Crochet Clouds Baby Blanket

I have a newborn niece that I haven't met yet that I needed to make a Christmas present for.  I didn't have a whole of time to devote to this blanket since I have 5 Ninja Turtles I have to make for a nephew, an in-progress UGA baby blanket for my baby, plus the other stuff I want to make for my baby before he/she is born.  So, voila .. literally took me an afternoon.  I thought about embellishing it a bit with a scallop edging, but I didn't have any more of the cotton candy poofy yarn, so oh well.

The simple granny square in the middle was made using a random-skein-bought-from-a-garage-sale.  It was called Cotton Candy and it was a bulk weight yarn.  I probably would have made it bigger if I had more yarn, but what you see, is what I had to work with.  That's all I got for ya.  If you are unsure how to make a granny square, a good tutorial is found here: Crochet Simple Granny Square How To

• The white edging was made by attaching the new yarn by chaining 3, then double crochet once in each stitch that you can find (kinda tricky with the poofy fluffy yarn, but it doesn't have to be exact).  In each corner of the first row, I double crocheted two in a single stitch. 
• Once the row was completed, I chained three, then started over again.  This row, in each corner I double crocheted two in a single stitch, twice (4 total stitches in the corner).  I didn't keep count as I went, it just depends on how big you want to make your middle granny square, so I can't tell you how many you need to go before you double up.  I just eyeballed what I thought would be the corner stitch.  Carry on.
• Once the row is completed, chain three, double crochet once in  each stitch.  In the corner (again, eyeball it), I double crocheted in a single stitch, three times (6 total in the corner).  Carry on.
• So, essentially, you should have picked up on what I did there ... in each successive row's corner, add 2 stitches.  So, row 4, you should have 8 double crochets (taking up four stitches) in each corner, row 5 you should have 10, ect. ect.  Carry on for as long as you wish, making the blanket as big as your little crocheting heart desires.

 So, this pattern isn't exact.  Shoot me.  I wasn't necessarily planning on making it into a big project.  As I said earlier, I didn't have a whole lot of time to work on this blanket.  

Questions?  Comments?  Concerns?  Ask!

A Shade of Vampire by Bella Forrest

Somehow, I stumbled upon this series called A Shade of Vampire.  It begins on the 17th birthday of Sofia Claremont, who is woefully stumbling down a beach in Cancun feeling sorry for herself because her best friend, Ben is rolling around with some girl, and sigh .. she's been in love with him forever, but he has friend-zoned her.

 

Aside from wanting to shoot myself in the face at this so horribly, horribly cliche moment, I kept on trucking.  Thinking ... it could only get better, right?  

Well, she ends up on this perma-night island called The Shade after being kidnapped by a vampire.  This vampire, Lucas, seems like sadistic bastard, who wants to claim Sofia for himself, but alas, Sofia is to be reserved for his younger brother, the reigning vampire prince, Derek.   Of course, you learn that big brother Lucas can't deal with that, so there is one of the conflicts.

For some reason, Derek takes an instant liking LOVE to Sofia and decides that she is going to be his personal slave and that nobody can touch her, and anybody who does faces the wrath of Prince Derek.  (Hence the problem with Lucas arises, especially after he torments her behind closed doors and she's too afraid to mention it to Derek, even after Derek has told her he would protect her and all of that other manly-cliche-ridden-stuff.)   I hate insta-love!! And it's literally what this whole series is based on!  Oh but wait!! In addition to INSTA-LOVE, there is the--but wait, I can't love him, he's a vampire/oh wait, I can't love her, she's a measly human!  Oh, gag me with a shovel!  Are you freaking kidding me?!

I guess by the way this review is going, you can tell I'm not entirely sold on this series.  The book, like this review, is very vague.  It's a quick read, maybe a little over a hundred pages, but it merrily skips along, supposedly lasting months. I kinda felt like I had been time-warped by Castiel by the time I was done with the first book.  I'm leaving major plot-points out of this review, because if I mentioned them, I would have literally re-written this book in fewer words than it took to get it published to begin with. 

So, in answer to the question I asked myself at the beginning of this book:

it can't get better.

But what am I doing?!  I started reading the second book!! And alas, it got better, much much better, it just took ANOTHER hundred pages... I guess it was a good thing the second book is around 300 pages long.  So ultimately, I suppose you could say:

 

I'll give this series another shot, I suppose. 

