Craftyminx

Merry Christmas!!

Have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Love, 

Sheldon, Dana, Dewey, and Dash Beach

Craftyminx Reading List: November

I told you all that I would be doing more book reviews etc. So here we go --The first installment in my reading list series. First a little background for those of you who don't know know a lot about me. Last month I read an all time high of 11 books in a month. As a teen librarian I read a lot of YA novels and here’s why: At the beginning of November I went to the YALSA Young Adult Literature Symposium for work, this was an amazing experience! Imagine about 500 librarians and other bookish professionals whose target audience is teenagers. There was a lot of pink hair and tattoos of course, but also an awesome group of people who were extremely invested in young adult literature. I found myself feeling very out of place in a lot of sessions even though I fit in with my pink hair and tattoos ;). These people had read sooo much more than me I didn’t know what all the hot new titles were before the teens started loving them like everyone else. I vowed to put more of my time into keeping up with the curve of my profession. It’s only been a little over a month, but my knowledge has grown exponentially. Reader’s advisory is easier than ever for me when it comes to teens. I know how to get the right book into the right reader’s hands. It’s awesome. Sadly my crafting has taken a cut. Right now it’s still because the craft room is still in boxes. I’m hoping once it is put together again, I’ll get more audio books ordered and be able to craft and read more often. 

I just decided I needed to start these and would have started at the end of December but I read some really great books in November that I wanted to include so I'll still do a post at the end of December for this month's books but I wanted to sneak this one in too.

Divergent and Insurgent by Veronica Roth
Divergent is a dystopian novel set in futuristic Chicago. Everyone is separated into five different factions, each dedicated to a particular virtue; honesty, selflessness, bravery, peace, and intelligence. Every year all the sixteen-year-olds are tested and must choose the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. Beatrice Pryor the protagonist of this book has to go through this process and surprises her family and herself by her choice. The novel follows her through her decision and through the crumbling society around her. 

When this book first came out it was marketed as a Hunger Games knock off. I wanted nothing to do with it because I figured it wouldn’t be nearly as good. However, when the book made YALSA’s Best of the Best List and my friend Meg told me that the book was amazing and that I HAD to read it. This book is excellent!
It is well written and has just the right amount of suspense and romance. It’s nothing like the Hunger Games except being set in a dystopian society. I can now say I enjoyed it more than the Hunger Games and devoured it and the second book, Insurgent, in two days

 

A Storm of Swords (Book 3 in the a Song of Ice and Fire Series) by George R.R. Martin

I started listening to this series on my commute to work shortly after the second season of the HBO show finished. I needed to immerse myself in the story some more. I was so excited for the third book!! The series is epic fantasy so if you’re not into that you may not enjoy it but I find the world to be fascinating. I don’t think I’d be able to actually read the books because they just take a long time to read, but I love the narrator Roy Dotrice so the audio books have been amazing and while they still take forever to listen to I’m loving it.  There are so many story arcs in this book and I was on the edge of my seat through most of it and had so many feelings throughout the book. 

 

Every Day by David Levithan 

I always gush about David Levithan. He’s an amazing author and his writing is beautiful! I got to meet him at the YA Lit Symposium and turned into a big puddle of Dana. This is his newest book and Sheldon got a hold it of before me and read the whole thing in a week which is really rare for him. He’s a slow reader and is known to abandon books before he ever finishes them. I read it while I was at the symposium and immediately fell in love with it.

“A” wakes up in a new body every day and has done so for his entire life. I’m going to use the male pronoun here because it’s easier but presumably A has no gender since he could wake up in any body as long as it is the same age as him. He sets rules for his life that involve not interfering with the other person’s life and not getting attached but one day A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets his girlfriend Rhiannon and everything changes. A falls in love with Rhiannon and can’t get her out of his mind. One thing I really loved about this book is that each chapter is like a short story because you’re getting acquainted with the new character as A does. It’s a lovely story about the complexities of love and life and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. 

I read two other books by Levithan (co-authored by Rachel Cohn) as well. I re-read Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List. Both excellent and fun reads. I had a soft spot for Naomi and Ely’s relationship as someone who fell in love with her gay best friend and I think any girl who has gay best friend(s) should read it. After I finished it I immediately handed it to Levi who never reads and told him he had to read it and that he would love it. He loved it as well and connected with other characters and said he wanted to read more now. Warm fuzzies I tell you :)

 

Ask the Passengers by A.S. King

During the YA lit Symposium I felt like everyone was talking about this book. It was mentioned during many panels and I immediately put it on my to-read list when I got home. 

