{ I just love books }

I was typing up the Happy Homemaker Monday post this morning, and I had said in there that I wasn't reading anything at the moment, as I was expecting new review books to come in.

Low and behold, I got two in the mail today, which made me very happy.

The first one I'll be reading is the Tamera Alexander "With this Pledge".  Ooohhh I can't wait!!!

I have also been trying to finish my Diana Gabaldon's "The Drums of Autumn", which has been slow going because I had so many review books the past few months, and only really got to read it here and there, when I had a spare moment between books.

{ Slow day - Working on blog to book }

I'm slowly, and I mean very slowly starting to turn the corner with this cold.  Just letting my body dictate how fast or slow I move, and how much I do.

Lazy homemaking days

Oh Texas, when are you going to pick a season and stick with it?

I don't even know what to think anymore, we have gone from a high of 71 yesterday to super windy this morning and 30 degrees.  That's a 40 degree difference from one day to the next, like what??

I've been spending a lot of time indoors.  Some people love being out and about but I've always been a homebody, much happier in my house, surrounded by my things and my family and puttering around.  I don't get bored, I don't get frustrated, I just enjoy being where I am.

{ If only Bella would let me sleep }

Ok, it's been 5 days since I've had proper sleep, I feel a little zombified at this point.  You know when you haven't slept well for a while, and you get to that cranky, yawning every five minutes, nobody must look at you, stage????

I'm there folks.  I actually got irritated with myself earlier because I'm so cranky and irritable that my own voice was getting on my nerves.  Haha

I've mentioned it before, Bella is very old and for the most part she is doing well, but she goes through these phases every month or two, where for 3 or 4 nights she is restless, walks around, whines and cries and keeps us up all night.  This just so happened to the be that week, so I'm struggling to make it during the day, and on top of that I have Jasmine's cosplay weapon to finish for Saturday, was dealing with the sinus and allergy thing, and my usual responsibilities around here.   So yes, just a bit of crazy hectic week for me.

Curt came home from work the other day with more fresh farm eggs for me.  How beautiful are they?  And yes I said beautiful, I always find them to be the most prettiest of brightest yellows. 

I also received my Blog Book for 2007 and again I'm so impressed and happy with the results.  It makes me so happy to see the actual book in my hands.

I've only quickly paged through it.  I was going to read the books, but then I decided that I want to wait until I have all my books, and I can sit down and just start reading from the very beginning.

I worked on my menu plan today.  I am trying to keep to the budget which has been hard to do lately, everything is getting more and more expensive.

My last grocery trip two weeks ago was $320.  I about died right there on the spot, I have NEVER, like NEVER spent that much on groceries for 2 weeks.  Everyone keeps saying to me, that's nothing, my actually still cheap for groceries, and I guess I need to take a second look at my budget and up the food total, but golly, I wasn't expecting that.

I'm not going to go crazy and throw caution to the wind and all that.  I still plan on trying to stay under $300.  Let's see how I do this time around.  I plan on doing a Grocery Haul for you all.  Not sure if I'll do video or just photos, but there will be one tomorrow for sure.

Jasmine's weapon is coming along.  It's giving me headaches, making me question my sanity at times, and wanting to just say forget it.  But I like a challenge and this is definitely in that category. 

I took that photo yesterday, it looks different already today as I've started adding the final pieces and details, but I'll wait until it's complete to show you.

As I was saying though, it has given me a bit of a run for my money and at times I have to stop, step back and go do something else for a bit. 

I've finished Part 4 of the Atlanticus, and I'm really hoping I can finish Part 5 this weekend (need to pick up more yarn though).

So yeah, that's what's been going on around here.  It's almost 9pm and I'm going to go ahead and brush my teeth, take my meds and try really hard to get some good sleep.  :)

{ It's here....my Blog to Book for 2006 }

Oh my gosh, I am jumping up and down in excitement!!!

Oh, Oh, Ohhhhhh you have no idea how happy I am to have just received these books, or maybe you do because of my tone and the jumping up and down.  I can't stop smiling, I have the biggest, goofiest grin on my face.

Ok, so I promised I would share it with you and I'm about to do that.  First I want to say that I'm very happy with the quality of the book, the binding, the cover, the whole process.  I couldn't recommend Lulu Printing enough.  I've just ordered my 2007 book and am almost done with the 2008.  It's going to be a pleasure working with this company to turn my dreams into reality.

