If You Like Decorating Magazines & Good Stories, You'll Love This

I am addicted to a big fan of Google Reader. For those poor souls who don't know about this yet and still manually check all of the blogs you are addicted to so dearly love, let me give you a quick explanation. Basically, you can subscribe to all of your favorite blogs and it updates your reader when any one of them posts a new blog post. You just check in with Google Reader (from any computer with the internet, mind you) and you can read all of the new posts right there. It is ever so convenient. Just go to google.com, click on "more" at the top of the page, and a menu will drop down. Click on "reader" and there you go. You. will. be. forever. thankful. to. me.

I want to share some excellent posts that have come across my Google Reader lately. Hope you enjoy this little tour...

Tip Junkie is a great site. My favorite posts are the ones like this where she shares great projects her readers have sent her. You're bound to be inspired by several of these ladies.

I am already a huge fan of Heather's, even though I just discovered her site yesterday. She has woven a beautiful tale of how she came to meet her husband in fourteen seperate posts. Lucky us, we get to read them all at once, since we don't like to wait.

Always a huge fan of The Nester, she did not fail to impress me with her quick decorating skills. She recently moved into a new house, and everything already looks so lovely. Go check it out. Soon she'll take us on a whole tour...she promised!

(photo source: http://nestingplacenc.blogspot.com/)

The Life Hackery has given us 50 great kitchen tips in one post. Get out your notebooks, then click.

I don't even own a sewing machine, yet I long for creative ways to make my home beautiful with fabric. Let's just say that this post at Restyled Home is wayfreakin'cool. She's my hero.

(photo source: http://restyledhome.blogspot.com/)

Enjoy. Please share some of your favorites with me!

Give Me a Great Book - Nothing Will Get Done at My House! My thoughts on BOOK CLUBS.

I recently completed the 3rd book in the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer. It is meant to be a book geared towards teens, but I tell you what(!), I couldn't put it down, and it has been a LONG time since the word teen was associated with my age.

The 4th book in the series comes out August 2nd and the movie for the first book releases on December 12th. No - I'm not obsessed or anything, but I do have a friend who is! She shares all of this date goodness with me frequently. I have visited a few sites for mega fans of the series and found some interesting topics, but I'm not nuts about it.

I have never been a member of a book club. I think that I would like too, though. As long as I found a group that had the same interests as I do. I don't like a ton of non-fiction (though some is ok) and I love to read for pleasure. I don't want to learn a bunch of heavy stuff, unless it is mixed in with fiction (like historical fiction, which I happen to LOVE)!

I am not up for organizing my own book club, but in case you are, here is a site that has some pretty comprehensive information on doing so. There is even information there about online book clubs, which seems like a convenient option, but may not give you the social outlet if that is partly what you are looking for.

I wouldn't mind needing to read certain books by certain dates...I don't think that would take much of the fun of reading away from me, but I do think that it would be vital to share common reading interests with the rest of the group. It wouldn't work for me otherwise.

Have you guys participated in book clubs? Were they a great experience, or not so much?