Tag: week in review

Sunday Bookends: Greenhouses, same books/same story, favorite blog posts, and happy Mother’s Day!

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday BookendsLeave a comment

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.

First, happy Mother’s Day to all you mother’s out there!


What I/we’ve been Reading

Still reading slow.

Yes.

Me.

I’m reading slow.

So I am still on Flowers and Foul Play by Amanda Flower

I am also still reading Fellowship of the Ring.

I hope to have both done in the next week because now that I am done with the revisions of Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing I’ll have a little more time for reading.

I am enjoying both books.

Little Miss is reading to me at night now until her eyes start to cross, and I love it because now she knows how I feel when I’m just too tired to read to her.

This week she read to me from Charlie the Ranch Dog, the children’s books about Ree Drummond’s dog, and from Little House in the Big Woods. I love how she starts to yawn as she reads. She is so much like me these days. We are too tired from playing during the day to be able to stay awake at night to read.

I wanted to record her reading on my phone but she refused to let me. Oh well. Not a big deal. I just wanted to record how well she’s doing at reading.

She’s been reading well for a couple of years now, but I’m just impressed with how much she’s progressed in that time.



What’s Been Occurring

I wrote about what’s been going on in our lives during my post yesterday. After I posted, Little Miss and I visited a local greenhouse that has been operated by the same family for 50 years with a friend of hers, then the little girl came to our house and she and Little Miss played together for the rest of the afternoon.

They played in the stream by the greenhouse and back here they searched for snakes, found dead animals in the yard that our evil kitten had killed, jumped on the trampoline, and played on the Slip N’ Slide. They never seemed to stop moving. We had an earlier night at bedtime than some nights, though, so that was nice.

I went over to my parents at the end of the day to help straighten up some before my brother comes to visit today for Mother’s Day.

The upcoming week doesn’t look as busy as this past week.

We have gymnastics on Monday and nothing else for the rest of the week other than possibly going to my parents to help clean and The Boy has work. Next Saturday we plan to go have a picnic and see a movie in a town about 45 minutes from us.

What We Watched/are Watching

This past week I enjoyed videos from Forgotten Way Farms (on YouTube) and also watched a Midsomer Murders with The Husband.

I watched half of Operation Petticoat, which I will finish this week for our Spring of Cary post Thursday.

We watched a ton of Bluey, which seems to always be on in the background because Little Miss absolutely loves that show.

I watched a couple of Mary Berry episodes and a really depressing art documentary on Vincent VanGogh with Little Miss as well.

We didn’t have as much time to watch things this week, but we did watch some Newhart (streaming on Amazon now), which is always nice and relaxing.


What I’m Writing

As I mentioned above, I have finished the first revisions on Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing and sent the book out to a couple beta readers and on to the editor. This week I am finishing my newsletter for Substack and then I hope to write a couple blog posts that I have ideas for. I have already started book two in Gladwynn’s series as well.

On the blog I shared:

What I’m Listening To

This week I listened to Tami Neilson, a country-rock musician from New Zealand.

Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week

Through the Lens with Spring Happenings by For His Purpose: https://forhispurpose.blog/2023/05/12/through-the-lens-with-spring-happenings/

I Should Have Known by Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian: https://nostalgicitalian.com/2023/05/07/i-should-have-known/

Fit For A King by Fuel For the Race Blog: https://fuelfortheraceblog.wordpress.com/2023/05/12/fit-for-a-king/

Now it’s your turn

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Trampolines, craving quiet, lilacs are blooming

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Saturday Afternoon Tea6 Comments

Note: I usually only share this post on my blog (Boondock Ramblings) but thought I’d share it with my subscribers here on Substack too this week.

I am back this week for Saturday Afternoon Chat and I am sipping peppermint tea but later I’m sure I’ll be drinking cool water as our temperatures are supposed to be higher today than they were yesterday and Thursday.

As I am writing this, The Husband and Little Miss are at gymnastics and I am taking a little bit of what I guess I would call self-care time.

This is the first time in – um – a long time that I have had any time alone to write or think or just decompress. I seriously do not even remember the last time I had a break when it was daylight out without people and animals all around me, coming in and out of the house, looking for attention or needing something.

This past week was very busy but not busy with going places. It was busy with being outside or washing dishes or trying to clean things out or, quite frankly, it was busy in my mind. My mind has been racing 1,000 miles a minute, sometimes a second, these days.

It’s racing over my parent’s health issues, my kids growing up, homeschooling, me trying to help the family financially while also trying to have fun with some side activities like writing, photography, and designing, knowing I need to spend time with my husband, my kids, my parents and feeling like there isn’t enough of me to go around.

I’m finding it hard to simply sit and listen to my own thoughts and try to find some balance in the midst of all the chaos. I’m struggling to find moments of peace in the chaos, something I plan to write about later this week.

Right now the house is silent. The dog is asleep on the ottoman and outside my window there is one lone bird not exactly chirping, but sort of calling. There isn’t even a truck grinding its brakes down the hill like it so often is during other quiet times I’ve been able to grab in the past.

Quiet.

My soul has been craving it.

Not long stretches of quiet because then I feel off-centered and lost and melancholy as I long for the presence of my family – even if they are loud at times and need a lot of attention. I want to give that attention. The majority of the time I want them around me because if they aren’t then I feel like life is incomplete.

