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My Sunday Post is hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer
Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date

Last week was a pretty good week all around! Wyatt and I had a great week of homeschool, my mom’s house went on the market finally and in 12 hours had 17 viewings scheduled, I had dinner and drinks outside at my friend’s house for our girls night out, and on Saturday we went to the apple orchard and pumpkin patch. Today we are just sticking around the house and working on projects and just chilling out, which is nice too.

Read Last Week:

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So A Catered Halloween was a DNF for me. I tried all week to finish it and I just couldn’t. It is probably just me, not the book. I can be so wishy-washy sometimes. I did remember that I never finished Witch when I picked it up a few months ago, and started it again, from where I left off. I’m sort of glad I waited to read it until now, it fits the mood better. I love Barbara Michaels. I just loaned my mom one of the books from my collections, Vanish with the Rose, and I feel bad, it scared her a little! But to be fair, that one scared me too!

Reading This Week:

After I finish Witch, I am going to start The Final Girl Support Group. I am excited to read it, after spending much of my high school years and twenties watching horror movies and rooting for those final girls! (The Halloween series with Jamie Lee Curtis was always a favorite. She is the ultimate final girl!)

Posted Last Week:

Homeschooling: Pirates, Raccoons, and Magic Fish!

Currently…October

Spooky, Creepy, Dark and Twisty: My October Podcast Playlist

Watching:

Billy and I started Nancy Drew again, and are totally sucked in. It is not without its faults but for the most part we are entertained and that is what counts! We also watched Muppets Haunted Mansion last night with Wyatt. It was pretty cute.

And that is pretty much about it from around here! What is going on in your neighborhood?

It’s that time again! I’m joining up with Anne in Residence for her monthly Currently..post. This month we are talking about what we are borrowing, buying, planning, prepping, and reading!

Borrowing: Lots of books from the library! We are homeschoolers and the library is a place I visit at least twice a week. My mom is also unable to drive right now so I am also borrowing books for her as well. Our library has also started offering activity kits, which we are loving. Crafts for kids, and hobby introduction kits for adults, with kits for birding and crocheting and all sorts of things. These kits come with books and all the supplies you need.

Buying: Christmas gifts. I have Wyatt almost completely done already! I was never an early shopper until last year and I loved having December free to just enjoy the season without having to worry about getting my gifts all bought. Wrapped? Well, that is a different story.

Planning: Different fall activities, field trips, summer vacation trips, lesson plans, different winter projects, autumn inspired meals… really, when am I not planning something?

Prepping: Our bedroom for the update, finally! We were planning to do our room months ago but different factors came into play, and then we redid our son’s room, so now..it is our room’s turn! I am going through everything and deciding if we need it or not, buying new things – like our new duvet cover, which I love. It is always exciting to refresh a room!

Reading: All the scary and spooky books! Mysteries, thrillers, horror for me; fun Halloween picture books for Wyatt.

That’s about it from me today! What are you all borrowing, buying, planning, prepping, and reading?

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My Sunday Post is hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer
Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date

It’s finally October, and I am so excited! Last week was a great week. I feel like Wyatt and I had a productive and fun week of school, I got a lot of stuff done around the house, and I even had the opportunity to hang out with friends twice! One night for drinks in the yard at my friend Kelly’s, the other a morning walk in the woods. Both were perfect and what I needed. We also finished changing Wyatt’s room around. I wanted to get him a different bed. I have mentioned he has cerebral palsy, and it affects his gross motor. So I wanted a bed that was really easy for him to manage on his own. I found one that matched his needs without seeming too young and we put it all together today, with the comforter he chose, which is space themed. He is very pleased with it! We still need to pick out and hang artwork. He requested a room that is space and animals…two things that are sort of hard to combine. I will figure it out though. Right now it is sort of bare but coming along! I also need to move that shelf, which is leftover from how the room was set up before. It is giving me anxiety to have it over his head! Note to self – have Billy move that today!

Read Last Week:

I finished this book in two days- I could not stop reading it although my brain felt broken after reading it. It was so good and so weird and so crazy. I loved it though.

Reading this Week:

A Catered Halloween by Isis Crawford : I need a little break from the reading I have been doing. I have been reading some pretty intense books lately, and I needed some cozy. So I grabbed this mystery from the display at the library Saturday and took it home with me. Sure it is the fifth in the series and I have not read the previous four, but that is not unusual for me. This drives everyone around me who reads crazy – that I will just pick books up and read them from the middle of a series and circle back around, or just never finish a trilogy. I don’t know why I do this but, I do. It doesn’t seem to bother me. So far, I am enjoying this book! I started it before bed last night and only put it down because I was tired.

Posted Last Week:

Hello October!

