Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin'?

Hiding

trish — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 05:33:55 +0000

This is how Ethan would hide when he first started hiding:

Today, for the first time, he actually did hide, as opposed to leaning against a wall and telling you he’s hiding:

Hiding was originally published by Trish for Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin'? This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

Thoughts on The Last Man (audiobook) by Vince Flynn

trish — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 05:20:43 +0000

Title: The Last Man [Audiobook] [Hardcover]
Author: Vince Flynn
Narrator: George Guidall
Genre: Mystery/Suspense/Thriller
Running Time: 11 hours
Date Published: November 13, 2012

I accepted The Last Man by Vince Flynn for review with quite a bit of trepidation. While I love mystery/suspense/thriller novels, the synopsis for The Last Man didn’t make my skirt fly up. But within minutes of listening to the book, I knew I would love it, though I didn’t realize that this author would become that kind of author that would make me want to drop all my other reading commitments and just read his whole backlist. Seriously. I don’t kid.

So here’s the setup: Mitch Rapp, assassin for the CIA, is sent to Afghanistan to investigate the kidnapping of Joe Rickman, a guy who basically knows all the CIA’s secrets, particularly the identity of many of their spies. The fact that the US doesn’t want Rickman spilling all their secrets is an understatement. But when Rapp arrives in Afghanistan to find out what happened to Rickman, it becomes obvious that things are a lot more complicated than they seem. In fact, a series of events makes it appear as if someone is out to kill Rapp as well.

Backstory: When I discovered the show 24, it had already ended. I watched season one in a few days, and then proceeded to blow through the next seven seasons over the next few months. I loved Jack Bauer’s no-nonsense style and his bad ass ways. Mitch Rapp reminds me of Jack Bauer. He’s a no-nonsense, doesn’t-take-garbage-from-anyone, smart-ass, isn’t-a-cold-blooded-killer kind of guy. This is the best thriller I’ve read. Period. It had nonstop action, snappy characters, fantastic bad guys, even better good guys, and the violence was at a minimum. The narrator, George Guidall, has recorded a ton of novels (over 900!!!) and has won awards for his narration. I have to admit, though, that I found his cadence to be distracting. I felt like he read the way an author would read as opposed to the easy flowing style that many narrators have. I got used to it after a while, and it certainly wouldn’t stop me from listening to other novels he’s narrated but I won’t be seeking him out.

Bottom line: Best thriller I’ve ever read.

Thanks to Simon & Schuster for giving me this audiobook to review!

Thoughts on The Last Man (audiobook) by Vince Flynn was originally published by Trish for Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin'? This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

On recurring miscarriages and being “unlucky”.

trish — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 07:10:42 +0000

Well hello! I’ve missed you all! You’ve grown so much I hardly recognize you. Let me pinch those cheeks!

I’ve been meaning to keep you updated on what’s been going on with Ethan, but I keep putting off writing any posts because I’m always so busy doing other things. I want to get back to posting semi-regularly, though, and what better way than to tell you that I had another miscarriage.

I was super excited to find out I was pregnant because I found out on December 9th, two days after my birthday, and I knew EXACTLY how we were going to tell my MIL. I set up an appointment for an ultrasound for when I would be 6 weeks because I was a wee bit nervous since I’d already had one miscarriage, though the doctor had assured me that I would most likely not have another miscarriage. I was sure this pregnancy would be fine.

In fact, I was so excited about this pregnancy that I totally spaced and only got my MIL two gifts for Christmas, one of which was the photo that told her we were pregnant.

I started telling Ethan he was going to be a big brother and I set up an appointment with our midwife and I told a few close friends that I finally got my BFP.

We left my MIL’s house Christmas evening because we had some things to do the next day. When I woke up on December 26th, I thought I felt my period starting but then told myself I was being ridiculous and paranoid. I wasn’t actually surprised when I went to the bathroom and saw bright red spotting. I knew. I just knew.

