Book review {July and August}

July and August have flown by.  I try and read a new book every week.  Sometimes it works out but in July and August I couldn't make that work with everything else going on so I decided to combine my July and August book review into one post.  I read four great books over the past two months.  They were all so different but not a bad one in the batch.  There are SO many books I have on my list to read.  Let me know your favorites and I'll add them to my list.  You can read my other book reviews for this year below

January  February  March   April  May

The Summer I met Jack  is a historical fiction book about   Alicia Darr is a poor, Polish immigrant who comes to America after WW II for a chance at a better life.  She works at a movie theatre in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.  While working, she meets a young Jack Kennedy and they fall madly and deeply in love.  She meets the entire Kennedy family and at the end of their summer together  Jack proposes to her but his Father adamantly objects to their marriage because Alicia is Jewish and he wants Jack to run for President.  Devastated, Alicia moves to California to start a new life for herself but Jack Kennedy keeps re-appearing in her life at various times until his death.  I never knew anything about Alicia Corning Clark and found this book very interesting.  I have always loved reading about the Kennedy family and this book was fill of history, intrigue and scandal.  I highly recommend it!

The Sound of Gravel is a memoir about a girl who grew up in a polygamist family.    This is the first book written by Ruth Wariner and I can’t believe this is her first book because she is a wonderful storyteller.  In the book Ruth talks about her childhood and growing up in an FLDS compound in Mexico.  She served as the caretaker for her many siblings.  She survived severe neglect, extreme poverty and molestation by her stepfather. I still think about what yhe author and her family went through.  This book is a story of survival and is both heartwarming and heartbreaking I couldn’t put it down.

All the Ugly and Wonderful Things was my book club book for August.  This book was another heartbreaking book about a young girl Wavy who lives with extended family because her father is a drug kingpin who parties hard, has multiple girlfriends and shady business associates and has little time for Wavy.  Wavy's mother is a drug addict who also is dealing with mental health issues.  The only bright spot in Wavy's young life is Jesse Joe Kellen who works for her father.  Kellen takes care of Wavy and makes sure she has what she needs to survive.  This is where we had the most discussion at our book club-Wavy and Kellen have a physical relationship when she is a young teenager and he is a 20 something year old man.  This part of the story made me very uncomfortable.  I did enjoy this book and the way the author made you really feel compassion for Wavy and her circumstances.   The author tells a beautiful story of love and survival.  

I just finished reading From the Corner of the Oval by Beck Dorey-Stein.  She was a 20 something unemployed teacher working part time jobs when she saw an ad on Craig's list for a job in a law firm. The law firm turned out to be the Obama White House and Dorey-Stein served as a stenographer for the President providing transcripts of meetings, press interviews, etc. The most interesting part of the book for me was reading about the author's travels with the President.  She got to see the world with him and it was interesting reading about the ins and outs of travel with the President.  She also talked about the toll the job took on her personal life and  the many friends and adventures she had while working for the President. She is a wonderful story teller and I hope this is the first of many books from her.

Happy reading!

Xoxo

This and That

Oh my goodness these last two weeks have been a blur-we packed up and moved from our summer house back to our regular house over the weekend.  We rent our regular house to baseball families visiting our town for 12 weeks during the summer.  G also  has been working with a contractor day and night for 8 days trying to get our second rental house ready for tenants who are moving in this week.   On top of all of that craziness classes started today at the college where we work and we have an exchange student living with us this fall and she moved in yesterday.  I'm exhausted just typing all of that.  For the last two weeks I have done nothing but pack, clean, organize and I made numerous trips to Home Depot to get stuff for the rental house.  I am SO exhausted but I am thankful that we are back to our regular house and almost settled in there.  

I also did manage to squeeze in a few fun things that were already on my calendar in the last couple of weeks.  

 G learned to put in windows and put 16 news ones in our rental house!  Here he is putting in the windows in the dining room of the downstairs apartment.  I took tons of pictures of the renovations that we did and want to make a book of before and after pics.  

The upstairs bathroom needed a complete overhaul.  Here is the before and the (almost) after.  

I love making homemade freezer jam so I made 6 jars of  strawberry freezer jam for us and I also made pesto using basil from my garden.  I was able to make four batches of pesto the basil leaves from one of my plants.

My friend M invited me over for a fun afternoon of swimming, friends, and snacks.  It was a great day!

My friend T had her second annual summer brunch and I made peach hand pies to take to the brunch.  They were so easy to make and I used peaches from the Farmers Market.  Peaches are in peak season in NY right now and they were so delicious.  I will post the recipe soon.

I went to a fundraing event for Hospice over the weekend.  ZZ Top played and it was a lot of fun. Practically everyone from our whole town was there and it was fun night for a great cause!