A Few Short Book Reviews (Small Favors, The Lost Apothecary, and Bunny)

Listening To:

Science and true crime podcasts, mostly. I hope to get a post out about them next week, and maybe even a playlist of my favorite episodes. We are also listening to a lot of Lord Huron and The National Parks – something about their sound really resonates in me this time of year.

Watching:

We started Vera on Acorn (I think Shelleyrae recommended it?) and we love it! We might save it for the winter though when we want something to binge that has lots of seasons. We also started Only Murders in the Building (thanks Deb for that rec!) and we are addicted! There is mystery and intrigue and secrets and humor! We were cracking up watching it last night. The cast is is amazing too. We love how Selena Gomez can hold her own with Steve Martin and Martin Short in a scene. We are also hoping to start Nancy Drew now that October is here.

And that is it from our home today! How are you all doing?

Finally it is October! My very favorite month of the year! I love love love fall and all that goes with it. The chilly mornings, crispy leaves, apples and pumpkins, sweaters, jeans, boots – just everything. I feel like I started the month off right today. I met my friends at the park for a morning walk, coffees in hand, and it was such a great way to start the day, even though our feet were soaking wet by the end of it from the dew on the grass. But we had great talks and spotted some new mushrooms, and also, more leaves on the ground, that had changed color. When I went a few weeks ago, the leaves were still green and on the trees; today, the leaves were starting to change and fall to the ground, red and yellow and orange.

I love the drawing in and quieting down that fall signals. We are still running around, busy, but I know that soon we will be tucked up at home, cozy nights with soup and tea and blankets, good books, board games. I love our fall and winter evenings, having dinner around our table, music playing in the background as we enjoy the time together, usually Carole King or Lord Huron or the The National Parks, connecting with each other about our days. Weekends spent outside in the chill, coming home to chili that we turn into nachos the next day. Fires and cider with my brother and sister-in-law as our kids play in the yard then snuggle on our laps once it gets darker.

And it is also spooky season! I love scary books, witches and ghosts especially. I used to love scary movies but I have become a bit of a wimp – now I am very choosy about what I watch. And I am lining up all the Halloween kids movies to watch with Wyatt this year – Disney’s cartoon The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Beetlejuice, Casper – and I saw that there is going to be a Muppets Haunted Mansion movie too! I am super excited about it! Wyatt and I have watched the trailer a million times! He loves Halloween too, and is looking forward to trick or treating again this year, masked up, but trick or treating. He wants to be Pete the Cat and he is going to be an adorable. I might be biased though, just a little.

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We’ve been slowly adding in our Halloween decorations, and Luna decided to get in the act and pose on her castle. Soon my SIL Chrissy and I are going to get the kids together for an autumn walk after school to gather leaves to dip in wax and string up as a garland, and of course, the traditional visit to the orchard to get apples, doughnuts, and pumpkins!

Do you do anything special in the fall? What do you most look forward to?

Somewhere along the line I gravitated from night owl to early riser. This is late for me. I am usually tucked up in my bed about now, reading a book. Tonight though, I didn’t feel like reading.

Night time used to be my favorite time to sit outside, late when everyone else was sleeping, neighborhoods quiet except for the creaking of the crickets and the distant whoo-whoo of the trains that constantly run through our town. I’m not outside tonight, but curled up in my office chair, cats at my feet, Luna the leopard gecko sprawled out on her rock, Freddie the frog in his water bowl, Harry doing who knows what in his house in the other room. I can hear the crickets and the trains, the cars whooshing by on their way home or their way out to a party, a bar, to work.

I am content here in my home, with my child sleeping across the hall, Billy working in his office for a bit. There used to be a time I would have loved to be out and about, soaking up the night and hitting all the restaurants and staying out way too late. But now, I am about different things. My family and my animals and my plants, my books and my thoughts. I am happy. I know some people, friends of mine, who were in such a rush to be back to “normal”. And while I want some things to be back to the way they were, I don’t mind this new part of me that enjoys being home. I always have different projects going, books to be read, notebooks filled with ideas and lists of those books or shows to watch or topics to learn more about, things I want to try. We have embraced new patterns and routines, found joy in in the smaller everyday moments. Things that used to seem so important don’t anymore; activities I once merely poked about with I am now making much more time for.

Living slower. More deliberately. Isn’t that what Thoreau moved to the woods to do, live deliberately? To live on purpose, carefully. With intention. Not rush about to the point that we no longer are enjoying our lives, which I feel I may have done, just spinning wildly from one thing to the next. We may not have moved to the woods away from it all, but the past year and some months our lives were stripped bare, leaving plenty of time for re-evaluation for what we wanted to resume. For some, that does mean resuming it all over again, those who thrive on activity and crowds of people. But I have realized that never really served me or my soul. My soul has been ready for quiet. For enjoying slow times with my own little family, my parents, my brother and his wife and my niece. A few of my closest friends.