Astrid Jones spends a lot of time staring at the sky -- at least that’s what any observer would notice, but what she’s really doing is sending love to airplane passengers. She's dealing with a crumbling family dynamic, learning to live with small-town life, trying to fit in at school -- things most teens deal with and her coping mechanism of sending love to the airplane passengers is refreshing.

Astrid is also falling in love with a girl and isn’t quite sure what to do about it. While the plot in itself isn't just about Astrid questioning her sexuality, I found this to be one of the best books about questioning that I've read. Not everyone has the same kind of realization about being gay and coming out and I love how Astrid’s is very common but not always represented in popular culture where loud and proud seems to be the norm. It’s nice to see that she has a way of dealing with all these things that are going on in her life in a positive way. Something else I really liked was that we get to see how her sending love affects the passengers on the plane just tiny little stories that are added in which really seems to add to the flow of the book.

 

Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley

This book won the prestigious YALSA Printz award for excellence this year. This book is weird, but weird isn’t always a bad thing. It was one of those books where I wasn’t really sure where the story was going most of the time and even when I was halfway through the book I wasn’t sure if I really liked it, but kept reading because I knew there had to be a reason why it won this award. In the end I did really enjoy the book, but I still don’t fully know why. I think its because of the ways the stories weave together throughout the book. I did hate the way it was written in a weird point of view at times, but got used to it. 

The story builds through layers of information. Cullen Witter lives in a small somewhat boring town in Arkansas. Everything changes when his younger brother disappears and then the town starts getting fame for the rediscovery of a previously extinct breed of woodpecker. There is a parallel story of a missionary in Africa who is losing his faith who we follow along with his journey. See what I mean? It already sounds kind of weird. But Whaley is a great story teller and pulls the two stories together into a great book. I don’t think this is one that everyone will enjoy, especially in the beginning, but the more I read the more I enjoyed this book.

Drink, Slay, Love by Sarah Beth Durst

I came across this book as I was looking through my collection at work. It’s about vampires and unicorn vampire hunters. When I read the blurb I knew I had to read the book just because there were unicorns and vampires involved. Pearl is a sixteen-year-old vampire. She’s witty and heartless, definitely not a sparkly vampire. Things change for Pearl when a unicorn stabs her through the heart with its horn. Her family (who is very much like a mob family) thinks she is losing it when she is found unconscious on their doorstep and she tells her story. Obviously unicorns don’t exist so she was attacked by a vampire hunter who missed her heart since she isn’t dead. Pearl begins to change. She’s not allergic to the sun anymore, and she starts to have sympathy for her food -- i.e. humans.These changes come at a price though as she has to deal with her family’s expectations and her new found feelings towards humanity. It’s a different vampire story and I found it quite enjoyable. 

Breathe by Sarah Crossan

Another dystopia, I really like dystopias and they are the big thing right now so I read a lot of them. This story revolves around three characters; Alina, Quinn, and Bea who live in a world where the earth has died because people have cut down all the trees to make room for the growing population. They deprived themselves of oxygen so a company called Breathe has learned how to manufacture oxygen and has created an oxygen rich biosphere-like pod for some of the society to be able to live and thrive in while the rest of the world has died around them.

The Breathe society is organized by zones where the wealthiest members of society are in zone one and can pay for extra oxygen and the poorest are in zone three and can only afford to live off of the small amount of free, taxed, oxygen that the pod provides. Their intake is monitored and they can only use what they can afford. Quinn and Bea are best friends Quinn is zone one and Bea is zone three. Alina is also zone three, but she has been working with the resistance, a group of people who don’t agree with Breathe and want to re-grow the outside world. The story follows these three as they embark on a journey outside of the pod with only two day’s worth of oxygen in their tanks. The story’s point of view changes among these three characters so the development lacks a little bit because you never get a full picture of each character in the beginning, but I think through the end of the book all three characters have developed well and I personally felt connected to all three. There’s a tiny bit of a love triangle, a lot of action, and a really unique dystopian world.

*Links are amazon affiliate links.  

