2014 - Book 33

"Blood and Chocolate" - Maryland

This was back to the typical YA novels of the times, a story about werewolves. The writing was kind of weird, I don't know if it was because the author was trying to get into the wild creature mentality, but it just seemed too carnal or sensual for a YA book, but then again, too many YA books are like that, in my opinion. It just surprised me that this was a YA book written by a children's librarian when I thought she would have been a romance novelist or something instead. It was shorter than some of the books I have read though and the plot all fit together well, which I liked. The story follows a young girl and her pack family of werewolves. There is much dissension and unrest following a fire that killed her father, the pack leader, and drove them from their previous settlement into a more heavily populated town. Suspicions rise when a few humans are killed and Vivian (the main character) has to figure out out if she belongs with her pack, or with a human boy she's fallen for. It was an interesting read, I guess, but only for older YA readers.

And now for something totally different, a house remodeling tip: How to paint clean lines

We recently remodeled our half bathroom and I wanted to make sure we had clean lines between the wall and ceiling. I found this gem on Pinterest and it worked beautifully.

Look at those lovely clean lines.

This was the inspiration for our remodel: Half Bath inspiration

I didn't get as nice of pictures as she did, but here are some before and afters:

Overview

Biggest area of change, in my opinion. Also, the mirror is a medicine cabinet :)

We still need to add some shelves above the toilet, some artwork on the large wall, and some sort of window treatment, but you get the idea. It's so much nicer now :)

Now you know I couldn't resist throwing in a recipe too: Monster Cupcakes ("green eyed monster" & "orange you spiky monster")
These turned out really cute, but were rather putsy to put together. Usually I have a pretty high tolerance on my "putsy-meter", but putting individual chocolate sprinkles into frosting behind a tiny M&M just about pushed me over the edge. I only managed to do half of them before I gave up and decided that half were girl monsters and the other half without the eyelashes would be boy monsters ;) The green ones had too much frosting on them for my liking, but if I would have made homemade buttercream that wouldn't have been a big deal. I just really don't like store bought frosting anymore . . . I've spoiled myself into becoming a frosting snob I guess . . . oops. Well, these little monsters were pretty cute anyways, I really liked the addition of the chow mein noodles, and the cupcakes were a big hit with the kids at our gathering around Halloween time.

Have a great week :)