Variety Pack

Hello again my dearies! I've got some time to kill so thought I would pop in to share some Dollymamaisms with you.

The other day I finished book number 5 in the Outlander series: The Fiery Cross. LOVED IT! LOVED IT! I am crazy about this series and am anxiously awaiting the 6th and FINAL book which is coming out in September, I believe. I am very excited to see how it the story ends, plus, though I've loved it, I will be glad to finally be free from it. It's been such a compelling story line that I've been reading it non stop for a month or more. I've literally carried these books with me all through my day, reading at any possible moment I could snatch. I'm glad for a little break between #5 and #6, too, just to get myself caught up on some other stuff.

I was thinking about my love for this series and what it is about it that has grabbed ahold of me so strongly. One of my favorite aspects of this series is the romance between the two main characters. As the author points out in The Outlandish Companion (a companion! book to the first 4 in the series) whereas a lot of romance novels focus on a courtship and then end with a marriage, Outlander starts with a marriage of necessity, and then builds up to an incredible romance and adventure within the context of a long marriage. The story has way too complex a weave to ever be regarded as just a romance novel. No way! It's got a wide range of all the great story elements, and is woven beautifully. I really enjoyed reading The Outlandish Companion and learning about how the author goes about writing her books, developing characters, and so on. Very interesting and different from what I would have imagined.

Since it has been waiting for my attention for months and is overdue at the library, my next literary stop was Being Perfect by Anna Quindlen. It's a dinky little book that becomes even dinkier when one realizes that it is about half-full of pictures. I think it took me about 15 minutes or less to read. It's basically an essay that got put into a book. Must be nice to be that popular as to write a little essay and have people buy it for $10 each!

I have enjoyed Anna Quindlen's work in the past, but didn't find this item to be all that compelling. The message in the book is to stop trying to be perfect, and instead just be yourself. GREAT! If you need to hear it, now you have. For me, I already figured that out awhile back, so it didn't spark any great interest in me, although it did have a few spots where I felt it was a good little follow up to Surrendering to Yourself.

I also finished up Bless and Be Blessed by Peter Lord. It's got a great message: Why save the best things we say about people for after they're dead? Tell them now and build them up! The author explains about the importance of blessing others with our words, and how to go about it. This happens to be something that comes fairly easy to me, but I enjoyed the reminder and hope to put the habit into practice even more in the future.

In household news, we've been making some progress around here. While getting toward the end of The Fiery Cross I started feeling guilty about how lazy I've been, sitting on my arse reading all the time, rather than taking good care of the house and inhabitants. :) I am thinking I need to trick myself into thinking of my life in terms of a 20 hour a week job doing house stuff, and a 15 hour a week job teaching kids stuff, and so on. Haven't gotten to that point, though, because I refused to let myself sit down and make up lists and nonsense rather than just get to work. I got on a crazy binge and organized 2 yukky, cluttered cabinets in the kitchen (all it took was a $6 drawer thingy!), and got clutter off of my worst hot spot in the house. (and it still looks pretty good, all these days later)

My husband requested that I get a few picture frames and get some photos on the walls. We've been really bad about this. I never want to just get one frame at a time since I want them to match, and it's rare that we can just buy all the frames I want. Worse, we don't live real near any decent place to get a nice frame. I do not want Walmart frames that do not have convenient ways to get the pictures in and out! So, we barely have any family pictures on the walls, and lots of empty spaces where they could go. I had some photos in mind to frame, and set out for a little dept. store on Friday to see what they had. I was in luck! Their frames were 50% off, and there were LOTS! I ended up getting 6 8x10 frames to put all the kids most recent individual pictures in, one large frame to put our family picture from last November in, and a collage frame that is way cooler looking than most I have seen. All of that for under $65, which I thought was awesome! So now we have pictures up and that is quite a thrill!

From there I got inspired to use my new photo album and put some pictures into it. Way back when I had just 2 kids I got invited to a Creative Memories party and got into the idea of scrapbooking. The only problem was, I kept having kids and kept racking up pictures, and didn't have the time, space, or kidless hours to get the stuff put in books. So for years we have been adding photos to the stacks, with little hope of them ever getting seen by any of us. Most of my kids haven't even seen pictures of themselves as babies, and frankly, I can barely remember their younger years.

Recently someone on one of my egroups mentioned that for those of us with no hope of catching up on the scrapbooks, that there are now regular stick-your-photo-in-the-sleeve and stick-your-photo-under-this-film kinds of photo albums that are acid free and all of that good stuff. I HAD NO IDEA! So I went out and got a $5 photo album, and then let it sit for 2 weeks until yesterday. Rather than stress about whether or not I was starting right from the very beginning or whatever, I just picked up some pictures that went together, and put them in the album. And I kept going. If I found that I was out of order, I could open the 3 ring binder thingy and just switch stuff around. or I could take the pics off the page and move them elsewhere. These are the issues that have kept me paralyzed from scrapbooking for all these years. What if I get them out of order? What if I find pictures that I didn't know I had and now the whole book is messed up? Well, now none of that really matters. I put pictures into that book until my back hurt, and the whole family had a great time seeing themselves as little tykes. I'm far from done, but it was nice to at least get that much done. Maybe I'll even do some more of that before too long goes by. It will be so nice to have the pictures available to look at, and later on if I want to scrapbook them all perfect and pretty, they all be ready and waiting.

Must go for now. Ta ta!