Here is a round-up of beauty products that have caught my eye lately... As I shared earlier, I am loving Root make-up. I want to try their sleep serum, pretty booster, and lemon drop eye shadow next. This bronzer... This blush... Retinol cream... Have any of you tried cleansing water? PFB Vanish... Magical foot cream? This is my new favorite tinted moisturizer, but I'm due for a refill. ... Read more
Carefully considering how to restructure and redesign my blog... Eagerly anticipating the arrival of Baby Russum #2. I am so excited to snuggle a sleepy baby during church again... Patiently trying to teach Zianne words, boundaries, and manners. Parenting is so fun and tough at the same time... Quickly trying to get our house cleaned out and prepped for the arrival of a new human... Slowly watching the words on my dissertation add up. The days are grueling, but I love seeing progress when I look back over multiple weeks... Happily knocking out fun goals like reading for fun and making time for dates... ... Read more
Better late than never, right? Here is my book report for the second half of 2014 - the year I finally achieved my goal of reading 12 books for fun! You can see the first book report of 2014 here. {via} Never Let Me Go - This was the book. By far my favorite on the list. It was haunting and intriguing and sad and beautiful. I don't want to give anything away, but I think it's a must read. Kazuo Ishiguro, also wrote The Remains of the Day, which is one of my all-time favorites. Heaven is for Real - So I got around to reading this book about four years after the rest of the population. There were no surprises in the plot for me, since I had heard so many people talk about and debate the book prior to reading it. If it made some people curious about the Lord, then great. I trust that heaven is going to amazing because Jesus says so in the Bible, and I have never felt the need to try to imagine what it's like, so the book was just okay to me. Warm Bodies - My first {and last?} vampire story. It was okay. I think vampire story lines are weird. The Night Circus - After starting this book multiple times over the past few years I finally finished it. Once I got about a third of the way through it, I got pretty hooked, but I can't rave about it as much as other people do, because it should NOT take that many attempts to get into a plot. Also, the ending was weird. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - This was my first Agatha Christie mystery and I really enjoyed it. It was a fun read, the characters were interesting, and the ending will throw you for a loop. I will probably read more of Christie's books in the future. When You Reach Me - I closed out the year with this young adult novel. It won the Newbery Award in 2010. I thought this was a cute story. The characters were likable and the plot was a bit suspenseful. I'd place it in a category with From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Harriet the Spy, as a fun novel about children growing up in New York City. Amazon.com Widgets ... Read more