Sunday Sips-November 15, 2020

Good morning! Here we are on another beautiful Sunday.

Today I’m drinking some Twinings Gingerbread flavored tea I randomly found on an endcap at my local grocery store. It’s the perfect amount of spice and giving me those holiday vibes I’m craving right now.

Even though my family hasn’t decorated for Christmas yet (only because our house is going through some remodels) we are officially over Halloween movies and onto Christmas movies. They just make us feel so good. Now I put together a quick list of some of my faves that may not make everybody’s list. Some are for the whole family, some are kid-centric, and some are adult only.

Feel free to screenshot and use. My kids are also fans of the Santa Paws series which I believe is a spin off of the “Buddies” movies. Let me know if there are any on here that are your fave too. Hands down my all time fave holiday movie is a lesser known one even though it has a star-studded cast which is Love, The Coopers. I did try to watch Love Actually last year due to peer pressure from my Instagram fam and could not get behind it. I KNOW, Okay!? It’s an unpopular opinion but it is what it is. I didn’t like it whatsoever.

My daughter turned 10 this summer and we were supposed to celebrate in Disney World but that obviously didn’t happen so we did some fun stuff at home to make it special. One of the things we did was buy a movie projector and we had our own drive in movie in our backyard with my hubby’s truck loaded with pillows and blankets and everything. The one we purchased came with a white sheet essentially with holes on the corners to hang. Using the double sided tape and hooks provided, we attached the screen to our house with no problem. It was so much fun and we all loved it. Now that it’s colder though, we’ve been using it indoors on a bare wall in our living room. You can use a big open space on a wall or hang a sheet, but it’s amazing to watch movies on the projector. It adds a whole new element and we had a blast doing that with Halloween movies all fall. We will definitely be checking off some of these holiday faves in the same way too. I’ll link the projector I bought and have had zero issues with. With use it with a small BOSE bluetooth speaker we have and our amazon fire stick which can access the Netflix app just fine. At just over $100 it is well worth the money, especially during Covid.

With holiday shopping in full swing already I thought I’d put together some of my all time fave small shops for next week’s blog post. Most will probably be bookish but not all. If you have any recs, let me know via email ashleymarieauthor@gmail.com. I’d love to find more small shops to support this year.

This past week I’ve been hard at work writing Marc’s story and tweaking the outline which is normally how i roll. I have a loose outline in the beginning with certain scenes in mind marked down with key details then as I write i let the story unfold how the characters intend and adjust as needed. I’m the driver and can ultimately decide where we’re going but i do let the characters give directions for the most part. I got away for a couple days and mostly did research. Not as much writing per se but research is huge in writing so you can get things as accurate as possible. My beta did finish reading Changing Lanes and gave some incredible feedback, proving that Beckett’s just as special as I thought he was. I cannot wait to share him and his amazing story with everyone. It’ll be a nice hot treat for that frigid month of January. Preorder on Amazon for it is live right now so if you purchase before release day, it’ll be auto-delivered to your device 1/21/21 which is pretty awesome. You Do not want to miss his story. Trust.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for joining me for a cuppa and let’s hang out again. Same time next week? SEe ya then. Stay safe and healthy.

Ashley