100 Books

I love to read. I especially enjoy reading classic books. I'm posting this for future reference as I'd actually like to try to read all of these some day!! Thought some of you out there might enjoy as well.

Here's how it works:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE

The premise of this exercise is that the National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (I have to admit that I have not finished this one)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (I've read book 1&2)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (I feel like it's mandatory to underline this one)
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 (I haven't read the COMPLETE works, but I've read a lot of Shakespeare)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
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 (I read a junior version of this when I was in middle school, so I'm not sure it counts)
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 Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (I love these movies. I definitely need to read the books)
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 (I'm actually currently reading this one)
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 (Also read this as a junior classic. Need to read the full version)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (Also read this as a junior classic. Need to read the full version)
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 Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
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 - Kazuo 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 (Also a junior classic)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (I actually really liked this book and probably shouldn't admit it because it was darkness)
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (one of the best quote books ever)
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 (I read this on the buses of El Salvador the complete unabridged collection. Pure perfection. I love this book and I even enjoyed all of the history)

The good news is that at least I've read more than 6 of these books. The bad news is that I haven't even read half of them. Maybe that's a new goal for the year.....We'll see. :)

Valentine's Day!!

I finally found my camera cord and so here's the post I've had saved for months.

We had a super Valentine's Day. I know I'm a little bit late, but we had such fun. We made Valentine's for everyone with sweet treats. We also decorated sugar cookies together as a family. This year the cookies look the very worst ever. But, we made whipped cream cheese frosting and it was divine. Completely fattening with heavy whipping cream and cream cheese, but absolutely delightful (see recipe below). Anyway, the cookie decorating wasn't very great as my icing pens somehow got dried up. So, none of the frosting would come out of the pens. But, we had quite the fun together!!

Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting

1 (8 oz) package cream cheese, softened to room temperature

1 ½ cups powdered sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt1 teaspoon vanilla

1 ½ cups heavy whipping cream

In a large bowl combine cream cheese, sugar, salt and vanilla. Beat until light and fluffy. Set aside. In another medium bowl, beat whipped cream until stiff peaks form (it helps to use a chilled bowl and chilled beaters - and make sure the peaks are stiff not soft). Fold whipped cream into cream cheese mixture and mix carefully (so as not to deflate cream) but well.

(Be careful if adding coloring - the liquid food coloring found in the baking aisle can quickly thin your icing so you may need to add a bit more powdered sugar to compensate. I prefer to use Wilton's gel coloring but either will work.)

Please note that I hate this picture. I don't like pictures of myself. The boys gave me a heart sticker which they insisted I put on my face. And something looks funny with my tooth. Just ignore my face. I'm only posting this to show a person out there who shall not be named my short hair cut. I donated all my hair to locks of love several months ago. AND then, I got real highlights (which I've never done).

Mice

I'm sure that there are people out there who read my blog who love mice. I can't stand them. I find them disgusting. I hate that they like to invade houses. I hate that they leave their little poo tracks everywhere. I hate that they poke their little noses into any possible food that they can. I think mice and snakes are equal in my things that I hate most scale. Well, except rats. Rats top both. But, in my mind, mice and rats are basically the same thing. I'm sure that PETA would be apalled by my disgust.
So, several weeks ago pre-Christmas I had quite the mouse experience. I'll have creepy mouse dreams for the rest of my life. I was sitting at my parent's computer early in the morning working. My parent's live in a very old farmhouse that they've fixed up. I'm sitting in the chair, typing an email to a co-worker and all of a sudden I feel something down in my pants. I feel around and there's nothing there. So, I completely think I've imagined that there's something in my pants. And then, I feel something moving up behind my leg. I feel around again and there's something with a little body up my pants leg. I jump up screaming. Screaming is an understatement. I kick my legs all over the place and out flips a mouse. Not just a cute little mouse, but a big fat one. The understated screaming becomes much worse.
My brother jumps up out of bed and comes running in to see what's going on. I can't even talk. My voice is completely hoarse. I take off running downstairs kicking my legs. David comes running to me to see what's wrong.
I scream, "David, a mouse just ran up my pants!!"
He responds, "What?"
"DAVID A MOUSE CLIMBED UP MY PANTS!!!!"
He doesn't really believe me. So, he runs up the stairs. And sure enough, the mouse is scurrying through the house. I see it and I start freaking out yet again. David pulls out a shoe and saves my life.
Yes, I realize that I shouldn't be afraid of mice. I grew up on a farm for goodness sakes!! I've been bitten by mice in feed bins. But, I just can't handle them. And big fat mice just make it even worse. I will no longer wear baggy pajamas while sitting at the computer.
I'm planning to write a new book in the series.... and the first line will be "If you give a mouse a pants leg, he'll take a whole leg."