A couple of weeks ago my friend D hosted our monthly bunco game and her hubby made pizzas for us in their outdoor pizza oven.  They were so good!  

A couple of weeks ago Margaret Atwood, one of my favorite authors, came to Cooperstown to give a talk about her books.  She talked mostly about A Handmaid's Tale and the TV series it has become.  She gave a fascinating talk and I learned so much from listening to her.  She had a dry sense of humor and she kept everyone engaged with her funny stories and sharp wit.  After the talk she did an impromtu book signing and I had her sign a copy of the Handmaids Tale for Ava.  Once school starts for Ava we are going to read the Handmaid's Tale together.  

This morning I watched the finale of Sharp Objects.  I read the book in June and have absolutely loved the series it was SO good.  The finale was intense and crazy and I loved every minute of it.  If you watched it let me know how you liked it.  

Finally our exchange student from Taiwan arrived yesterday.  She slept most of the day yesterday and is still tired today.  She is a sweet girl and we have had fun talking with her and getting to know her a little bit.  We have a couple of fun things planned for her this week before school starts.  

I hope you had a great couple of weeks.
xoxo

Friday Favorites

Happy Friday Friends! I'm so happy it's the weekend.  We have one weekend left before we move back home and classes start again for the fall.  I am going to try and soak up and enjoy every second of this weekend.  Before the craziness of packing and moving next week.  As always I am joining up with Erika, Narci and Andrea to share my Friday Favorites.  

1. The BEST thing that happened this week was having Brock home.   It was so much fun-we laughed, ate good food and celebrated his 21st birthday.  We even went to NYC for an overnight trip to see the Yankees play a game.  It was a great week and it went by way too fast. I'm so happy that he's happy.   He LOVES Arizona and is working really hard at his full time job at State Farm and going to school full time at Arizona State.  It's crazy to me that he's all grown up.  He is doing great and we couldn't be more proud of him.

2.  My dear friend Stephanie had a birthday this week and we celebrated by going out to dinner Sunday night.  We went to an Italian place in Cooperstown that had the most amazing homemade pasta.  We each ordered something different and shared them all. It was a night of fun, friendship and delicious food.   Happy birthday Stephanie!!

3.  Last week Rachael and I taught a small group of women who were at a week long camp for adults (how fun would that be?) how to make mercury glass.  These are so easy to do and we had such a fun time.  I hope to do a full tutorial on DIY mercury glass votives soon.

4.  In August I love canning and freezing fruits and vegetables for the winter.  So far this year I have made freezer corn.  I used this recipe.  I just left out the sugar because I thought the corn was sweet enough without it.  The corn is from my Father-in law's garden and it is SO good.  We all love it!  I hope to make some strawberry freezer jam this weekend.  

5.  Tonight I am going to hear one of my favorite authors-Margaret Atwood-speak in Cooperstown.  She wrote two books that I read ( The Handmaids Tale and Alias Grace) both have become TV shows in the past couple of years.  I have been looking forward to her talk all summer and I can't wait to hear her speak.  

I hope you have a great weekend!
Xoxo

Weekend Update

Time flies when you are having fun!  Oh my goodness I can't believe we are already in to August. Where has the summer gone?  We've had a lot of fun times and have spent a lot of time working on our rental house

We have a few more fun things planned this summer...including Brock coming home tomorrow-yay!! 

Friday was my sister Shelby's 40th birthday!  I hate that she lives in Texas and we didn't get to celebrate in person but we face timed so that was nice.  Happy birthday Shelby!!

Ava and I went with my friend Sabrina and her daughter to a waterfall and swimming hole about an hour away from our house.  We like to take little adventures with our girls in the summer and this was so fun!  We went here for local peeps :)  We spent the afternoon exploring and swimming and just having old fashioned summer fun. 

Ava and I took a quick trip to our small county fair.  I loved taking our kids when they were little and I am glad Ava wanted to go this year.  We got a funnel cake and a lemonade walked around the floral and food exhibits (my favorite!), toured the animal bars and rode a few rides. We took a pic on the Tilt-a-Whirl.  

Saturday at I helped my friend Stephanie get ready for a surprise 50th birthday party for her husband.  She had the party in their backyard and it was the perfect setting for his party.  

The best part about the whole party was that he was so suprised!  I am so happy she was able to pull it off.

It was a great night-lots of good food (catered from Moe's!) and good friends!

Sunday afternoon I went to an outdoor concert to hear my friend Julia's son play.  He has just started singing live (this was his second show and the first one Julia has seen) and I wanted to go and listen to him and support Julia.  I can't imagine how stressed out she was for him-omg!  Every summer a couple of families host a series of concerts on their land where a tornando came through about 20 years ago.  People bring picnic baskets and just listen to music.  I have never been before but I definitely want to go again! 

 I hope you had a fabulous weekend!!
Xoxo