March 2025 Memories

It’s been a month of fighting technology, so I didn’t want to start this, gonna be honest. I’ve been feeling rather discouraged with how everything has been acting behind the scenes.

(there are affiliate links in the form of many books and a few games)

Week 1

I started off March with a book release. My friend Stephen, the founder of Lorehaven, released his debut novel, and I attended the book release party. It was a lot of fun, and afterward we went to Chic Fil A and had dinner. This is the first time we’ve gotten together that we remembered to actually take a picture, usually afterward, we say something like, “We forgot to get a picture of everyone,” so as I was heading out I insisted on a picture. As awkward as it looks.

The big picture is my new dress I finished. I’ve been fiddling with it for months, and it’s still not completely how I’d like it, but I love all of the swoosh it has, and how much fun I had figuring out the odds and ends of adapting the original pattern to what I wanted. I wish I’d managed to get the sleeves a little more poofy for what I wanted, and just a hair longer, that’s the whole reason there’s lace, because I never got them the right length, but otherwise I like the length.

I’ve been working a bunch on cleaning, and that top middle picture is the giant ball of muck I pulled out of the family room carpet with the new carpet cleaner. Which is rather terrifying to contemplate.

Then I have been working on cleaning out the dining room, and getting it better organized and generally clean. I decided to empty out the cordenza and rearrange everything in there, which then got me thinking, “I should get all of the horses in the kitchen dusted,” and suddenly I’m sitting on top of the refrigerator 2 hours before we have guests coming over as I’m finishing cleaning it up.

It was not the best of plans. But it was A PLAN. End result, everything in those locations are freshly dusted, and freshly cleaned, and looks great.

However, 4 days later I did discover one of the horses sitting in my cabinet in a bowl for unknown reasons.

Books read:

• Husband Auditions– I won this from a book reading challenge. I got to choose from the books people had read as part of the competition, but over half of the books read in the competition were by me… So, this was the one I picked, and it’s a cute book. I enjoyed it.
• A Noble Friend– A Bluebeard retelling, I am very indifferent to this book, I usually really enjoy this author’s books, but this one was rather blah
• The Scarlet Rose– Beauty and the Beast meets the Russian mafia, I quite enjoyed this and it worked really well, I’ll probably slowly pick up this author’s other books
• Guard in the Garden– a cozy fantasy written for men, a soldier who is forced to retire and now has to become a guard and his slow recovery over a year. I adore this book, and my summary is not doing it justice

Games played:

I didn’t take pictures, and I’m writing this on March 24, so that tells you what is going on.

Oh! And the craft up there is for the Feeding of the 5000 basket craft, which was popular with the kids.

Week 2

Here is the final picture of the cordenza, sadly with the random bin of craft supplies put in the picture. But I love how it looks now, and hopefully, I’ll do better at keeping it all cleared off.

Top middle picture is a cool new math curriculum that I’m about to review. I can’t wait to dig in and write all about it. My friend heard I’m reviewing Learn Math Fast and started raving about it, which got me even more excited for it.

Right before the kids got back, I went to see Seussical with my sister-in-law and her kids, which was a lot of fun.

The kids’ request for food when they came back was soup and bread, so I tried to make a bread bowls, which as I was mixing the dough the mixer fell apart (top right picture).

It took a bit of work, but we fixed the mixer and put it all together, which is good because the the Artist had all sorts of cooking she wanted to do.

As Superman got home I played Bloodbourne with him.

Books read:

• Where Darkness Dwells– an epic fantasy book, and I need to get the next book to see my final thoughts
• Her Forgotten Sea– Regency fairy tale retelling of the Little Mermaid, it was an interesting take, she completely loses her memory of the sea, and unlike most Little Mermaid retellings I liked that
• The Beast’s Magician– The second book of the Regency fairy tale retellings, the author had a sale of her books, so I bought up most of her books while they were super on sale. While I really enjoy them, I don’t think I would buy them full price because they are fairly short, 150 pages or less, and I can’t see paying $5 for a book that long.
• Her Cursed Apple– the Snow White from this series, which was a really fun take on this tale, with how short they were the pacing is very fast, and they are all charming
• Her Enchanted Tower– Rapunzel, this was an amusing different version for the story.
• Her Accidental Frog– The Frog Prince, the last several books are much more obviously intertwined where the characters are more obviously referring back and forth to each other. I also probably read some of these next week, but I was on a roll looking them up. And I still need to put them on my Goodreads
• Game Changer- this was a betaread, so it’s not on Amazon or anything yet, but it’s book 2 in a series, and was a fun read for me to see the next generation of characters in a world I love.

Games played:

• Bloodbourne– it’s a cooperative role-play board game, and we successfully played through our scenario, unlike when we played at Christmas

Week 3

Okay, this week is going to be really random.

Let me attempt to tell this in order of what happened.

Which is starting on the bottom.

We had, Superman’s kung fu teacher, and now friend, it’s interesting making that transition as he grows up. But he came over and we had dinner together and played games all night long.

Then our craft for the week was making a tree for Zaccheus to climb up. The kids had fun designing the outfit for Zaccheus to wear.

Okay, that bottom left picture. That is a funny story. Batman is now deployed overseas. All we knew it was somewhere in Europe. He didn’t really know, he could probably find out, but he didn’t bother, and so we kept asking him, and so he gets there and texts us he is 7 hours ahead of us, but still won’t answer where he is. Then 4 days later we just suddenly get a text with this picture, no location, no words, just a picture. Then after a couple more texts, we finally get a location. So, I now have a country, which I’m not saying, just in case that is important.

While the college kids were home for Spring Break, I went on a hike with Superman, and then played some board games with him. The Artist had friends over for a tea party. Leezard tried her best to eat Superman’s birthday cake, which is why it looks so funny, and then while everyone was outside, she ate even more cake, but that happened on Friday, let me go back to that top picture, which happened on Thursday.