Sometimes, though, I need even a half hour of quiet so I can think and remember how much I need the everyday noise and hustle and bustle because without it that would mean that those who are most precious to me are no longer part of my life. If they were no longer here then I would no longer be here because they are what give me a purpose to create and live.

I need a quiet moment to close my eyes and breathe in the peace of God and remind myself that I am not alone in all my fears, worries, and apprehensions, I am not alone with my racing thoughts. God is here even in the chaos, even in the fear, even in the anxiety that tries to take me over.

So today I will take a moment of quiet while everyone is gone and just soak in all the goodness that is my life, repelling thoughts of all the bad that I think my life produces or is filled with.

When I forget how great my life is in the overall, grand scheme of things, song lyrics from a song by Wes King from the 1990s comes to mind.

“Life is precious. Life is sweet. Like the earth beneath my feet. And his truth makes it complete. Knowing Jesus died for me, life is precious, life is sweet.”

Earlier this week Little Miss and I spent hours of our afternoons on the neighbor’s trampoline. I can’t lie. I didn’t enjoy it as I should have. I was resentful. I wanted to finish revising the book I’m writing. I wanted to read. I wanted to have “me time.” And I felt selfish about that.

I felt like I should be enjoying every moment with my daughter because before I know it she will be grown up and moved out and I will have all the free time I want but I won’t want it. All I will want is time with my children back again.

So, I felt my resentment for a little bit, pouted some, and even flounced a little.

But then I worked on just enjoying that time with her, watching her jump and do flips, and seeing how much she’s grown physically and skill-wise in the last year.

Yes, I worked on it. I chose joy when I didn’t feel it because sometimes, we have to do that and, you know what? I did soon feel joy and I felt a slow rhythm return to my soul that I needed. I had been rushing and trying to do too much at once and I feel like God knew I needed that slowed-down time to just be in one moment and not ten at once.   

Yesterday the local homeschool group met at an alpaca farm about an eight-minute drive from our house and then stopped for some ice cream at the restaurant where my son is now washing dishes a few times a week.

Little Miss loved the alpacas and kept feeding them the carrots that the owners had cut up for the kid’s visit. She fed them so many I thought they might start spitting them back at her, but they seemed as thrilled with her feeding them as she was to feed them. She stayed with them long after the other kids had gotten bored and wandered off to the little shop the farm has and the woods around it.

After the farm visit and ice cream, there was a Mother’s Day craft at the library. Then it was time to go home and cook dinner and wash some dishes.

Speaking of dinner, lately Little Miss has wanted to make special sauces for dinner, and one might last week she made an amazing cheese sauce to go with our dinner of chicken and rice. Another night she made a similar cheese sauce for our dinner of sausages and egg noodles (though I had rice with mine). The sauce was so good and I saved some to have with my lunch yesterday. I told her it is now her job to make cheese, or another sauce, for family dinners. She’s very excited about this prospect. My only issue will have to be making sure that she doesn’t get so excited she tries to do too much by herself and accidentally burns or cuts herself. She is sometimes impatient waiting for Mom to help so she jumps ahead and does it herself. This can be a good and a bad thing.

I was worried one day when she was making the sauce because I said it was cutting into our homeschool time.

“Is this sort of homeschool? Teaching me about cooking?”

As usual she’s quicker on the uptake than I am.

So, yes, we treated it as a time to learn and it removed the guilt from this homeschool mom.

Today Little Miss has a friend who is going to come to play, which will probably mean more time on the trampoline.

I don’t mind. This hour break has helped me have a little “me time.” Even the short break is so rejuvenating for my spirit. (Doesn’t that just sound so dramatic? “It’s so rejuvenating for my spirit!” *snort* I sound like I’m in one of those YouTube videos with the guitar music and some girl in an old-fashioned dress skipping through a field of tulips.)

In all this rambling, I forgot to mention that our tulips and our lilacs are blooming. The lilacs smell so amazing! Last night I had to go search for our youngest cat who has been staying out past curfew lately and when I opened the back door the amazing sweet smell of the lilacs hit me.

We used to have a very small bush by our garage and a larger bush that is growing in the middle of a tree on the top of the hill behind the house. This year the smaller bush by the garage is much larger than t had been, and an even smaller bush is growing next to the fence next to the house. I don’t remember that bush last year but It is very welcome to stay there and bloom. I should probably cut some of the bushes back but I love to see plants grow naturally. That’s one reason why I have never cut back our wild rose bush. Well, that and the fact our neighbor, who told me the bush is over a hundred years old, said that when her landscapers trimmed her wild rose bush (which was grown from a section of our bush), it stopped blooming as well.

I look forward to those wild roses blooming every year. When they first start to appear, pure joy settles in my chest and then spills outward through giddy giggles. I’ll see them through the kitchen window and go grab the camera to take a hundred photographs of them. A hundred photographs I used to have no idea what I had the use for other than to look at during the winter months when everything is so drab. This past week, though, I decided I can use some of those photographs for journals I am developing.

Speaking of photographs (yes, “speaking of” are the words for the day, apparently), I failed a bit on my Photo a Day in May challenge. I literally forgot about the challenge for nine days, but when I remembered I picked up my camera and took several photos of the lilac bushes and Little Miss jumping. I am not trying to remember to take my camera with me everywhere I go so I can pause a moment in the craziness and photograph something that catches my eye.

