Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot March 28

Hello, blogging peeps! I hope you are all having a great week.

Welcome to another Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot hosted by Marsha in the Middle, Melynda from Scratch Made Food & DYI Homemade Household, Sue from Women Living Well After 50, and me.  Look for the link party to go live on Thursdays at 9:30pm EDT. 

Weather-wise it has been cold.

Family-wise things have been a bit hectic, but I’ll share more about that in my Saturday Afternoon Tea and Chat post.

Blog-wise I’ve been busy writing reviews of books and shows.

Writing-wise I have finished Cassie, which will release in August and have started brainstorming for the third Gladwynn book. I’ll announce a title for it at a later date.

Let’s get right to our most clicked post of the week:

|| Family History: Discovering a Surprise Ancestor by Women Living Well after 50 ||





And some highlights I picked from the posts this week:

|| Brookgreen Sculpture Garden by Thrifting Wonderland ||

I loved the art in this one but also the information about the artists and the birds. It was a very relaxing post for me after a hectic week.

|| Easter Hutch in Dining Room by Debbie Dabble Blog ||

I always love Debbie’s decorations and how she pays attention to detail and focuses on that detail for us in case we miss it while looking at the photos. These setups must take a very long time and her patience to create them always impresses me.

|| Joy Comes in the Morning by Becoming His Tapestry ||

I always love Brenda’s inspirational messages.

I really loved this sentence: Then we look up, not into the eyes of our friends and family, but into the precious Word of God and realize that spring is here, not because it’s actually spring, but it begins to feel like spring because we’ve allowed ourselves to be comforted by the Word of God and His Spirit. 

Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago.

Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter
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Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot: March 14

Hello, everyone! I hope you’ve had a wonderful week. Welcome back to our Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot.

Welcome to another Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot hosted by Marsha in the Middle, Melynda from Scratch Made Food & DYI Homemade Household, Sue from Women Living Well After 50, and me.  Look for the link party to go live on Thursdays at 9:30pm EDT. 

What a lovely week we had weather-wise. Today I spent part of the day at a park with my daughter and our friends and it was such a nice time.

Tomorrow our temperatures will go down about 20 degrees so I am glad we were able to get out today. I hope the weather was nice or will be nice soon where you are.

Let’s get right to our most clicked post for the week:

|| For the Love of Rabbits by Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs||

I find it hard to highlight only a few posts each week because I enjoy so many of them but here are four that I enjoyed:

|| Radio Plays: What I’ve Been Listening To by Where the Wild Things Were ||

|| Doolin Ireland: Arriving in County Clare by Life of 2 Snowbirds. ||

|| A Look Inside My Drawers and More by Debbie Dabble Blog ||

|| The Columbian Park Zoo Perfect and Small Zoo for Children

by Amy’s Creative Pursuits||

Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago.

Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter
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Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot

Hello, everyone! I hope you’ve had a wonderful week. Welcome back to our Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot.

Welcome to another Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot hosted by Marsha in the Middle, Melynda from Scratch Made Food & DYI Homemade Household, Sue from Women Living Well After 50, and me.  Look for the link party to go live on Thursdays at 9:30pm EDT. 


The weather has been middle of the road here this week. More rain than sun but still warmer than some weeks.

Here is this week’s most clicked post:

Tea with Spring Flowers by Thrifting Wonderland

And here are three highlights from me:

Recycled Rubber Statement Necklace Style With A Smile by Style Splash

What are You Leaking by Pam Crement

San Francisco in Dark by Adventures in Weseland

and a bonus:

Five Mini Reviews of Old Fashioned Childrens Books by Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs

Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago.

Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter
https://fresh.inlinkz.com/js/widget/load.js?id=c0efdbe6b4add43dd7ef

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot February 29

Welcome to another Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot hosted by Marsha in the Middle, Melynda from Scratch Made Food & DYI Homemade Household, Sue from Women Living Well After 50, and me.  Look for the link party to go live on Thursdays at 9:30pm EDT. 

February 29th? What? That’s not normal!

So this is our extra day every four years.

What did you do with your extra day?

