Books & Break

I am totally on a "travel memoir" reading kick right now.  I just loooooove reading about travel.  I love reading REAL stories about travel.  Travel Lit.  It's actually giving me an idea for another book.  Yes!  Another one!  I'm about 60 pages into writing my YA lit novel and I just might start another one.  Just an outline of one.  It's good, it's really good!

See, I love to travel, if you didn't know!  I believe that if I become a famous writer, like JK Rowling famous, then I can live out my days traveling all over the world with my family.  Then I can be inspired to write more books about traveling with my family.  See the plan here?  It's genius, I know.

Only problem is, I am NOT a writer.  Not yet.  I'm no where near as brilliant as JKR, she's the best.

Anyways, with being home early on Monday from the snow, being sick on Tuesday, and being off yesterday and then again today due to ice, ice baby...I've had some good reading time on my hands.  I finished this book:

It was a sweet book about this woman's experience of falling in love with a Frenchman and moving to Paris.  I loved how she was writing as she was finding her place in a foreign land, and how she learned just how different life is from America.  It was eye opening.  America is so...obsessed...with succeeding and fast food and the "dream"...it makes me a little ill thinking about it.  Then I thought, Europeans don't need all that because they are living the dream, right?  At least in my opinion ;)  She has a blog where she keeps us up to date with how life is going now.  Her next book comes out in April and I'll be buying that one for sure.  This book includes recipes, ones that she discovered as she journeyed through her new life. I can't wait to try some of them {when I get the book back from mom, who wanted it after I read it}.

Then I moved on to a Frances Mayes book that I haven't read...

If you know me at all, you know I adore reading her books.  Under the Tuscan Sun is one of my very favorites.  My dream is to live in Italy.  When we went to Italy 2 summers ago, it only fueled that fierce desire in me.  I love it!

I'm halfway through this one but I can tell you that I already love it.  She and her husband take seasons out of a few years and travel all over.  So far they have been to Spain and Portugal.  I just love her style of writing.  And her style of travel!  They rent little apartments (that's what we did!  it was the best!) and stay in government run hotels and castles and eat and walk their way through tons of little towns.  Swoon swoon swoon.  What a life:)

If you look at my Goodreads to-read list, you will find about 2 dozen more travel memoir type books.  I'm obsessed!!  It's all I can do to keep myself from running to B&N or the library and getting them all.  I actually may end up doing that today ;)

Today we are off school and therefore have lost another day on our Spring Break.  What used to be an 10 day break is now 5 day one.  Sad.  So, since it's officially a break day, I am thinking of all sorts of things I can do that I would do if it were Spring Break.  Sleep in?  Not a chance!  DIY something?  You betcha!  Paint something?  Already started {it's only 7:14am!}  I've been waiting to paint our little upstairs hallway.  There isn't much wall do it, since there are 5 doors off of it, but still, it needs something.  I'm going to paint white/gray stripes across it, as best I can.   I'm looking up the process now and while it seems complicated, I think I can handle it.  It can't be harder that the last accent wall I did, right?!?

I'm also working on building three shelves to hang on the walls when I am done painting.  My brother and sis-in-law gave me power tools for Christmas and I've had a lot of fun with them so far!  I can't believe I'm actually building something?  It's less scary than I thought, and although I've made a ton of mistakes so far, on only 3 little shelves, I am learning a lot.  I'm trying to gear up the courage to build a media cabinet for us.  I hate ours, and we need more rustic furniture with character but I can't find anything that fits what I want and that is affordable.  So...I'm going to build one myself.  I just need to practice on smaller things first!

I'll be back to show you what I've done!  I hope I get the wall finished today:)  I hope everyone enjoys their day!

Cheers!