As I’ve said before, photography helps to slow me and my mind down, which is one reason I wanted to do this challenge.

Since I missed several days of the challenge, I am going to try to stretch it into June as well.

To end my post (since I think I hear my husband and daughter coming in now) here are a few photos I’ve taken for the challenge so far in May. I’m sure I’ll share a separate post later in the week with one for each day.

How about you? How was your week last week? Have you found any new teas to drink? Let me know in the comments!

Sunday Bookends: A spring outing, reading mysteries, and new glasses for the youngest

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends9 Comments



It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.



What’s Been Occurring

I did not share a Saturday After Chat post yesterday because I was out of the house both Friday and Saturday and did not have time to write one.

On Tuesday last week, we traveled to a town near us to pick glasses up for Little Miss and The Boy. Yes, Little Miss is now like the rest of us in the family and has glasses. I don’t really like that she’s had to get them at such a young age, but if she can see better, that’s great.

I wanted to blame too much device usage on her need at such a young age, but then I remembered that I was only a couple of years older when I got glasses, and I didn’t have devices back then. I did a lot of close work with sketching and reading but I did not have a phone or Kindle or anything else that might cause me to be near-sighted. I suppose it is simply bad genetics once again.

Luckily, she looks absolutely adorable in glasses.

The Boy looks absolutely adorable in glasses too, but he doesn’t pose for photos anymore.

The Husband would probably pose but his glasses are old so I didn’t take a photo of them.

After we picked up the glasses we went to the local library for a gathering with the local homeschool group. It was a lot of fun and nice to finally meet other homeschooling parents. I had met a few of them at the end of February but several of the children were sick that week. We missed the next couple of meet-ups because of Little Miss’s dental procedure, weather, and Little Miss getting sick one week.

During this meetup, they had a birthday theme and exchanged gifts between the children to help encourage them to get to know each other. This didn’t really work as much with the teenagers who simply looked at the floor while they handled each other gifts, but it was a good idea.

One of the members brought their pet pig and then there were birthday party type games (Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Musical Chairs, and a pinata). Little Miss had a blast but by the end she told me she was all socialized out and wanted to go home and not talk to people for the next five months.

Yes, she is very similar to me.

After interacting with other people I need a downtime of not talking to anyone or going anywhere for at least a day, if not more.

On Friday, Little Miss and I grocery shopped, which I hate doing but it went well, even though I had to have our van looked at by an exhaust specialist before we went because we have a hole in our exhaust and then grocery shop. I actually very much dread going to the grocery store. My weird health issues seem to kick in during those visits. My legs get weak, my head feels odd, and my lower back hurts by the time I get halfway around the store.

I prayed all the way to the store, though, calling on Jesus’ many names – Elohim, Adonai, and Jehovah Jireh, my provider. I rebuked anything coming against me and by the time I left the mechanic to head to Aldi, I felt so much better. I was able to get all of our shopping done and when I went home I even carried in all of the groceries, something I’m usually too tired to do.

In full disclosure, I did take a l’theanine before I left. It is a natural supplement to help with relaxation but there is no way it had time to kick in and not only that, it does not give me energy or take away the vertigo I experience in stores or in fluorescent lights. Only God can do that. Don’t be afraid to ask him for help in even the smallest situations in your life.

Yesterday we visited a comic shop as a family for Free Comic Book Day.

We traveled about an hour to get to the comic shop, visiting a town near us that we had not visited before. It was full of old houses that dated back to the early to mid 1800s. I honestly felt like I was in an old neighborhood in Philadelphia or something.

The kids and The Husband went into the comic book store and I wandered down the street, admiring the old buildings and beautiful churches.

There was a Little Free Library at one of the churches in the town with the comic book store and I found what I think is a cozy mystery. I replaced it with a book that was in the van.

After our visit there we stopped at a GameStop store for The Boy and visited a park/playground  afterward.

It was a nice day, especially since we finally had a sunny, warm day for the first time all week and also because the views were so nice.

I am trying to talk my dad and son in building me a little library that I can install across the street from our house. I think it would be fun for people who are walking or driving by to see and know that they can find good books in.

What I/we’ve been Reading

While I was not a huge fan of M.C. Beaton’s writing style, I couldn’t help reading through Death of a Poisoned Pen, which is a Hamish Macbeth Mystery. I gave up at one point and said I couldn’t put up with her choppy writing any longer, but I needed to know what happened so I went back to the book and finished it Friday night. This was a later book in the series so maybe it wasn’t even written by M.C. Beaton by then. Maybe ghost writers wrote it like they do James Patterson’s books.

Now that I have finished that book I am free to focus on Fellowship of the Ring, which I have a goal to finish before the end of May but will probably finish earlier. I need The Boy to finish it before the end of May as well because I would like him to write a review of it and Huckleberry Finn before our meeting with our homeschool evaluator.

I am also reading a cozy mystery by Amanda Flower, a new-to-me author. The book is called Flowers and Foul Play. It is a Magic Garden Mystery so there is a bit of magic mixed in.

