Book Review - The Kane Chronicles

I'm behind again. I've been meaning to write this post every since I wrote this post back in August, because I finished these books about the same time. But then we moved, and um, other stuff happened (Okay, have you ever seen Julian Smith's video "Pre-blessed Food?" It's super funny, and kind of a light-hearted commentary on how busy we all think we are. At one point, this one guy is explaining how busy he is and says, "We've always prayed religiously before eating. But we got so busy with work and {and here he waves his hands all funny} watching TV." Anyway, Jason and I quote that all the time. And that's how I feel right now when I'm making excuses to you. I've been so busy with work and {waving my hands all funny} watching TV...)

*Cough* Anyway! I read these books!

They're great! This is the Kane Chronicles series. The first book is the Red Pyramid, followed by The Throne of Fire, and finished with The Serpent's Shadow. They're by Rick Riordan, the same author who wrote the Percy Jackson series (for which you can find my review here). And where those books deal with the Greek gods, these books deal with the Egyptian ones.

I have to admit that I was less into the first book than I was into the Percy Jackson series. Don't get me wrong; it was still a great book, especially compared with most of them out there. Maybe I was just still too attached to the Greek gods, and missed them? But the second book drew me in a lot more, and I thought the third book was great. So, in summary = great series. Pick it up if you're looking for something fun.

The one criticism I have for this series is that it felt like some scenes were missing. For example, the second book starts off with the main characters doing something because - and this they tell you, you don't actually see it happen - another character showed up and gave them instructions to do it. And I get that Rick Riordan wants to start in on an action scene, but the whole first half of the book I kept feeling like I was missing something - that scene where the character gave them instructions. It just would have put the book on a more solid foundation, made me feel more settled and less like I was forgetting something, if that scene was there. Both the second and third book have a few of these missing scenes, that I just wish were there and would make me feel better if I could just read them. Anyway, it's not a big deal, but that is one thing I would have changed about the books.

Another side note: I love the way that Rick Riordan deals with race in all of his books that I've read. He has tons of characters of different races, and doesn't make a big deal about it. And when I mean a ton, I mean that probably at least half of the main characters are different races. It's a nice change.

Again, this was a fun series to read and I think you'd like it if you like fantasy/action/adventure books in general. Definitely check them out. :)

No way!

Jason and I went to Costco last night to stock up on formula for Ellie. (It is so cheap there, by the way. Literally half the price of the stuff at the grocery store. If you use formula, you might want to look into it.)

After we got the stuff that we needed, we wandered into the book section, and I found this!

This Son by Lois Lowry, a 4th and final book to The Giver series

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Did you guys know that there was going to be a last book to this series? I DIDN'T! (I'M SHOUTING BECAUSE I'M SO SURPRISED AND EXCITED!) I thought she finished with this series years ago! I thought Messenger was the last book! And THERE'S ANOTHER ONE!

Plan: hatched. Find way to read this book.

Only the beginning

 Two Fridays ago I read Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis. It was a good, albeit kind of "different," book. It's the first in a series of three, and I'm reserving my final judgement until after I've finished all of them, but I definitely liked it.

I won't go much into the plot, other than to say that a totally normal guy ends up having the following conversation with his seal/otter-like alien friend. They are talking about happiness and memory, and the seal/otter says (and this is one of my new favorite passages ever, in any book I've ever read): 

"A pleasure is only fully grown when it is remembered. You are speaking...as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing. What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then -- that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it."

Stop and think about that for a moment. Read it again maybe, thinking about each line.


I love it.

He goes on to say this:

"How could we endure to live if we were always crying for one day or one ear to come back - if we did not know that every day in life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?"

This whole week, that line has been playing over and over again in my head. Every time I've had an especially happy moment, where Baby has been laughing and I'm just feeling joy in my heart, I keep thinking, "Every day is this day." And every time I've thought of a past time that I was especially happy, the same thought comes to me. Remember this post that I wrote just a little while ago? Those times. This day is those days as well.

