Yellow decor

Our bedroom still has no art or pictures up on the walls. Nothing on the walls at all! I want it to be painted a lighter color too. Right now it's a tan-ish color that I don't like. I want yellow decor in the bedroom, and already have some! My vanity table and a painted side table are yellow. And I have my white vintage dresser too. With those in mind, here are inspirations for me.  But I still need more wall decor inspiration.

Source: pinterest.com via Christina on Pinterest

Source: Uploaded by user via Christina on Pinterest

Source: maiedae.blogspot.com via Christina on Pinterest

Source: Uploaded by user via Christina on Pinterest

Cabin trip

We decided to plan a long weekend trip to Gatlinburg, TN for the end of April! We are renting a cabin for three nights with my family coming along too! We all (especially my mom) always wanted to do a mountain cabin rental! I found a cute one and everyone agreed to it. With splitting the cost, it's not too bad for everyone! We will be six adults and one kid, and the cabin actually sleeps up to nine people! I'm excited! I have been there twice. The last time was many years ago and I don't remember everything. It will be fun for all of us to go!

Pins and Doctor visits

 Things have been busy! Yesterday I went to the doctor. Today Kavi went to the doctor. We aren't sick (thank God!) but they were routine, mostly. Kavi did have to get 3 shots and a finger prick(boo) and yesterday I just wanted some lumps under my skin, on my thigh, checked out. Mine are harmless cyst bumps according to the Dr. And I had blood drawn to make sure the levels were fine. Lots of time in waiting rooms! It's draining, even though you are just sitting around!

Some of my favorite pins recently that don't hurt like needles!

Adorable for party decor:

Source: thisismeinspired.blogspot.com via Christina on Pinterest

Handmade gift ideas:

Source: the36thavenue.com via Christina on Pinterest

Cozy:

Source: 24.media.tumblr.com via Christina on Pinterest

Book Updates

I wrote last week about the books I had recently read and the new books I had brought home from the library.

Here's an update since then:

The Borrowers was definitely a cute read. I finished it on Wednesday night. Hopefully in a few years, Kavi can enjoy reading it! It is different than the movie version from when I was younger. There are more books in the series that I hope to read in the future.

I am about halfway done with The Farthest Away Mountain. I still enjoy it after all these years. Classic fairy tale vibe. Not too long either.

The Star of Kazan was very good. Lots of details, and a longer book.
  "Annika is happy living in the servants' quarters of a house owned by three eccentric professors. She adores Ellie and Sigrid, the cook and housemaid who found her as a baby, abandoned on a church doorstep. In the eleven years since, they have taught her how to bake and clean to perfection. Then one day a glamorous stranger arrives, claiming to be Annika's mother. Annika is no servant, she learns, but an aristocrat whose true home is an ancient castle. But at crumbling Spittal, Annika discovers that all is not as it seems in the lives of her newfound family. . ."- From The Star of Kazan Amazon page.

If you or a child in the right age range needs book suggestions, I would definitely suggest all of the books I have mentioned recently. I need new books to read now. I have a list of books I want to read and was hoping to just use the library as the source. Some are not available or on a long list of holds(I don't have an e-reader and don't want to buy all the books I want to read).
My "to-read" shelf at goodreads:

Christina's to-read book montage

Biscuits & Chocolate Gravy

Have you ever had chocolate gravy? I think it's just a southern thing, but I could be wrong. And boy was I missing out! I recently had this "chocolate gravy" for the first time at a local place here. Now I want to make some at home. This recipe from Sprinkle Bakes looks good...the recipe images are on Pinterest.

 

Source: sprinklebakes.com via Kristin on Pinterest

Source: sprinklebakes.com via Christina on Pinterest

It's not just like having melted chocolate. It's more than that!