When I called the doctor’s office, I ended up with an appointment with a doctor that I didn’t want to be assigned to but had forgotten to switch away from when I’d been assigned to her. I figured she couldn’t be that bad, and in fact our appointment with her was fine. She was matter of fact about the whole thing and gave me a 50/50 chance of carrying to baby to term, though I knew without a doubt I was miscarrying. She sent me for blood work and told me she’d call when the results came in.

One of the tests done with the blood work was an hCG test, which tests for the pregnancy hormone. When the results came back, I had almost completely finished the miscarriage. The doctor called to tell me that, and I took the opportunity to ask about a few things. First, I asked about progesterone. It seemed to me that my results from this current blood work and the blood work I had done when I had my last miscarriage were low. I was told that testing for progesterone is an outdated test that they did in the 1950s and won’t tell me anything except whether I’ve ovulated or not. Actually, this isn’t true but I didn’t want to argue over the phone.

So then I asked why I had a second miscarriage when I was told it was unlikely that this would happen again. This is what the doctor said:

“Well, you’re just unlucky.”

OH REALLY. Is that an official diagnosis?

Needless to say, I switched away from her as fast as I could. I’ve been meaning to write a note to the head of her department to ask that she show a little more compassion to the next woman who comes to her in the middle of a miscarriage.

I had my first appointment with my new OBGYN today and I told her what’s going on and my concerns about when I get pregnant again. She listened, understood where I was coming from, and agreed that we would do blood work as soon as I find out I’m pregnant again. I’m so thrilled that I found her!

My situation isn’t really cut and dry because Ethan is still nursing, and nursing affects hormone levels so that could be why I’m having trouble staying pregnant. I’m hesitant to wean him just to get pregnant. I’m hoping I can have a viable pregnancy and still nurse Ethan.

I’ve also discussed this whole situation with our midwife and she suggested I take Welcome Womb, a tincture with herbs that are know to help progesterone.

The year 2012 will be The Year of the Miscarriages, but I’m hoping 2013 will have better things in store for us. I’m hoping we’ll get pregnant quickly again (getting pregnant hasn’t been the hard part!) and that we’ll buy a house and sell our condo. I’ve got big plans for you, 2013. In the meantime, let me leave you with some pictures of Ethan!

On recurring miscarriages and being “unlucky”. was originally published by Trish for Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin'? This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

Thoughts on Stardust (audio) by Neil Gaiman

trish — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 04:58:27 +0000

Title: Stardust [Audiobook] [Physical]
Author: Neil Gaiman
Narrator: Neil Gaiman
Genre: Fantasy
Running Time: 6 hours 38 minutes
Date Published: October 30, 2012

I’m actually quite embarrassed that I’ve never read any Neil Gaiman, so when the opportunity arose for me to listen to the audio of Stardust, I jumped at the chance.

I actually went into this not even knowing what Stardust was about. Gaiman says in the Introduction that this story was born out of his desire to write a fairy tale for adults. I was instantly hooked. A fairy tale for adults? HELLS YEAH! I’ll admit, though, that my heart sank a little when I found out the Gaiman was the performer for this audiobook. The author? What the hell?! I’ve been to more author appearances than I can count, and honestly, I haven’t heard too many great author readings. The reading is stilted, emphasis is placed on the wrong words, and it always feels like they’re reading so I never get lost in the words. But Gaiman did an amazing job, making me eat my opinion about authors reading their own books in a very short period of time. It makes me wonder if he’s performed other novels of his, and if so, I want to get my hands on them!

Stardust is about Tristran Thorn who is in love with Victoria Forester. One night he tries to get a kiss from her and they see a falling star. She tells him that he can have anything he wants if he retrieves that very star for her. So off he goes to find the star so that he can present it to Victoria. He finds the star quite easily, which turns out to be a girl who, due to falling from the sky, has broken her leg. Tristran captures her and takes her on the journey back to his village. Along the way they encounter a unicorn, witches, elves (I think?), slaves that have been turned into animals, and an assortment of odd characters.

Since this was a fairy tale for adults, there was some swearing and sex. Which I actually really enjoyed. It wasn’t over the top. It was a nice juxtaposition of the quaint fairy tale with modern words sprinkled in. Gaiman is still able to keep the traditional feel of fairy tales with the way he writes, while still nodding to the fact that this book is for adults who still love fairy tales.