So let's get right to it.  If you've been wanting to do turn your own blog into book, you are going to have to first go and read this blog post I did explaining it all, showing you how to format the posts and how to pick the book to use etc.  It's got a lot of information for you all :)

I ordered the book on the 26th of May and it arrived today, just about two weeks, which is not bad considering it has to be printed and shipped out etc.  The total cost for this book was $32 and that included shipping.  Again NOT bad at all.

Here are the books, this is how they were shipped, wrapped in plastic which I really like.  I got two books, one is mine and the other my mother in law paid for and ordered for herself.

The cover.  It's really good quality.  You can have colored covers or designs etc. but I wanted mine to be plain white, I just prefer it that way.  They will all be white and have the same colored text and font.

Here's the book spine.  I chose to label them by volumes so this is Volume 1 for 2006, the next is Volume 2 for 2007 and so forth.

I love how it turned out :)

I picked the Professional Hardcover Casewrap.

The first page.  It's very well bound together.

And now to show you the inside.  I was a little apprehensive about how the pictures would show up, because I chose black and white.  You have the option of using color as well, though that is more expensive. 

Obviously the pictures aren't high quality, and that's understandable as well because the original photos were not that great to begin with.   My first years blogging I had a very cheap digital camera and didn't get my Canon until 2011.

I'm still really happy with how it all turned out, the quality of the pictures, the print and so on.

If I didn't have so much blogging material, I would have chosen to have each blog post on it's own page, but that's just not going to happen.  I decided to fit as many as I could on a page. 

Again I wasn't sure how it would all look in print.  It's one thing to see it in a Word File but to see it in book format is completely different.  I'm thrilled with the results though.

Here's the back cover.  I LOVE how it looks.  All the books will have the same text on the back too. 

So overall, I couldn't be happier with my blog to book.  I am glad I found Lulu, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking to turn their blogs to book, or publish any other book they want.

You can self publish, you can keep it just for yourself, or you can even sell the books online through Lulu and Amazon etc.  The possibilities are endless.

I am thinking that I may run a giveaway and give one of these books to the winner.  Kind of like a thank you for reading my blog over the years.  You would get your very own Book with the very first year of my blogging adventure :)

I'm already working on the next years to turn them into books, I'm also working on a Slow Cooking Thursday book with all the slow cooking recipes shared on the blog.  And I'm currently doing a Full Bellies, Happy Kids Cookbook as well with all the recipes on my blog. 

I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to format that one, I don't want it to be just the usual cookbook look, so I think I might stick to the blog format and do them by year?  I don't know, I'll figure that out, but if any of you are interested in having the food blog in book format, I'll have that for you in the near future.

And that's basically it.  I hope this post has given you all the information you need, or at the very least inspired you to turn your blogs into books, after all these will make wonderful additions to your bookshelves or even coffee table, and think of all the amazing memories jam packed in these pages.

If you have any questions and I can help, please leave a comment below and I'll try my best to help you as best as I can.

I'm off to continue on my 2008 book and also start reading through my new beautiful book :)

Hit me right in the feels!!!

Ok so I just finished my blog book for 2007.  Much as I'm loving this amazing trip down memory lane, it's also really hitting me and making me quite emotional.

There are so many memories of our life that I had forgotten about, so reading these posts is bringing back a lot of good moments, some make me cry, some make me laugh, but they all make me feel blessed to have had the life we had and still do.

Things have changed, oh my word have they changed.  I was so good about blogging, I didn't go more than a few days without writing something down.  As I was looking at my blog archive, I noticed what a huge difference from a few years ago, for 2006 I had 426 posts, for 2007 I had 248, then 2008 I had another 418.  But when I look at 2015, there were just 160 and 2016 even less with 151.  How sad is that?

So I'm trying really hard not to go back to that, and also to not to let the whole year of 2017, pass on by without documenting as much as I can.  Life is ever changing, people get sick, we lose loved ones, we don't know what is going to happen in a few months from now or even next year, so it's important to make every second count.

I'm also finding old favorites that I had forgotten about, like for example Lori Wick.  I love her books so much and I haven't read one in years.  I even thought that maybe she wasn't writing anymore, but nope, she is and there are quite a few I haven't read so I'm definitely going to check some out at my local library.

