Archives - Weekly Update

I am writing from a lawn chair on my deck. This is the first nice day we have seen all week and I am soaking it up. I am ready for a long weekend. My reading pile has ROCOCO by Adriana Trigiani (coming out June 21st), THE UNDOMESTIC GODDESS by Sophie Kinsella (coming out July 19th) and A GOOD YARN by Debbie Macomber, which is in stores now. I am going to be cooking recipes from the cookbook that Linda Greenlaw wrote with her mom called RECIPES FROM A VERY SMALL ISLAND (coming out July 6th; for more about it, go to FishingWithLinda.net). That's my plan. Crack those lobsters.

I love summer and I always seem to read more this time of year. The last few summers there have been really slim pickings on what I call "Beach Reads." This year that's not the case. We read a lot of summer books these last few months and got inspired to created a Summer Beach Bag of Books feature. But we did not stop there. We added a contest where EACH week we will spotlight a title with very cool beach bag prizes. Read on for more about all fourteen titles and how you can win our HISSY FIT Beach Bag this week. Many thanks to Shannon McKenna and Joni Rendon who worked with me on creating this sizzling summer list.

I am a cupcake overachiever. There, I said it. I love to bake cupcakes and decorate them for every occasion. Thus, I was thrilled to see that Anne Byrn, the author of THE CAKE MIX DOCTOR had a new book out --- CUPCAKES FROM THE CAKE MIX DOCTOR. Oh are there ideas in this book! There are flavored cupcakes, great frostings and decorating ideas. Lots of ideas. Last weekend for my mom's birthday I made her a cupcake bouquet. This entailed sticking cupcakes into a Styrofoam dome and sticking flowers around them. Okay...sticking is not a great verb here, but since I stuck them on toothpicks, it's very applicable. Well, this was a big hit. I am eyeing the Cupcake Wreath, the Fireworks Confetti cupcakes...I could go on and on.

Tonight I took my younger son and his friend Josh to see Eoin Colfer, the author of the Artemis Fowl series. Josh and Cory have bonded over reading. They constantly compare what they are reading and introduce each other to new series books. Tonight Colfer entertained the crowd with humorous stories for more than an hour. We all commented that he could have a second career doing standup comedy. I loved seeing the audience just mesmerized by his stories. After he signed the boys' books I thought we were headed for the car. But no, the two of them took off to do more book shopping. In the car on the ride home they sat in the back seat reading by the light of their book lights. Really nice experience.