I did what I normally do (homeschool, cooking dinner, working on my book) but made a little extra time for reading. Today it is very, very cold in our neck of the woods. We went from 60 degrees yesterday to 26 today with a windchill of 15. What brought that cold air in was heavy rain and wind all day yesterday and my dad and I drove in it for me to get my eyes checked and him to have his taxes done. Good times. We made it safely home, unlike a car that we saw up on an embankment on our way home, however.

How was your week?

Let’s move on to the most clicked post for this week and a few of my favorites:

Most clicked:
Panels of the National AIDS quilt by Adventures in Wesleland.




My favorites:

Mod Crochet Purse Organizer by Road Gypsies

Sweet Potato Balls Recipe by Shop Annie’s


The War Time Book Club by This is Mutton

Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago.

Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter
https://fresh.inlinkz.com/js/widget/load.js?id=c0efdbe6b4add43dd7ef

Weekly Traffic Jam Reboot February 22 and my daughter likes my book!

Welcome to another Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot hosted by Marsha in the Middle, Melynda from Scratch Made Food & DYI Homemade Household, Sue from Women Living Well After 50, and me.  Look for the link party to go live on Thursdays at 9:30pm EDT. 

What: Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot – a chance for bloggers to link up their posts that are related to fashion, DIY, food, and anything else that is family-friendly.

When: The link goes live Thursday nights at 9:30 PM EST/United States time.

Why: To connect with other bloggers and bring more traffic to your own blog.

My 9-year-old daughter wanted me to read my book—Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing to her a couple of months ago and then again this weekend. Since it is a very clean book, even with the mystery element, I started to read it to her. I didn’t think she’d be interested but she asked me to keep reading so I did.

This week she asked if she could use my old Kindle and she downloaded my book and began to read it on her own. I thought she’d get bored fairly fast but 20 minutes in she ran to me from where she’d been sitting on the couch in the dining room and declared, “I just got to Lucinda and I love her. She is my favorite character.” She then quoted something Lucinda had said and, in the most adult way, said “She is heeelarious.”

I can’t lie – the whole situation made me weepy. I imagined other people reading my book and enjoying it and always thought that would be so amazing but I never thought about how amazing it would be to have my own family like what I write.

Some might say that it is normal to have family and friends say they like what you have written, but I have not had one friend from high school, college, or in my adult years read my books or say one thing about them to me over the last five years I have been writing.

I have not been able to gush with them over my characters like I hoped I would be able to.

My mom and my husband have both read my books so I can gush a little with them, luckily.

My daughter is only 9 and I really didn’t think about her reading my books or even caring about them, but I am grateful that my books are clean so she can read them and not be shown things she shouldn’t be shown or exposed to at her age.

My dad is not a reader but he has now read both of my Gladwynn Grant books. He literally took the time to read a couple of my chapters of my books each night and that means the world to me. If you could see me right now you would see me with tears in my eyes, knowing that my non-reader dad took the time out of his day to read my books and even left me a review on my Facebook. Dad has not always been a supporter, exactly, of me writing fiction so I was shocked when Mom said he was reading my book.

Dad felt like I needed to have traveled more and experienced more to be able to write fiction and he may be right in some ways, but his comments were somewhat discouraging to me when I started writing fiction for fun in 2018.

Here is the review my dad left me:

I am not much of a reader at all and very seldom read fiction and I watch very few movies.

Like who wants to read about something that is not . Lol Evidently a lot of people.

Anyway I got into the first Gladwyn mystery and found it intriguing and starting this one I find it more so.

Sometimes I think wow, I never knew that 😉 lol ; you see Gladwynn Grant,a mixture of intelligent, ditsy curious, and almost cunning, was my mother’s name.

Okay off to store a few more clues and along the way of the town theater find out what happened to Samantha.👩‍💼🧐🤔 🙂😋

Well, anyhow, I just thought I’d share all that today because it was on my mind as I started to write this post today.

Let’s move on to our top post this week:

Friends and Pasta by Thrifting Wonderland

And now three of the posts that stood out to me this week:

Hiking Photos from Last Friday by My Slices of Life

Finding Peace in Pain: Exploring Christian Mindfulness For Pain Management by Grace Filled Moments

Valentines Hutch Tree and More by Debbie Dabbleblog

Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago.

Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter
https://fresh.inlinkz.com/js/widget/load.js?id=c0efdbe6b4add43dd7ef

Weekly Traffic Jam Reboot February 15

Welcome to another Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot hosted by Marsha in the Middle, Melynda from Scratch Made Food & DYI Homemade Household, Sue from Women Living Well After 50, and me.  Look for the link party to go live on Thursdays at 9:30pm EDT. 

What: Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot – a chance for bloggers to link up their posts that are related to fashion, DIY, food, and anything else that is family-friendly.

When: The link goes live Thursday nights at 9:30 PM EST/United States time.

Why: To connect with other bloggers and bring more traffic to your own blog.

I hope all of you who celebrate Valentine’s Day had a lovely day. For all of you who consider it just another day, I hope you are having a good week!

Our kids made dinner for us yesterday at home and then we watched a Fred Astaire movie, which I didn’t enjoy as much as his others because the ending was quite weird. He tricked a woman into marrying him like he could just treat her like something he owned and not a real person. It was so odd.

We watched an episode of Psych as a family after the movie.

Our weather dropped down into below-freezing or just above-freezing temperatures this week so today I am sitting in front of a fire that took a bit for me to make but that is keeping us nice and cozy in our living room while I snack on frozen blueberries as a treat and get ready to watch Lark Rise From Candleford. Have you ever seen the show? It is based on a classic book.

This week we had a three-way tie and they were all from Lynne at Thrifting Wonderland! Lynne always has such interesting posts! Did you see these three this week?

First up is Another Real Estate China Pattern

Next is Happy Dancy Thrift Store

And last was Walk Around the Lake

I enjoyed all three posts myself.

Now for my favorites this week:

Finding Strength in Vulnerability: The Story of a Healing Cry by Grace Filled Moments

A Valentines Day Look for The Sunday Showcase by Chez Mireille Fashion Travel Mom

and Unicorn Tears Raggery Wall Hanging by Shelbee on the Rags

 I hope you had a great week and have a great week ahead.

Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago.

Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter
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Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot February 8

Welcome to another Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot hosted by Marsha in the Middle, Melynda from Scratch Made Food & DYI Homemade Household, Sue from Women Living Well After 50, and me.  Look for the link party to go live on Thursdays at 9:30pm EDT. 

This week has been very busy for me.

I have had to leave the house every day except today. Two of those days I took my dad to doctor appointments for an injured foot. Thankfully the foot was not broken but it has been causing him a great deal of pain.

Luckily the sun came out this week, even though the temperatures were very chilly still. Today the temperatures are in the low 50s and it feels like a heatwave. My daughter and I went outside and played with the dog (nicknamed Zooma The Wonder Dog here on the blog) by throwing her ball across the yard, something she has only done once before all winter. She won’t give up the ball so we throw one ball and to get her to drop it, we throw another one.

She was having a ton of fun because she absolutely loves being outside and being able to run around. I needed to just sit and watch her run around because our trials from last week with broken down this or that have continued into this week. First, my dad broke down (Har. Har.) and now our dryer, which was starting to die before.

Unfortunately, we only have a limited budget to have all of this fixed.

I need new eyeglasses at the end of the month because the “anti-glare covering” on my lenses is peeling, making it hard for me to see through and aggravating the floaters I already have.

It will all get worked out, though. God has always provided for us.

Now, on to our most clicked posts for this week and a list of my favorite posts.

The most clicked:

First February Thrift by Thrifting Wonderland





My top three or three favorites:

Lean Into Grace by A New Lens

I cheated a bit by choosing this one because the book that Pam talks about here is written by the daughter-in-law of a family friend and I was pleasantly surprised to see it up on someone else’s blog. The woman’s husband’s family grew up not far from me in my little corner of Pennsylvania.

8 Ways to Make February Fabulous by Women Living Well After 50

I don’t know if it is proper to pick a post from one of the hosts or not, but I did really enjoy all these ideas for surviving February by Sue from Women Living Well After 50. She called it: ‘It’s February – 8 ways to make it Fabulous’. The ideas on how to make life more relaxing and easier to work through are ideas I’m going to be taking to heart for the rest of February.

