My first give-away of the holiday season will be closed tomorrow. If you have not done so yet, go to the attached link to get yourself entered. You just need to follow this blog if you do not already do so, and leave a comment on what you would use the gift cards for!
One lucky winner will be getting both gift cards; keep them both, share one, or give them both away!
The winner will be drawn tomorrow and announced by Thursday! Good Luck to each and every one of you 🙂
Just in time for the upcoming Holidays (which I cannot wait for!) is a great murder-mystery without all of the blood-and-gore, full of laughs, and even boasts some great recipes.
Joanne Fluke has quite the market for her Hannah Swensen mystery books. Hannah owns her own bakery, and seems to come across dead bodies almost as much as she has customers in her shop!
This story begins when Hannah finds her neighbor dead in his condo, with a box of her gingerbread cookies on the floor next to him. Who did she sell those cookies to?
Joanne Fluke has dozens of these types of stories written around Hannah, and they are all good reads. I have not tried any of the recipes in the books, but they seem to be fairly straight-forward without a lot of complicated steps. This particular book also contains 2 more stories; one by Laura Levine, and the other by Leslie Meier. Gingerbread is the theme here, and I think you will enjoy these stories as well.
As we get through October and into November, I am going to be having a few different give-aways; books, gift cards, etc. Stay tuned, the details will be out soon!
Wishing you and yours a Blessed, Wonderful Christmas, with everything you wish for, granted. To enjoy the gift of giving, and making others happy, is what truly makes me happy!
My Christmas gift to myself is going to be a Nook HD+ 🙂 I have enough gift cards to get this this year. I have always said I will never get an electronic reader, because I love my physical books! But I will definitely be using the apps on here, as well as managing my magazine subscriptions. I stopped my subscriptions to all magazines quite some time ago; I could not stand reading something once, and then throwing it in the trash.
Environmentally, this is a wonderful idea 🙂
Has your Christmas been everything you expected or hoped for? Did you have an outrageous surprise? I would love to hear about it!
If you are looking for a feel-good book to read to get you in the Christmas spirit, and you want something a little more cheerful than “A Christmas Carol”, this is the book for you!
It was by chance that I happened upon one of Patrick Taylor’s Irish Country books. Being Irish, if it has anything to do with it, I am reading it! I was glad to find these books, they are a fun read, while interesting, and the descriptions have you feeling like you are sitting in the same room as the characters.
The series revolves around an Irish town Doctor of long-standing, and his newly hired Doctor, who is learning his senior partners’ ways, usually with laughs. They share a house with a housekeeper who keeps you chuckling as well, and the practice is actually ran out of said house. (Don’t you wish it was still like that?)
They are in the county of Ballybucklebo, and Barry is excited to spend his first Christmas in the village, if his fiancé cooperates, that is. A new Doctor in town is proving to be stiff competition as well, practicing medicine in a “new” way that the other two gentlemen don’t favor. This “new” type of medicine is the basic way we are treated by doctors. Not new to us, but new to the setting this story takes place in.
As Fingal tries to figure out his love-life, and Barry tries to salvage his, they also take it upon themselves to help a young single mother who is struggling with her sick son. The story is not overly romantic (I certainly wouldn’t put a Harlequin stamp on it) but definitely gives you an idea of what these two somewhat attached men struggle through with the respective women in their lives.
There is enough drama and emotional attachment to this little sick boy, his mother, and the doctor’s themselves that will keep you turning the pages on this book until you realize you are at the end and looking for another of Patrick Taylor’s Irish Country stories. This is a great read, a feel good story, that will have you laughing as well as rooting for the characters in the story.
For your own information, some other Irish Country books by Patrick Taylor are, “An Irish Country Doctor, An Irish Country Girl (about their wonderful housekeeper in her younger days), and An Irish Country Wedding.”
Have you been lucky enough to read one of these books? Did you enjoy them as much as I have?
How I have never heard of or come across this book is beyond me. I absolutely love L. Frank Baum and was sure I had read all of his books, even those that had nothing to do with the Wizard of Oz. This book was published in 1902, and tells a very interesting story of how Santa Claus came to be. There are several places in it that explain the concept of stockings hanging by the fireplace, the Christmas Tree, and I found the most interesting part of the story being as to how the parents got involved in helping Santa get the presents ready for the kids.
From the end of the story: “So, to lighten his task, which was fast becoming very difficult indeed, old Santa decided to ask the parents to assist him. In the story: “Get your Christmas trees all ready for my coming,” he said to them; “and then I shall be able to leave the presents without loss of time, and you can put them on the trees when I am gone.” And to others he said: “See that the children’s stockings are hung up in readiness for my coming, and then I can fill them as quick as a wink.
And often, when parents were kind and good-natured, Santa Claus would simply fling down his package of gifts and leave the fathers and mothers to fill the stockings after he had darted away in his sledge. “I will make all loving parents my deputies!” cried the jolly old fellow, “and they shall help me do my work. For in this way I shall save many precious minutes and few children need be neglected for lack of time to visit them.”
Besides carrying around the big packs in his swift-flying sledge old Santa began to send great heaps of toys to the toy-shops, so that if parents wanted larger supplies for their children they could easily get them; and if any children were, by chance, missed by Santa Claus on his yearly rounds, they could go to the toy-shops and get enough to make them happy and contented. For the loving friend of the little ones decided that no child, if he could help it, should long for toys in vain.
And the toy-shops also proved convenient whenever a child fell ill, and needed a new toy to amuse it; and sometimes, on birthdays, the fathers and mothers go to the toy-shops and get pretty gifts for their children in honor of the happy event. “In all this world there is nothing so beautiful as a happy child,” says good old Santa Claus; and if he had his way the children would all be beautiful, for all would be happy” (L. Frank Baum, 1902)
What a clever way to explain to children the story of Santa and how he came to be. I am going to look for this book so I can get it for my girls, I think they would really enjoy it. But it will have to be an updated printing, because the majority of the ones I am finding online are a fortune! There is one on Ebay right now for $1200.+, with 20 colored plates and it is a 1st edition I believe. Wow! I would love to have it, but a bit out of my buying range 🙂
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