Little Miss has been reading a collection of Charlie books to me. Charlie was Ree Drummond’s (The Pioneer Woman’s) dog and there was a series of I Can Read books written about him. I found the collection at a library sale, and she’s been reading a chapter or two of the books to me before bed. Then I read from The Miss Piggle-Wiggle Treasury to her but I am telling you, I am ready for that book to be over. The stories really do drag a bit and I find the solutions this woman has to common childhood quirks a little irritating. It was written in the 1950s when children weren’t supposed to be imaginative, I suppose because the latest story had a mother trying to figure out how to get her son to stop daydreaming and dragging his feet and instead hurry up and do what he is told.

Little Miss likes the stories though, so I push through for her sake. I can’t wait until we can move on to something else, though. The book is due back this week, but, sadly, I can renew it again.

On our trip yesterday, Little Miss read an entire Imagination Station book by herself – they are about 80-100 pages long and around 12 chapters. They are books produced by Focus on the Family through the Adventures in Odyssey series.

The Husband is reading Peril at End House by Agatha Christie.

What We watched/are Watching

We watched a lot of Newhart this past week and I watched Holiday with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, which I loved.

Little Miss and I watched some Mary Berry.

I actually did not watch a lot this past week because I was either revising my book or reading a book.


What I’m Writing

I am in the revision process for Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing so I worked on that a lot this week.

On the blog I shared:

Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week

Rose Fairbanks: Living In the Overflow

https://rosefairbanks.com/2023/05/01/music-monday-living-in-the-overflow/comment-page-1/#comment-19638

Mama’s Empty Nest: Words for Wednesday, Just Like Mom

https://mamasemptynest.wordpress.com/2023/04/26/words-for-wednesday-just-like-mom/


Now it’s your turn

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

Sunday Bookends: Who is M.C. Beaton? Crazy days with young children and old movies are what I’m watching

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday BookendsLeave a comment

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.


What I/we’ve Been Reading

I didn’t read a ton last week because I was working on finishing Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing. I hope to have it done in a couple of days and then I can return back to some of the books I’ve been reading.

I took a break from Fellowship of the Ring but am anxious to get back into it this week.

I have been reading Death of a Poison Pen by M.C. Beaton. It’s a Hamish MacBeth Mystery.

Now, in some ways, I’m not sure what I think about the book because there is a lot of head hopping between characters – like how old books were written (you know, where the author tells you what everyone in the room is thinking all in the same scene) and I don’t know that I love Beaton’s writing but I’m caught up in the mystery and I can’t put the book down when I start reading. I need to know who killed the postmistress and the school’s head teacher!

I have a feeling Beaton’s writing will grow on me and I’ll read more by her. I won’t read the most recent Agatha Raisin books that they put out with her name on them, though. I picked one up and it was awful. I don’t think she wrote it at all since I think she was in her 80s when it came out and put out right before she died, actually.

She is the author of two very popular mystery series in the U.K., including Hamish Macbeth (my friend Erin says the show on BBC is nothing like the books, just a warning) and Agatha Raisin, but under her real name Marion Chesney she also wrote a ton of historical romance novels. She has also written under the names Ann Fairfax, Helen Crampton, Jennie Tremaine, and Sarah Chester.

There are 34 books in the Macbeth series and 30 in the Agatha Raisin series. There are also books related to the series and a couple were written with the help of someone named R.W. Green after she died.

Yes, I have been reading Wikipedia. Why do you ask?

The Husband is reading Victory City by Salman Rushdie.


Little Miss and I are reading The Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle Treasury before bed. She loves it and I don’t really but I’m reading it for her sake. They are cute little stories about parents trying to get their children to do the right thing with Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s help, but they are a bit bizarre and silly too.

The Boy is reading his history textbook, and his science textbook and listening to Fellowship of the Ring.

What’s Been Occurring

Last week was a pretty relaxed week but I rambled a bit about what has been going on in my post yesterday.

Today we are recovering from a visit with Little Miss’ friends. I say recovering because they played full force yesterday – spending most of their time on the trampoline – not because it was a bad visit.

We probably won’t visit my parents because my dad is having hip pain after being adjusted by his chiropractor. He’ll have to call the chiropractor tomorrow and tell him that something was not adjusted right at all.

What We watched/are Watching

This past week I watched An Affair to Remember for the Spring of Cary challenge Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are doing.

The Husband and I also watched a Poirot and a couple of Brokenwood Mysteries and a few Newhart episodes.

This week Erin and I are watching Holiday with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn.



What I’m Writing

I am writing the last chapter of Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing either today or tomorrow and then I will begin self-editing the book and rewriting, etc.

This past week on the blog I shared:

What I’m Listening To

The Husband turned me on to Nate Smith this week and then I also listened to Warren Zeiders. Both are country artists but not the garbage we hear on the radio today, thankfully.

Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week

I hope to be back next week with blog posts I enjoyed this week. I didn’t take note of the ones I read this week and I am also behind on my blog reading because of homeschool and working on the book. I hope to get back on track this week. We will see how it goes.



Now it’s your turn

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

Sunday Bookends: My husband is a speed reader, finally enjoying Fellowship of the Ring, a DNF for Anne, and working on Gladwynn’s book

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends1 Comment

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.