I am sure tomorrow morning I will read this and think to myself what a strange mood I was in when I wrote this. And maybe even feel embarrassed to have shared so much of my innermost thoughts. But this is where I am tonight, so I am going with it. And with that, I think I will get tucked in, to my book and my bed. Sweet dreams everyone.

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My Sunday Post is hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer
Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date

We had a pretty ordinary week last week. Which was perfectly fine. Homeschool, I worked for my cousin, and that is about it really. Yesterday we attended something called FrankenFest which was neat, and then later on had a late night fire with my brother and his family. The kids were up late, we were out late, it was fun. I remember those occasional late nights when I was a kid and they always seemed so magical.

Read Last Week:

I read this book in two days – it was a fun fast read! I hope to do a review post of a few of the books I have been reading this week.

Reading This Week:

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I have been wanting to really work on reading more own voices books for various reasons and seem to have fallen down a rabbit hole. I started Onigamiising last week and am really enjoying it. And when I requested Gichigami Hearts from NetGalley I didn’t realize the two books were written by the same author!

Posted Last Week:

Snippets of Life Lately

Our Butterfly Project – The Final Update

Watching:

We are still watching Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple on BritBox. They are so well done! Although in the last one that we watched, one of the characters at the end killed another character very unexpectedly. My husband and I looked at each other in surprise and he said “Well that got dark quickly.” Which made us laugh since we are watching murder mysteries. We also started the LuLaRoe documentary LuLaRich and we are fascinated by it.

Life lately hasn’t been anything too out of the ordinary, just the regular comings and goings, homeschool, appointments, drinking coffee, taking care of my wee creatures, visiting with friends, reading some books. Wyatt and I picked flowers from the garden and pressed them. Nothing exciting but I am a person who is happy and content with a low key life. In fact, Billy and his co-workers all put money in to buy lottery tickets together as the jackpot was some large amount of money, and they were all talking about what they would do with it if they won. Some of the answers were buy property (this was Billy’s answer too), pay off debts, vacations, shopping sprees, etc. When Billy asked me, I said I would buy two mourning geckos and two dart frogs. In case you are wondering, this would cost about $100. And a few books too. I apparently dream big y’all. Although, buying property would be awesome, but Billy seems to have that under control.

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Yesterday I dropped Wyatt off at my mom’s in the morning and met my sister-in-law for coffee and a walk in the woods. Where we promptly nerded out looking for mushrooms. At one point we were crouching down on the ground grabbing a shot of a mushroom and had to laugh at what anyone stumbling upon us might think. It was a great way to start the day though, with conversation and coffee and a walk in the fresh air.

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I also got my glasses this week! It is so nice to have them while working on the computer and when reading. Since I only need them for reading up close, I bought one of those eyeglass chains to let them hang when I don’t need them. I love them – they have decorative bats on them, so I felt like they were seasonally appropriate.

I also took my mom to a pain management specialist. She has been having issues with her back for a while now and was dragging her feet about going to a doctor. We finally got her to go and we learned that it is more than likely her SI Joint – and the treatment sounds very promising and like it is easily treatable. It was a great relief to finally get an answer and to find solutions! Pretty soon my mom will be back to her own level of mobility again.

We were supposed to go on a camping trip starting Monday; however I looked at the weather forecast and it was promising storms so I made the decision to cancel. I am not a great camper and I didn’t want Wyatt’s first camping trip marred by storms and rain either. A wet camping trip does not sound fun to me. Billy agreed on that as well, but he still has the time off so I think we are going to take a few day trips next week. I have some ideas but nothing concrete. Today we are actually going to a Franken-Fest at Fort Wayne in Detroit. I have no idea what to expect but if it is not fun or too crowded, we can still walk around the grounds. It is sort of spooky there – the old fort and out buildings are crumbling, although they are being worked on by a historic preservation society. They have been there since the civil war, I think? I will find out today!

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I am starting to feel surrounded…

How are things going for you? Anything exciting? Or just living life?

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My Sunday Post is hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer
Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date

We had another great week of homeschooling! We are still finding our way through the new school year, but everyday gets easier. I am having my own time management issues, juggling house stuff, blog stuff like visiting everyone’s blogs, and just plain taking a minute to breathe and relax, but I will get it together. We have been sticking pretty close to home right now, without many outings lately – just taking care of business around here lately. I feel a bit like the squirrels running around our yard, stealing apples, burying nuts in our lawn, preparing and organizing and doing. And reading – I have been reading more in the past few weeks than I read all summer! I am ready for the slowness that fall and winter bring.