The writing was always so much fun, to the point that I would laugh out loud at the way Gaiman turned a phrase. At one point I got out of the car and was just grinning because I was so happy to be immersed in this book. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t listening to it at that very second (I mostly only listen to books in the car). I felt like a teenager whose crush just asked her out on a date. I was smiling LIKE A FOOL. And when I was away from the book, I was thinking about it. I was positively giddy to get back in my car and start the story again.

I’m sure the book is great, but I highly recommend the audiobook. Do yourself a favor and get Stardust for yourself for Christmas. I will be listening to this book again. And again.

Five out of five stars! I want to throw stars at this book it was so good. This guy can tell a story.

Thoughts on Stardust (audio) by Neil Gaiman was originally published by Trish for Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin'? This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

Thoughts on The Boy in the Suitcase (audio) by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis

trish — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 05:59:40 +0000

Title: The Boy in the Suitcase [Audiobook] [Paperback]
Author: Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis
Narrator: Katherine Kellgren
Genre: Mystery
Running Time: 8 hours 41 minutes
Date Published: December 13, 2011

Summary:

Nina Borg, a Red Cross nurse, wife, and mother of two, is trying to live a quiet life. The last thing her husband wants is for her to go running off on another dangerous mission to help illegal refugees. But when Nina’s estranged friend Karin leaves Nina a key to a public locker in the Copenhagen train station and begs her to take care of its contents, Nina gets suckered into her most dangerous case yet. Because inside the suitcase is a three-year-old boy: naked and drugged, but alive.

Nina’s natural instinct is to rescue the boy, but she knows the situation is risky. Is the boy a victim of child trafficking? Can he be turned over to authorities, or will they only return him to whoever sold him? In an increasingly desperate trek across Denmark, Nina tries to figure out who the boy is, where he belongs, and who exactly is hunting him down. When Karin is discovered brutally murdered, Nina realizes that her life and the boy’s are in jeopardy, too.

My thoughts:

The Boy in the Suitcase was the first translated book that I listened to on audio, and I was pretty sure that audio is the only way I’ll be reading translated crime fiction in the future. The second translated crime fiction book that I listened to confirmed that. It’s so nice to have names and locations properly pronounced, and I think the proper pronunciation helps me keep track of the characters better.

I found The Boy in the Suitcase to be such a refreshing read! I can’t expound too much into why it was a refreshing read, other than to say that I read a fair amount of crime fiction and the reason the boy is kidnapped was quite interesting and had me thinking about right and wrong long after I finished the book. The pacing was excellent and I thought it was gripping from the minute I started the audio.

The Boy in the Suitcase had some interesting social commentary about immigrant refugees that is relevant to those of us in the US. I don’t like to be beat over the head with an author’s agenda or personal political or social opinions. Not because I don’t like discussion or debate, but because I’m relatively intelligent and can get more out of one well worded sentence than I will something that belabors a topic. Thankfully, the authors don’t focus too much on the immigrant refugees topic, but they did do a good job of putting it out there for you to ruminate on or dismiss as you see fit.

I don’t know if it’s my newness to audiobooks or that the narrator Katherine Kellgren really is as good as I thought she was, but the narrator was fantastic! She had a different voice for everyone and her pronunciation and accents had me repeating words and names exactly as she said them long after I finished the audiobook. I’ve got the second book in the series, Invisible Murder, on my list of books to read, and I’m hopeful that Katherine Kellgren will be the narrator for that one as well!

Thanks to Audiogo for giving me this audiobook to review!

Thoughts on The Boy in the Suitcase (audio) by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis was originally published by Trish for Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin'? This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

Thoughts on Live by Night (audio) by Dennis Lehane

trish — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 08:14:35 +0000

Title: Live by Night [buy the audiobook] [buy the hardcover]
Author: Dennis Lehane [website] [Facebook]
Length: 14 3/4 hours (416 pages)
Genre: Fiction, historical
Date Published: October 2, 2012

Live by Night is the third book by Dennis Lehane that I’ve had the pleasure of reading. A few years ago, after I read my first Lehane novel, I mentally put his whole backlist on my List of Books to Buy, so when Live by Night was published, I was thrilled to be given the opportunity to review it on audio. Here’s the synopsis:

Boston, 1926. The ‘20s are roaring. Liquor is flowing, bullets are flying, and one man sets out to make his mark on the world.