Ordering photo cards from Minted

We got our infamous Christmas cards in the mail today! I can't wait to show you guys, but I have to wait until we send out all of our cards before I show the photo online because we like to keep our card photo under lock and key in order to surprise our family and friends. However, I wanted to tell you all about my card ordering process and show you some of my favorite designs.

We have ordered cards from a different place every year. I like to try out the different companies and maybe one day I can decide on who I like the best. Last year I fell in love with Minted's designs but we hadn't budgeted enough to order our cards from there. They are pretty expensive, but the designs and paper quality are top-notch. So I warned Sheldon last year that this year I wanted to order from Minted.

A rookie mistake I made the first year we did our chrismas card photo was that I didn't look at card designs before we took the photo. Our card photos are always really elaborate so if we don't make the photo fit the design we want to use it just won't look right or it will end up cropping an area we need in the photo. I had an idea of the photo we wanted to take and what we wanted it to say. There is fire involved in the photo so I wanted something that said warm wishes. My only slight complaint from using the Minted website is that the search function would work great if they named their designs by what they said on them (some are, some aren't). I pretty much had to just browse through all the designs to find what I wanted. This actually worked out for the better because I got to see all the cool designs Minted has for future cards.

These are some of my favorite designs: (click on the photo to go to the design page on Minted's website)

   

This is the design we ordered:



Something that I have found unique about Minted is that they have soo many options for the cards: Flat, folded, cropped (in various designs), different colored envelopes, pre-addressed, labels... seriously everyting. You'll pay for these options, but they actually have the options so you can get the exact card you are envisioning. Something else that I liked and even decided to use, some of the card designs have postcard options available, since you don't have to pay for envelopes these are cheaper. We decided to get these to give to people at work and friends we wouldn't probably mail cards to that way they don't get messed up by mailing just a postcard, but we could save a little money by getting 50 of each desing instead of 100 of the flat cards with envelopes.

As I said, we got our cards in the mail today and let me tell you, they were worth every penny! The paper is gloriously thick and the printing is flawless. We ordered silver envelopes and they are beautiful. I will make sure to post photos as soon as we send out all of the cards.

So funny story, the day after I ordered my cards I had an e-mail from a wonderful person at Minted who didn't know that I had ordered cards already and wanted to know if I would do a review of their designs in exchange for some free cards. Since I love their designs and had already ordered I said "yes, defintely." I rarely accept offers as you know. Since I was gifted some free holiday cards for this review I would like to order more of our cards to be able to send to my lovely readers. I did this last year and could only afford to send out ten or so. So this year, if you would like a card from us, please send your mailing address to my e-mail dana (at) craftyminx (dot) com. Please put christmas card address in the subject line. I will have to cut it off at 50 so if you want one e-mail me soon! 

Make sure you check out all the dsigns on Minted if you are in the market for photo cards this year. 

P.S. We're doing great! The house is coming along and I feel like I can start blogging again. It will be more librarian and bookish stuff until I get the craft studio put back together, but I miss you guys so I'll try to start blogging weekly to start back in the swing of things. 

Enjoying fall

This Saturday I decided to take the camera outside with the boys while Sheldon raked the yard. I've been wanting to get cute pictures of Dash because he's always running around with big sticks or toys in his mouth. He makes those happy dog faces and cracks me up. Dewey wasn't interested in running around, he was more interested in eating pecans. It was a perfect day for just hanging out. I'm glad we did this because we actually have cold weather outside now. 

I love my silly dogs :D

P.S. I don't know if I'm back to blogging yet or not. I'm still reading more than I am crafting unless it has to do with a teen library program and blogging just doesn't have the appeal that it used to. 

Alive and well

Just checking in to let you all know that I'm alive and well but buried under 300 packing boxes. We're still trying to unpack and make our house a home again. This is incredibly hard work and I've been so exhausted the last few weeks. I wish we could have taken off for two weeks and had plenty of time to do all of this but that just wasn't a possibility. Thank you for all the comments and e-mails asking how we've been doing. We're ecstatic to be back home and slowly but surely getting it all put back together!!

Moving Day

Yesterday was moving day!

 Our house was supposed to be completely finished so we could actually start living there, but it's not quite ready yet. I have been told it will be by the end of the weekend so we'll see. I've pretty much stopped trusting our contractor.

