Catching Fire....

Before I review Catching Fire: Book 2 of Hunger Games, I need to review Book 1 officially.

Last week I made this Book 1 of April, since I was trying something new out of it and I like to have at least 1 cookbook on my list a month where I find a new recipe:



I give this book a 4. 

Its awesome!  I love making these cake pops, there are so many options of pops to make, I am going to do them again and again until I have all sorts of designs, maybe even open an Etsy shop selling my own?  We'll see....but the possibilities are endless with these tasty treats!  I recommend it if you love baking and love being creative.  Its a craft that you can eat.  How awesome is that??

Now for Book 2 on the April list:



This book gets a 5!

I did not want to put this one down!!  Just like the first one - but this time I made myself.  Since I am trying to Be Healthy this month, I couldn't stay up all hours of the night reading it.  But that was really hard.  Sleeping.  Going to work.  Not when there was such a good book to finish (one of the benefits of being a housewife in the winter...I could read right through a book in a day, no problem)!  Katniss' story continues and I can't even say what happens because if you haven't read the first book, it would just ruin it.  Read this series.  It's amazing!  I love love love it!  No, not as much as Harry Potter - but its right up there with Twilight fighting for my number 2 favorite series;)  I don't think it'll beat Twilight in that fight, but it's close!  LOL.  Book beating humor....what a dork;)

So tonight I am moving on to Book 3 (making up for lost time!) for April which happens to be Book 3 in the Hunger Games (last book) called Mockingjay.  I am sure that book will be done by Sunday, if not tomorrow.  It's the weekend and it's raining and I don't mind curling up on my couch and reading as much as my heart desires, with breaks for food, maybe some sleep, def some cleaning and cake popping;)

I've got some projects brewing for this weekend too, I'm hoping to get a few fun things done around the house so be on the look out, TeeBCrafty this weekend;) Have a pleasant Friday evening!

Cake Pops

Today I attempted to make cake pops again!  This isn't one of my April books, although now that I think of it, it should be!  I have never tried to make the bride and groom pops before, so it IS something new!  Maybe I will add this as a April book - I'd have to figure out what to bump until May....hmmmm

Anyways, this is the book, I got it for Christmas and have made one set of pops that were ok.  I get better with practice!!

Here are Bakerellas Bride and Grooms:


Hers are really cute - my dipping chocolate dried up before I could dip the grooms tuxes, so I improvised....


Here are mine:

These are practice pops, but I have two showers coming up that I have to make these for, I'll add ribbon to the final pops.  Aren't they cute??  Even though I didn't dip the grooms, they still look dapper, don't they?!?  These pops are chocolate cake mixed with fluffy white icing, dipped in white chocolate! 

I'm proud of myself:)  Practice makes perfect! 

I'm still working on Sense & Sensibility (from March) will prob finish that tonight and move on to April books finally!! I can't believe the weekend is over already, goes by so so fast...

Linking up with a bowl full of lemons for:



and also with...

English cottage or Cape Cod-ish cottage?

I've been working hard on our little room off our basement.  It was old and gross...here look:

Our basement has all this cool brick but back in this little nothing sorta room there is that brown gross wall - so I decided to paint it because we cant take it off - there is just concrete foundation behind it.  You can see we were not really using this room, it was a box graveyard, with extra wood and flooring and of course Frodo's kitty box...not too much use out of it!!! 

So I painted the walls white, added a reeeeeeally basic curtain to the gross, yucky window and PRESTO - look at it:

Isn't it a million times nicer?  See Frodo hanging out on the shelf?  He loves it now!  I still have to do some work thought - those little window looking things on the shelf bases lead to water pumps and such and have these ghetto doors on them, so I have to figure out what to do with those.  Plus, the big shelf over in the corner needs a curtain rigged up on it to hide the storage - plus the parts of the yucky wall I could reach because the shelf was in the way (it won't move easily!)

Now that its all pretty it sort of looks like a cottage - doesn't it?  So the question is - do I go with English Country cottage or Cape Cod-ish beachy cottage?  I have lots of knick knacks and picture ideas that could go either way.  We already have "London" in our family room so maybe a beachy New England cottage would be best.  But then, we have beachy places upstairs too.  Decisions, decisions...

This will be a multi purpose room.  I wanted to put the sewing machine my mom gave to me down here, it's the only place there is room, plus I think I want to put all my scrapbooking and crafting stuff down here too, as well as our ironing board.  It's upstairs in our office but I hate that it's there, plus our laundry room is right through the door on the right of this room...so that will free up a lot of room up in the office.  I have that shelf up there and will have more room for my millions of books (yes, I love that I have LOTS of books, Kindle lovers!!  I will NEVER get rid of them!!!!)

Right now I have that folding table down there, the sewing machine is on it, but I want to custom building a desk with cubbies underneath to go between those two shelves, which by the way, aren't those shelves cute?  With the white paint they have a whole different life!  My mom gave me that little cabinet which I can use for sewing supply storage, and there was this random mirror down there that I want to hang on the wall.  It's all about using what you've got, right?!?!  The price of this makeover so far - NOTHING!  We had tons of leftover white paint from my house painting spree right after we moved it.  I love projects that cost nothing!

Oh and of course I have been doing some reading...the Overton Window by Glenn Beck.  I'm not really getting into it yet....but I'm almost halfway through so I am committed to finishing it - but its really slow.  I love reading about government lies and conspiracy theories and all that...but this is...slow going with all that stuff?  But, I'm holding out for something big...if not...eh...can't love them all!  I'll give my official review tomorrow when hopefully I will finish the book.  I can't do much else with this crazy Thunder snowstorm outside! 

I'm also going to make Cake Pops, which are really cute and fun.  I'll post pics later!  See what happens when I'm inspired - I do tons of different stuff!  I guess I should say inspired and unemployed, lol, since I have time to do all sorts of things like cook, clean, redecorate and read;)

Enjoy your night!!