Christmas Trimmings

I decided this year I am going to go all out for Christmas.  It could be because now that I'm pregnant, I'm nesting, and I want to decorate more, or it could just be because I got a creative bug up my now-enlarging pregnant butt.  The first decorative item I created for Christmas this year is a wreath for my door!  Originally, I found a wreath on Pinterest that I really fell in love with. 

 

(taken from this blog: http://www.southernsunflowersandcoffeebeans.com/2012/11/its-beginning-to-look-lot-like-christmas.html ... don't say I never give props to those who deserve it!)

It didn't take me too long to realize that those wooden-branch-inspired wreaths are expensive as hell, and with only having a $20 budget to make this wreath, I had to stroll around Michaels and figure something else out.  
As I was walking through the glitter explosion aisle full of stem picks, I decided on my design.  It helped that all of the picks were half off, so instead of spending $0.99-1.99 per item, I got them for $0.50-1.00.  I bought a smaller sized fake fir wreath that ended up being $5.99.  The wooden letter C I bought was $1.49.  It was a smaller, cheaper C since I bought a smaller wreath.  I bought 8 total picks, which I said earlier ranged from $0.50 to $1.00.  Two of the picks had a bell on them, so I could hear that Christmas-y jingle every time I open my door.  I bought one spool of ribbon, costing me $4.99.  I needed a hot glue gun and glue sticks, which will come in handy for future products, which was $2.79 for the gun and $3.99 for the glue sticks.  It helped that I had a 25% off your entire purchase coupon, so all in all I spent $17.34, which if you remember, about $8.00 was spent on the glue gun and sticks. 
Once I got home, I arranged the picks artfully on one side of the wreath, just bending the flexible stem around the wreath so they wouldn't fall off.  I wrapped my wooden C in the ribbon and hot glued it so it would stay (thankfully, a C is a pretty easy letter.  Sucks for you S's and F's out there!).  I finagled a bow so I could add in a bit more color.  I'm thinking about buying smaller ornament balls and gluing them onto the wreath, but I haven't decided yet. So this is my creation!! Good luck with yours! 

Island 731 by Jeremy Robinson

So, I just finished this book so I could talk about it in my book club tonight.  Holy cow.  I'm slightly disturbed.  No ... I'm seriously disturbed with this book.  It's on par with Jeremy Robinson's other works, but I'd have to say this book takes the-Most-Effed-Idea-Ever award.  Probably my least favorite out of Jeremy Robinson, not because of the book itself.  It was very well written, the characters were developed awesomely, which is pretty much Jeremy Robinson in a nut shell.  However, just the idea behind this book is freaky as hell.  I'm the type of person who doesn't really enjoy watching movies like Saw or The Human Centipede (which I was duped into watching after being coerced by peer pressure .. don't ever say peer pressure disappears with age) because I just can't wrap my brain around the type of people it takes to even come up with an idea like those for a movie versus a storyline that has a baseline in history.  Part of me wanted to sit in a corner and suck my thumb while rocking back and forth behind a triple-deadbolted door.  It's mindboggling that there are indeed people in this world that are so severely effed up, they may be doing something like this book entails in their basement in the name of science.  I'm a scientist.  I agree to expanding our knowledge of our universe right down to our stem cells, but holy freaking nutballs... there has got to be a line somewhere, and I have a feeling there are tons of people in this world who not only toe it, they kick dirt over it and then skip on gleefully.  (So enough of that tangent .. onto the book...)  This may contain spoilers.


This book contains genetically altered chimeras, ranging from psychotic sea gulls with piranha teeth to crocodiles with squid-like tentacles that shoot from their gullets (which kind of reminded me of the vampires in the third Blade movie).  In other words .. the stuff from your worst nightmares.  And that's not even touching the main plot of this movie, human transfiguration/mutilation/experimentation.  Transplanting arms, sewing people together, giving people extra appendages, not to mention cultivating brand new species by basically implanting a fertilized, effed-up genetically egg into a person and seeing what gets birthed.  It was awful.  Not the book was awful, but the idea was gut-wrenching.  Definitely my least favorite book by Robinson, but that's not saying I hated the book.  Of course, I grew to love the characters, rooting for them when they needed it, boohooing when they got injured or captured, smiling and laughing along with them to ease the tension when the moment was needed.  As always, I caught myself wondering how they are doing currently, as if I was reading their first-hand accounts of the events and they were real human beings.  (To this day, I still fleetingly wonder how the main character from SecondWorld is, until I remember he was a book...)  I definitely grew attached to them, and I'm sure I'll catch myself thinking about them in the future (the same way I'll randomly remember that terrible movie The Human Centipede at the worst times possible).  I'm sure my dreams tonight will be vivid, and I'll probably wake my husband up with my thrashing and he'll wake me up so I can find myself in a cold sweat.  Great.  Can't wait to sleep now.

