Sunday Sips-October 11, 2020

Good morning!

Thanks for joining me today on this chilly fall Sunday.

Today I’m drinking a tea I found at my local Target store. It’s Tazo brand which I typically drink and love their Chai varieties but felt like giving this Vanilla Bean Macaron flavor a try. It’s SOO good. With black tea, chicory root, cocoa peel, licorice root, cinnamon, cardamom, and other natural flavors, it’s sweet and mild but definitely packs a ton of flavor. *Just a note: I always use two tea bags per 8 oz of water, then sweeten prepared tea with real maple syrup and a splash of milk.* If you’re enjoying a yummy drink of some kind too—CHEERS, Friend! We made it another week.

Lately I’ve been burning one of my fave candles for this time of year. It’s a Pumpkin Chai scent—perfect, right?—and it’s actually on sale right now! It smells so good, I might even pick up another one to hold me over next year too.

We had a nasty wind storm blow through most of New York on Wednesday and it took something like over 200,000 people’s power out, including most of our school district. Luckily, our home didn’t suffer any damage or power outage but it did give our family the day off of remote learning on Thursday. My ten year old started crocheting this summer so she dedicated her day off to making the pumpkin shown above. She learned by watching a few videos online and quickly upgraded from making us many, many coasters for our drinks to hats, scarves, and now pumpkins. I had to share her latest one here because it was just too cute not to. She listens to audiobooks while crocheting and I think it’s the sweetest thing in the world. That apple definitely didn’t fall too far from this multitasking, book-loving tree.

This week I’ve had “Girl on Fire” by Hera Lainey on blast. It’s a longer song at just over five minutes but that just makes me love it even more. Am I the only one that misses those long songs?

Yesterday my family and I took some updated fall family photos. After years of spending hours upon hours of painful bribery to get all three of my kids to smile halfway decent at the same time while a photographer watched on, I decided to start taking our own pictures. I’ve done it for the last three years now and OMG it’s so much better. My kids, dare I say, ACT BETTER without the extra audience and photos go much faster and smoother. We use a cheesy little tripod that barely holds the weight of my camera so if you have a tripod recommendation, please let me know. I honestly don’t know how much longer ours will last. Yesterday was dicey at best. We moved earlier this year and our house backs up to some beautiful lush woods. With the leaves in full color change mode, we were able to capture some of those gorgeous reds, oranges, and yellows behind us. So, we didn’t have to pay anyone AND we didn’t have to leave our house. WIN-WIN. The only part now is picking the best ones out. I took over 400 apparently so I do have some work ahead of me.

Earlier this week I did something I almost never do: I watched the SUNRISE. I am an absolute night owl through and through. After staying up past midnight editing, I then found myself up again at 5am. Let me be clear, the only time I make it to see 5am is if I stay up late from the night before. lol I NEVER wake up that early unless I’m traveling and have to. Even then, you can bet I’m not happy about it. But for whatever reason I was up, and not up that I could easily fall back asleep, I was UP. So I dove right back into editing and caught this amazing photo of the sun coming up right behind my backyard woods. It may have been worth the early wake up call, plus I got to spend some uninterrupted time with Beckett which is no hardship, let me tell you. I’m hoping to get the full blurb along with title, dates, and sign ups for Beckett’s book out sometime this month. I’m cruising through edits but the blurb…the blurb process sucks. haha Ask any author and I’ll bet most if not all say the same thing: writing blurbs is hard. I know the book is good and I know what it’s about but how do I tell other people that without telling them everything? That’s the tricky part. Or simply saying “Read it. You’ll like it.” Now that would be easy! Blurbs also take time. I actually rewrote the entire blurb for Detour right before cover reveal but I’m glad I did because it was so much better in the end.

My reading time has slowed down again but I did start in on Nightfall by Penelope Douglas. She’s one of my fave authors and this is her newest release. It’s the fourth and final book in her Devils Night series. I purposely held off reading it until this month since the series is very Halloweenish. It’s a long book so I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes me a while to make my way through it. It’s currently free in Kindle Unlimited on Amazon as is the rest of the series.

My Halloween costume just arrived and I’ll be showing it off in some capacity on Instagram I’m sure. I haven’t exactly figured out how I want to do that but I will share it. I just love it too much not to. I’ve already tried it on and danced around in it…several times. Follow me on IG if you’re not already to find out what costume I’ll probably be wearing inside my home with the doors locked on Trick-or-Treaters this year. GO AWAY COVID! Seriously.

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That’s it for this week. Thanks for spending some time catching up with me and I hope you have a wonderful week coming up. Stay Safe.

Ashley