Winter at Nelson Crest: Saturday Snippets by Debbie Dabbleblog

I chose this one because – babies. Yep. Beautiful babies. That is all.

I hope you had a great week and have a great week ahead.

Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago.

Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter
https://fresh.inlinkz.com/js/widget/load.js?id=c0efdbe6b4add43dd7ef

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot February 1

Welcome to another Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot hosted by Marsha in the Middle, Melynda from Scratch Made Food & DYI Homemade Household, Sue from Women Living Well After 50, and me.  Look for the link party to go live on Thursdays at 9:30pm EDT. 

Our cold weather came back this week with a vengeance and some snow will just not go away because it’s been too cold for it to melt.

Luckily, we did not return to the arctic temperatures we were faced with the week before last.

This has not been an easy week in our house. While everyone is healthy (for the most part), everything has broken all at once, including cars, trucks, washers, dryers, the sink and my sanity.

It has been one thing after another and we’d love some prayers.

In the midst of all that I have wanted to find some time for relaxing, reading, and watching things, but that really hasn’t happened this week. I need to find a way to have that break this weekend or I think I might crumble into a weepy mess.

This week for our Weekly Traffic Jam Reboot Link Up we had another tie for the most clicked!

The most clicked posts were:

Snow Leopard for the Win by Marsha in the Middle

And Be Mine Valentine by Thrifting Wonderland

My favorites for this week were:

Winter Wonderland Trees & Villages in the Den, 2024 by Debbie Dabbleblog

I loved this tour of Debbie’s trees and den decorated for winter! It was relaxing to take the photo tour!

A Sweet Valentine’s Day Table At Sunset by Life Is Better Lakeside

I really enjoyed how this table was decorated and amazed with the view as well!

Beauty Update and Makeup Bag Rummage by Is This Mutton

I don’t know enough about makeup so this was an amazing crash course for me. I loved the details about the makeup, her skincare routine, and other things she takes or does for her skin and health.

It is hard choosing favorite posts some weeks because I really enjoy so many of them so please go check out the links each week so you can see what everyone is sharing.

Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago.

Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter
https://fresh.inlinkz.com/js/widget/load.js?id=c0efdbe6b4add43dd7ef

Weekly Traffic Jam Reboot

Welcome to another Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot hosted by Marsha in the Middle, Melynda from Scratch Made Food & DYI Homemade Household, Sue from Women Living Well After 50, and me.  Look for the link up to go live on Thursdays at 9:30pm EDT. 

The cold weather finally went away and gave way to warmer temperatures this week.

It was so nice to be able to go outside and not feel my muscles and face aching from the cold.

Ice and snow still fell on Tuesday even as the temperatures rose.

By Wednesday it was all rain and we were supposed to get up to two inches but luckily we didn’t!

As I start this post, I am watching Emma for the post I shared this morning for Jane Austen January.

We only have one more movie left to watch for next week – Miss Austen Regrets.

Our link-up for anything about Jane Austen is still currently open on our blogs – at the top of the page under Jane Austen January.

Now for our most clicked most this week. We had a three-way tie!

The Trauma Effect by Zetta Thomelin by Is This Mutton

Mid-January Thrift by Thrifting Wonderland

and

Quiet Moments Tablescape by Thrifting Wonderland

And for my three favorite posts:

Favorite TV Shows Growing Up in the ‘80s and early ‘90s by My Slices of Life

I loved this nostalgic post about TV sitcoms and dramas from the 1980s and early 1990s. I watched a lot of the shows mentioned in the post and have good memories of those days.

My Father’s World Kindergarten: W is for Water by My Full Hands and Heart

I love reading about what other parents are doing to educate their children, either through homeschool or other means. I’ve read good things about My Father’s World too.

A Walk Down Church Street in Marietta, GA by Chez Mireille Fashion Travel Mom

I loved these photos of a walk down an area with historic homes in this part of Marietta, Georgia. The photos were pretty and the post was relaxing.

Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago.

Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter
https://fresh.inlinkz.com/js/widget/load.js?id=c0efdbe6b4add43dd7ef