Hello Friends! Can you believe I’m back again already!  You didn’t even have time to miss me! LOL I have spent the last few days (besides regular family stuff) at my day job, reading, catching up on “Sunday Society” tasks, drinking coffee (and some water plus a few walks on the treadmill) and taking pictures of my Valentine flowers.  I have sooo many pictures of those darn flowers.  I could only take pictures in the morning before work because that’s when I had good window light.  And I wasn’t sure how long they would last.  I was an obsessed person!  In fact, I may have gone a little overboard!  (At the time of this writing, they are still alive!)

Just when I thought I would get this blog post written on time, my 15 year old daughter takes me up on my promise that I would put some video games on Ebay to sell for her.  You see she wants the new Nintendo Switch gaming system for her birthday this year.  It’s $399.99 plus tax and of course the games aren’t cheap either.   Pretty pricey, as are all video gaming items. This system is the same price as the bed we got her younger sister for her birthday last month.  So we weren’t going to get it for her.  But; she has $150 already and $55 in Walmart gift cards from Christmas. And she is going to sell some of her old games she no longer plays.  We will pay the rest.  She loves her Nintendo!  I am never going to add up the dollar amount we (and she) have spent in Nintendo gaming.  She started off with the Gamecube system when she was little and saw a Spongebob Gamecube game advertise at the end of  a video.  I’m thinking she liked it because it was Spongebob Squarepants.  LOL  But thats where it started.  Then it was the Gameboy, Gameboy Color(second hand), DS lite, DSi, 3DS (which she recently sold to a friend), and the 3DS XL. Then there is the Wii system, which we bought for both girls and we all played.  And then the Wii U system when it came out.  Yes she does play video games a lot, sometimes.  But she also gets outside.  She needs her fresh air.  That girl will go for a walk in the middle of winter when even I won’t go outside.  But remember, I am somewhat sensitive to the cold.  LOL

Okay, that’s enough free advertising for Nintendo.  🙂  Back to my flowers.  I took so many photos that they all started looking the same after a while.  Well to me anyway.  But my very favourite is the one at the top of this blog post.  It suits the Oscar Wilde quote quite well.  I think I may buy flowers more often.  I enjoy their quiet beauty, they do what I tell them and don’t talk back.  It was so easy to set up my camera on a tripod and get in close or move back out and get different angles of the flowers.  I could get as little or as much in focus as I wanted.  You can get a larger view of each photo just by clicking on it.

In my spare time I also love to read.  It helps me relax and gets me off of the internet.  I joined the 50 Book Pledge again this year to help me stay on track and I have pledged to read 50 books.  Last year I only read about half that.  To save money and to not have 50 books laying around at the end of the year, I have different modes of acquiring these books.  So far this year I have read eight books and just started my ninth.  Here is a list of them and how I got them:

1. In The Company Of Women: Inspiration and Advice from over 100 Makers, Artists, and Entrepreneurs by Grace Bonney.  This book I got for my birthday.  It doesn’t feel, to me, the kind of book you read on a tablet/iPad.  You need to hold it in your hands.
2. A Beautiful Mess: Photo Idea Book by Elsie Larson. I purchased this book because I can just pick it up anytime and go through it for photo ideas.
3. The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher.  This one I got from my local eLibrary in audio book form because Carrie Fisher is doing the talking.  It was a bit eerie, especially in the first part of the book, when she references a couple of things.  I guess more eerie since she had already passed away when I listened to this book.
4. Inferno by Dan Brown.  Got this one in ebook form from my local eLibrary as well.
5. The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield.  I purchased this one in paperback form.  It’s a rather small book too.
6. The Other Widow by Susan Crawford.  I purchased this one, on sale, in ebook form.
7. Not Dead Yet: The Memoir by Phil Collins.  I got this one (ebook) from my local eLibrary.
8. Carve The Mark by Veronica Roth.  I purchased this one in hardcover in case my daughter wanted to read it as well. (It was only when I was into the last few pages of this book did I realize it was not going end and that I would have to wait for the second book in the series.  Sigh.)

I just started reading “Meet Me at the Cupcake Cafe: A Novel With recipes” by Jenny Colgan after randomly stumbling upon it (ebook from eLibrary).  It may have been the title that caught my eye, but inside it’s dedicated “to anyone who’s ever licked the spoon.”  That’s me!!  I won’t give a review as such for any of them.  Normally I give all the books I read a four or five star.  To be honest, if I don’t like the book, I usually don’t waste my time finishing it.  I also tend to read books on a variety of topics, as you can probably tell.   Another reason for me to vary from ebook to regular book is that I find the screen hard on my eyes after a while and I need to give them a break.  But not a break from reading.  If you know what I mean.