Thursday, I went to the Chosen World Premiere with Sean. He texted me a week or so earlier asking if I wanted to go to the Red Carpet with him, and the answer was of course yes. And it was insane, I need to sit down and write out that entire story so I remember it well, because it was quite fun, actually, I’m going to print off those pictures and do that later today. Here are a couple of the highlights: I got to interview Jonathan Roumie (Jesus), Sean used several of my questions when interviewing cast members, we were in the same theater as the cast for watching it, just the entire experience, I got to interview the actor for Goliath in the House of David show. It was so much fun. We got home so late, but man that experience was a blast.

Books read:

• Night of Dance– a Cinderella retelling, I am totally putting these up not in the order I read them (I actually read this after all of the other books listed so far, but it’s the 2nd books in the series)
• Meetings and Mayhem- an author I read said she and a bunch of authors put together this short story collection of meet-cutes, and then if you sign up for their newsletters you got a slew of free novels or novellas, and that got me all sorts of things to read, which worked out well because I had a migraine a couple of days recently and all I could do was lay in bed and try not to throw up from the pain
• Songs and Spun Gold– Rumpletstiltskin and Phantom of the Opera smashed together as a story, but it’s part 1, it worked surprisingly well, but I didn’t realize it was a part 1, so I got to the end, and it was a satisfying ending, but I had to go buy the next one to get the final solution
• Spirits and Pacts– part 2 of this book and it all ends quite well, and it introduces the character who will be the main character for the next book in the series (which I had already read, because that was the characters in the meet-cute in Meetings and Mayhem, and you can read this out of order)
• Arrows and Gems– It claims to be a Robin Hood and Snow White and Rose Red retelling. I see the Robin Hood, but I don’t see the Snow White and Rose Red part. Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed the series and how the characters developed through the book
• A slew of short stories related to this series that were part of the newsletter sign up that are various scenes related to these stories

Games Played:

• Commissioned- I finally played some of the other scenarios beyond the starting one and that was really fun, sadly they are out of business, so I can’t link to the game
• Doomlings– a fun game, but probably not one our family would enjoy super a lot because the play style can encourage being mean
• Smash Up– We played this with Superman’s kung fu teacher, and it was fun to see his reaction to the game
• probably another game, but I don’t remember

Week 4

I was looking at my pictures and realized that almost half of the pictures I took for this week were to text to someone to annoy them. Thus, you get a very small image of the Minecraft movie poster that I took to text to my kids who think it looks absolutely horrible. Ever since they saw the first trailer, they have been quoting to each other, “Ever since I was a kid, I have yearned for the mines.”

This is accompanied by eye rolls. Massive eye rolls. I also took a picture of the novelty Snow White popcorn tin to text to my brother with comments that I don’t think they will have many people purchasing that one. He’s had many people accusing him of being a shill because in his review, he said the movie wasn’t terrible, but not great. Basically, his 6-year-old daughter enjoyed it, his 13-year-old son thought it was horrible, and his 11-year-old daughter thought it was fun enough. So, nothing to write home about, but not something that should have cost over 250 million dollars.

He responded with eye rolls. It is obviously necessary to annoy your little brother even if you are a grown adult.

I’ve finally started seeing bluebonnets, which makes me happy. I’ve threatened to make the college students take pictures with me when they come home for Easter. They are not happy about this.

I’ve been working on making some bath mats for my bathroom and finished the first one. I’ve been taking some older towles that were becoming somewhat ragged and turning them into strips and then weaving them together. Then I sewed them onto another mat, so it’s like three layers of terry cloth all sewn together in the end. I think it looks pretty cool. I do think I want the next one to be a little bigger, but this first one will work quite well to sit in front of my sink for somewhere softer to stand while I’m brushing my teeth each day.

Jeff and I played the Oregon Trail game a couple of times this week, and both times, we died horrible deaths. Jeff was reminded why there are so many jokes about dying on the Oregon Trail and dying of dysentery.

I grabbed a couple of little flowers I found in the grass, and I’m currently drying them hoping to tape them into my notebook for a bit of fun little silliness.

So, that was my March. I’m typing this last week up on April 1, and now I need to get the books I read written down:

Books read:

• Fake Dating a Human– the final book in the High Court of the Coffee Bean, and I thoroughly enjoyed the ending of the series.
• Ties of Bargains– in the same world as the Court of Midsummer books, but a different series of thematic books, I enjoyed this one, and have realized I have read many of the books this one is related to, but not quite all of them. At some point I should pick up the missing books in the series
• Cursed for Keeps– book 2 in a fairy tale retelling series that is kind of independent but also kind of not. I’ve come to the conclusion, her series are very much books that you cannot pick up after book 1 without feeling slightly confused. I had read book 1 ages ago, but hadn’t remember the specific details. It also doesn’t help that she has several different series that are sometimes in the same world at different time periods, and in this case I think it’s a different world, but the magic might be similar? I don’t know, once I went back and read book 1, I enjoyed that part. Though, I need to add that into my Goodreads. I’m trying to actually have all of that up to date this year. It is SOOO Hard.
• Midnight for a Curse– which sounds like it should be a Cinderella story, but is actually a Beauty and the Beast story, and I like this better than the previous one which is Snow White
• Of Curses and Hearts– is a Princess and the Pea retelling and is a bit more of a humorous retelling, and I like it, but it’s probably is the weakest. So I guess, the series just goes down in my preference from book 1 down

Games played:

• Oregon Trail
• Unlocked Nautilus– this is an escape room card game, and Jeff and I “played” this last night and were rather indifferent to this and decided we really didn’t enjoy this one that much