Reading
I
was going to say I've barely read anything this month. Then I just went
and counted on Goodreads, and I've read 12 books, haha! I think what it is, is that I read several books I
didn't really love (Slice Harvester, How To Be a Grown-Up, The Life Intended, The Last Letter From Your Lover) so they didn't really stick in my brain.
The books I DO remember reading? Fool's Fate (the final AMAZING installment in the Tawny Man trilogy), The Winner's Curse, Death in the Clouds, and The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (see my full review of that one here).
Watching
Now here I can truthfully say I've barely watched anything. That's partly because I was obsessed with Fool's Fate
(which is 32 hours on audio, and I finished it in less than a week). So
any time that normally would be spent with the tv on in the background
was spent with my audiobook playing. And it's partly because it's
summer, and there aren't a lot of new shows, and we're pretty much
caught up on all of our usual Netflix/Amazon Prime choices. We did watch
a handful of episodes of How I Met Your Mother season 1, and I got the
"joy" of watching Tinkerbell and the Legend of the Never Beast with
Eleanor... but otherwise, pretty much nothing.
Researching
I have, however, continued to obsessively research my family tree.
My Great-Great Grandpa Charles left his family when my Great-Grandma Helen was 7
or 8, and was never heard from again. (So he left their Ohio home
around 1910/11.) I found his WWI draft card though, which was dated
1918, and puts him in Pennsylvania. I have decided that MISSION: FIND
GG-GPA CHARLES is my challenge for this summer. My aunt told me that years ago
my great-grandpa (the one married to Helen), did some research and found
out Charles may have started another family, but Great-Grandpa never
told Helen because it would have made her so sad.
But
Helen passed away in 2000, so I can safely dig
around a little now. I feel so bad
for my Great-Great Grandma Clara. When she died, she had a double headstone
put up with her info, and then next to it her husband's birthdate, and
"Death Unknown". Ugh. I want closure on Clara's behalf!
Eating
My newest obsession is balsamic roasted strawberries.
They are incredibly easy and incredibly delicious. Sprouts had
strawberries on sale for .98 a lb, and I went twice last week and bought
6 lb each time! Here's the super simple recipe: Take about 3lb of
strawberries, wash 'em, chop the green tops off them, and throw them in a
baking dish. I use a 9x9... it's fine if they're piled up at first,
because they cook down. Turn your oven on to 375, drizzle your
strawberries with balsamic vinegar, and then sprinkle with a fair amount
of sugar. If you do 3/4 of a cup they come out sweet, but still tangy.
Or you can go all the way up to 1 cup if you want them super sweet.
Roast the sugared strawberries at 375 for about 40 minutes, stirring a
couple of times, till the strawberries are all soft and shapeless, and
you have a pan full of syrup. Let it cool off, pour the strawberries
& syrup into an airtight container, and they'll keep about a week in
the fridge. We've been eating them on plain yogurt, on shortcakes, on
pancakes, smeared on toast, and maybe (ahem), by the spoonful. SO GOOD.
Raining
Monsoon
season started early! On Thursday the temp suddenly dropped from 105 to
85, and we got our first glorious raindrops. It rained really hard for
about 10 minutes, and then sprinkled a few minutes more, hurrah! And
we've gotten rain 3 more times since then... never more than 20 minutes,
but still, I'll take it! It's been so nice to be able to let the girls
play out back a little in the daytime, and to smell that wonderful
desert rain smell.
Designing
I
was having a bad day on Monday (due to lots of little things just
piling up on me), and I made myself a phone wallpaper that said, "BEST
DAY EVER", so that every time I looked at my phone it cheered me up.
Also I ate like 14 Oreos, but that's another story. Anyway, making that
wallpaper was so easy, and then my phone was cute, and I was like, "Um,
why have I never done this before?"
So I made another one, with a Louisa
May Alcott quote about books. I'm putting the photo at
the bottom of this post - in the hopes that some of you might want to save the pic and use it too. Guaranteed to make your phone about 42% more bookish and happy, ha! It's specifically designed for my iPhone 5,
but I left white space around the edges so hopefully it's adaptable to
other phone shapes too.
What are YOU into?
Planning to link up with Leigh Kramer's What I'm Into link-up tomorrow!
