Book Review Journal Entry #1 - "The Life and the Death of Charlie St. Cloud"

I am currently reading "The Life and Death of Charlie St. Cloud" by Ben Sherwood, I promised myself I would read the book before I watched the movie because I almost always like the book so much better, but find it hard to read after I've watched the movie, and so far it is a great book. I loved the beginning where it's from the perspective of a volunteer fireman(although I'm sure that just hits close to home for me as my hubby is one and I always wonder what they are thinking). They are responding to a tragic accident that will play itself out throughout the course of this novel. It has been a great read so far, focusing a lot on the enduring relationship between siblings, and it also deals a lot with death, but not in a dark and depressing way, it's a refreshing perspective on death. It asks the question what happens to our loved ones after they die, are the really gone or just waiting for us to see them.

This book also deals with the struggles Charlie goes through to maintain the relationships that he cherishes the most, something all of us can relate to on one level or another. I think we all do certain things a certain way and maybe even at a certain time in order to achieve the balance we so cherish. I certainly know how important that balance is to me, and how important it is to hold onto that balancing act, even though at times it may not be convenient, the stability it provides is soo rewarding.

Thus far I am only about 65% done reading the book, and it is really starting to get interesting, so I look forward to what happens next as Charlie's relationships start to evolve and boundaries start to be pushed. Charlie is at a point in the book where he has to distinguish the difference between what is real and what feels real, and I am so interested to see how the author plays that out.

So look forward to reading my further reviews of this book soon!! Thanks for checking in

Amy

What I Am Loving Wednesday

So I figured out how to do this whole blog link thing so why not have two wednesday link ups. I like the idea of this one from Jamie at this kind of love. So i thought I would join in and maybe even get some new followers, which would be something I would love (lol)

What I am loving this wednesday is definetely the weather, we had some rain this morning and it looked like it was going to be a yucky day, but boy was I wrong it has been gloriously sunny. I love that I was able to get Hannah out for a walk, hopefully leading to an excellent nights sleep. It was also a whopping 10 degrees celcius here, for Canada, that is great. As an added bonus most of the snow has melted and we saw our first robins, plus two canadian geese have made the move north, as they were chilling in the pond down the street from us with the other ducks that are here year round. It was marvelous. I even got some of my Christmas outdoor decorations down. I'll have to start bugging Eric to take down the lights. Check out some of the other what I'm loving Wednesdays here, these are some of my top favorites:

Stephanie at The Sweet Life
Brittney at Livin' Our Love Song
Jenn at A Home in the Making

So tell me what are you loving this wednesday? Link up with Jamie at This Kind of Love

Amy

Would You Rather Wednesdays

So here's my first edition of Would You Rather Wednesdays?, a link up with Ash from Life As I Know It

1) Would you rather forget to brush your hair or forget to put on deodorant on a hot summer day?

   
        - forget to brush my hair cuz I can always tie it up but chasing a two yr old and being stinky - yucko

2) Would you rather walk on broken glass or hot fresh pavement?

    - umm neither.... I think broken glass because I can imagine the kind of pain it would be kinda like walking on gravel so as long as I went slow and steady lol

3) Would you rather eat 6 plates of brownies or 6 bags of chips?

      - umm chips if there was dip, but I'd really prefer half and half

4) Would you rather gain weight in you butt or your gut?

    - I think my butt, what kind of question is this?

5) Would you rather have a migraine or the flu?

     - the flu but minus the puking lol

6) Would you rather eat with a fork or a spoon for the rest of your life?

     - a fork I could still eat ice cream in teeny tiny bites mhhmmm ice cream

7) Would you rather eat a gallon or ketchup or mustard?

     - ketchup defintely

M.I.A

Sorry I have been M.I.A lately, I have had a lot going on and though I know that's no excuse it is my reality). I have been super busy trying to properly launch my Etsy site, and I have also received several orders from my Facebook page, and have been working on some order for some upcoming brides, so if you are in need of some custom handmade bridal jewellry I'm your girl, I provide awesome rates and I LOVE doing it. Add onto that a gloriously relaxing trip to Orlando, and a sweet little girls 2nd (OH MY!!) birthday party, and we have been super busy. But I'm back, and I am looking for followers so I have decided to link up with my sister on her Would You Rather Wednesdays!! . So here's hoping I added that link properly :) So I will leave you with some pictures of our Orlando trip and some pictures of Hannah's birthday party. Enjoy!!

Hannah and Mommy in the pool

Hannah and Daddy walking in the edge of the zero entry pool!!

We meet Mickey and Minnie

Hannah's Second Mickey themed birthday!!

What a wet, crappy weekend it was!!!!

As my title says what a wet crappy weekend it was and for once I'm not referring to the weather, I'm sure that everyone that was waiting to see the finished product of my headboard will totally understand why there was a delay in me posting all weekend. My hubbie and I had a successful night of headboard makin' and we loved the finished product and I had just gone to bed proud of myself and in a great mood, and my hubbie was headed downstairs to have a shower before bed and feed the cat. So I just get into a nice sleep and I hear Eric yelling for me "Amy get down here the basements flooded". I was like "yah right I'm sure he's kidding as he didn't want to feed the cat, after all our house is only three years old". But he persisted, so I went down and low and behold our basement sure is flooded....did I mention our beautiful, fully finished basement...

What a freaking disaster, but it gets better..... Eric immediately goes out to the garage to grab the shop vac and start sucking up the mysteriously warm water and I start inspecting the hot water heater for signs that it has lost its load... I can't see anything though. Now bear in mind, hubbie and I were headed for bed so I am barefoot and in a night gown and he's barefoot in his pj pants. I scramble for towels to try and save the carpet and Eric goes to dump the first load of water down the sump pit. And then he makes the discovery that sent me running out of the room. The sewage pump on the downstairs washroom has stopped working and we are in fact infiltrated with sewage, not water. YUCK!!!!!!!! So, too little to late we continue cleaning stuff while I call our insurance company as we have a young daughter I do not want sewage in my house. I'm sure they appreciated the late night call (midnight) about as much as we appreciated sewage in our basement.... but they have been really great.

Saturday morning they had a clean up crew at our place to assess the damages, and disinfect. They took away all the damaged items and cut out the affected carpet and left us with these ginormous fans to dry the place out. Oh and a disgusting, headache inducing smell of disinfectant. In just 12 hrs I had gone from loving my life, to HATING it!! 

We were supposed to be hosting our neighborhood pumpkin carving Sat night, and obviously that was not happening, so thankfully one of the other moms was so kind to a) watch Hannah all afternoon as I dealt with the insurance company - I did not want to miss them taking out my stuff and b) host the party. I was never so grateful to get out of my own house. I had had a hell of a day... my lab went through our french door screen after seeing multiple people carrying stuff out of our house and my hubbie was at work so I was literally on my own dealing with all this. So getting out of the house was just what I needed.

We lost a lot stuff and are now trying to figure out what we will do with our basement. Eric has really bad allergies so we were eventually (think 10 yr plan) going to replace the carpet with wood flooring (bear in mind we are in a raised ranch so we have full size windows in our basement), so now is our opportunity. We have been out checking out flooring and are just waiting for the quotes to come in to replace our stuff. I hope to have our flooring and everything back in place by December 1st. so hopefully they can make that happen....

We did find though that flooring installation is expensive.... so we are toying with the idea of my hubbie installing it himself as we did re-do all the floors in our old house so he is super experienced. We just have to find the time to make it happen as the room that was affected was over 600 sq ft. 

So that was the beginning of my weekend, tomorrow I'll tell you about Hannah's second Halloween. Hopefully all this chaos dies down soon....... 

A