It's just a super interesting thought and one that I really wanted to share with you. It honestly has increased my happiness as I've been thinking about it ever since I read the book.

If you like C.S. Lewis, I would recommend checking this book out. And I'll give you an update on what I thought of the series once I've finished the other two. :)


(Big side note: The cover of this book (at least on our copy) was totally, totally wrong for it.

The copy of the book that we have is old; it was published in 1965 and I honestly don't think whoever chose the cover for the book had even read it. "It's a space book!" they said. "We need to give it a space cover!" And then they went and found some generic sci-fi drawing on somebody's desk a couple of cubicles over and put it on this book.

This is the cover of our copy:

And here is the cover of a copy that I think suits the book much, much better:

Anyway, I feel better now that we've cleared all that up.)

Books I Love - Beyonders

Do you guys remember when I wrote a post last year entitled "Books I Want to Read this Summer?" (I know it might be hard to remember; it was like a year and a half ago.) Well I did, in fact, read those books. And I planned on writing blog posts on them. And…now it's been so long that another summer has passed and I've actually read their sequels. So! You are lucky enough to be able to read my reviews of the original books and the sequels. Woot!

Today I want to talk to you about Brandon Mull's series "Beyonders." In "Beyonders: A World Without Heroes," a regular boy named Jason is, through a crazy twist of fate, transported to a different world he's never had an inkling existed. People in this new world, though, know about us. Sometimes, like Jason, people from our world end up over there. They're called "Beyonders," because they're from the "Beyond" (our world). Jason learns that this world is almost entirely ruled by an evil lord named Maldor, and also stumbles upon the secret that Maldor can be destroyed by a magic word which brave adventurers have to collect syllable by syllable. He's joined by another beyonder named Rachel, and the two of them set out to find the entire word, destroy Maldor, and return home to our world.

I have to admit that when I read the first book in the series last year, I liked it, but I knew that I still liked Fablehaven more. Beyonders was good, but (I felt) lacking some of the originality of Fablehaven. It seemed to me to be a more typical/regular fantasy plot. With that being said, though, the writing was good, the characters were good, and the story was entertaining. It was a good book and I enjoyed it, and I was very interested to see where the series would go.

(Side note: Have any of you noticed that Brandon Mull seems to have some sort of fixation on betrayal? In Fablehaven, it was one of the major themes, and it's carried over into this story as well. Thoughts?)

Now that I've read the second book, "Beyonders: Seeds of Rebellion," I fully endorse the series as a "Books I Love" series. Brandon Mull is just so creative, and his creativity really shines through in this book. I won't tell you what happens, because I don't want to spoil anything, but the book is awesome. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I can't wait for the next one. (Which, by the way, comes out next March. Sigh. I wish books came out faster.  But I'm patient. Mostly.)

So, yeah! Beyonders is great. If you're looking for some fun books, definitely try them.

Awesome Jean Tote Bag

All right, last day of this batch of crafts. Like I mentioned in the onesie post, I cleaned out my closet. This left me with not just a bunch of shirts to donate, but a bunch of old, worn-out or ill-fitting jeans as well. Some were so old and so patched that I didn't think even DI would want them. So, I used them to create my very favorite project out of all these.

I made a bag.

An awesome bag.

Jason and I go to the library all the time, and we use these cottony-type of tote bags to haul all of our books back and forth. Bags of this size are particularly helpful, so I decided to make another one using a couple pairs of my old jeans. As soon as I started planning it, I could visualize exactly what I wanted it to look like in my head, and so I just made it based on that. I used our cotton tot bags for a size-reference.

I used two pairs of jeans - a light one and a dark one - for the alternating strips and for the edge at the top. For the inner lining and the strap, I used this faux-jean cotton dress that I was also getting rid of. It was perfect because it's soft and a much lighter fabric than the jeans, so the inside is nice and soft and finished and the strap is soft as well.

By cutting the pieces of fabric carefully, I was able to utilize the dresses's already existing pockets without having to do any extra sewing. So, the bag has two pockets in the inside (you see them in the upper left part of the bag, one on each side).