Prohibition has given rise to an endless network of underground distilleries, speakeasies, gangsters, and corrupt cops. Joe Coughlin, the youngest son of a prominent Boston police captain, has long since turned his back on his strict and proper upbringing. Now having graduated from a childhood of petty theft to a career in the pay of the city’s most fearsome mobsters, Joe enjoys the spoils, thrills, and notoriety of being an outlaw.

Joe embarks on a dizzying journey up the ladder of organized crime that takes him from the flash of Jazz Age Boston to the sensual shimmer of Tampa’s Latin Quarter to the sizzling streets of Cuba. At once a sweeping love story and a compelling saga of revenge, it is a spellbinding tour de force of betrayal and redemption, music and murder, that brings fully to life a bygone era when sin was cause for celebration and vice was a national virtue.

Seriously, if there’s one thing I want to convince you of, it’s that you need to read Live by Night. I was on the edge of my seat with the first sentence: “Some years later, on a tugboat in the Gulf of Mexico, Joe Coughlin’s feet were placed in a tub of cement.” The book is full steam ahead from that first sentence, and doesn’t let up through the whole book.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of The Godfather film while listening to this book. I consider The Godfather to be a classic, so I don’t make that comparison lightly. But the way Joe Coughlin rises to the top and the way he tries to hold on to a bit of his humanity and the way the story is just so epic made me think about The Godfather quite a bit while listening to the book.

Live by Night is epic, spanning most of Joe Coughlin’s adult life, from petty thief to mob leader. I found Coughlin to be a very nuanced character. Whether it was Lehane’s intention or not, I thought a lot about nature versus nurture while Coughlin struggled with his choices. Coughlin’s descent into being a gangster is one of those things that has so many small steps, so many things that you could say, Well, it’s just this one thing that won’t hurt anyone, that when Coughlin finally admits he’s a gangster, he’s really been that way for a while. And while he’s technically a bad guy, you’re rooting for him to triumph over the other gangsters. It felt a bit like rooting for Dexter.

I just loved this book. It was amazing, heart-pounding, gritty, and insightful. It never felt too long (in fact, I wouldn’t have minded if it had been a tad longer, not because anything felt rushed, but because the story was that good and I didn’t want it to end) and the characters’ emotions seemed to leap off the page.

As I mentioned above, I listened to the audiobook which was AMAZING. The narrator, Jim Frangione, made me realize why they say an audiobook is performed by so-and-so. Live by Night was a book that I felt like I couldn’t listen to the CDs fast enough. There are visuals that I have from this book that I expect will stay with me for a long time, specifically because of how the narrator performed the story.

Have I fallen all over myself to tell you how fantastic this book was? Because that’s what I’m doing: falling all over myself about how good this book is. Lehane makes me feel like a teenager in that I want to read all of his books, know all the trivia about him, and then write a bad poem about how much I love him. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to properly obsess over authors, but at least he makes me feel like I would do that if I could. Who was the last author that inspired that in you?

Thanks to HarperAudio for sending this book for me to review.

Thoughts on Live by Night (audio) by Dennis Lehane was originally published by Trish for Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin'? This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

Thoughts on Broken Harbor by Tana French

trish — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 05:49:44 +0000

Title: Broken Harbor [buy the book]
Author: Tana French [website]
Pages: 464
Genre: Fiction, mystery, literary
Date Published: July 24, 2012

I have been stalking Tana French ever since I finished The Likeness in October 2008. When you find an author that you love (and I mean love in the she’s-in-my-top-three-favorite-authors-of-all-time way), waiting for their next book is kind of like trying to entertain a toddler. It’s excruciating. (Or maybe it’s just me that finds trying to entertain something with the attention span of, oh, around 6 minutes to be painful.)

So to say that I’ve been waiting for Broken Harbor with every inch of my being is totally true, though also a bit 15-year-old-melodramatic.

