Stepdaugher's Scrapbook

Every year I try to make my stepdaughter a scrapbook for either Christmas or Easter, here are some of the pages of the one I just finished for her.



My 'to read' list

I found these 100 online and plan to read most of them... I have read some before but it has been such a long time I plan on reading them again.  I will take a book off the list when I am done and then maybe replace it with another or just let the number get lower.  Feel free to comment with other "must reads"

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

 2 The Uglies series

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 The Hunger Game series

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 "The Bible"

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations -Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 "Complete Works of Shakespeare"

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot 

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck 

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 "Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding 

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazu Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

101 The Best of Me

102 The girl with the dragon tatoo series

Book Review: Smokin Seventeen

This is the 17th book in the series, although it it the first I have read and it will probably be my last unless for some reason my 'to read' list gets really low.  The main character in the series is Stephanie Plum.  The plot is that dead bodies start showing up at her work (she is a bounty hunter) and then the killer starts addressing them to her.  She is also caught up between two love affairs and keeps going back and forth between both of them because she can't make up her mind.  The book was just a little too dramatic where I kept thinking yeah right and I could guess the killer right off the bat.  At the end of the book STOP READING RIGHT NOW IF YOU DON"T WANT TO KNOW THE ENDING!!!  there are three people who were all trying to kill her.  One of them kidnaps her from her apartment and then the other meets them in her parking lot and then the third comes out of no where and tries to run her over. So one gets shot by the other, that one gets run down and dies, and the driver goes to prison.  Like I said... a little too much.

Book Review: The girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The girl with the Dragon Tattoo

This was a LONG book to say the least,  If I love what I am reading I can't put it down and am usually done reading the book in a couple of hours... I started reading this book about 2 weeks ago.  The basic story line of the book was a good one: Reporter gets into trouble which almost ends his career, he gets offered a job to write a book on a rich family and to look into a 40 year old murder that happened during a family gathering.  I just think the book had A LOT of information that could have been left out.  I would sometimes skip through multiple pages at a time without reading them because they were talking about finances and businesses and other stuff I found really boring.  That being said I am excited to see the movie because all that boring stuff will (hopefully) be left out. 

Maybe it was just me though because I know a lot of people gave this book great reviews.  But I am only going to give it

October recap

OK, I know it is the last day in November, but at least I managed to post Octobers crafts before December right?  Here are a couple things we worked on:

A picture frame:

Here are the supplies we used:

The frame was a basic wooden frame that cost $1 at Michaels,  and I got the eyes for $1 at our local Dollar Tree.  The rest of the supplies I had on hand. 
 Crafts are such much more fun when B can get involved and do parts of it himself.

He painted the whole thing all on his own.  Then he handed me the eyes because I used a hot glue gun to stick them on.  The letters are chipboard that I covered with scrapbook paper and then I added a ribbon that says "Happy Halloween".  This was a really simple and cheap craft that we got to do together. 

The next craft I made after Halloween so that I could get all the supplies for really cheap. 

Here are the supplies I used:  Popsicle sticks: $1 at the dollar store, 2 packs of mini pumpkins and one large pumpkin to hold everything (which were all 75% off at Walmart so between .25 to .50 each). 

Then on the back of the mini pumpkins I wrote a number 1-15 on each of them.

Then I on the sticks I did all possible math equations that could add up to that number. 

The end result is a addition game where B has to add up the 2 numbers on the sticks and stick them in the right pumpkin. 

We also painted pumpkins together like we do every year

We did the Brutus and the witch (minus her hat which was added later because it was still in storage with the Halloween supplies because I buy them on clearance for around .50 after Halloween) Something new we did this year was make a mummy pumpkin using a roll of gauze ($1 at the dollar store).  and used red puffy paint for the eyes. 
I also decided it would be fun to carve a pumpkin but B thought it was disgusting and wanted no part of it so I ended up doing it all by myself. 

He did enjoy putting a new candle and lighting it up every night though. 

Well that pretty much sums up my October crafting, I have so many crafts/scrapbooks to get done in December and they are Christmas presents so they have to get done... wish me luck. 

Teacher's gift

With Thanksgiving coming up I wanted to make Brayden's teacher a little something to show how thankful we are she is helping him become such a good learner.  I got the idea from Pinterest and here is what I made:

First I bought a plant pot from Michael's (around $3) and used chalkboard paint to paint it green and painted the rims black.  Then Brayden picked out a zebra plant from Lowes (around $5) and we planted it.

