I didn't make as many crafts this month. The two IronCraft challenges were the dollar store challenge and the Peeps challenge. For the dollar store, I collected items from Michael's dollar bin and clearance racks and ended up with this, coming in right around $5:
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| Pretty sure this isn't the duckie's natural habitat. |
For the Peeps challenge, I ran out of time...and creativity. Nothing was standing up correctly and I kind of made a big mess on the counter. I called it "Blue Peep Group's Easter Show Rehearsal" (rehearsal because nothing was working):
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| Things are going terribly wrong on this stage. |
I have a few friends who love Ryan Gosling and follow the "hey girl" Twitter feeds and such. So one lucky birthday girl got this from a pattern I bought from Defiant Damsel's etsy shop:
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| Hey girl, hope your birthday is fabulous. |
The last craft I finished in March was for another friend's birthday. I made a very cute one from the weelittlestitches etsy shop and some homemade shortbread:
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| milk + cookie = love 4 eva! |
I spent a lot of time in the library, so I only ended up buying one book in all of March: the third book in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. It finally came out in the paperback size that matches the other two I have. Yay for a matching set :)
It turns out, I read a lot of books this month. A lot. Mostly because the Evanovich series reads really, really, really fast and the Selznick books were crammed with pictures. This month I read: Secret London: An Unusual Guide by Rachel Howard, The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonder Struck by Brian Selznick, Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan, Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner, and Janet Evanovich's High Five, Hot Six, Seven Up, Hard Eight, To the Nines, Ten Big Ones, Eleven on Top, Twelve Sharp, Lean Mean Thirteen, Fearless Fourteen, and Finger Lickin' Fifteen.
Secret London: An Unusual Guide is a travel guide for those wanting to go to places the usual traveler might miss while roaming around London. I've wanted to go to London for so long that I've gotten to the point that I can't tell you why I want to go or what I want to do. This book had TONS of places that I would miss if I just did the big things on the list. I took copious notes and will go back to them closer to travel time (hopefully next year) and see what's still around and what things still seem really interesting to me. This is only the first book I'll look into for London. I want to make sure I cover a lot of ground in my head and when I'm actually there.
The Invention of Hugo Cabret is now a lovely movie everyone can enjoy on DVD called Hugo. I saw the movie last month in the theater and finally read the book that had been sitting on my nightstand for a long time. The book is filled with the story and lovely black and white illustrations. Having seen the movie first, I wasn't surprised at how beautiful and intricate the drawings were...I was surprised by how faithfully the drawings were represented on film. The book follows Hugo's story from when we meet him, through his past to explain his present, and then turns to connect all the characters together through Georges Méliès. Méliès is a character in the book and is also a real-life master film maker. Each character has a part to play in the story to bring everything to a much happier place in the end. The book does not take long to read at all (despite the page count...remember, lots of drawings). If you've not seen the movie, wait until after you read the book. It's not one of those situations where you'll like one more than the other, but it's very nice to see how it comes to life.
Wonder Struck is another Brian Selznick book with both story and pictures. The story this time is split in two: one part is about a young boy who goes completely deaf and how he goes off to find his father and the other part is about a young girl, about 50 years earlier, also deaf, in search of her inattentive mother. Without knowing their pasts and futures, these two characters' stories become intertwined as the young boy's search comes to a close. It's another beautifully told story with lovely black and white drawings to illustrate the fantastic worlds Selznick has created.
Maine is the second book by Sullivan. I read her first one, Commencement, last fall. This book was another that sat on my nightstand for a long time. Maine wasn't about female friends, it was about the females in one family. I didn't really get into this one...it got a lot of good hype when it came out and it is a decent book, but I wasn't really blown away. It was very hard to have sympathy for any of the characters. It wore me out to read about all of their problems and skeletons in the closet. When I was done, it felt like a relief and definitely didn't leave me wanting to know more about what happened to them...even though the ending was a little off and tried to be somewhat redeeming.
Fly Away Home was another good book from Weiner. I seem to consistently like her writing. This story was about a family reacting to and surviving a political scandal that involved the husband cheating on the wife. Each character was well defined and had things you liked and didn't like about them. Weiner's first books seemed more light hearted than the last couple of I've read. The topics that she tackles aren't usually light hearted, but she always has a character who brings the laughter. This was an engaging read and as I got toward the end I realized that no one had made me laugh out loud and I was kind of sad. But then, out of nowhere, chaos! And the grandmother pulls though with the hilarity. I laughed out loud as she grilled each person about their secrets that they hadn't even come to terms with themselves and certainly hadn't shared with the rest of the family.
