By HappyDappyBits on Etsy

Happy Valentine’s Day!

We picked up out first set of moving boxes this afternoon and packed our first boxes. We also had date night tonight and watched Jurassic Park 3 [we wanted to watch the whole trilogy!] and had bad food. The bad food included guacamole with chips, brussel sprouts and cheese sticks with red sauce. So not really good for you and not really bad for you. We need to spend some time together before really starting the moving process I think.

Right after we finished the movie we packed up six super big heavy boxes full of books, things on shelves and videogames. Tomorrow we’ll get more boxes and continue on. Right now we’re planning on have everything packed up and staged by the end of the week so we can take next week pretty easy to lower our stress.

Got any great moving advice?

Lentils from The Stone Soup

Things have been so busy lately – we’re moving before the end of a month to a bigger place! It’s all pretty sudden and we’ll find our more tomorrow since the final part of our application is getting completed tomorrow. Yay! That being said doing these Menu Plan Mondays will become even more important since we’ll be on a pretty tight budget! It’s a busy week planned with not only getting things into boxes but an overflowing work week and even a doctor visit. We’re hoping that it will all even out after the move.

What we’re having

• Big Vegan Salad – greens, roasted nuts, avocado with a homemade sherry vinaigrette
• Spaghetti with wheatballs [bought from the store!] and a simple green salad
• Roasted Mushrooms, rice and steamed veggies [freezer section at the store] and Wilted Greens with Parmesan - I’ll have real parmesan and he’ll have vegan parmesan
• Homemade baked beans with a simple green salad
• Either Pesto Cauliflower or Black Pepper Tofu with Cauliflower depending on our mood

Breakfasts & Lunches

• He’ll be having bagels and tofu cream chez for breakfast
• I’ll be having hard boiled eggs and steamed veggies for breakfast
• Lunches are leftovers
• A kitchen sink soup
• Winter Roasted Vegetables and Versatile Lentils

Not as frugal as it could be but since I’ll be working extra hours and have to see the doctor there’s not really time for more. It should be good though.

What are you making this week?

What I Thought

This is Maria V. Snyder’s second series in the same world and the characters from the first series are well established and some continue on in this series – so be aware! Start with her Study Series then move to this one – that’s a fantastic series and why I even decided to start on this series.

I actually really liked this book even thought I guessed what was going to happen most of the way through the book. The setting of this story are the kingdoms of Sitia and Ixia – naturally two polar opposites when it comes to magic use. Sitia embraces it and Ixia loathes it. The characters and how they were portrayed was decent if not a little frustrating. At times they seems a little flat or slow.

Even with the minimal funkiness the rest was really good. The theme of grief and loss play heavy into most of this book and Snyder manages to not have it be melancholy.  My favorite quote from the book is actually about grief:

Everyone grieves in different ways. For some, it could take longer or shorter. I do know it never disappears. An ember still smolders inside me. Most days, I don’t notice it, but, out of the blue, it’ll flare to life. — Opal Cowan

I think that another centeral theme to this story was confidence and trusting in your abilities. The protagonist, Opal, spends most of the book hemming and hawing about how she’s only a one note magician and that she’s not special at all while every other character in the book is telling her that she’s something special. It does get old quick but I think that it was necessary and I think that theme will continue on into the next book in the series.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I’ve also gone through all of the old posts and updated them as well as getting a new Archive working properly, updating my About page and adding in a Quote page with some of my favorite lines from the books I read.

This week on DE expect:

• Book reviews!
• Recipe post
• Plus more MPM posts!

What do you think?