high five for friday!

1.  i got my Norwex products and i am super excited to try it out.  i'm even considering selling it if it's as great as they say it is!

2.  i went to the Brewer's game on Wednesday with my dad and we had a great time!  unfortunately there was major traffic and he could barely talk so he asked for a redo in a couple weeks :)

Reynolds is mine and my dad's favorite player :)

3.  i finished the book "Hollywood Wives: a new generation" by Jackie Collins.  she was on the Bethenny show so i thought i would give her a shot.  it was a really good book actually!  a little bit of raunchiness but not as bad as i was worried it would be.

4.  Starla and i are going vegan for a month!  well, she said she would try.  haha.  i just need to be more conscious of what i'm putting into my body!  i probably won't go completely off of meat, but i'm gonna try my hardest, just like with the soda.  i just need to get on track with my eating, because my belly has been hurting me lately from eating stuff i shouldn't be.

this book has BEAUTIFUL pictures!  some good recipes too!

5.  we are officially fosters for midwest boston terrier rescue (MWBTR)!  we are super excited to work with them, and very sad to not be working as closely with WBTR.  we should be getting our next foster in a week or so.

Drinking and Tweeting: and other Brandi Blunders by Brandi Glanville

i have a confession...

i am obsessed with the real housewives.  all of them.  every city.

whenever one of them writes a book, which has happened a few times, i always read them.

Brandi is one of my favorite housewives.  another confession is that i love celebrity gossip.  which means i followed her story of her husband cheating with LeAnn Rimes.  i wanted to find out what else she had to say about it.

although i was a little late to the game, i finally got a chance to read Brandi's book...

it only took me 2 or 3 days to get through it.  and she is hilarious!

i loved all of her funny stories about her ex and LeAnn.  but it wasn't all about that.  it was mostly about getting back on her feet after the divorce (like vaginal rejuvenation hahaha).

this a book for a good laugh.  and definitely a must read.

where'd you go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

link

Lauren Conrad has a book club through her website.  i have never been able to follow along with the book club because i've always had too much school or work or whatever.  i was so excited that this time i was able to keep up!

'where'd you go, Bernadette' was an interesting book.  it was written more as different forms of correspondence between people.  it was a book within a book as well.  most of the book were e-mails back and forth between character.  the daughter in the book did some narrating in parts to help the book along.  i think that's why this made the book such an easy and quick read.  it's almost like you are snooping on someone's e-mails ;)

the book is about a girl, Bee, who's mother goes missing.  the mom is very antisocial and she gets overwhelmed easily.  Bee decides she wants to take a trip to Antarctica, and so when Bernadette goes missing, they assume she is overwhelmed by the trip and some other things going on in their lives.  Bee is determined to find her mother, even though everyone thinks she has died.

it was a good book that kept me interested throughout.  it was a quick read, and i would definitely recommend it.  it was also fun to follow along with the book club and see what others had to say about the book as well.

photos

I have been trying to learn how to use my hubby's fancy camera.  I'm currently reading a book called "Beyond Snapshots".

Beyond Snapshots

The pictures in the book are beautiful and it has made things make a little more sense, but I'm still working on it.  Marky Mark has helped a bit, and if I still can't figure it out, I might try and take a class.  Anyways, here's some pics of my girls from the last week...

"Spelling It Like It Is" by Tori Spelling

I read this book in THREE days!  It was crazy that I was able to get through it so quickly because I haven't been much of a bookworm in awhile.  I have loved all of Tori Spelling's book so I was really excited when it was finally my turn to get it from the library.  "Spelling It Like It Is" was such a good read!  Tori Spelling has always been one of my favorite people (I mean, I do own all of Beverly Hills 90210 on DVD after all), but unfortunately this book made me like her a little bit less.  I think the book is hilarious, in typical Tori fashion, but she can really be careless with her and her children's lives.   In this book, she goes over everything that has happened since "Tori and Dean" stopped airing.  That means this includes MANY moves, some business ventures, and the birth of her youngest, Finn.  She is such a good story teller, which makes this a must read!