Speaking of laughing out loud, every single one of the Evanovich books has made me laugh like that...usually more than once. One of them I even had to put down because I started cry-laughing and could no longer see the page. Pretty sure the neighbors thought I went crazy. These are the books about Stephanie Plum, an incompetent bonds agent who sometimes catches her man, but usually ends up in a big crazy mess with either Lula, the ex-hooker turned file clerk, or her Grandma who thinks she's entitled to see inside every casket of every dead person. One of the two main men in her life, Morelli the hot cop or Ranger the hot, mysterious security agent, usually have to come to the rescue. She's got the intuition for the job, but unless someone makes her really angry, she's just not that effective. These books aren't prize winners and the stories are generally slightly unbelievable, but they are very entertaining. If you just want something light to read to pass the time with a few laughs, these are your books.
Well that's it for this month. Now to sleep off the unseasonal allergies. Woohoo!
Secret London: An Unusual Guide is a travel guide for those wanting to go to places the usual traveler might miss while roaming around London. I've wanted to go to London for so long that I've gotten to the point that I can't tell you why I want to go or what I want to do. This book had TONS of places that I would miss if I just did the big things on the list. I took copious notes and will go back to them closer to travel time (hopefully next year) and see what's still around and what things still seem really interesting to me. This is only the first book I'll look into for London. I want to make sure I cover a lot of ground in my head and when I'm actually there.
The Invention of Hugo Cabret is now a lovely movie everyone can enjoy on DVD called Hugo. I saw the movie last month in the theater and finally read the book that had been sitting on my nightstand for a long time. The book is filled with the story and lovely black and white illustrations. Having seen the movie first, I wasn't surprised at how beautiful and intricate the drawings were...I was surprised by how faithfully the drawings were represented on film. The book follows Hugo's story from when we meet him, through his past to explain his present, and then turns to connect all the characters together through Georges Méliès. Méliès is a character in the book and is also a real-life master film maker. Each character has a part to play in the story to bring everything to a much happier place in the end. The book does not take long to read at all (despite the page count...remember, lots of drawings). If you've not seen the movie, wait until after you read the book. It's not one of those situations where you'll like one more than the other, but it's very nice to see how it comes to life.
Wonder Struck is another Brian Selznick book with both story and pictures. The story this time is split in two: one part is about a young boy who goes completely deaf and how he goes off to find his father and the other part is about a young girl, about 50 years earlier, also deaf, in search of her inattentive mother. Without knowing their pasts and futures, these two characters' stories become intertwined as the young boy's search comes to a close. It's another beautifully told story with lovely black and white drawings to illustrate the fantastic worlds Selznick has created.
Maine is the second book by Sullivan. I read her first one, Commencement, last fall. This book was another that sat on my nightstand for a long time. Maine wasn't about female friends, it was about the females in one family. I didn't really get into this one...it got a lot of good hype when it came out and it is a decent book, but I wasn't really blown away. It was very hard to have sympathy for any of the characters. It wore me out to read about all of their problems and skeletons in the closet. When I was done, it felt like a relief and definitely didn't leave me wanting to know more about what happened to them...even though the ending was a little off and tried to be somewhat redeeming.
Fly Away Home was another good book from Weiner. I seem to consistently like her writing. This story was about a family reacting to and surviving a political scandal that involved the husband cheating on the wife. Each character was well defined and had things you liked and didn't like about them. Weiner's first books seemed more light hearted than the last couple of I've read. The topics that she tackles aren't usually light hearted, but she always has a character who brings the laughter. This was an engaging read and as I got toward the end I realized that no one had made me laugh out loud and I was kind of sad. But then, out of nowhere, chaos! And the grandmother pulls though with the hilarity. I laughed out loud as she grilled each person about their secrets that they hadn't even come to terms with themselves and certainly hadn't shared with the rest of the family.
Speaking of laughing out loud, every single one of the Evanovich books has made me laugh like that...usually more than once. One of them I even had to put down because I started cry-laughing and could no longer see the page. Pretty sure the neighbors thought I went crazy. These are the books about Stephanie Plum, an incompetent bonds agent who sometimes catches her man, but usually ends up in a big crazy mess with either Lula, the ex-hooker turned file clerk, or her Grandma who thinks she's entitled to see inside every casket of every dead person. One of the two main men in her life, Morelli the hot cop or Ranger the hot, mysterious security agent, usually have to come to the rescue. She's got the intuition for the job, but unless someone makes her really angry, she's just not that effective. These books aren't prize winners and the stories are generally slightly unbelievable, but they are very entertaining. If you just want something light to read to pass the time with a few laughs, these are your books.
Well that's it for this month. Now to sleep off the unseasonal allergies. Woohoo!