But still.

True.

As I cracked open Broken Harbor, it was with a bit of trepidation. Could Tana French even come close to my expectations?

“I will never doubt again.”

I was thrilled when Broken Harbor book was picked for my book club (a new release! hardcover!). When we got together to discuss the book, the premise of society making my generation feel like we have to have it all — a spouse, 1.8 kids, a house, two cars, etc, made for fascinating discussion. We ended up talking politics, taxes, income, and who is considered to be middle class. The discussion was quite natural and flowed straight from the book. Fortunately, we all still liked each other when the meeting ended.

Here’s the synopsis of Broken Harbor from Good Reads:

In Broken Harbour, a ghost estate outside Dublin – half-built, half-inhabited, half-abandoned – two children and their father are dead. The mother is on her way to intensive care. Scorcher Kennedy is given the case because he is the Murder Squad’s star detective. At first he and his rookie partner, Richie, think this is a simple one: Pat Spain was a casualty of the recession, so he killed his children, tried to kill his wife Jenny, and finished off with himself. But there are too many inexplicable details and the evidence is pointing in two directions at once.

Scorcher’s personal life is tugging for his attention. Seeing the case on the news has sent his sister Dina off the rails again, and she’s resurrecting something that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control: what happened to their family, one summer at Broken Harbour, back when they were children. The neat compartments of his life are breaking down, and the sudden tangle of work and family is putting both at risk . . .

One of French’s strong suits is her ability to write dialogue. Obviously crappy dialogue is easy to spot, and probably most dialogue goes unnoticed. But I’ve found that I love to come upon French’s dialogue because it’s so interesting. I realize as I type this I risk coming across as daft, but trust me on this. The Irish dialect comes alive and while I wouldn’t call the dialogue snappy, her characters have spunk, making their conversations more than just a way to move a story forward.

I have to warn you that I ended up being consumed by this book while I was reading it. Mostly I started looking at new housing developments as if they were the ghost estate in Broken Harbor. I don’t know how French can not only transport me to another world while reading her book, but can also make it so that I’m sort of still in that world even when I’m not reading the book.

The story itself is heartbreaking, and I was surprised that the story became even more so as I got further into it. Where is the line between sanity and madness? Will we know when we’ve crossed it? Will our family or our friends? These questions come up both in the main story and in Scorcher’s personal story, which was melancholy as well.

What do you do when friends start doing things that you don’t agree with? I don’t mean illegal things, but things that you think will make them unhappy?

The questions this book broaches are numerous, so there are many directions a book club could take it.

If you like your endings wrapped up in a nice tidy bow, Tana French is not your author. I have friends who are still mad that they read In the Woods because they never found out what happened *In the Woods*! I happen to like the fact that the reader is left to imagine how things might/should/could/would end, especially in Broken Harbor. Even more than that, I like that there’s no one person to blame in this story. It’s like all relationships — things are always much more 50/50 than they may seem and when you look at the picture as a whole, it’s hard to pin everything on one person and say, This is the reason everything happened the way it did.

Anyway, all that to say that I loved this book. If I had to rank it against her others, I’d say it ties with Faithful Place, which I thought was only slightly less great than The Likeness (which is in my top 5 favorite books of all time).

A huge thank you to Viking for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Thoughts on Broken Harbor by Tana French was originally published by Trish for Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin'? This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

Hide and Seek

trish — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 06:33:17 +0000

We play a lot of hide and seek these days, and Ethan will often hide.

The rules are: you have to look around for Ethan (this can be done sitting on the couch) and verbalize where you’ve looked. Is he under the coffeetable? No. Is he under the chair? No. Where could he be? Where’s Ethan? Ethan will slowly come out of his hiding spot (see above), and the longer you pretend not to see him, the harder he laughs when you finally do see him and are startled by his presence.

Hide and Seek was originally published by Trish for Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin'? This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

Thoughts on Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino

trish — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 05:43:20 +0000

Title: Salvation of a Saint [CD] [MP3] [Hardcover]
Author: Keigo Higashino [website]
Narrator: David Pittu
Genre: Mystery
Date Published: October 2, 2012

Synopsis:

From the author of the internationally bestselling, award-winning The Devotion of Suspect X comes the latest novel featuring “Detective Galileo.”

