I loved this book. Alex ( main character ) is an unlikely Southern Belle by default only. She was raised on a commune by her herbalist mom and has led a very unSouthern and unladylike life. She has a head full of dreads and a bit of a chubby body. She has never been shopping  since all of her vintage tees and other clothes come from a communal closet at the commune.

Suddenly her mom dies and she is swept off to her Grandmother’s mansion. Her grandmother is young looking, vibrant, wealthy and the head of a group of women called The Magnolia League. Miss Lee (her grandmother) wants Alex to make her debut and take her place next to her as the next head of the Magnolia League.  Miss Lee presides over all the other young looking sweet tea sipping ladies and prepares Alex for the infamous Magnolia League Debutante Ball.


Alex is not sure that this is what she wants to do. She is irreverent and in the beginning does not take this whole thing very seriously. Slowly, as she is sort of overwhelmed by her grandmother and two other Magnolias…Hayes and Madison…she protests less and less. Alex is sort of an earth child. She wants to recycle and ride her bike to school and be less of a consumer. But sneaky little spells are cast all around her and strange things begin to happen. She begins to learn about hoodoo…yep…I said hoodoo…and soon her dreads are shaved off and instantly replaced by a head full of amazing hair. She loses twenty pounds in a month due to a bracelet she wears that causes her calories to be burned up by a bird doppelganger and she tries to buy a spell to make a boy like her. And with all of this going on she tries to understand why her mom ran away from her grandmother and what the hoodoo people…The Sullivan’s…have to do with all of this.


I did really love this book. I have read Katie Crouch’s books before and she writes beautifully and with much skill. I still can’t tell if this book is strictly YA or a sort of hybrid. But it was yummy!!! It ended with a (sigh) question so it has the feel of a series.

Another Rain Filled Day...

I love this...whatever it is!!!

It is in our entry way.

Above it is a chandelier.

I love the chandelier.

I hate the chandelier.

We don't know how to clean the glass in the chandelier.

It is way too high up there.

I don't think there is a ladder that high.

We have tried to pay people to clean it but so far...no one really wants to.

It is my dilemma.

Lucky for us none of the bulbs have ever burned out.

But...

now that I have said this out loud and in print...that just might happen.

Now for the white thing...

My husband bought this for me from my favorite store.  It was handmade by a craftsman who gathers doors and porch railings and knobs and kitchen shelves from old houses and then arranges them all together into pieces that look like the one above.

I don't even know what to call it but I love it.

I think that it must look not pretty to some people.

But I still love it.

I have family photos all over it so that every time I walk by I see my mom and dad and my sister and my brothers and my beloved pets.

Do you think it should be called a hutch or a curio cabinet?  Or just a quirky artistic sort of weird thing.

I also love anything painted white and I love old things.

I love wondering about all the different places all the pieces of my white thing came from.  A farmer's wife leaning on her wooden front porch railing or a child home from school slamming a cupboard door looking for cookies...all of these are in my white thing.

I really do love my white thing.

Can you see the door in my white thing?

I love the carved feathers, too.

Cookie Madness's No Fail Pan Cookies...a family fave!!!

I don't know if you are familiar with a blog called Cookie Madness.  I have been following her for years.  The most amazing cookies come out of her kitchen.  She posts new recipes all of the time and it is my go to blog for something sweet.  We do not often eat sweet things in our house so when we do it has to be yummy and quick...I love quick.  I don't like making actual cookies but I love a chewy crisp cookie like treat.  That is where this bar/cookie comes into play.

Sunday...

This cookie was much needed on Sunday.

My husband had a hectic travel week and we just wanted to chill out on Sunday...play with our toys...our Kindles, our iPADs, and our laptops.

I was in a Sunday Cooking Frenzy.

I made breakfast...turkey sausages and eggs.

I made lunch...Pioneer Woman's Beef and Noodle Bowl.

I made dinner...Pioneer Woman's Oven Barbecued Chicken.

Yum to the above.

Then I made these cookie/bar things.

Double yum.

