Category Archives: Linky Love

Saturday Linky Love

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I know — it’s Sunday, not Saturday.

We had a busy day yesterday with a funeral and some touring in an area we don’t often go to. The wind was blowing and it was a beautiful sunny day. I tried to catch the movement in these flowers.

But I’ve been saving up some fun stuff for you to look at. I’m linked up today at Vanderbilt Wife; I hope you enjoy reading these curated lists of goodies!

  1. The post most likely to make you make some changes in the way you spend your days: “How to Carve More Time Into Your Day”
  2. The post most likely to make you feel inadequate, boring and/or stupid: List of 21st Century literature written by women that you should have already read.
  3. The post most likely to make you read a book and eagerly anticipate its movie: Top 12 Fall Movies Based on Books
  4. Most ridiculous claim of the week: Prends Moi perfume will help you to lose weight. Don’t forget to click into the Enorme link. 🙂
  5. Video of the Week: Miami University (my Ohio alma mater) Men’s Glee Club performing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.
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Linky Love: Friday’s Child Is Loving and Giving

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This week I’ve decided to hook you up with blogs that I follow and love EVERY day. Using the ancient British nursery rhyme, I’ll take you on a tour of my favorite blogs.

When I learn that a young family member or friend is going to have a baby, I think to myself, there goes twenty years of your life. It’s not easy giving up the self and couple-centered activities that young people enjoy, and I’m not sure that everyone who chooses to have a baby is actually ready for the just-plain-hard work that goes along with being a parent of a young child. Thank goodness the joy of having kids usually outweighs the bad. I’ve been blessed to see my two children grow up to be wonderful adults, but there were moments along the way that I would have easily sold them to the gypsies (JK, kids). Images like this one make me remember those first steps and that first Easter egg hunt. These were times when I loved my kids so much I could barely hold it in — and I still do.

Today I’m featuring the blog of my niece, Jessica, who writes as Vanderbilt Wife. Her honest appraisals of her life as the mother of two toddlers have made her popular among “mommy bloggers” but she is more than that.

As the nursery rhyme goes, Friday’s child is loving and giving, and I think that Jessie epitomizes that in her relationships with her little family, with her sister, with her father and mother, and with her many cousins and aunts and uncles. She was a dedicated and thoughtful granddaughter to my mom and dad, and in her role as houseparent to boys in a private school, she is a mother figure as she bakes her way into their hearts.

If you want to connect to a real person who writes about real life and is honest about the trials and joys of being a parent, try out Vanderbilt Wife. She also shares a lot of recipes which are all delish! And then there’s the photos of my adorable grand-niece and nephew. 🙂

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Linky Love:Thursday’s Child Has Far to Go

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This week I’ve decided to hook you up with blogs that I follow and love EVERY day. Using the ancient British nursery rhyme, I’ll take you on a tour of my favorite blogs.

I follow Jillian at A Room of One’s Own because she truly has far to go and publishes lists of what she’s read, what she’s reading and what she plans to read. She has just recently started reading classic books and is a perceptive reader and thought-provoking writer. I don’t always agree with her, but I am always interested in what she and her readers have to say.

Jillian is fearless about changing her blog template and finds images that exactly fit her content. I never know what I will encounter when I open her blog post of the day. If fact, while I was writing this post, she changed her template twice! Make that three times…

If you love classic literature, you’ll love Jillian. I encourage you to visit her — you might get hooked into one of her challenges!

Linky Love: Wednesday’s Child is Full of Woe (and Joy)

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This week I’ve decided to hook you up with blogs that I follow and love EVERY day. Using the ancient British nursery rhyme, I’ll take you on a tour of some of my favorite blogs.

While not precisely about woe, Mike’s Look at Life is a very personal blog that he says is “communicating issues around life including horrific loss and overwhelming joy, and many things in between.”

Mike writes beautifully and takes interesting photos; I encourage you to visit him.

Linky Love: Monday’s Child Is Fair of Face

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This week I’ve decided to hook you up with blogs that I follow and love EVERY day. Using the ancient British nursery rhyme, I’ll take you on a tour of my favorite blogs. Everything about Mike’s photos are “fair of face.”

Monday’s Child is Wilden Marsh: Another Year of Living With Nature at Hoo Wood and Wilden Marsh Nature Reserve. Mike’s photography is crazy good — and I’m hooked on his stories about life at the reserve.

In addition to being funny, witty, occasionally sarcastic, and all around entertaining in a low-key kind of way, Mike teaches us about the beauty of flora and fauna in his role as Warden of this Nature Reserve in Worcestershire, England.

After having followed his blog, I am enchanted by his stories (especially about the foxes) and want to visit the next time I am in England!

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Saturday Linky Love

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I’m pretty excited that my niece, known out there in the blogging world as Vanderbilt Wife, is the new moderator of a Saturday link-up. I’m proud of her and of the success she has had as a writer, so I’ll be supporting her efforts on Saturdays.

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, my goal is to connect you with some bloggers and writers that you might have missed, and will share stories that I think are worth reading.