What I/we’ve been Reading

It took until around Chapter 9, but I finally got into Fellowship of the Ring. Or it finally picked up, whichever. I mean, I guess I liked it before then but a character I remember from the movies showed up around Chapter 9 and that’s when things started to really pick up. Now I’m moving through it much faster and would love to be able to finish it by the end of the week, but I’m not sure I will. I have enjoyed listening to it some of the time on Audible and reading it part of the time. Friday night I sat on the back porch and read a couple of chapters of it, which took quite a while since the chapters are so long.

I also started reading Death of a Poison Pen by M.C. Beaton. It’s a Hamish Macbeth Mystery and takes place in Scotland. It’s a much lighter read than Fellowship of the Ring so I’m using it to break up the old style of Tolkien’s writing but I will probably focus on FOTR this week because I do want to know what happens. Yes, I did watch the movie but I sort of glazed over after hour two and got a bit lost. I’d rather read it.

I finally gave up on Anne’s House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery. It was terribly depressing and I once heard a reader say life was too short to read a book you don’t enjoy so I finally put it back on the shelf. I’ll try some of the other books in the series at another time.

Little Miss and I are reading On The Other Side of the Hill by Roger Lea MacBride. Some nights we are reading The Miss Piggle Wiggle Treasury.

The Boy is reading Fellowship of the Ring.

The Husband was on vacation this week and even with taking kids to appointments, washing dishes, mowing the lawn, and helping to take care of a sick dog he managed to read six books and start a seventh.

The books he read:

The Infernals by John Connelly

Out of Range by CJ Box

The Scared Stiff by Donald Westlake

Bye-Bye, Baby by Ace Atkins

Number One is Walking by Steve Martin

Standing by the Wall by Mick Herron

The one he is reading now: Don’t Ask by Donald Westlake


What’s Been Occurring

I wrote yesterday about our drama last week with Zooma the Wonder Dog. You can read about it in this post.

You can also see some of our photos from the week there but I will share a few here too.

What We watched/are Watching

Little Miss and I found two other Mary Berry series on Tubi on the Roku this week so we watched those episodes throughout the week.

I watched My Favorite Wife for my Spring of Cary feature with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and decided it was not my favorite Cary movie.

An Affair to Remember is up for this week.

The Husband and I watched Oceans 11 this week. The original with the Rat Pack etc. That was some ending. Whew.

We also watched a super creepy episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents with Dick York from Bewitched. Yikes. He was a very good actor and very underrated.

We also started Carefree with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, but both had to head to bed for some sleep so we will finish it later.

I also watched a few art videos and a couple of YouTubers this week but had to take a break from the YouTubers as some of them grate on me because after a bit they all start to sound the same. They talk about the same books and wear the same clothes and skip in the same fields and it is starting to get a bit weird. I’m sure I’ll still watch a few of them, including Forgotten Way Farms, which is different from all the other “Young Woman Reading Cottage Core Style Books and Filming Herself Wearing Old Clothes and Skipping through A Field of Flowers.”



What I’m Writing

I worked on finishing Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing every day this last week and hope to have it finished this upcoming week. You can pre-order it here:

It is coming out July 18th now instead of June 20th.

On the blog I shared:

What I’m Listening To

I am listening to an audiobook of Fellowship of the Ring and other times I am reading the book.

Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week

Big Sky Buckeye, God’s quiet place:

https://bigskybuckeye.com/2023/04/19/gods-quiet-place/

Breath of Hallelujah: Pascha At Holy Trinity Cathedral Chicago

https://breathofhallelujah.com/2023/04/19/pascha-at-holy-trinity-cathedral-chicago/



Now it’s your turn

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.




Sunday Bookends: Slogging through a couple of books, warmer weather, and old TV shows

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends3 Comments

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.


What I/we’ve Been Reading

I’m reading a book called Expired Hope for a book tour. In my head, I call it Expired Drama. There is a lot of drama. Like too much drama. It’s a romantic suspense book listed in the Christian Fiction genre. I am probably not going to read another one by this author (Lisa Phillips) even though she is a good writer. The crisis scenarios that keep happening in every chapter are simply too much for me. It’s a bit overdone for my taste, but I’m sure others enjoy that type of escapism. I think I need it to make a little more sense for me to enjoy it.

I am also still reading Fellowship of the Ring. I feel bad I keep saying that I’m still reading it. It’s a good book. I just keep getting interrupted by either the children or phone calls or life in general when I try to read it. Then I get distracted with other books or writing because fantasy, or at least older fantasy, is not always my thing. I do, however, really enjoy Tolkien’s style of writing and when I sit down and focus on it, I do find myself getting carried away into the world of the Hobbits. I do sometimes wish that Tolkien would get to the point. I didn’t think anyone could write that many times about their characters being lost in the forest and drag that fact out for ten pages of talking about rows and rows of trees, but somehow he managed it.

I will be finishing Anne’s House of Dreams by the end of April. That is my goal. I stopped that one because it was a bit more depressing than the previous books I have read in the series.

I started a Walt Longmire Mystery and oh wow – after reading mainly light and fluffy books for the last few months, it was simply too dark and gritty for me. I had to put it aside for now, even though I love Craig Johnson’s writing.

I’m reading a chapter or two of The Lord God Made Them All by James Herriot before bed.