I already had the ribbon in my scrapbooking stash, but it can be purchased for $1 at hobby lobby or any craft store.  Then I got apples and pencils (also from Michaels .25 cents each) and wrote each students name one them.

I also bought a big apple and wrote his teachers name on it (less than $1)

Lastly I had a small chalkboard and wrote "Thanks for helping us grow" on it and stuck it in the dirt using a pencil.

One thing I learned from this project is not to use hot glue... it does not stick at all to the pot. Use a form of super glue instead.   When I was having Chris take it to school he said they all popped off when he picked it up and my mom had to come super glue them before she picked Brayden up from school.

Book Review: Summer Rental

Summer Rental

This book is about 3 childhood friends who decide to come together and spend a month during the summer together.  I find it so unrealistic that women in their 30s could take a whole months vacation away from their jobs and families, I can hardly get away for a girls weekend.  But besides that, the premise was good and these best friends come together and are able to reconnect and help each other with difficult situations they are each facing.  Has some love story and adventure involved and it kept me interested while my kid plated at the mall play area.  I rate it: 

12 Fridays event

This past weekend I went to a scrapbooking event called Twelve Fridays.  It was a weekend retreat/scrapbooking classes.  I had a blast! This is the first time that I have ever taken a scrapbooking class and I learned a lot of new techniques.  It got me to do some layouts that were totally out of my element, which is good because I loved to be introduced to new things in the scrapbooking world. 

Here are some the layouts we created:

Mine all look slightly different than this but they are the same idea.

Like I said before, I loved the classes and learning new things, but they lasted a majority of the day and even though I stayed up really late with some awesome girls (one night til almost 5 AM), I did not finish nearly as many layouts as I wanted to get done.    I did put a dent in my wedding pictures but didn't finish them like I wanted to, I got most of the ceremony done but still have the posed pictures, the trash the dress, and the reception pictures left to do. 

But overall I learned that I love scrapbooking retreats and I can't wait until March for my next one

Book Review: Now You See Her

I just finished reading James Patterson's book Now You See Her. 

Here is my review:  I got the book at 7 PM and was able to finish it by lunch time the next day, it has been a while since I have been able to say that about a James Patterson book.  They seemed to be getting mundane and repetitive.  This one however has some twists and turns and kept me interested up until the very end.  It starts out with a college girl on spring break who makes a huge mistake which later comes back to haunt her.  She ends up marrying a man who isn't who she thought he was and when she finds out that she is pregnant she decides to escape and start a new life to protect her her unborn baby.  She later learns that a man is on death row and only she has the information to prove that he is innocent, but that would mean she has to reveal her past and accept responsibility for her actions many years ago.

I give it : 

Cleaned my room and October challenge

My scrapbooking space always seems to be a mess but I tried to clean it the best I could tonight

I just think I have grown out of my corner and need my own room!  Maybe one day.....

After I finished I finally got to work on the Columbus Scrappers October challenge
Here is the layout we were supposed to base ours on:

Here is the one I made:

It is not one of my favorites, I never use buttons like they did, seems I can never find the right color one and I hate using a whole page for only one 4x6 picture.  I might try to make it a 2 page layout and have a lot of pictures on the next page

Mom's Birthday Card

My mom's birthday was September 19 so I decided to make her a card. 

I got this chipboard at a yard sale for .50 cents

Then I covered it with scrapbook paper and used spray adhesive to stick it on

Next I wrote a poem in the pages

It read:

I often contemplate my childhood, Mom.
I am a mother now, and so I know
Hard work is mixed together with the fun;
You learned that when you raised me long ago.

I think of all the things you gave to me:
Sacrifice, devotion, love and tears,
Your heart, your mind, your energy and soul--
All these you spent on me throughout the years.

You loved me with a never-failing love
You gave me strength and sweet security,
And then you did the hardest thing of all:
You let me separate and set me free.

Every day, I try my best to be
A mother like the mom you were to me.

It took a little longer to make than I had thought so I had to give it to her late.  I think this may also have to do with this crafting kick I was on getting a little bit old.  Don't worry it will hit me again, but if I go awhile with out posting you know why.