I've been so extremely lazy this past week, I don't know why or what, but I could easily sit on the couch and not move an inch.  But I'm a mom, and a wife and a homemaker, and anytime I sit down, I get that guilty horrible feeling that I should be doing something.

One good thing through this laziness is that, I've been catching up on my blog books and also my crochet.  Maybe I shouldn't worry too much about it, or even consider it lazy, maybe I should just take it as it is?  Part of my life?

Oh and before you ask, my house is clean, the dishes are done, the laundry is washed and put away and I do cook every day too, so I guess I'm not really being lazy, more like doing more of what I enjoy this week as opposed to just chores and homemaking tasks.  Yes, we'll go with that.

My handsome young man.  He is getting so big, though he's not really growing too much more, but he's all muscle and craziness.  Definitely makes life interesting for us.  He is almost 9 months, will be turning 9 months old on the 5th of June.  Time has flown with Marley, feels like just yesterday I picked him up and he was but 6 weeks :)

Like I said in my previous post, I promised to take a picture of Bella to show you all.  She is so old, we never knew her actual age because when we saved her from the puppy mill they told us she was around 5 years.  That was back in 2007.  So if we go by that she's around 15 years old.

She's so cute.  She is definitely showing her age, has a bit of trouble walking around, prefers to stay in the Office, and pretty much sleeps all day long.

I don't know how long she'll be around, but for now, we try to enjoy every moment we have with her.

Here's my Atlanticus.  I kind of made a boo boo, cause I saw these colors in my yarn stash and it's the softest yarn ever, and thought "these would be great for a blanket".

And I just went right to work.  Here's the problem though, I have had these since Arizona, and I don't remember when I got them, I think it was at JoAnn's because that's where I usually bought my yarn.

It all went great until I ran out of the purple, not even halfway through that round.  I have to set it aside now and wait until I can make it to a JoAnn's or Michael's or even Hobby Lobby to get more yarn.  I'm worried though that I may not find the same kind of yarn, which would be heartbreaking since I'm loving this pattern.

But never mind, we will just set it aside for now and worry about it later.

I finished the It Takes One to Tango book, and need to look through my bookshelf for the next book review in line.  I have so many and 3 more new ones coming in this week some time.  Not sure which is next, and I guess I could just read any of them since I have to review them all, but I try to go for the book that is going to be on tour in the next few weeks, if that makes sense.

I'm still waiting for my first blog book to come in, wish it was here already because I'm so excited to see it and share with you all.  :)

Jasmine is sitting next to me playing Overwatch on the playstation with her boyfriend, Marley is laying between us sleeping and I'm just basically messing around my computer until hubby comes home from work.

We have this routine every day.  He gets home and plays with Marley and I go and start dinner, set the table and all that fun stuff.  After dinner, while I clean up the table and do the dishes, he spends time with Marley and the kids and then I take my shower and he goes off into his Office to spend time with Bella, do his work on the computer, play some games etc.

Now I understand that for some people this may seem weird or even insane that he does his own thing and I do mine, but I think it's important in any marriage to do what works for you, and for each person to be able to enjoy their own leisure activities without feeling guilty.  We spend plenty of time together, matter of fact we go to bed at 8:30 PM every night, and watch TV for about 2 hours, talk about our days or anything that is bothering us etc.

The only thing I really need to work on, is my relationship with God because it's nowhere near where I wish it to be.  I'm actually quite jealous of the relationship I had with Him back in 2006, how I wish I could go back to that.  Then again the only way that will happen is if I put the work in, right?

I might need to reread Pursued by the Shepherd.
 

I did just find one of my favorite books this morning, while cleaning and organizing my bedside table.  "You're Late Again Lord" by Karon Phillips Goodman.  All the books in the series are so cute and so good.  The perfect size to read when you don't have a lot of time to devote to a book.

Right, I am going to check my email real quick, pay some bills and then get things together for dinner.

We're having Spaghetti Pizza Pie tonight.  Haven't made that in a long time so it will be nice to have it again.  If you want the recipe it's over on my food blog.

Have a wonderful blessed night friends.  I'll be back tomorrow with a new story for my Story Time Friday :)

{ Blog to Book and a few other things }

Hello everyone, I sure do hope this post finds you all doing well.  :)

I am doing ok, I'm finally over the horrible cold I had but my poor boy Nick, has it now and is absolutely miserable.  He seems to be at the last day of it though, because weird enough this cold has a pattern.