"Another Place at the Table" by Kathy Harrison

link

I decided to read this book after I found out from a foster mom that it is a really good look into the foster care system.  She did warn me that it was kind of an extreme take on fostering.  I really enjoyed reading this book.  Kathy took in some of the more extreme cases, dealing with sexual abuse, so there was a lot of problems that would go on in her house because of it.  The book did a good job detailing how the foster care system really is, and showed an interesting look at what it could be like.  Unfortunately for me, I read it and thought to myself that I hope my fostering is nothing like what happened in the book.  Some of it was really nice, her relationship with her kids that she ended up adopting.  I do hope the same thing for me and my husband.  I just know that I wouldn't want to deal with the extreme cases.  It's so sad to see how things really are with such a messed up system for these kids.  These poor kids suffer because of underfunding and not enough resources.  Whether wanting to be a foster parent or not, I still think it's good for people to see how the foster care system really is and that there is a lot of help needed for these poor children. 

Lauren Conrad book signing

Last night, on a whim, me and Marky Mark decided to head to Milwaukee for the Lauren Conrad book signing.  I had been thinking about going but didn't know anyone that would want to go with me.  We had a showing on the house last night, and we were able to head out at about 6:30, of course that was after I changed into all Lauren Conrad attire.  We got to the event about 15 minutes late, and there was a huge storm when we got there.  Some girls said they didn't think we would be able to meet her, but one of the ladies that was working at the bookstore was able to work it out so we could!!  (Thank you book store lady!)  It was SO amazing to see her in person.  She is SO beautiful!!  We had to each purchase a book in order to meet her so I picked up her new book that just came out yesterday, 'Infamous,' and her other book 'Beauty'.

Link

Link

We had to wait in line for about 2 hours to meet her, so of course we made friends with the people in front of us in line.  Luckily, Alex had a nice camera and was able to snap a few shots of her before we found out that we weren't aloud to take pictures of her.  This was so sad to find out :(  But at least he got a couple.

She looked SO CUTE with her bangs!

We got to the talk to her for a bit.  I didn't really have anything planned to say other than 'Hi' (I know, really original) but Marky Mark came to the rescue asking her how many books she had signed.  She told us that she didn't know for today but on her last tour she figured out she had signed about 10,000 books!!  Crazy!  I wish I had remembered to mention her dogs or SOMETHING but I was pretty star struck since I am kind of obsessed with her.  I wear her clothes, read her books, follow her blogs, and pretty much want to be just like her. ;)

One of my autographs

I'm SO happy my hubby forced me to go (Ok, maybe not forced, but at least was willing to go with me)!  We had a great time and I will never forget it :)

"Two for the Dough" by Janet Evanovich

get it here

This was the second book in the "Stephanie Plum novels."  I reviewed the first book in the series here.  I found this one a little harder to get into than the first book, but once it got moving I really enjoyed it.  This book is a continuation of the first book, so basically Stephanie gets another assignment to hunt down another criminal, Kenny.  This time she has Morelli helping her out, which makes it fun to see their flirting and attraction for each other play out.  My favorite part about this book is her grandma.  She is hilarious!  There are quite a few really funny parts of this book.  Again, this was a really easy read and I will definitely continue to read the series.

'Bloom' by Kelle Hampton

I just finished "Bloom" by Kelle Hampton yesterday.  This was pretty good book.  My sister had suggested it to me and I didn't want to read something that was too deep, so because of that I found this to be a little too deep for me.  I loved the story about Down Syndrome and I learned a lot about it from this book.  I really appreciated her explanations of her feelings, and she gave a good image of what she was going through and how it all felt.  At times, I found this to be a bit too repetitive and found myself skimming over parts.  I think part of it for me is I'm not a mom and I've never given birth so I don't completely get where she was coming from.  I LOVED the pictures in this book.  Kelle really is an amazing photographer.  I looked up her blog "Enjoying the Small Things" and loved looking at all her wonderful pictures of her beautiful girls and family. 

"One for the Money" by Janet Evanovich

I love to read and always try to read at least one book over break.  This winter break I have already finished "One for the Money" by Janet Evanovich.

This was a GREAT book!  I loved that it was an easy read.  I didn't want to read anything too deep because I was on break from school and had to read THREE textbooks last semester.  I also loved the humor and the quirkiness of the book.  I actually found myself laughing out loud as I was reading it.  It's about a girl that becomes a bounty hunter, working for her cousin Vinnie because she had lost her job and couldn't find anything else.  She is on a hunt for Joe Morelli who is out on bail for murder.  She just so happens to have a bit of a past with Morelli, which makes the chase that much more interesting. I will definitely be reading the second book and probably all the books in this series.  But for now, my sister suggested "Bloom" by Kelle Hampton, and I'm about half way through.