Library Loot + story thoughts

 

I have gotten into a reading phase, finally! I decided to grab a couple of books from the library, almost 3 weeks ago. Kavi got his first library card(yay!) and I went into the juvenile fiction section. I have been working on a story for a long time now, and mentioned it here before around a year ago? I should probably have finished it by now, but life happens! And we moved and all that. :) I now have approx 32,500 words in my rough draft. But I have decided to read lots of books for the same age group that I imagine my own story to be for. "Middle grades", maybe ages 8-12? Although I still love reading books meant for those ages. The Chronicles of Narnia, The Princess and the Goblin, and lots of others! I would pick them over any type of mushy love story. I do like a sweet love story mixed into a bigger adventure story. I had read the tips many times, read lots of books in the genre you are writing in. Not to steal ideas, but to understand how their stories and characters developed. How did they start the story? What made you want to keep reading?
As I write and want to add things into my story, like a steam river boat for instance, I actually have to do homework to look up the era in which I want to represent and how did that kind of boat work and how did they look, how fast or slow did they go, and how far they traveled between stops. How long would a certain journey realistically take. For that I even did a math problem that at such and such speed, plus stops, how long would it take to travel 1000 miles on a river? Ahh! Self imposed homework! But it's fun. Even if my story contains fantasy and unreal things, there has to be some realness too. I don't really want any logical questions about the boat speeds and types, trees and birds, carriages or motorcars unanswered. Because I wonder those kind of things when I read a book. What birds are normally found in cold mountain climates? Would the bird I chose fit in?(and yes, it does, because I researched).

So on that day when Kavi got his first library card, I picked out two books to bring home. Both by the same author, Eva Ibbotson, who I sadly never heard of before that!?

 So I took home Journey to the River Sea and The Secret of Platform 13. 

Journey to the River Sea was an interesting adventure story about an orphaned girl who lives a nice enough life at a girl's boarding school in London, set in 1910. Her parents had died two years earlier in an accident during their time away, where they were doing excavations. A guardian, in charge of her finances as well, sought out any living relatives that she could live with eventually. Finally an uncle and aunt were found who would take her in. They currently lived on the Amazon River in Brazil and ran a rubber tree farm. So she travels there across the ocean with a newly hired governess and things, of course, do not go as expected once she arrives.There are issues between the snobby people and the native people.
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The Secret of Platform 13 was a much lighter, quirky, magical type of adventure. There were lots of magical creatures, a secret way to get to an unknown island, and a lot of wit. I was actually laughing out loud at some of it. It was entertaining. It's about a "gump", a grassy hump, underneath which a special door opens every 9 years for exactly 9 days to let people go to (or from) the magical Island, to get away from busy London life, or to go where they might feel more accepted. It's set in the early 1990's I believe, or late 1980's, so London would have been as it was when the book was written. A baby prince is born on the magical Island, and when he is a few months old, he is accidentally lost in London, kidnapped by a woman who had no children, and the magical door closes before they can get him back. Fast forward 9 years, and everyone is waiting for the magic door to open again so they can go rescue the prince from his fake mother and bring him back to his parents. And again, things don't go as planned!
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I returned those books and then this week, I brought home three books. I found a blog last night that does a weekly "Library Loot" post, and people can join in. I decided to show what I got this week at the library.
The Farthest-Away Mountain, The Borrowers, and The Star of Kazan.

I have already finished The Star of Kazan, last night. It was the longest and I tackled it first. Last night I read for many hours to finish it because I had to know what happened! I can talk about it later.

Next I'll read The Borrowers. I am pretty sure I have watched a movie version of it when I was younger, but never read the book. And my mom said she loved it when she was a kid and that I would love it too.

I'll read The Farthest-Away Mountain last. I read this book when I was a kid. I think my cousin had it and let me borrow it. But I look forward to re-reading it after so many years.

The blog I got the idea from is The Captive Reader. And I didn't really link up the right way this week, but will try to next week!
And here's a cool widget from goodreads.com, a useful book rating and recommendations site.

Christina's books

The Secret of Platform 13

by Eva Ibbotson

Journey to the River Sea

by Eva Ibbotson

Bruchko

by Bruce Olson

Bruchko and the Motilone Miracle

by Bruce Olson

Under the Overpass: A Journey of Faith on the Streets of America

by Mike Yankoski

Yay for Saturday

I am happy that today is a nice day.

I have lacked in posting here! Well, I am still trying to set up things in our house. Things have been busy! And then I got a bladder infection and had to go to the Dr on Thursday for antibiotics. And then yesterday (Fri) was a tense day of keeping an eye on the weather. Lots of areas were hit, but our area and central Alabama was pretty much spared. It was just mentally tiring yesterday and we are relieved that this weekend will be nice. We need to go out and do something fun!

I took some pictures in the backyard, on Wednesday, of the buds and tiny blossoms on the trees. Spring is already showing up here!

Little yellow/green buds