Ok let me start by saying that I think I got it from my nephew because he had been sick, then passed it to my brother and then to me.  I always joke around with Colby that he is the only one who gets me sick Hahah

Anyway, it starts with the itchy throat, goes on to horrible sore throat for a day, then fever, body aches, chills, headache and the last day is coughing and itchy chest and throat.  It lasted exactly 4 days, for us all, and this the fourth for my son, so I'm hoping he is knocking the last bit off.  At least we hope.

We are officially on summer break, school year is over, my girl is graduated (I haven't forgotten that I need to do a post on that, I will do it by this weekend), I've been getting over that cold and nursing my son back to health.  It's been a much calmer, relaxed week for me, but I haven't exactly been lazy or doing nothing.  Matter of fact, the reason there have been no posts this whole week is because I've been working on my blog to book.

I promised I would tell you all about it, and so here I am :)

Before I get into it, I had actually debated doing this post now.  I was thinking that maybe I should wait until I have the actual book in hand and do it all then, but I decided that I would go ahead and tell you all about it, in case some of you want to get started on yours, and then when the book comes in, I'll do another post showing you what it looks like and what I think of the finished product.

I will start by saying that this is a lot of work, especially if you've had a blog for as long as I have, and like me, blogged a lot.  I mean, A LOT.  Folks, I was posting 2 to 3 posts a DAY.  What on earth Sandra??

I look back now and laugh, but I was so enthusiastic about the blog and life and my little kids, and it really does shine through in the posts.  What a trip it's been, I have been working on this since Monday and just finished my first book for 2006.

But, I'm sure you'll all eager to know what I'm doing, and how I'm doing it.

For a long time I've been wanting to turn my blog into books, not just for myself, but for my children as well, I think it would be fun for them to sit down and read these posts, see themselves growing up and what they did and what they liked, essentially, where they came from.

Problem was, every site I found that would do it, was so expensive.  For example, the last one I found which I thought at the time was my only choice, was going to cost me $40 for ONE MONTH.  One month?!?!?!?  I've been blogging since February of 2006.   Just think we me here....

11 years
12 months in each year
$40 per month

I would end up paying $5280.  WHAT!!!!!  Yeah that's not going to happen.

Now what if I tell you that I found a site that will do this for me, give me a Hardback Letter sized book, that will cost me less than $40, including shipping, for a whole year?????

Right?!?!?!?!

I came upon it purely by accident.  I was searching and searching and I could not find anything that would do this for me without breaking the bank.  Right before I gave up, I decided to browse through the google search results I had gotten and go back a few pages.  And that's when I found it, a fellow blogger talking about turning her blog into a book and the place to do it.

I was so ecstatic, that I started right away.  Since Monday I have done nothing more than working on this book.  I wish I could tell you that it's quick and easy, but it's really not, it will take quite a bit of work from you, but it's worth it and you'll enjoy going through all those old posts on your blog, as much as I am enjoying reading mine.

Let me tell you how it works and give you some tips.

The company is called Lulu.  It is a self publishing website.  You'll want to sign up for a free account, then when you're done, click where it says CREATE.  Next you'll want to pick Print Book.  (You do have the choice to make eBooks as well, how cool is that?).

Next you get to pick what size book you want.  You can do paperbacks, you can do hardbacks, and it shows you the prices as well.  I went with a Professional Hardcover, Casewrap, US Letter Hardcover, 8.25X10.75in, Black and White, $11.37.

If you scroll down on that page, you can download the template for your book and just add all the content in there.  I will say that it was a bit confusing for me, there are pages that I couldn't delete, pages that just didn't look right etc.

But what I ended up doing, was downloading the template, opening it in Word, and then I did my first page.

That's what mine looks like.  From there I pretty much deleted all the other pages in the template, which were contents, acknowledgements, preface, introduction and so forth.  I don't want any of that, I want the book as simple as possible with the focus on the actual blog posts.

But, after my book title page, which is the first page, I left an empty page.  Then here comes the hard and the time consuming work.  You have to copy your blog posts, one by one, and past them into word.  It takes a LONG time.  I started Monday morning, have worked on it every spare moment I have, in between laundry and cooking and mommy responsibilities etc.