In 2011, The Devotion of Suspect X was a hit with critics and readers alike. The first major English language publication from the most popular bestselling writer in Japan, it was acclaimed as “stunning,” “brilliant,” and “ingenious.” Now physics professor Manabu Yukawa—Detective Galileo—returns in a new case of impossible murder, where instincts clash with facts and theory with reality.

Yoshitaka, who was about to leave his marriage and his wife, is poisoned by arsenic-laced coffee and dies. His wife, Ayane, is the logical suspect—except that she was hundreds of miles away when he was murdered. The lead detective, Tokyo Police Detective Kusanagi, is immediately smitten with her and refuses to believe that she could have had anything to do with the crime. His assistant, Kaoru Utsumi, however, is convinced Ayane is guilty. While Utsumi’s instincts tell her one thing, the facts of the case are another matter. So she does what her boss has done for years when stymied—she calls upon Professor Manabu Yukawa.

But even the brilliant mind of Dr. Yukawa has trouble with this one, and he must somehow find a way to solve an impossible murder and capture a very real, very deadly murderer.

Salvation of a Saint is Keigo Higashino at his mind-bending best, pitting emotion against fact in a beautifully plotted crime novel filled with twists and reverses that will astonish and surprise even the most attentive and jaded of listeners.

My friend Jessica really enjoyed The Devotion of Suspect X (at least, I think she was the one who enjoyed it?) so I was really excited to have the chance to review another of Keigo Higashino’s books, Salvation of a Saint.

My thoughts:

If you enjoy Sherlock Holmes, you’ll really enjoy Salvation of a Saint because it’s Sherlock Holmes for the 21st century. The book revolves around how someone could commit a murder when they were hundreds of miles away. While I enjoy car chases and shoot outs, I even more enjoy stories that have a puzzle to solve, which is what you’re trying to do in Salvation of a Saint.

My favorite character was the eccentric professor (aptly nicknamed Detective Galileo) who forces the detectives to pursue only logical thinking, even when there seems to be nothing logical about the story.While I haven’t read any Sherlock Holmes in quite a while, the way Detective Galileo behaves reminds me much of the way Sherlock Holmes behaves, particularly in the way he asks questions of those who haven’t figured things out as quickly as Galileo/Holmes.

The book posed an interesting question, both how someone could commit this crime, but also why. I read some reviews on Amazon before starting the book, and a few folks talked about how they couldn’t believe that that particular person, the way they were presented in the book, would commit a crime like this. I tend to agree, but on the other hand, it’s a fairly complex story by the time you get to the end, and who of us really knows what is lurking in anyone’s thoughts?

This is my second novel in translation that I’ve listened to on audio, and I’m becoming increasingly convinced that audio is the only way to listen to translated books. I really enjoyed listening to the narrator pronounce the Japanese words (names and cities, mostly), and I think it was his correct translation that helped me quickly remember who the characters were. When I read a translated novel, I seem to take a lot longer than normal to get all the characters in my head due to the fact that their names are so foreign to me.

I really enjoyed listening to this narrator, David Pittu. He had a different voice for each character that gave me an indication who was talking before he read the part that tells you who is speaking. His voice for the three women in the book were quite breathy, though, which was distracting in the beginning. I hope, however, that I have the chance to listen to this narrator again!

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for sending me this audiobook for review.

Thoughts on Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino was originally published by Trish for Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin'? This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

Advent Calendar

trish — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 06:06:52 +0000

My husband’s mom has a really cool advent calendar. She made it from a Busilla kit when her kids were babies (they’re both in their 40s now). Dave said he wanted that advent calendar when she died (she encourages us to tell her what we want when she dies), but I knew that his sister would want it as well. I actually thought that she’d somehow snagged it last year when she said she had it, but it turned out my mother-in-law had only loaned it to her. When Dave’s mom dies (hopefully not for 30 or more years — that would put her over 100), I don’t want to start any wars or bad feelings over any thing. Material possessions are not worth losing family over, so I decided to make an advent calendar myself!