With all of that being said, I still rated this a 4 out of 5 stars on my Goodreads account, simply because I enjoyed reading it, but it didn't make my Favorites list alongside with his other novels. 

SecondWorld by Jeremy Robinson

Picture this: red flakes fall from the sky that taste like blood on your tongue, looting breaks out in your neighborhood, you get a pounding headache; soon enough, you can't breathe at all.  All of the oxygen is gone.  You die a painful suffocating death.

Lincoln Miller is a lone half-Jewish former SEAL, now NCIS agent working on a pollution case in the middle of the Florida Keys 50 yards below the surface of the ocean.  Finding a plethora of dead fish out of the porthole window, he surfaces and finds red covering everything, then soon realizes that he can't breathe without his SCUBA tank on.  Flash forward to understanding of what's going on.  The red flakes (which you find out rather quickly is oxidized iron aka rust) suck all of the oxygen out of the air.  But why?  A natural cosmic event? Or something more sinister?  Obviously, it's something more sinister (and this isn't a spoiler, you can tell this by the giant swastika on the cover). 

Without giving too much more away, I have to say this was a pretty good book.  It was definitely a change of scene from the series I just read (Crossfire series by Sylvia Day... review to come soon).  Like I've said previously, Jeremy Robinson is one of 2 action adventure authors I have on my list o' favorites, so I knew I wasn't going to be disappointed.  This fast-paced adventure is full of action, without being too over-bearing, has military-esque lingo, without making the most non-military person run for cover, and had a pretty new take (at least to me) on Nazis both from WWII and current-era White Supremacist assholes.  I thought it was poetic justice that the main hero happened to be half-Jewish, while some others might think it's cheesy.  Jeremy Robinson has a knack for making his readers, maybe not identify per se, but at least relate to his characters.  I always end up rooting for his good guys and booing his bad guys when I read his novels.  If you're in the mood for an action thriller, definitely take the couple of days it'll take and read this novel.  I highly doubt you'd be disappointed.  I remember reading one review that was saying this was the most improbable book and how her life was wasted while reading this blah-blah.  I feel like one of the whole points of reading is to leave your reality behind and immerse yourself in a different one.  Who cares if this book is improbable?  I don't know about you, but I sure as hell wouldn't want somebody to get any bright ideas off this kind of apocalyptic stuff.  But when it comes down to it, the only review you need to follow is your own.  

Definitely a 4 out of 5 starts on my Goodreads profile.

Hello my friend, it's been awhile, where should we begin?

Can't say much lately.  Haven't read anything mindblowing.  I may be a smidge burnt out on reading.  Couple of two-stars, one three-star, but I wasn't stunned by it.  It's getting a little tedious.

Unbeknownst to me, there was a third book in a series (that I didn't even know was going to be a series) by Abbi Glines called the Too Far trilogy.  I wasn't blown away, but it was better than some other books I've been reading.  For some reason, I woke up one morning on one of my rare days off, and was thinking about the two main characters.  I have no idea what brought it on, but there they were.  So, on a whim, I re-read the first two novels.  Then, that night, I discovered on the Top 100 list on Amazon, that there was a third book!  Well, after downloading it (because I'm OCD and can't let a series go un-read, even if it takes me the time it takes an elephant to have a baby [that's 22 months, bt-dubs in case you were curious], I WILL read the whole thing), I promptly read it that night.  (Each book was only around 200 pages each, so it wasn't too much.)  I enjoy how Abbi Glines switches from Blair to Rush between chapters.  It's refreshing and nice not to get too bogged down in the way one character is thinking.  Blair, the female character, is of course, super duper nice and sweet and wholesome and of course she has an over-active guilt complex THE ENTIRE SERIES.  It's like a yo-yo that is stuck in the dead-mans-walk trick, where she's constantly berating herself about how guilty she's feeling because she is making Rush choose between his self-involved mother and shocking sadistic/psychotically bitchy sister, then she's up again, reeling in her pregnancy and loving life and Rush.  Rush, on the other hand, it still trying to smooth over his major faux paux from the end of the first/ like half of the second book where she leaves him and is struggling through her first trimester of pregnancy alone.  He's always tripping over himself to make Blair feel loved and make her believe that she's the center of his universe and promising how he's never going to put anything ahead of her again in his life, before he GASP! does something stupid and she gets her feelings hurt and runs away, only to be consoled again by him once he catches up to her.  I swear, I really felt like this book was a yo-yo.  By the end of it, I was ready to thump them both on their foreheads and make them act like the adults that they are and be parents to the baby and to stop wallowing in their own crap (her case guiltiness for his family drama and his guiltiness for making Blair feel like she wasn't numero uno in his life).  I'm glad I read the book, so I can put the characters to rest in my head, but the third book was by far my least favorite.  I probably liked the first one the best.  I was very generous in giving this book three stars on my Goodreads profile.