Little Miss and I are reading On the Other Side of the Hill by Roger Lea MacBride. It is part of the fiction series based on the childhood of Rose Wilder, daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

In the evenings we are also reading Mrs. Piggle Wiggle: A Treasury, which is the story of an eccentric woman who helps teach children to have fun when they have to do work around the home or other things they don’t want to do. It was written in the 50s so there are, at times, some old-fashioned ideas – like 8-year-olds having to do all the housework instead of the parents. Of course, the book also exaggerates some of the situations for the sake of the silliness of the stories.

We also signed out a pile of picture books from the library last week that we will be reading this week and I’ll be sharing about them in a Little Miss’ Reading Corner post.

What’s Been Occurring

I wrote about what’s been occurring in my post yesterday if you want to check it out.

My only update is that the temperatures did drop after our rain yesterday and I was glad to have it cooler so I can cover myself with a blanket while I write this and later while I read.

Also, after the rain, the blooms on the tree next to our house opened even more, so that was pretty cool.

I think the forsythia bush bloomed even more too.

Later today we will head to my parents for some lunch.

Tomorrow, we have gymnastics for Little Miss and a guitar lesson for The Boy and Tuesday it is an eye doctor appointment for them both. After that, the week isn’t too busy for us other than The Boy working at his part-time job.

It isn’t too busy for me at least. Ha.

What We Watched/are Watching

Last night we watched the first episode of season nine of Brokenwood Mysteries. We had missed watching the show and had finished up season eight a couple of months ago, so we are glad it is back for a new season.

Little Miss and I watched a lot of Mary Berry this week. Most of the episodes we had already seen a couple of times before but we still really enjoyed them.

Earlier in the week I watched The Awful Truth with Cary Grant and Irene Dunne and this week I am watching My Favorite Wife with the same actors. This is part of The Spring of Cary that I am doing with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.

We also watched some Newhart last week (all of the seasons are now on Amazon), Hogans Heroes, and I watched a couple episodes of Madame Leblanc Mysteries until it started toward preachy themes about the lifestyles of people.

We also finished an episode of McDonald and Dodds and watched a couple episodes of a British sitcom called My Family.


What I’m Writing

I am working hard on Gladwynn’s first book and hope to have it done by the end of the month, if not before, and out to beta readers. This reminds me: I’m taking applications for both beta readers and launch team members.

If you want to sign up to beta read the book and give me your feedback on the characters and the story, etc., then you can do so here: https://forms.gle/WzSJe2pP71MBWbfn9



If you want to be on the launch team that is just where you get an ebook copy of the book and then help me promote it by letting people on your social media, blog, etc. know about the book, you can sign-up here: https://forms.gle/rfqE8oWqfQzhnrhQ7

On the blog last week I shared:

What I’m Listening To

I did not listen to a ton of music this past week, but I did listen to Fellowship of the Ring on Audible.

Now it’s your turn

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

Sunday Bookends: He Has Risen! And other less important stuff

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends3 Comments

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.

First: Happy Easter! He has risen! He has risen indeed!

Now on to the less important stuff.


What I/we’ve Been Reading

This past week I finished Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie and would definitely recommend it. I loved the witty comments from Miss Marple and the humor woven in throughout the book. I don’t know if the ending was my favorite, but it was definitely an interesting way to be led to the guilty party.

The rest of the week I read a few chapters of The Lord God Made Them All by James Herriot and tried to decide what other books I might want to read from my TBR. I think I’ll start Little Women this week.

Other choices I have for later in the month and May:

Hell is Empty: A Walt Longmire Mystery by Craig Johnson (I did start this one so might continue reading it)

Midwinter Murder by Agatha Christie (I was supposed to read this during the winter. Oops)

Deadly Ever After by Eva Gates

The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz

Death by the Seaside by T.E. Kinsley

All That Really Matters by Nicole Deese

I tried to read a little of Anne’s House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery, which I started months ago, but the old way of writing is a little annoying to me right now, especially when it is used to tell horribly sad stories about the characters in the book. The one girl’s father committed suicide and she found him. Her brother also died being run over by a wagon and she saw that too.

It was like Montgomery just wanted to throw in as much sadness, depression, and drama in there as possible and it is just a bit much. I may skip ahead and read other parts of the book but I guess I don’t like this book as much as I hoped. There is too much about the other characters in the little town Anne and Gilbert moved to and not enough about Anne herself so far. I will probably still try to finish the book, however.

I am still reading The Fellowship of the Ring and I feel like I will never finish it because it is so dense,   and I keep getting interrupted when I try to read it.

 Little Miss and I will be finishing Land of the Big Red Apple this week because it is due back at the library and we’ve had it out long enough and simply because we’ve been working on it so long.

The Husband is reading a collection of novellas called Standing by the Wall by Nick Harrington.


What’s Been Occurring

I didn’t have time to finish my Saturday Afternoon Chat post yesterday because I attended a memorial service about 45 minutes from our house for a family friend. The day before I went grocery shopping and then worked on Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing, forgetting that I had a blog post to finish. So, I will include what I was going to share in that post in this section of this post this week.

This past week we finally had warmer weather. Sure, we had two days of rain, but at least we had some sun before that.

I thought Tuesday would be a more relaxed day than my Monday, but it actually turned out to be a busier day. On Monday, Little Miss had a gymnastics make up class and The Boy had a guitar lesson 45 minutes north. My dad took The Boy to his guitar lesson, and I took Little Miss to hers since they were one right after another.

