January 2026 in Books

Not as many books as I was hoping to finish this month, but a really good mix of subjects and genres. Check them out:

Family of Spies - Christine Kuehn - nonfiction - five stars - This was a really interesting book. When a screenwriter contacted Kuehn about her family's story, she was horrified to learn that her grandparents and aunt/uncles were Nazi spies/supporters. It takes her. many years to want to research and then get the full story of her family. They were recruited in Germany to work with/for the Japanese, and then sent to Hawaii, where they played a key role in gathering intelligence for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The crazy thing is that they really were not punished for their roles in the attack, ended up just getting deported back to Germany. Also sadly Kuehn's father, who was born in the US and had no knowledge of his parents and siblings activities essentially lost his family. He served for the US during the war, and held onto the secret until very late in life when confronted by his daughter.

The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern - Lynda Cohen Loigman - fiction - five stars - Augusta Stern has finally retired and moved to a retirement community in Florida. Who else lives there? Irving Rivkin, the boy who broke her heart years ago. The book jumps back and forth between the past and the present as you find out what went wrong all those years ago. It's a really cute story and I loved all the characters. Quick, fun read.

Yes Please - Amy Poehler - memoir - five stars - This was my audiobook for the month. It was a fun, listen/read. I really enjoy Poehler, and her wit comes through in the audiobook which she narrates, along with some audio cameos from others in the business. It was interesting to hear how Poehler started out, and all the other things she has done. I was really only familiar with her television career, so the other stuff was pretty interesting. Comedy is apparently a pretty collegial/small world, so it was interesting to see how her life/career has intersected with others. I definitely recommend listening to this one vs reading.

Buckeye - Patrick Ryan - fiction - four stars - There was so much hype around this book that maybe I had unrealistic expectations for it. It was good, but not as amazing as I had expected. It's the story of Cal and Becky as well as their complicated relationship with Margaret and Felix and the couples' sons. The storyline follows them from childhood to adulthood/death. I found the book compelling as a read, moved through it quickly and it kept my attention, I just didn't really like the characters. This was one of those books where I got annoyed with them all, what they were and were not doing. 

The Mademoiselle Alliance - Natasha Lester - historical fiction - five stars - The story of Marie-Madeleine Fourcade who ran the Alliance resistance network in France during WWII. It's a pretty amazing story. Fourcade took over Alliance network when the original leaders were caught. Alliance was working with MI6, and she was known to them initially only by her code name. Her gender was not revealed to them until she took one of the full moon flights back to Britain to strategize with them. While extremely inspiring, it's also extremely sad because of so many of the agents that you get to know in the book did not survive the war. Highly recommend.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse, #1) - Dennis E. Taylor - science fiction - four stars - I hadn't read a science fiction book in a while, and this one got really good reviews, so I thought I would try it, and I'm glad I did. It's about an extremely smart guy named Bob who has contracted for his brain/'corpsicle' to be preserved after he dies so he can essentially be brought back to life once they have figured out the tech to do that. A hundred years later, he wakes up to find that a lot has changed in the world. There are different countries/powers, and corpsicles no longer have rights. He's essentially been put into an interstellar probe looking for other habitable planets since the word is basically dying. He has the ability to reproduce/clone himself, so soon there are lots of different Bobs exploring the universe. There are also other probes from other countries too, and most of them are not friendly. It's a very clever premise. I really liked Bob as well as his clones and the differences between them. This dragged a little bit in a few places, so a four, but definitely looking forward to reading the rest of this series.

Favorites this month were The Mademoiselle Alliance and The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern. What have you guys been reading?

Greetery Thanks

 *This post contains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp.

I had a little extra time to create a couple of weekends ago, and resolved to pull out some items that I haven't yet gotten to work with. These Thanks products from The Greetery were calling my name, particuarly because I needed a Thank You card.

I really love these products. The stencils can be used on their own for an elegant one layer card, or you can use the dies to add drama and dimension.

I started by inking up the sentiment using Peony and Aster ink. I then die cut the the sentiment using the outline die. This die cut piece was placed on a sticky mat, and then I added the accents using the third stencil and Cookie Dough Lunar Paste.

I pulled out an older piece of Pinkfresh patterend paper, adding some gold splatter using my Starry Colors watercolors. This panel was adhered directly to my card base, and the sentiment was popped up with foam tape.

This was such an easy card to create. Thanks for visiting!

SSS Brushed Pine

 *This post contains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp.