My inspiration started over at homemade by jill. She did an advent sew along that has great instructions, some tutorials, but best of all, a LOT of pictures from people who did the advent sew along. Here’s her instructions:

Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Brief discussion on what kind of felt to use
Ornament templates

I scoured Jill’s Flickr group to see what ornaments people had made. I needed inspiration for colors, details, and unique ornaments. I wanted this advent calendar to be special to my family, which is why we had to have a football. Football is a big part of our family and part of the Christmas tradition, so that was a must. If I could avoid it, I didn’t want to have any duplicates such as ornaments or presents.

I started on this project back in February so there wouldn’t be any pressure to finish it at the last minute. I purchased felt from Heather Bailey and got to work on the ornaments. All of the ornaments are hand stitched and stuffed, even the candle.

This was my biggest advent calendar inspiration! I copied the shape of her tree and really made an effort with my ornaments. I wasn’t going to machine stitch them, but if something wasn’t as close to perfect as I could get it, I did it again.

Inspiration for the acorn and the color of the pockets came from Jeanetics, Rudolph is from See Suzy Spin (and despite the fact that she says the wreath is super easy to make, I couldn’t do it and am bummed. Her wreath is super cute!), and the tilted hat on the snowman was inspired by this one. I made the sleigh from a picture I found online, as well as the rocking horse (though there’s a good template here). There’s a few ornaments I want to redo, and since we’re hoping to have another baby someday soon, I’ll be making a stocking for the advent calendar for that child. I’d like to have a few extra ornaments, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know! I’ve tried and failed at making a wreath, holly is an option, but other than making another ornament or present, I’m at a loss. The nativity ornaments seem like an obvious choice, but my husband would rather not have them.

I realized after sewing on almost half the buttons that you really need a button with a shank. They do not make green buttons with shanks. Trust me, I googled the heck out of that question. You can make a shank, though, either with the thread that you use to sew on the button or with a bead. I found some green beads that seemed to be perfect, and I initially thought I would have just one bead in the center of the button, but I couldn’t make the button sit correctly on the bead. I eventually figured out that I could have one bead under each hole, not only giving the beads the perfect lift off the felt, but also allowing them to sit just right. Bonus: they add a little bit of sparkle of you happen to be looking at the calendar from the side!

The snowflakes and the candy cane bias tape were my husband’s idea, both of which I balked at and have since become my favorite parts of the calendar. The snowflakes add some interesting dimension to areas that would otherwise be bare, and the candy cane striping makes the calendar so much fun! Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find red and white striped bias tape. I don’t know if it’s a seasonal thing or if it even exists. What I found was on Etsy and was handmade by someone. I ended up needing about 3.5 yards of the bias tape, which I only found out after I bought 3 yards of vintage red and white striped bias tape. The tape that is on the calendar now is what was handmade and was bought after I got the vintage tape and realized I didn’t have enough.

Binding the back and front together took more skill than I currently have, so I owe a huge thanks to Amanda for helping me out with it. She patiently sewed the two pieces together when I was afraid to and never made me feel like I was intruding, even though I was there for 6 hours, 4 of which was spent finishing the advent calendar.

As part of the advent calendar, I want to make a tradition of having things we do in the days leading up to Christmas. I want it to be a time of year that we not only slow down and enjoy time as a family, but that we focus on being thankful and kind to others. I thought about having activities in each pocket, but what if you can’t do the activity that day? So instead I will have a list of things to do that will go in the pocket on the day that we do them. Things like, “Enjoy mugs of hot chocolate in front of the fire.” “Find the home with the best Christmas lights and take them a thank you note.” That last one is from here, which really inspired me! It’s not just about enjoying the Christmas lights because you thank the people that put up your favorite display. How kind and thoughtful! Maybe one will be, “Open the door for everyone today.” Nothing monumental, but something that takes us outside of ourselves. I haven’t made up my full list, but I will soon! More inspiration for activities can be found here.

Advent Calendar was originally published by Trish for Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin'? This post cannot be republished without express written permission.