for me/grilled fake chicken stripes for E, and homemade corn chips out of corn tortillas. Served with a pina colada like drink out of pina colada mix, pinnapple, and coconut milk
• Macaroni and Cheese (family fav on theredkitchen) with carrots (allrecipes, with lemon zest and plum jam instead)and rolls (allrecipes, added cheese). Gooey bars (allrecipes, modified for what I had on hand; less cream cheese, added sweetened condensed milk, added nuts and coconut, and less powdered sugar as suggested in the comments) for desert.  This meal took some coordinating, but it was sure good!
  
• Pita sandwiches. Muffuletta spread (previously tried from Simple and Delicious)and tofurky sausage for E, turkey sausage on mine.
• Big salads with lots of veges and meat, and pitas with cheese broiled on top
• Pasta salad (family fav on theredkitchen) with hawaiian cheesy bread (previously tried from Simple and Delicious) and raspberry smoothies (vanilla yogurt, raspberry/pineapple/orange sherbert, freshly frozen raspberries, and sprite).

For lunches, I've been eating fruits and veges or leftovers.  We did eat out a little more over the last week + because it was our anniversary and some other things went on.  We've got a nice stockpile of good leftovers because of making a bunch extra Pasta salad tonight, and one more big meal planned for this week.  Next week, or this weekend, I think we'll have a trip to Costco in store, and there is one meal in particular I like to have after that trip, and maybe I can find more good on-sale things and some new frozen fruit for smoothies too (besides the normal stuff we need to go for: laundry soap, TP, light bulbs, ya know)

I'm looking forward to continuing on with this (posts taggeed "meal planning"), it's really fun for me to look back at what I've made and share with my friends here :)

starting out the day right

One of my goals in being healthier includes getting back to eating breakfast.  I had been doing a pretty bad job at remembering to do that.  E sometimes comes home for lunch early, so if I get a late start on my day, I don't want to eat breakfast only to have lunch 2 1/2 hours later or something!  And I like having the time to eat lunch with E, so skipping that isn't as nice of an idea.

One thing I have found I'm enjoying, and it gives me more energy for the day, is a new one at our grocery store, Weight Control Oatmeal.  I really didn't get it for the weight-control reason, but because it's got 7g of protein and 6g of fiber, and one packet is 2 services of whole grains.  It's also got considerably less added sugar than their other versions.  That's pretty good stats!  My mom recently informed me that her doctor said cinnamon was really good for you (the paper she gave me says "one teaspoon taken with food can increase the metabolism several times over", and it's also supposed to aid in digestion), so I've been adding extra cinnamon to my cereal, along with a handful of raisins, both before it's cooked.  (this is not an ad by any means, just my experience!)

I'm still having a hard time getting downstairs and not getting caught up with other tasks I want to do early in the day, but I'm sure trying harder to remember.  Even if I can do this a few times a week, I think it will help with my overall health.

Do you have any good tips on your fav breakfasts on a week day? :)

on kadyellebee: TV season talk

kadyellebee: TV season 2007-2008

http://kadyellebe...

Welcome back to my annual TV preview. I’ve been doing this since I was in college on paper, and then publicly on my blog since I started blogging. Sometimes, it’s fun to look back at what I was looking forward to watching each year in the past. (2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001)

One thing I enjoy doing every summer is figuring out what shows I want to watch when the new TV season starts.  I'm continuing on the tradition on kadyellebee, feel free to check it out if you enjoy hearing opinions on the upcoming shows! :)

Dark tonight

So dark and it was wet, so the mall lights are on.

Dark tonight

Now playing

Zelda from the gameboy advance. Getting close to the end. :)

Now playing

poor feed reader

I've been neglecting my feed reader (I use NetNewsWire on my mac these days) for some time now.  I've been collecting wonderful feeds for so long that I knew that if I opened it, there'd be a katrillion things I'd feel obligated to actually read because I KNOW that they are really good things.  So my current solution was? just don't open the feed reader until I know I have time to read.

I've been reading VoxWatch to keep up with my friends here, and my LJ friends list, but beyond that, I'm hopelessly behind on my friends who aren't on either of those places.I haven't kept up with the knitting reads I was watching, even the Vox knitting group because it's harder to see in VoxWatch (and so I was watching with a feed)

New solution?  open the feed reader and mark all as read.  Start fresh and keep up from now.  And prune some of the folders I'm not as interested in, delete or put them all in a folder together to touch when I really need something to do  (heh, because that happens so regularly).  I think I'll do that now while I feel motivated to clean (taking a break from real housework ;) )

Man, I just wish I didn't keep finding so many great things I wanted to read on the internet!! :D