Sunday Sips-February 7th, 2021

Hello! Long time, no see. Actually it’s been about a month since I’ve blogged and I’m happy to be back. today I’m drinking some Yogi brand caffeine-free Peach DeTox tea. Although i’m not exactly sure what it’s supposed to be detoxing but with organic ingredients like peach, cinnamon bark, ginger root, along with other spices like black pepper and cardamom, it’s got a great fruit flavor with just enough spicy tang to warm me up on this cold winter morning.

This month I want to talk about date nights! Now this can work with anyone—your significant other, your kids, or even yourself. During the entire pandemic my hubby and i have tried to set aside one day a month to have a tiny bit of alone time with each other. We order out but pick it up then we set up a little decorated table in either our basement or our bedroom and enjoy either a lunch or dinner together while my oldest watches his sisters elsewhere in the house, mostly the living room with a movie or video games on. We usually eat and watch a movie or our fave show but recently we switched it up with an escape room game.

I ordered this Escape Room In a Box on the target app then picked it up with contactless pick-up. The only things we needed aside from what came in the box was a glass of ice water and the flashlight on a cell phone, otherwise it’s all included and easy to jump right into. There’s a time limit of 90 minutes once you lift the lid and it was so much fun and different to have something new to do for once. Unfortunately we read the instructions wrong and only solved one of the three “paths” to solve the entire game and thought we beat it until our uber smart kids pointed out that we’d only completed a third of the game. LOL. But it turned out okay because we decided to have a family game day one weekend and we split into two teams to solve the other paths together as a family which might’ve been even more fun. Although we all thought certain parts were a little difficult at times, we powered through and were still able to figure it out within the time frame. So i totally recommend this no matter who you’re playing it with and I’ll be trying out this different themed one for my hubby while getting my kids this one for Valentine’s day coming up next weekend.

Since the last time I wrote on here, I released Changing Lanes, my enemies to lovers second novel in the Creekwood series. *Screams* My little book baby actually earned TWO orange banners on amazon and continues to keep steady rankings in its categories. I’m beyond proud and want to share a few photos of the release day fun…

If you haven’t read Changing Lanes yet, it’s still FREE in Kindle Unlimited along with the first book in the Creekwood series, Detour.

I also joined TikTok and have found a great little community there of writers and bookworms. If you’re on there come say hi @a.marieauthor. I’m not the best at it as I’m still trying to get my feet under me but it’s been fun trying out different things. I definitely feel more freedom with posting teaser videos than I do on instagram.

January was a busy month and I’m so glad i made the necessary changes to fit everything in without feeling like I was drowning. Now in February, I’ve been chug, chug, chugging along trying to make some headway on Marc’s book. I even switched to the font Comic Sans to see if it will actually help me to write faster like many writers claim. Here’s hoping!

Until next month, stay safe!

Ashley