My advice:

Stick to simple common fonts such as Tahoma, Times New Roman, Arial etc.  If you use a font that is on your computer but not on the Lulu website, they will change it to a common font and it will throw your text all over the place.  After finished the book, I had to edit it 5 times, over and over.
Keep the original margins contained in the template, don't mess with those.
Use actual page breaks instead of just hitting the enter key.  (I did that the first go around and again, it threw my document into chaos and shifted pictures, text etc).

I didn't include all the tags and meme's that I had.  I didn't feel like I needed those posts in the book and besides, they were just going to take up more room.  Not to say I changed the blog content, I still went month by month and added every post in, just left out the tags and unimportant posts, like I had a few in there whenever I changed a template on the blog, just basically saying "Hey I changed my template".  I didn't need that in the book.

The good thing about doing it one by one and manually transferring, is that you can delete unnecessary pictures, or videos, shift the text around a bit to fit better and so on.

At first I was going to do a separate page with just the title of each month on it, but that would take too much room, so I chose to do it this way.  I used Century font, 48 pixels and bold.  I also made sure to start every month on a new page.

I also tried to fit as many posts as I could on a single page.  Here's an example:

Going back to the page breaks that I mentioned above, those are very important if you don't want your text to shift around and to stay as close to what you want it as possible.

Let me try and show you what I mean.  As you can see below, I ended one post on one page and begun another on the following page.  Usually I would have just hit the enter key and started the next post, but with the publishing website that doesn't work and when you upload your file, it shifts things around.  So what you want to do is make sure you are clicked right after the last word on the page, in my case where it says "I've missed those".  Make sure you click right after the period.  Then go up top to the Insert Tab, and click on Page Break.  The pointer will move to the page below.

Start your next post there.  That's it, simple.  :)

Once you're finished adding all your blog posts, go ahead and save the file.  I saved mine as Blog 2006 because that was the year I was working with.

At the Lulu website just follow the directions to make the book you decided on.  It will ask you to upload the file, which you will do.  If anything is wrong with it, it will tell you.  In my case, the first time I uploaded it mentioned the fonts and some pictures that weren't high graphics etc.  You will get a chance to download a preview which will show you exactly how the book will look.  If you're not happy with something, just go back to your original file, edit and change it, save it and then go back to the website, delete the old one you had uploaded previously and upload the new one.

I had to do this 4 times because I wasn't happy with certain things.  But once it's done, you will then get a chance to personalize your book covers, add what you want it to say, add a picture if you wish, write on the spine of the book etc.

Here's my final book for 2006.

Again, I kept mine very simple, I just want a simple white book.

There is a minimum limit of 20 pages and a maximum of 800.  With all the blogging content I had for 2006, mine came up to 580 pages and the total price $28.05.  LOVE IT!!!

That's my final product and my page.  You can set it up to just yourself, or you can open it up to the public and anyone can purchase your book.  I will be getting copies for family, of course.

All in all, with shipping it will be less than $40.  I'm so happy I found this place.  I'm planning on ordering mine tomorrow and should have it by next week, at that point I will take pictures and come back and show you all.

Sorry this post was so long, I wanted to share this with you and give you as many pointers as I can to help you.  I didn't have any help and stumbled about blindly hahaha

I am now working on my 2007 book, it's going much smoother now that I know exactly what needs to be done and how it should be formatted.

I have decided, as well, that I'm going to do a Diary of a Stay at Home Mom - Slow Cooking book with all the slow cooking posts and recipes, which are a LOT.  And I'm also going to make a Full Bellies, Happy Kids Cookbook.  My daughter has requested one for herself and I'll order a copy for myself and my son, as well as any family members that want one.  I might actually give some as gifts.

Alright, I best get on out of here.  I have to continue working on the book, I also need to make my new menu plan and grocery list.  We have a very busy day tomorrow, a therapy appointment for Jasmine, a tattoo appointment for Jasmine (yes she wants a tattoo), bank, birthday and father's day shopping, Best buy, Goodwill, Rental company to sign new lease and so forth.  It's going to be crazy busy.

Hope you all have a wonderful Thursday.  OH and I do realized I've missed 2 weeks of my Friday Stories, but I just haven't had a chance, and since tomorrow I'm so busy, I will pick back up next week and hopefully then be able to stay on track.  Thank you for understanding :)