Today's card features the Brushed Pine die from Simon's Heart to Heart release. The set consists of two dies, one base piece, and one which cuts all the individual pine tree layers.

I die cut the base piece three times from dark green cardstock, and the detailed piece twice from white cardstock.

The dark green trees were swiped with my White Pigment inkpad to soften them and give them some texture. I then adhered every other row of the white detail pieces to the trees. Once that was done, I added a little bit of sparkle to those layers (although it's hard to see in the photos) using Frosted Lace Stickles. The trees were then set aside to dry.

For my background panel, I added some light inking with Royal ink, and then stamped the sentiment, from my Stacked Holiday Sentiments set.

The trees were then adhered to my inked sentiment panel. Two were adhered directly to the panel, and the third popped up with foam tape. These were trimmed down to the size of the panel, and I added a white mat as well.

SSS, Swirling Snowbreeze Peace

 *This post contains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp.

I've got a super easy card to share today featuring the Swirling Snowbreeze Embossing Folder from Simon's latest release. 

To create this card, I swiped a variety of blue Distress Inks over a panel of watercolor cardstock. The panel was sprayed with water, and then run through my diecutting machine.

I then swiped my White Pigment Inkpad across the panel to accent the raised surfaces with white ink.

The panel was adhered to my card base with foam tape.

I cut the shadow for my sentiment from vellum, and the sentiment itself from Matte Silver cardstock. This was adhered to the embossed panel by carefully adding foam adhesive behind the Matte Silver portions of the sentiment.

I think the swirl of the 'a' from the Fancy Peace sentiment goes perfectly with the embossing folder, don't you?

SSS Heart to Heart, Heart City Take 2

 *This post contains affilaite links to Simon Says Stamp.

I've got a couple more cards to share today using the new Heart City stencils. For these cards I'm using just two of the three stencils - not the actual heart stencil, but the parts that create the walls of the heart building.

For this first card, the shapes are facing hte same direction and shifted to create rows of these rounded shapes. The resulting pattern really reminds me of peppermint sticks lined up next to each other. I'm definitely planning to make a peppermint stick card next Christmas using these stencils!

I used just Peony and Orchid for this card, although one set of stripes was inked a little more heavily than the other. 

I also used Peony to ink the cardstock used to die cut my Lovely sentiment. A couple of the secondary sentiments from that set were used to complete the card.

For the next card, it's the same idea, except this time I inked the stencils in the right manner, so they make the bottom part of the heart building, but again I left the heart off, shifted the stencils, and inked again to create a chevron pattern.

I used Marine and Cadette as my colors, alternating them from left to right in the pattern.

Just as in the last card, I used one of my colors, Cadette, to ink the cardstock for my sentiment, the Simple Thanks die. This time, the secondary sentiment comes from the Thank You Basics set and was embossed in white on black cardstock.

It's always nice to be able to get more use out of your products! Thanks for stopping by!

December 2025 in Books

Twice - Mitch Albom - fiction - five stars - I love all of Albom's books and this was another great one.  Alfie has the ability to go back and change his story, he can live any moment again, but there are some restrictions. He can only go to that one moment twice, if he loses love, he cannot regain it, and he cannot stop death. The story is told at the end of Alfie's life as he recounts the mistakes he has made and the things he has changed. Alfie's greatest regret is that he had love and lost it, and has now lived a second life doing all in his power to fix as much as possible for the one he loves. Both sweet and bittersweet, loved it.

The Menu of Happiness (Kamogawa Food Detectives, #3) - Hisashi Kashiwai - fiction - five stars - I really enjoy these books. They are a great palette cleaners. They won't ever knock your socks off, but these books just leave you happy and smiling. The Kamogawas run a restaurant as well as a detective agency. You can come here and ask the chef to locate/prepare a dish you had once. The catch in the stories is that there is always a reason someone wants a dish a second time, a haunting memory that requires some amount of closure. I thought this set of stories was particularly good, and I really enjoyed how the Kamogawas were able to help each of their clients.

Patriot: A Memoir - Alexei Navalny - memoir - five stars - This was one I listened based on a recommendation from a friend. It was excellent. While I knew who Navalny was and that he was a political foe of Putin, I did not have a deep understanding of Russian politics and what Navalny's party/organization was doing. This provided a good overview of how he got involved with politics. Much of the book is focused on his poisoning, reovery, and then return to Russia and incarceration. What really struck me about all this is that Navalny knew that when he returned to Russia he would eventually be arrested, and that he would never leave jail, at least not while Putin was in power. I think he expected to grow old there and die, and not be poisoned in jail, but he went back knowingly and willingly because he loved his country and believed that this is how he would affect change. Highly recommend.

Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home - Stephen Starring Grant - memoir - four stars - This was a good read. Grant is an executive who loses his job when COVID hits. In order to maintain health insurance and make ends meet, he signs up to be a rural mail carrier. This was a really interesting description of what the job of a mailman requires, it's a lot of hard work. I really enjoyed reading about the mail parts of things, the training, his co-workers, different stops along his route, weird things he's delivered, etc. Less interesting to me were his general musings/commentary of politics etc. which is why this isn't a five star review. Still, definitely worth the read.

Shopgirls - Jessica Anya Blau - fiction - four stars - Zippy is 19 and was just hired to be a shopgirl at I Magnin, a fancy department store in San Francisco. She has recently also moved in with Raquel, who is a new lawyer and several years older than her, but they have become best friends. Zippy loves her job and is good at it, although not everyone at I Magnin is friendly. In addition, she is navigating family issues and just being out on her own for the first time. I really enjoyed the charater of Zippy, she is naive, kind, genuine. I felt like the story was a little underdeveloped, but the characters made it work for me.

Bright Young Women - Jessica Knoll - fiction - four stars - This book is loosely inspired by the Ted Bundy case. Pamela, president of her sorority, is also the sole witness to an attack at the sorority which leaves two girls, including her best friend, dead, and two others badly injured. The police bungle the case, focusing on an ex-boyfriend. Then a woman name Tina arrives. She is convinced that this is the work of a serial killer, the same man who murdered her best friend/lover. Pamela and Tina team up to take down the real killer. The book just back and forth between the present and years before when Tina's fiend, Ruth, was killed. Knoll does an excellent job creating the characters, and making the reader frustrated with the ineptitude of the authorities which allowed the serial killer/Ted Bundy, to excape custody multiple times.

Blue Christmas (Weezie and Bebe Mysteries, #3) - Mary Kay Andrews - fiction - three stars - I usually love Andrews' books, but this one was just OK for me. This is a short little novelette that focuses on Weezie, a character from two previous books. I think the issue for me was that the plot was just kind of thin, and I knew where it was going early on. It either needed a better storyline to make it longer, or it should have been much shorter. I still do like the characters, but story itself was just meh.

The Mighty Red - Louise Erdrich - fiction - three stars - This one was kind of weird. Kismet Poe is the object of affection for two boys. Gary, who is convinced that if Kismet marries him, all will be well and she will save him, and Hugo, Kismet's best friend and the one she actually does love. Meanwhile Kismet's father has disappeared and along with him, seemingly, the church's refurbishment fund.Kismet does marry Gary, but it's not a true marriage, and Hugo sets off to make his fortune and rescue Kismet from the marriage. This book was frustrating to me. It seemed like a bunch of people making ridiculous stupid decisions. On the up side, Erdrich is pretty good at creating characters and you are rooting for them. Despite the weak storyline, I wanted to know what happened, and I did like many of the characters. 

SSS Heart to Heart Release, Heart City Stencils

 *This post cotains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp.

It's a release day at Simon Says Stamp! The Heart to Heart release is live, and as the title suggests, it'ss about all things love. Today I'm sharing a couple of cards created using the new Heart City stencils. This is a set of three stencils that create a repeating dimensional heart shaped building.

For my first card today, I wnet monochromatic, inking the stencils with Carnation, Peony and Rose to create my background. 

For the sentiments, I pulled out my ilysm stamps and dies, die cutting the shadow piece from white, the sentiment itself from hot pink cardstock, and stamping the secondary sentiment in black on that same pink cardstock.  Super easy.

Next up, my favorite card created for this release. This was fun because I was just kind of playing and experimenting.

This time, I used Distress Oxide Sprays to create the bottom portions of the heart buildings with Villainous Potion on the left, and Peacock Feathers on the right.

For the solid heart stencils, I combined Ranger Transparent Matte Texture Paste with Ominous Twilight Distress Mica Stain, spreading this through the stencil.

While I really liked the look, I wanted something with a little more oomph, so, once the paste was dry, I replaced the stencil, and rubbed Statue Foundry Wax around the edges of the hearts and then heat set.

A little bit of gold splatter using my Starry Colors watercolors finished off the background.

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The sentiment is from the Clean Line Stacks set and was gold embossed on black cardstock, die cut, and popped up with foam tape.

That's all for me today. Be sure to head over to Simon to check out the full release!