I took on a new author: Cheryl McIntyre.  On the Top 100, I spotted a book called Before Now.  Reading the synopsis, my interest was piqued.  After a little bit of further research, I discovered that it was the second book in a series, so naturally, I found the first one called Sometimes Never and had to read that one first.  It started out okay.... and remained okay while reading it .... but I found myself skimming some pages, reading dialogue ... then skimming some more inner self-hatred perpetrated by one of the main characters.  Okay, so starting at the beginning: Mason is an 18 year old who is very handsome and panty-dropping, but jaded to the whole girls-throwing-themselves-at-him-constantly lifestyle.  Enter Hope, the sarcastic, bitchy, I-don't-give-a-shit-what-you-think-about-me girl who instantly catches his eye.  They meet, they flirt, and he is convinced he's in love.  Cut to the girl, who we find out it a cutter with some serious anger/self-esteem issues.  Long story short, the 18 year old (because EVERY 18 year old has his shit together and knows exactly what's he's going to do with his life/knows that he's GOING to marry this girl, no matter what) Mason and Hope fall in love, she overcomes her cutting issue, he overcomes is jaded/anger management problem and they go to college together and end up being engaged before she graduates from college.  Now, I quite obviously find this EXTREMELY far-fetched in that 18 year olds are not that selfless that they cut themselves off from the only family they have left, get an apartment while still in high school, is convinced who they are going to marry and help said person over some SERIOUS issue single-handedly.  The novella called Blackbird is still following these characters and I skimmed through most of that book.  By now, I'm no longer excited to read Before Now because now I know this author's style isn't necessarily something I'm amused by, but alas, I'll read it eventually.  Two stars.  Definitely two stars.

J.C. Reed's Surrender Your Love.
Great synopsis on Amazon.  Probably one of the top 3 most disjointedly-written books ever.  I get it.  She's probably breaking into writing, didn't have this book fully edited/professionally read.  Kudos.  Seriously.  I know how hard it is to write a book for the first time.  I just feel like .. the book wasn't finished.  Sure, there was a plot line, climax, ect, but I just feel like it wasn't a smooth journey while reading.  Maybe the author had notes stuck in the margins of the book of scenes/ideas that she wanted to add, but never got around to them for some reason?  More than a few times, there were references to something that never actually happened.  And I kind of feel like .. this is bordering on Insta-Love, but it definitely wasn't the intention of the author, just some scenes forgot to be added that would help pad this attraction between the two main characters.  Disjointed is really the only word I had in my head when I finished this book.  Maybe there weren't any glaring plot holes, but there was certainly some roads that weren't fully paved and were very rocky.  I do have to say, the author is HUGE in the internal monologue of what the character (this book follows ONLY the main female character Brooke.  I feel like the author would have done much better with this book and keeping the attention span of the reader in tact if she alternated between Brooke and Jett.) is thinking and feeling and describing her surroundings, but holy jeebus, I was bored of it pretty quick.  I find myself reading the conversations but skimming a lot of the dense paragraphs that cover what she thinks.  I get it, you are falling in love with this hot guy.  I get it, his clothes barely cover how masculine and built his body is.  I get it, his eyes are sinful and his smile is sinful and his voice makes your tummy do funny things, but gimme a break here!  It was alright.  It has a sequel.  More of the same.  Literally, just under a different title, Conquer Your Love.  I'm 55% through the book, and decided to stop so I can surf the web, update my blog, look at Pinterest, ect.  Ya get what I'm saying?