On Tuesday I was ready to work on my book, read, do homeschool lessons and just hang out but the day became busy when Little Miss asked for glue to make slime and we headed to the dollar store. Then from there we came home, and I did a little writing and prepared homeschool but then my neighbor called and told us to come down and see her daughter’s new boxer puppy. Little Miss was very excited to do this, so we headed out the door into the sunshine and warmth.

After that visit we returned home to do our homeschool lessons and then it was time for me to cook dinner. Little Miss wanted to go back outside again so we went into the side yard and I burned our trash. The other neighbors walked by with their little Shih tzu dogs, so we visited with them a few minutes. My bacon got a little overcooked, but not burned while we were doing that. After that, we had some dinner, listened to the Family Hour on our local radio station (Adventures in Odyssey and Lamplighter Theater, The Pond, and other such programs), and I folded one load of laundry from the four loads I needed to fold.

The Boy also headed downtown for his job that afternoon.

And I already mentioned that on Friday we went grocery shopping.

The funeral service was sad and difficult since it was a younger woman (in her 50s) who had been a nursing home for many years because of Lyme that attacked her brain.

What We Watched/are Watching

This past week I watched Houseboat to write about on the blog.

The Husband and I watched the last episode of season one of Miss Scarlet & The Duke.

Then we watched a couple episodes of a British sitcom called My Family. This is the show that Kris Marshall from Death in Paradise and Beyond Paradise got his start on.

We also watched an episode of Yes, Minister.

On my own, I watched episodes of Forgotten Way Farms on YouTube.

What I’m Writing

This week on the blog I shared:

What I’m Listening to

Little Miss and I have been listening to a lot of Matthew West lately and I just heard this song and loved it:

And today I’ll be listening to this at least once:

Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week

Fuel for the Race, Our Millstones

Mama’s Empty Nest, What’s So Good About Good Friday

Now it’s your turn

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

Sunday Bookends: Finding a YouTuber I thought I lost, finishing books (someday), still working on the book I’m writing

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends4 Comments

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.


What I/we’ve been reading


I am still reading Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie because I worked on my book a lot last week instead of reading it. I hope to finish the book this week.

I am also reading Meant to Bee by Storm Shultz, a short romance novel. I plan to have that finished today.

The Boy and I are reading Fellowship of the Ring and we are not reading it as quickly as I think we should so this week I am telling him we need to set aside an hour a day for each of us just to finish it. Not an hour straight but maybe half an hour here and half an hour there. I hope to finish this book before the end of the school year, which will be June 3 for us.

Little Miss and I have been slow readers lately but I really would like to finish The Place of the Big Read Apples by Roger Lea MacBride this week and move on to something else.

What’s Been Occurring

I wrote about what we did last week in yesterday’s post. I mentioned that our temperature was close to 70 yesterday and was going to drop into the 30s overnight and it did, sadly. Yesterday we went outside without coats and today I woke up to snow on the ground. This week is supposed to warm up some, but not yet too close to 70.

This coming week the kids have classes – gymnastics for Little Miss and bass lessons for The Boy.

Little Miss usually has gymnastics on Saturdays but this past week she had an Easter egg hunt instead so we are making up her class tomorrow.

The bass lesson will be The Boy’s first and it’s about a 45-minute drive north so I am enlisting the help of my dad to take either Little Miss to her class or The Boy to his.

What’s planned for your week this week?

What We watched/are Watching

I was so excited this week when my friend Erin from Still Life, With Cookie Crumbs, told me she was watching a Youtuber I like. I was excited because I had lost this YouTuber in my list of subscriptions and it was driving me crazy! Little Miss sometimes watches kids’ shows on YouTube and she will subscribe to anything she watches so I had hundreds of subscriptions, many of which I did not want, and I could not find Forgotten Way Farms or remember it’s name! When Erin reminded me of the name I was so happy. Why was I happy? Well, because my life is a little sad and sometimes I enjoy an escape in videos that are fairly light, mundane, and calming.

This vlogger records her everyday life and cooks and has a very soothing voice, so I enjoy watching her. I am fairly certain I shared her on the blog before but when I went back to find the video I had shared to remind me of her channel name, I couldn’t find it.

Now that I found it again, I have the notifications set that it will tell me every time she posts.

This week I also watched Darling Desi who has now moved from Utah to Connecticut but still vlogs about cottage core-type stuff and fluffy books she reads.

The Husband and I didn’t have as much time to watch things this week but we did watch the final episode of the first season of Miss Scarlet and The Duke. We are behind because there are three seasons of the show.

We also watched Yes, Minister which is a British sitcom from the 1970s and is very witty and funny. Sometimes it is too witty because I don’t even get it. It’s sort of an elite comedy with references to politics that go right over my head at times.

The man who stars in Yes, Minister played the vicar in a Miss Marple episode I watched once and started to rewatch recently. Luckily, I didn’t watch the end of it because it is now the book I am reading and I’m not sure if the show will keep to the book or not. The issue is that now when I think of the vicar, who is the narrator of the book, I picture and hear the actor from Yes, Minister.

This week I’ll be watching Houseboat with Cary Grant for my Spring of Cary feature and will write about it on Thursday. Go ahead and jump in if you want to.