Read Last Week:

Small Favors by Erin A. Craig : I loved this book and could not put it down! It was such a good read! It’s a toss up which book of hers that I have liked more, House of Salt and Sorrows or this one – right now, I would say this one, but I love them both.

Reading this Week:

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I have both of these and I don’t know which to start first!! Gichigami Hearts or The Lost Apothecary – both sound excellent.

Posted Last Week:

First Day of School, Flowers, and a Frog

For the Love of Mushrooms

Late Summer at the Village

Homeschooling: Our Curriculum

Watching:

We have not watched too much or anything different. We are still watching Schitt’s Creek, a rewatch for me, the first time for Billy, and Agatha Christie’s Marple. We are always startled when we see a “big” star in that show – Carey Mulligan, Julian Sands, Richard Armitage, Timothy Dalton (although I 100% think of his role in Hot Fuzz when I see him now) As we move deeper into fall, we will be adding in more scary, spooky movies and show too. I am ready!

And that is about it from our little house here in the mitten. What has been going on in your world?

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My Sunday Post is hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer
Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date

We finished our first week of school and I finished two books! I am not quite sure how that worked but it did! Lol. We took Friday off and went to Greenfield Village with my sister-in-law and Dino Girl so the kids could hang out before Dino Girl goes back to school this week. And..I also got glasses. So did Billy. We left Wyatt with my mom and went to our eye exams together, where we learned we both have perfect distance vision yet have some typical sight issues that occur with aging, or so we were told. Like when I have to hold things with small print at arms length to read it… Our glasses come in on the 17th and I am sort of excited. I have been getting headaches when I read for too long so it will be nice to read without it causing one. Our vision exam was sort of crazy! It was done by a remote technician. I felt like I was in the future. The tech who was there set me up in the room with the eye thing in front of my front of my face. There was a giant monitor on the wall, and a remote technician zoomed in and did the exam, switching things digitally. Then when she was done she sent it to the doctor, who also remoted in on the monitor to explain about the results. It was wild. But it also seemed super efficient.

Anyway, on to the book stuff.

Read Last Week:

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Fire Keeper’s Daughter was excellent. It might be the best book I have read all year honestly. I loved it and am looking forward to reading more by this author. I also finished up The Running Hare, which I also loved. But I love John Lewis-Stempel and usually find zero faults with his books. Wyatt and I also started reading The Magic Tree House books last week, while Billy is listening to Six of Crows and The Bone Witch.

Reading This Week:

I started this a few weeks ago and then decided I wanted to keep it for September. I am weird sometimes. But now it is September and I am excited to start it! (again) I loved House of Salt and Sorrows so I am eager to read this one.

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Book Review: Harvesting Hope by Lisa Howeler

Hello September!

A Few Short Book Reviews

Watching:

We have gotten completely sucked into Agatha Christie’s Marple series on BritBox. It is so good!!

And that is about it from our little refuge! How are things in your world?

I figured since it was back to school week for us, I should probably get to working on my own overdue projects~ and knocking out a few reviews.

Let’s start with…

Oh man, did I love this book! I’ve recommended it all over the place and at one mom’s wine night I went on and on about how much I loved this author’s writing. It is beautiful, full of nature, and also moments from an 80s childhood that I could totally relate to. The imagery and how we can learn lessons from the creatures around us was just so gorgeous and poignant as well. And it made me feel proud as well, of how I am raising my child, to observe nature around us, to know the names of bugs and birds. Nezhukumatathil shares a story in this collection of talking a class of students, young kids, who had never ever heard of fireflies. Thought they were fake, made up! I wish every child, and every adult could find such wonder in the world around us, as Nezhukumatathil does. If you haven’t read this, I urge you to do so!

I love a book set in Michigan, especially on the most mysterious of all the lakes, Lake Superior. If you have ever stood on the shores of Superior, you will know what I mean when I say it holds its secrets and has its dark mysteries. So a gothic suspense set on these shores is a match made in heaven. I really enjoyed this read, which took the reader between two times, set in the same place. Two women, each with their own set of problems. There were so many threads to this story, and each one was as interesting as the next. Definitely a book to read when you want to settle down with a cup of tea and a book with a bit of a spooky vibe.

This book was legit crazytown and I was 100% there for it. 10/10, highly recommend. It was a trippy ride all the way through and I could not stop reading it. There were shocks and surprises and twists everywhere that the reader just doesn’t see coming. My mom and I could not stop talking about it! If you like true crime and dark reads, this book is perfect for you. Even if you don’t, I suggest you give it a try!