I've taked it upon myself to read Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth.  I'll let you know when I finish it 8 years from now...

I'm also re-reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.  I've read it once, so I'm not committing some type of sacrilege or blasphemy by not reading it in one fell swoop.  I'm reading here and there.

I discovered, thanks to Goodreads, a pretty popular fan fiction series called James Potter and the ....  I'm entertained so far.  The first one is called and the Hall of the Elder's Crossing.  It follows James Potter, Harry and Ginny's eldest son and I'm assuming the author G. Norman Lippert will write seven novels that follow him through all of his schooling.  All of the books he's written is available on his site www.jamespotterseries.com .  I'll keep you updated with that one once I've delved into it fully.  I think I only read the first few chapters (up to the night James gets Sorted.)

That is all.  

When you are with me, I'm free :)

M.I.A. For Awhile ... The Hunt For Atlantis by Andy McDermott Review

I know, I've been missing for a little while (to the numerous many of you who are completely AVID readers of this blog ((see, it's funny 'cause I'm pretty sure I don't have any of those 'you's)), but I've been backtracking a little bit and re-reading some books that made it onto my list o' favorites.  I did just finish reading a book for the first time though.

The Hunt For Atlantis is my first novel I've read by McDermott, and I'm impressed.  Let's not get ahead of ourselves though.  The only two action/adventure author slots I've allotted for my Favorite Authors list have already been taken by Matthew Reilly and Jeremy Robinson, however, McDermott would be a ... I would say distant third favorite.  Back to the review: this novel introduces Nina Wilde (archeologist/all around braniac) and Eddie Chase (ex-SAS/bodyguard/not even remotely attractive sounding).  I'm kind of happy that McDermott didn't make Eddie Chase some sort of swoon-worthy gorgeous specimen of an ex-SAS dude, because then I think the novel would be more about the him-her (Mulder/Scully-esque) storyline than the actual adventure storyline that it ends up following.  Without giving away any major plot points, Wilde is contracted by a guy to find the original Atlantis.  For people that don't know much about Atlantis, it might be a good idea to just kind of skim a wikipedia article about it, just so you're aren't like, "So, what's Atlantis and why are they looking for it in the middle of the ocean?" and such during the book.  (This did make me want to read The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne though.)  Granted, you can read the book and gather a kind of rough history of Atlantis and it isn't vital you know every bit of history associated with it.  The book is less of a history lesson that some books can be (kinda The da Vinci Code?? even though I really enjoyed reading it) and more of a what's-going-to-happen-when-they-get-there type of book. 
The plot thickens when you find out that there is a group of people out there who are directly trying to sabotage any and all attempts at somebody finding Atlantis (they even murder to accomplish this.)  I'd say this novel had a pretty good plot twist in it, but I still found myself counting down the pages until I was done reading it.

Some cons: as far as the action goes, it was alright.  It took me about a week to read this book, and that was mostly because I'd read some, then put it down and read a few chapters of Harry Potter or this really awful book I tried reading called The Devil Has Dimples. (Gah!  Nightmare!)  I feel like one of the main differences between one of my two favorite action/adventure authors (Reilly or Robinson) is that with their books, I'm constantly flipping pages, excited to see where the book is going to go, only to be disappointed that I've reached the end of the novel.  They seem more cover-to-cover action, whereas this book... was more like ... chapter-of-action-to-few-chapters-of-blahness-to-chapter-of-action.  I wasn't as on the edge of my seat with this novel that I would say I usually am with an action/adventure novel.  But this all goes saying I still enjoyed the book and I will definitely read the rest of the series, it just may take me awhile.  I'll probably read 4-5 books in between each one rather than read them back to back. 
Another thing: with the way the book ended, it seemed a wee bit too convenient for the main characters.  That's all I've gotta say 'bout that.


Goodreads Rating: Three out of Five stars (liked it)

And here's a little blurb for those of you whose interest was piqued by my comment about The Devil Has Dimples.  A woman finds out she's adopted, goes to some backwoods town to find out who her father is after her mother passes away, meets and falls in love with the town lawyer.  Now, sounds like an okay concept.  The actual format/writing of this book reads like an ADD kid. "Hi. Do you like cake? I have a frog.  I love riding my bike.  Oh, look, a rock. Hi, again.  I want a pretzel."  I got about halfway through it before I decided to cut my losses and go back to McDermott.