What I’m Writing

I’ve been mentioning that I have been working on Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing, which I hope to release June 20th. This will be the first book in a new cozy mystery series.

I worked on the book a lot this past week, which gave me less time to write blog posts.

I have started to offer paid subscriptions to my newsletter and I will be offering the chapters for this book as I write them to paid subscribers on Substack.

However, I will be setting up subscriptions for longtime readers of my blogs that allows them access to this feature for free. If you are someone who has been following me for a long time and would like a sneak peek of this first book, send me your email through my contact form and I will add you to that exclusive subscriber group. I’ll start offering the chapters later this week.

I only wrote two blog posts this past week on the blog:

Saturday Afternoon Tea: Book sales, good food, and impatiently waiting for spring

The Spring of Cary Grant

Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week

I Smell Like a Shamrock by Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian

Tuesday Tour Oh Henry by Mama’s Empty Nest

Seeing and Believing by Welcome to My Hearts Cry

Books That Feel Like Spring by Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs


Now it’s your turn

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

Sunday Bookends: Enjoying Spring weather, Magpie Murders, and new book series

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends3 Comments

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.


What’s Been Occurring

I sat out on the back porch today. Literally sat on it — my plump rump right on the porch, the soles of my feet together as I did a type of Yoga pose and tried my best to breathe in slowly through my nose (which is a big clogged thanks to allergies). The sun was very warm, and the breeze cool but not too cool. On the side of the house, crocuses are blooming and the buds are up for the tulips that will soon bloom.

As I sat with my eyes closed, I heard birds – which I guess might be robins since I’ve seen at least four this month, two in the last week since the first day of Spring – chirping off to my left. I heard the wind blowing across the trees on the hill above the house.

Little Miss is recovering from a weather-change illness she gets every year this time of year and she shifted herself to sit between my legs, leaning back against me. Zooma the Wonder Dog joined her and there we sat, grateful for the sun and still recovering from the ups and downs of winter – weather, emotionally, and physically.

About ten minutes before we’d walked around the yard, and tossed the ball, a toy, and a stick for the dog. I had bent my toes into the grass and enjoyed the coolness and slowly expanding softness of it as green works to replace brown.

Little Miss walked a little, even tried to run, then realized she still hasn’t recovered from feeling unwell Friday and Saturday so she sat on the edge of the porch, looking – I hate to say it – miserable and not herself. I sat next to her and we talked about how we wanted a garden this summer. She asked first if we could plant a flower garden instead of a regular one, but I suggested we do both and just plant a few things in the vegetable garden. She agreed and we are going to make a list this week of what we want.

The sun helped her feel a little better and I am hoping by Monday or Tuesday she will be well on her way to full recovery.

She hasn’t seen her grandmother in two weeks for various reasons and would like to go visit her but we decided to wait a couple more days in case she is still contagious.

This week we don’t have a ton on tap, other than getting her to her makeup gymnastics class she missed yesterday if she feels better and Awana on Wednesday.

I rambled about our trip to our old stomping grounds in yesterday’s post.

What I/we’ve been Reading

The weather is so nice today that I may go back outside after I post this and read a little bit.

I finished The Burning Issue of the Day last night and am working on Meant to Bee by Storm Shultz for a book tour while also reading A Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie and listening to The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien.

I want to read some books with a spring feel after next week so I hope to go back to Anne’s House of Dreams.

The Husband is reading All Kinds of Eden by James Lee Burke.

Little Miss and I are still reading the Land of the Big Read Apple by Roger Lea MacBride in the evening and during the day we were reading Soft Rain, the story of a Cherokee girl who is forced out of her home during the Trail of Tears. I know it is important for Little Miss to know this history but the book is pretty heavy and I’d love for her to hold on to her innocence a little longer. We may set it aside and pick it back up in a couple of years.

What We watched/are Watching

Last week The Husband and I finished up the Magpie Murders mini-series on PBS Masterpiece. It’s based on the book of the same title (Magpie Murders NOT THE MAGPIE MURDERS! Watch the series or read the book to know why that is important) by Anthony Horowitz.

It was very well put together and not a lot of gore, sex, or language. There was one “f-bomb” in the entire six-part series, if I remember correctly.

Saturday I kicked off my Spring of Cary classic movie series with A Awful Truth. It wasn’t too bad but toward the end I realized I had seen the movie before, but years ago – like probably over a decade ago. It was funny and quirky but not really one of my favorites of his.

I’ll have a post later this week sharing what other movies of his I plan to watch throughout April and May.

I started watching a new mystery show that I had hoped would be a bit funny but was a bit more on the depressing side instead: The Madame Blanc Mysteries. It follows the story of a British woman whose husband dies while in France. She moves to France to investigate what happened to him and stumbles into other mysteries along the way.

The first two episodes were very good and I’m interested to see if the first season wraps up the storyline with her husband or not.

What I’m Writing

As I mentioned on Friday, I am working on the first book in the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries, Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing, which is tentatively being released on June 20 of this year.

I am also working on a few other projects and you can read more about them in this post:

This week on the blog I shared:

What I’m Listening to

I like to listen to jazz when I work on Gladwynn’s story and last week I was reminded of an album by Harry Connick Jr. that I listened to in my teens when I first discovered Harry – Red Light, Blue Light. I have been listening to that a lot this past week.

Now it’s your turn

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.