Categories
Everything Else

I found this on Alethea’s blog and thought it was cool. It’ll also be a good list for me to have for “good” books that I still need to read. I guess 37 out of 100 isn’t too bad.

Here’s how it works:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read – I skipped this
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE –
4) Reprint this list in your blog

The premise of this exercise is that the National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below. However, there’s no such list on that website, that I can find. *shrug* Either way, here goes…

Bold & Purple means I read it and loved it
Black & Bold means I read it
Bold font & red means I haven’t read it.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen (not sure if I’ve read this)
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte (not sure if I’ve read it)
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible (not all most some)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 1984 – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh (want to)
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden (want to)
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon (want to)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams –
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Categories
Food

Strawberry Margarita Cupcakes

I found this recipe online (I can’t recall where) and finally found somewhere to make them for. This week I took them to our Chi O Alum Dinner Club then shared the leftovers with co-workers. I admit they were really good! Thought I’d share the recipe with the blogging world.
Margarita Cupcakes
Ingredients
1 package (18.25 oz. white cake mix (no pudding in the mix)
1 can (10 oz.) frozen Margarita mix, thawed (undiluted) (I used strawberry) 
3 egg whites
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon grated lime zest 
Directions
Preheat oven to 350° F.
Line standard muffin pan with baking cups.
In large bowl, combine cake mix, Margarita mix, egg whites and vegetable oil using electric mixer.
Stir in lime zest; mix completely.
Fill prepared pans 2/3 full.
Bake 22-24 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center of cupcake comes out clean. Cool in pan on cooling rack 5-8 minutes.
Remove cupcakes from pan; cool completely. Frost cooled cupcakes with icing and garnish, if desired, with a strawberry and/or lime twist. Yield: Makes 24 cupcakes.
 
Key Lime Cream Cheese Icing
Ingredients
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 package (8 oz.) cream cheese, softened
2 tablespoons key lime juice
1 teaspoon key lime zest or lemon zest
4-5 cups confectioners’ sugar
Directions
In large bowl, cream butter, cream cheese, juice and zest with electric mixer until light and fluffy.
Add 4 cups confectioners’ sugar, one cup at a time; continue beating until light and fluffy.
If icing is too thin add additional confectioners’ sugar 1 tablespoon at a time. Makes about 3 cups icing.
Categories
Food

banana bread

I was in a baking mood tonight! I was making the Blueberry Cake to take to work tomorrow and I found this recipe that I’d saved and had all the ingredients so I decided to test it out too. I’ll add a few pictures and yumminess info soon.

Easy Banana Nut Bread
Ingredients
3 eggs
½ cup margarine, melted
3 ripe bananas, mashed
½ cup water
1 Tbsp. vanilla
1 package yellow cake mix
1 cup chopped pecans (I used 1/2 cup b/c DH & I don’t love a lot of nuts in our banana bread)

Directions

Combine eggs, margarine, bananas, water and vanilla in large bowl—mix thoroughly. Stir in cake mix and beat well. Stir in nuts. Pour into a greased and flowered 10 inch tube or bundt pan (I used 2 loaf pans). Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes or until golden brown.

Categories
Travel

I’m Back. GA trip

Sorry I’ve been MIA on the blog recently. We were having much fun in the sun at Ocean Isle til last Sunday. Then it was a quick & busy 3 days of work then Jason & I left for my work claims conference in Atlanta. I’d never been there since I was really little. We stayed in Buckhead and we were able to just hang out together, window shop at Phipps Plaza & Lenox Mall, run around Six Flags, attend some kinda boring meetings & eat way too much yummy food. Here’s a picture of us at our new favorite restaurant down there (Dante’s Down the Hatch). Our table was actually in an old elevator and it overlooked the ship (& the moat with 3 real alligators!!)I also enjoyed my first time at The Varsity. Oh and I’d recommend the Tavern at Phipps as well~ my chicken caesar sandwich there kicked booty! Thanks so much to nestie Jules_NC for the fabulous restaurant recommendations.
After Atlanta, we were able to stop by and visit with Jason’s family from Sat afternoon to Sunday. His mom’s dad’s side of the family had a family reunion on Sunday. There were around 100 people there~that’s just Jason’s aunts & uncles, his cousins & their kids. It was pretty cool. I was able to meet more of his cousins & uncles and also spend more time with the ones I’d met at the wedding. My extended family is so much smaller in comparison. I’m not sure I have all the names down yet, but I’ll get it some day!

Categories
Family/Travel

OIB

We’re off to one of my favorite places in the world for the long weekend. I’m looking forward to a weekend of yummy seafood, doing a little shopping, laying out, Wii bowling with the family, watching a few fireworks, reading a few magazines & probably finishing Outlander, which I’m really enjoying once you get used to reading the Scottish accents. Hope everyone (anyone reading this?) has a safe & happy 4th!