While they were moving in furniture I really tried to keep the kitchen, living room, and bedroom clear of boxes, but the rest of the rooms are just full of boxes from floor to ceiling. It's kind of ridiculous. I started feeling bad about having so much stuff until I started opening boxes and realized when professionals move you they only put like 5 things in a box and wrap everything  with paper unlike when I pack and just stuff as much as I can in the biggest box possible and hope it all makes it to the destination safely.

We finished the floors Thursday night and the look so amazing! Big thanks to Levi for showing us the ropes of DIY floor refinishing.

I'm still working on all the interior doors so we don't have doors to any of the rooms. Even the bathrooms unfortunately so it has been interesting the last couple of days. You have to alert everyone that you are going to the bathroom and not to come close to those doors haha. We built a wall of boxes to cover one door though so that has been helpful.

I definitely have a better outlook on unpacking today and can't wait to get some more work done so we can finally move back in! If we can get hot water and our kitchen unpacked I'll be happy and able to actually live there.

Recently...

I met a new friend.

I dyed by hair

I have spent over 20 hours stripping doors. 

And no, I'm not done yet. I'm glad I'm a seasoned DIYer or I would have given up on these 15 hours ago.

I've had lots of family time.

We bought a mattress!! An expensive one that will mean that we have to hold off on other furniture purchases until we can save up some more, but I think our bodies will thank us for it once we get really great sleep. Our old mattress was horrible and had a permanent body indentation on my side of the bed. It was time for it to go.

I am determined to have move in day be next Friday. Most of the house is finished except for paint (which I'm told will happen tomorrow and wednesday) and then Levi and I are going to re-finish the wood floors this weekend. Wish us luck!!

Making the best of it

I was really optimistic about all this house stuff. Everything was moving along and then all of a sudden we hit a brick wall with our mortgage company (Wells Fargo for any of you that want to know how horrible their service is). We have had nothing but problems with them for a month and a half now. A month and a half that they have had the check from our insurance company (Statefarm is the best!) and haven't released the funds to us! It has been super frustrating and I have cried more than a few times.

Even though there have been REALLY discouraging points I've been trying to make the best of it by getting excited about re-doing the house. The house was mine and decorated more for me then Sheldon moved in and we tried to make it ours but now we can really make it ours. So we've gone furniture shopping both online and in person and I have gone through paint samples like the world will end tomorrow if I don't find the perfect shade of off-white. It keeps my mind off of the crap we've been having to deal with concerning them. I really really wanted Sheldon to love my ideas. While I can always see the big picture of everything coming together, he can't, so I made some little inspiration boards out of all my ideas for a few rooms and showed him. And he LOVED them and said the rooms looked like us*! It seriously almost made me cry. *So he didn't say this about the kitchen but we had already discussed that me getting to buy the hello kitty microwave for our apartment meant I could go all out with a pink kitchen :) So since everything was already so nicely organized I decided I'd share my plans with you all.

My first goal was to rearrange the furniture. We're swapping bedrooms, turing our former bedroom into and office/guest room with futon and moving up to a queen size bed in the other room(can I hear an amen?). We're also moving the laundry in from the garage so my craft room only gets half of the room now. I used this amazing online floorplan builder at www.planyourroom.com. I'm one of those people that actually cuts graph paper furniture to see if things will fit and this is way more easy and more accurate. You put in the measurements of your room and can also change the measurements of the furniture they have built into the system so everything is customized to your house. You can even save it to their website so you can go back to it at any time and change up your rooms. Awesome! So as you can see, all of this time I haven't been blogging I have been playing digital room paperdolls.

Then we had to pick out paint for the whole house. I wanted to go pretty simple and soothing (well except the craft room) since we'll most likely be putting the house on the market sometime in the next couple of years. I wanted a coastal cottage, inviting feel that we can brighten up with our other decor. I used my floorplan and filled it in with the colors I was thinking about using to make sure the house flowed.

The three rooms I made inspiration boards from were the living room, bedroom, and kitchen. I'm still planning the other rooms. All the paint is from sherwin williams except watermelon pink which is Behr. The colors not named are just accent colors. 

links: couch, chair, table,  rug  

Dresser, Bed, Bedding, Rug, Lighting

Microwave,  island, dishes, rug

*As of today construction has started and we finally got the check back from wells fargo! After today about 80% of the repairs will be finished!