Monday 27 May 2013

It's Monday, what are you reading? 27 May 2013


It's been a busy few months! I started a new job, got engaged and are now planning a wedding and we're looking to buy our first home! On top of that my sister and my best friend are both pregnant with their first children and are due in the next two months. Wow so much going on! No wonder the blog hasn't seen a lot of attention lately. Well we'll have to rectify that now won't we?!

I've had two baby showers in the last month and I had the pleasure of organsing my best friend E's baby shower (along with my very talented other best friend H). E loves books as much as I do so H and I decided that a children's themed baby shower was the perfect way to go. And she had already been gifted so many generous things from family and friends that she was a little nervous about where she would put more gifts so we asked everyone to bring their favourite childhood book for the baby instead. It was a huge hit. All the food was book themed and H did an incredible job making the labels; we had green eggs and ham, charlie and the chocolate factory sweets, alice in wonderland mushroom lollies, the very hungry caterpillar platter full or fruit, cheese, salami and other goodies, peter rabbit carrots and dip and some others too.





The most fun thing was we made a very hungry caterpillar cupcake cake. I made the green cupcakes and H made the head and legs. We were so pleased with how it came out! So if you're ever stuck with an idea for a baby shower or kids party theme I can certainly recommend it, everyone seemed to love the idea.


Our present to her was a nappy cake. I'd never made one before but H had so we thought it'd be a bit of fun. We decided we wanted to work it in with the theme so after searching online I found an example of a couch made out of nappies so we thought we could definitely do something with that. In the end we made a three tier nappy cake and the top tier was a chair with a little soft toy reading a book on it. We were so pleased at how it turned out. The whole thing was made from nappies, wraps, cloths, blankets, baby clothes and a whole lot of rubber bands! To top it off E and her husband have decided to wait to find out the sex of their baby so we had to go with gender neutral colours. Yellow is E's favourite colour so it was mainly yellow, mint green, aqua and grey.




Ok so on to books. I haven't been reading too much sadly because things have been so busy. But this month's theme at my library book club was Country Life, so I decided to pick up and read The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck). It's incredibly descriptive and is the kind of book that you really want to delve into for big chunks of time so progress is a little slow but I am really enjoying it.

New books I have acquired include Look at Me (Jennifer Egan), A Spot of Bother (Mark Haddon) and for something  a little different The Lincoln Lawyer (Michael Connelly). I haven't read any crime books in a very long time but I just felt like something a little different to my usual. 

I also received a review copy of The Ghosts That Come Between Us (Bulbul Bahuguna) so that will be the next book I pick up.

In other fun news I went to my book club at the local library and got a nice little surprise when I showed up, turned out they had an author speaking. Katie Fforde was touring Australia and New Zealand and we had the pleasure of having her speak at our local library. I have to admit I haven't read any of her books however I have no doubt I will over the years, I love a bit of light chick-lit here and there and I've spotted her books around. She is such a nice person and was very funny and really interesting to listen to so if you ever get a chance to hear her speak I can highly recommend you go.

It's Monday. What are you Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Book Journey