learn how to use your DSLR.

I love photography. It is definitely my true calling. One I have been ignoring for years and years because I just can't stand that everyone with a camera is becoming a photographer these days. I'll just keep taking photos of my best friend's baby and my all of my brother's weddings (he's had 2 so far, I have photographed both - I wish I was kidding) and call it a day.

I recently received the ahhhmazing Art of Everyday Photography: Move Toward Manual and Make Creative Photos by Susan Tuttle and she basically just taught me how to use all of my Rebel "scene modes" which I have never really figured out even though I've had the camera for over a year. Thanks girl, that was a big help. Moving on to lenses. My Rebel can use multiple lenses, but I still use the one it came with because I am cheap and extremely ordinary. Well Tuttle has really opened my eyes in this book by sharing her own personal photos while also including the lens she used, along with the focal length, ISO, aperture and shutter speed settings. With the right DSLR camera, you can shoot photos just as fabulous as hers, and it's so easy! Like, I never realized how easy until I read this book. Tuttle even shares her favorite apps so you can create amazing photographs on your smart phone. This lady is speaking all of my languages.

for the parent, teacher, poet, and reader.

Dear Wandering Wildebeest: And Other Poems from the Water Hole by Irene Latham is EXACTLY the kind of children's book I want my future little ones to read. It is SO good, unlike any other collection of children's poems I have ever read kind of good. The poems are rather deep for a K-4 picture book revolving around animals in the wild, and are written in both free verse and rhyme. The giraffes for instance have a poem describing thirst with such imagery, I felt my own tongue swelling and in need for a drink of water. What a wonderful way to teach children about imagery and to expand their vocabulary. The zebras and rhinos have their share of whimsical poetry as well. This is an elementary teacher's DREAM book.

gone girl though...

OMG Gone Girl. I only just read it (snatched up a mass paperback from Target for 8 bucks, worth every penny). Sometimes it takes a bestseller becoming a movie to finally get me to sit down and read it. What a fricken ride, which I can't really tell you about because it will totally give everything away and ruin your lives. But WHOA. Okay, okay, let me digress...

Nick Dunne and Amy Elliott were two New York City writers who met, fell in love, and did what most of us do when we first get into a relationship, don't act anything like our real selves. Oh you know you've done it. You live to impress in a new relationship. You become "cool boy" or "cool girl" - whoever that person wants you to be, you are. Well after a couple years of marriage their true colors started to show and their marriage hit some bumps. They lost their jobs, got a little broke, moved to Nick's hometown in Missouri to take care of his ailing parents, stopped loving each other, etc. On the day of their fifth wedding anniversary (on July FIFTH, ahem that's MY wedding anniversary, creepy) Amy disappears leaving signs of struggle that seem to be a little staged and a husband who has a dirty secret making him look super guilty. And I am SO sorry but I can't say anything else. It will be too spoily and I assure you, will ruin your life. But you have got to read the novel because it is unreal.

the story that never ends.

I had a FABULOUS week at the beach with my mom. We spent the week doing whatever we wanted, me on the beach or at the pool reading for hours in the sun, her on the hotel room balcony working. It was like going on vacation by myself only I had someone to eat breakfast and dinner with. What a dream.

The first book I read was Christopher's Diary: Secrets of Foxworth which, as an avid Dollanganger Series reader, I was super excited about. I know V.C. Andrews has been dead for some time, but I still love whoever the fake V.C. Andrews is. Here's a background on this perspective of what happened to the flowers in the attic. It's set in modern day, our main character is a teenage distant relative of the Foxworth's named Kristin Masterwood, who lives with her widowed father in Virginia, close to the old Foxworth mansion which has now been abandoned. Her father is a contractor and has been asked to demolish the rest of the mansion (which burned down for a second time), so that someone can hopefully buy up the land and rebuild. On the site, Kristin discovers Christopher's diary, his account of the years their father was alive and the time him and his siblings spent in the attic. Kristin's father doesn't really want her to read the diary because of all the horrible rumors that revolve around this story, he's super touchy about the subject because of his late wife (who was the one related to the Foxworth's) but since Kristin is close to seventeen, he doesn't forbid it and off she goes. Kristin gets so absorbed in Christopher's story (which we get to see lots of entries of along the way) that it starts to affect her real life. She rushes through homework to get back to reading, she avoids friends to get back to reading. She becomes a little obsessed with Christopher and his family. The book ends after only two months in attic, and hopefully the next book picks up right where this one left off because I'm intrigued, and fake V.C Andrews only just started getting to the good stuff.

a chilly day, a chilly novel.

Today's our last day at the beach and it's a little chilly (just like the novel I am starting, Gone Girl, brrr). Don't worry, I'm making the best of it.

 

what i'm working on...

summer and sun and all things hot.

I am in Myrtle Beach this week with my mama for our annual mother/daughter girls trip. We haven't been to the beach in about a year and a half, and it was long, long overdue! Since it still feels like summer from where I'm sitting, I am going to review one of the sweetest novels of the summer titled Butternut Summer by Mary McNear.

Butternut Summer is the second installment in McNear's series (the first being Up at Butternut Lake  which you don't necessarily have to read to enjoy this novel). Caroline's ex-husband Jack who unceremoniously left her and her daughter, Daisy is back in Butternut Lake, hoping to rekindle the flame, claiming he is a changed man. Caroline has her doubts but she is a little caught up with financial issues and Daisy running around with a mechanic who has a seedy history (and in my opinion the best people do) to really give Jack and his changed man speech much thought.

Despite Caroline's attitude and inability to believe that people can change, It is so, so sweet watching Daisy and Will fall in love. Even watching Caroline and Jack figure out where they stand warms the heart. It's all rather predictable, but that's what I'm looking for in a breezy summer romance novel.