  1. For the word-lovers and haters among you, this post from The New Yorker discusses words that should be eliminated from the English language. Of course it’s witty and beautifully written; it’s The New Yorker! There’s also a warm tribute to Adam Yauch from the Beastie Boys here that is quite touching.
  2. I ran into Tracy at iOS Affairs this week when she visited my blog. I was entranced by her concept, All Apple, All Apps, All the Time. There’s a lot to be learned from Tracy (and a lot of time you might waste playing with her recommendations!).
  3. Although I’ve been teaching English for fifteen years, I used to be a music teacher. I really enjoyed this look at student motivation and what we can learn from it in our classrooms.
  4. If you’re not up on your Australasia news, you might not know that there is a Marmite crisis going on. Apparently a factory that makes Marmite was damaged in an earthquake and it’s big news that for the moment, stores are on their last jars of Marmite. The blogger made it REAL with her photograph.
  5. I was really excited when I found that my friend Tricia has launched mini-meal planning at Once a Month Mom. With just two of us in our empty nest, the once a month bulk cooking isn’t really necessary, but I can make a recipe and freeze it in smaller units that we revisit twice in a month. Another thing I can try when I retire!
  6. Finally, whenever I have a chance, I encourage people to visit my friend Michelle. Her gentle way of looking at the world of reading  at The Great Read never ceases to inspire me.

As always, I welcome your feedback. Who do you think we should have read this week?

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National Delurking Day

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As I worked with my students this week during writers’ workshop, I told them about how important voice is in one’s writing. I used my own experience to inform my teaching — and I told them I don’t ask them to do anything I don’t do.

Image via http://www.826chi.org/programs/

It struck me that the words on the rubric probably apply to me, too. Most days I am just “informative and interesting” and some rare days I am “compelling and engaging.” Unlike my students, however, whose only audience is their parents, each other, and me, I put my work out there for the world to read — and comment on.

It’s probably a clear causal relationship between the number of comments I get and whether or not I have been compelling and engaging. Did I actually “force” you to engage with me?

Image via latestgadgets.co.uk

Since it’s National Delurking Day, I humbly ask you to engage. Leave a comment and let me know who you are. I know you stop by because I (feverishly) check my stats. And leave a comment at some of these wonderful writers’ blogs that I check daily via my Facebook feed. Once I created a Facebook page for Got My Reservations, it became very easy to skim down my Home page daily to check out what’s happening. If you are a blogger, I encourage you to create a Facebook page for your blog. It’s definitely increased my readership, if not my comments. 🙂

Classic Vintage Silver Eye Candy

Right You Are, Jeeves

Treasures from the Past: My Unicorn Collection

Who’s Jim Jebow?

Vanderbilt Wife

My Kitchen Scale

Witness (a guest post on Pioneer Woman about the movie)

Saturday Linky Love: Julia Child’s Kitchen — Quelle dommage

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I just read that the Smithsonian is dismantling Julia Child’s kitchen and putting it in a larger exhibit where it will be “in context” with other food exhibits.

Image via Richard Strauss/Smithsonian

Image via Richard Strauss/Smithsonian

OMG. I was just thinking about planning a spring break trip to Washington, D.C. in order to put my secret stick of butter in Julia’s kitchen. It’s a good thing I read David Lebovitz’s posts on my Facebook page!

Image via sanfranciscosentinel.com

They say it will be open again “sometime” because the Child kitchen has become a “go-to” exhibit and has attracted visitors far beyond the Smithsonian’s expectations. I was ready to make my pilgrimage, and I’m really disappointed.

I’ve been a Julia disciple for many years, but she really came into focus for me after reading her books and seeing the movie made of Julie Powell’s book. I blogged about my copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking here, made a recipe from the cookbook and blogged about it here, and commented on the book and the movie on my previous blog. I’ve excerpted my comments for you here.

Having recently finished reading My Year in France by Julia Child and viewing Julie and Julia, I can’t help recalling the scenes in both the book and the movie where Child gathers in a group of people and creates a family wherever she lives. She lost her mother early, her relationship with her own father and stepmother was strained and it appears that she was disappointed to remain childless, but she made up for this sadness in her life by being a catalyst who drew disparate people together.

Not surprisingly, her lasting friendships appear to have revolved around food and travel. The Valentine’s Day scene in Julie and Julia in Paul and Julia’s French dining room is poignant and felt very meaningful to me as it triggered memories of the wonderful meals I have shared with family and friends in 2009. Even when I went to the movie web site and watched the trailer, I was reminded of incredible meals from the movie and from my own life.

After reading both books and bookending the books with viewings of the movie, I heartily recommend that you do all three. The movie is good enough to stand on its own, but your enjoyment and understanding of the characters involved will be deepened by reading the books.

When I wrote this post in 2009, I had not yet been to France. This summer, we will go back to Paris for a return trip. I’m going to do some more research about Julia’s life in France and perhaps will be able to perform this year’s visit to the Julia shrines in France rather than the United States. Let me know if you have any good ideas!