Wise words to the weary: Be very careful where you sit.

One of my Favorite Things

Can I just say that one of my favorite things in the world is a piping hot bubble bath filled all the way to the top on a cold day?? Stress relief and total relaxation!!!

A Leggo Masterpiece

So tonight, my David made a silly face and presented me with a Leggo Masterpiece. Yes, the face is really silly. :)

The breakdown of the masterpiece as explained by David:

• The black trellis - stairs
• The little yellow circles - these are all Leggo heads that David detached from the Leggo bodies (it kind of reminds me of the days when my brother Jakob would pull our Barbie heads off) . Anyway, you can't really see the faces on the Leggo heads. One is a bearded man - AKA "the bad guy" . The other Leggo heads are the "good guys"
• The yellow circle - "a circle thing"
• The grey arched Leggo - You can't see the arch, but David called it "the Old McDonald's piece" - He calls McDonald's "Old McDonald's" and I guess the arch was the connection

And there you have it--a fabulous Leggo masterpiece just for mom. He was so sad when we put it up in the box because he thought I needed to keep it out.

****UPDATE: I just realized that David is wearing his spider Halloween shirt. Please note that my children have other clothes. David just loves this shirt and when he dresses himself, if this shirt is clean, this is always the shirt he wants to wear!!

Baby Dress

So, I've been talking to some of my family about this fabulous little baby dress that we blessed little Madilyn in and I thought I'd post a picture of it on here. I'm sure the men aren't interested (my brother is probably the only poor boy who may possibly read this).

Anyway, we had a new lady move into our ward boundaries at church. She came up to me two Sunday's ago and asked me if I had a blessing dress for baby yet. I told her that I had not. She then said that she made blessing dresses for people and had one on hand that she had not sold yet. She said that if I was interested she would sell it to me at cost--which was $30. Being the cheap girl that I am, I was a bit shocked. I was thinking, "I can buy myself a dress for less than $30. Why would I spend $30 for a baby dress?"

I was grateful that she approached me and didn't want to say no after I'd already went through a whole conversation about how we hadn't bought one and needed one and on and on and on. She then explained that she crocheted them. I'm always impressed by this talent in others, but again I was a bit appalled. I didn't want to dress my little one in something that looked like a knitted hat or a pair of socks. I just couldn't picture a crocheted baby dress being cute. But, I'm kind of non-confrontational and didn't want to hurt feelings and say I wasn't interested after I told her I was.

Anyway, I went on Monday to buy the dress worried about what I was buying. AND, it was the most beautiful blessing dress I've ever seen. I was extremely impressed. I mean...she hand-croceheted this. It had beautiful imbellishments along with cloth covered buttons. I'm not sure if you can see all the details, but wow!!! I ended up giving her a little more and feeling guilty at my ugly thoughts. :)

Baby Blessing

Yesterday was such a wonderful day. We had baby Madilyn's blessing. It was such a tender day with so many people we love. My whole family was here except my brother Ryan. We also missed David's family!! It was really neat to have 4 generations of family assist with the blessing as my Grandpa, my dad, my hubby, and my brother participated. What a special day!! Here are some "glamour" shots of baby that my sister-in-law LeAnn took after the blessing. She did a really nice job. And, I want to post all of them because I think Madilyn looks so cute in all of them! But, alas, I'm sure you don't want to see all thirty!

We are so grateful for such good family members and friends--those who were able to come and those who couldn't come. We love you lots!!