This bag is by far my favorite of the projects I made last week. It's so soft and yet durable-feeling and I just really really like it.

And that's the jean tote bag!

Adult T-shirts to Baby Onesies

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I've been on a sewing kick this week. There's actually two factors that worked together to create this perfect storm: One, we're moving. Two, I discovered that What Not to Wear has a bunch of full episodes on Youtube.  Both things motivated me to clean out my closet and left me with a bunch of old clothes that I felt I could reuse for Baby.

(Side note about What Not to Wear before moving on to the sewing project: I love that show. I don't know if you've ever watched it, but it's great. If you've never seen it, you might think that it's kind of a judgmental show because it's telling people that what they're currently wearing isn't so great. But it's actually completely the opposite. Yes, they do come and tell people that their current wardrobe is bad. But, the whole show is about building up the people's confidence and self-esteem, and showing them that they're beautiful and that they can and should wear clothes that reflect that. Anyway, I just really love it.)

One of the main thing I cleared from my closet this week was all those free t-shirts I accumulated at BYU. As Stacy and Clinton (the hosts of What Not to Wear) explain, those free t-shirts have no real shape. They are rectangles. I am not a rectangle. Therefore, they are not very flattering on my body. (Another side note: I did save my "stylish" t-shirts; you know, they ones that are actually made for girls. Not the unisex kind.)

Now, although I logically know that these t-shirts don't flatter me as much as other shirts could, I am still sentimentally attached to them. Some I've had for years, like my girls camp shirts, and others I just like, like my free BYU ones. So, what to do? Make them into onesies for Baby, of course! That way, they get to stick around. I don't have to deal with the emotional trauma of giving them away and never seeing them again, and she has some new clothes for when she grows out of her current onesies.

I've made two so far. Both of these were "test" onesies using shirts I wasn't that sentimentally attached to. This blue one I decided to just entirely wing and see how it turned out. I used a onesie that Baby hasn't grown into yet to get a good idea of what size to make and what shapes to cut. I laid it on top of the shirt, cut the the pieces out, and, like I said, just went for it. Here's before:

And after:

(I used the back of the original t-shirt to make the onesie's front. I should have taken a picture of the back so you could see, but oh well.)

I used buttons at the neck to make the neck opening bigger when putting it on:

And buttons at the bottom for the diaper opening:

This second onesie I did very differently. I followed the tutorial here, using her templates and instructions. (I have to admit, I found the instructions somewhat hard to follow at times; I had to think about each step for a while to get what she was saying. But, I figured it out. And I'm grateful that she made the tutorial.)

For this one, I used snaps at the bottom.

I really like how it turned out. It fits well in the shoulders, though it is a bit long so I will shorten it next time. I think for the next one I'll try making the leg openings like a regular onesie rather than a "shortall," either with a regular hem or possibly using elastic to make a ruffle leg? We'll see. I'll definitely show you once I make more, but it might be a while since we're moving. If I get a chance in the next couple weeks to make more, I will, but if I don't it might be a month or so.

Anyway, those are the first t-shirt onesies!

Sleeves, but more awesomely Rufflebums

Day two of the craft round up! Today is all about altering onesies.

Several months ago, Jason and I were at the Gap outlet store and saw a bunch of long-sleeved onesies on sale. It was spring, and Gap was getting rid of its winter inventory. The onesies were really cheap, and I figured that I could probably alter the sleeves so that they would be more appropriate for the weather when baby could fit in them. So, we got our two favorites.

Baby's finally almost big enough to start wearing them, and I've been on a sewing kick this week, so I finally got around to altering them.  I followed this tutorial here pretty much exactly. (Have you guys noticed how much I love that site, by the way? I love that site.)

They turned out great! Here's before:

And after:

She came.

I added the ruffle bum too, which I love:

 

I should add ruffle bums to everything.

I really like how they turned out. I definitely won't be afraid to do this in the future, if I find more deals on long-sleeved onesies. If you have any that you want to alter, you should try it!