I had no chocolate chips so I broke apart any chocolate candy that I could find.  I used Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Ghiradelli chocolates and even some Godiva's.

I threw in organic walnuts for good measure and for good health...hee hee hee.

I tossed in organic oats.

How could these be bad?

They were amazing.

They still are...munch.

You should seriously try them.

Don't thank me.  Thank Cookie Madness.

I Am Loving This Heat Wave...

I am absolutely positive that I am incapable of writing a summer novel. I am also absolutely positive that Nancy Thayer can. And…she does it with skill, knowledge and just the right amount of juicy bits.

Heat Wave is this summer’s Nancy Thayer novel. I was able to get a copy from Amazon Vine. The true start of summer for me is accumulating great summer books from authors like Nancy Thayer and Claire Cook and Jane Green.

I eat them up like candy. Give me a Nantucket or Maine or Cape Cod setting and some families with issues and I am glued to my book. Add a B & B setting and some friends and some rigid in-laws and an itty bitty bit of infidelity…this says winner to me.

Oh…and you can’t forget the tea and muffins…people in this book are forever baking and munching. But…they live in Nantucket and walk everywhere so the calories never hurt anyone as far as I could tell…

In a nutshell…Carley and Maud and Vanessa are three great friends who live on the island. Their families are close, their lives are intertwined and everyone is happy. Then a husband dies suddenly, an affair is made known and the three friends are no longer close.

The rest of the book is about recovery and growth and pain and love. All of this is in a luscious Nantucket setting.

I sort of could not put it down. I love Nancy Thayer’s knowledge of Nantucket and I love that she writes about real places there. I googled them.

This was a lovely fun book. It was never slow for me. I felt the issues that Carley and Maud and Vanessa faced were real ones. The juicy bits were not even graphic…you could almost rate this book G.

Sort of.

If you just want to read about real friends that could be yours or mine…this summer book is a great one.



I Love And Don't Love Monday's!!!

I love Mailbox Monday...I love reading all of the posts of all of the exciting and new and delicious books that everyone is reading. 

I am more interested in finding out what other people received than in noticing my own.  I buy books all of the time.  I get books in the mail from publishers and authors and Amazon.  It is fun and exciting and I love and appreciate it but I have an insatiable need to know what you are getting in the mail.   

I think I am a Mailbox Monday Lurker!!!

I am sorry!!!

But I love knowing what you are reading.

Do you mind?

That is what I love about Monday.

 

Here is what I hate about Monday.

I feel compelled to clean our house on Monday...really thoroughly.

It is exhausting.

And my thorough is not even really thorough.

Last Monday my idea of thorough was wiping down with Pine Sol anything I could reach.

I should add that I am not that tall.

Oh well.

Happy Monday everyone!!!

We Have The Sunday Lazies...

The weather is undecisive here today.  Yesterday it was chilly and today we expected rain all day long and it has been alternating between sun and clouds so the minute we want to go out it gets cloudy.

I just had a keratin treatment for my hair.  These are yummy and divine and if you tend to have hair that might be a bit wavy or fuzzy from humidity...keratin is such a wonderful thing.  My hair will dry the way I want it to without using tons of heat and a flat iron.  It will not get those fuzzy wisps.  I spend less time on it and love the way it looks but...

I am rambling.

Sorry.

The only weird thing about getting keratin is that you cannot get your head wet.  You can't put a shower cap on because that might get humidity on your hair.

You can not put a clip in it or a ponytail for at least three days.

You have to take a bath while your husband holds up your hair.

I know.

But my mom always told me that to be beautiful you must suffer.

The most I can aim for is cute.

I follow my stylist's instructions.  My hair has made me crazy since Thursday. But after this curing process...I will love it. I am like a clay pot right now...curing.

This is the third time I have done this treatment.  The more you do it the first year the more it builds up in your hair.

You will have the hair of your youth.

If that is what you want.

Right now...I have long kinda dirty hair.

Not a good look for me.

Do you live by any beauty tricks your mom taught you?

My mom also swore by Noxema.

This is not my hair but it is almost mine and this is the difference.