Review: Wicked Sinners

A friend of mine recommended Charity Parkerson's 'Wicked Sinners' and I managed to snag a copy for free from Amazon. I have posted this review on Librarything and rated it 5 stars.

Wicked Sinners is not the formulaic dark, brooking supernatural guy meets hapless, social misfit girl that I was expecting. While Parkerson’s plot twists and turns challenged my romantic sensibilities, she weaves them together with talent. The result: a book that I devoured, breathlessly arriving at the end.

At its most basic the plot is guy meets girl, true love ensues. However, unexpectedly tragic events turn this formula on its head. While it took me a while to resign myself to this, Parkerson’s engaging characters convinced me that this is the way it should be.

Parkerson weaves her tale with a surprisingly small cast of characters. I adored Adriana, whose impulsiveness and devotedness were enchanting. The description of Julien and Jacques had my heart racing, yet the differences between their personalities are striking. I must confess that it took me a while to warm to the character of Alain and even at the end I was not entirely convinced. But I am looking forward to Parkerson’s next instalments to convince me!

I thoroughly enjoyed Parkerson’s style. It was easy to read and engaging. Her flare for description won me over early. Even though I had not read the first book in the series, I did not find this an issue as ‘Wicked Sinners’ stands very well on its own.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed “Wicked Sinners”. I found it difficult to put down and I look forward to the next instalment.

Crafting with Daddy

I love weekends! Hubby is home and spends time with the girls. I love watching them play. He has a whole different style with them and they love it! David is also a closet crafter. He doesn't go for flashy supplies, but he loves taking something and turning it into a toy or decorating it more than he likes to admit!
A while ago a friend of ours who adores all things ladybug gave Bel 3 little red dome lights from Ikea. They are battery operated and very cute. At the time, David said we should paint them to make them look like ladybeetles. But Bel was having too much fun 'decorating' her room with them.
They resurfaced on the weekend when we tidied her room and being a very rainy time, David pulled out a nikko and got decorating.
David drew basic dividing lines on the lights to create ladybug features and showed Bel how to draw a face and spots on it. She tried but, being the perfectionist that she is, got upset when hers didn't look like Daddy's.
I think Bel's is the cutest. David called him Beauregard and the other two are Will and Jay after the friends who gave them to us.

Ladybug lights

Bel loves them even more now that they have little personalities. It doesn't show in the photo, but the 'spots' that Bel drew on Beauregard actually look like love hearts.

Bibliophile

Just recently, at the encouragement of a friend from playgroup, I've joined a couple of reading groups. I felt like smacking myself in the head during the conversation with my friend. I'm an English teacher for goodness sake! I read more than a book a week (if it's good, a book a day!).

I've joined numerous online sewing groups, so why not reading? So last week I joined 2 groups (and am open to joining more!).

I was very excited to be invited to my friend's facebook book club which has numerous members who are authors themselves and I therefore get the heads up about new books coming out and new up and coming authors. The second is uber-exciting. The site is www.librarything.com (forgive my inability to put links in!). On signing up, I joined their early reviewers section and put my hand up for member giveaways. The result: I got given a book for free in exchange for a review. How fantastic is that?!

So, without further ado, here is my first review, as posted on Library Thing, for Rebecca Hamilton's "Forever Girl Series - Sophia's Journey".

Hamilton creates an underworld that is both thrilling and enticing in ‘The Forever Girl’. She successfully interweaves myth and legend with reality in a refreshing take on the realm of the supernatural.

The characters are quite delightful and remain consistent throughout the novel. Sophia is engaging and easy to relate to, as we all feel on the outer at some point. While she is no shrinking violet, she has a softness to her and a realism as she discovers there is more to her life than she ever imagined. Similarly, I found the environmental consciousness of Charles especially entertaining and original.

While the market has been saturated with books of this genre, Hamilton presents a world that seems darker and more mythical than I have read so far. However, this seems to make her work more believable as the ‘elementals’ seem to form a more complete legend than vampires and shapshifters alone.

What's in a name...

When I first got into sewing, it was because I was suffering from PND and needed to do something other than longing for Bel to go to sleep and wondering what had happened to my life. I am so grateful for this hobby. It has truly been my lifeline!
One of the first things I made was a door hanging for Bel with her name on it. When I made it, she was madly in love with birds of all kinds and would lie on a blanket in the front garden for hours watching them. At that point, I had loads more time and hand-embroidered her name.


She absolutely adored it and loved swinging it on her way into the room. So when Willow came along, it was time to make a new one. She didn't have any interests when I made hers, being that she was only a few weeks old, but I hated that she didn't have her name on her door.
When she was in the womb, she was an absolute pest and wouldn't move very often. Consequently, they couldn't move her into a good position to discover her gender during ultrasounds. So, her nickname was 'Sprocket' (my husband is a motorbike mechanic). But sprockets aren't particularly feminine...With a bit of embroidery and lace, anything becomes girly! I severely underestimated how busy I would be with two darlings, so Willow's name was machine stitched on, otherwise she would still not have a hanging on her door 6 months on!


Once it went up on her door, my husband started collecting sprockets at work for actual garden edging!

Lanterns

I wanted to dedicate a whole post to this project.
Last year here in Cairns, the council put up lanterns in trees around the city as part of Cairns Festival. It has been Little One's favourite past time to go and see the 'Lantern Trees'. Unfortunately, the council, suddenly and inexplicably, took down the last of the lanterns at the Lagoon. LO was devastated! So, we broke out the recyclables, fabric scraps, paint and hot glue gun and made our own lanterns. They have been loads of fun and we place battery operated candles in them so LO can place them wherever she wants in the evening.
Once again, I consulted so many tutorials across the net in coming up with these ideas. There are so many amazing people willing to share their ideas!



On a political note, our current mayor is not popular, at all, but it's saying something when a 3 year old is unhappy with your decisions!

Slack blogging!

I am the slackest blogger. So I am going to start trying to catch up. It's not that I haven't been sewing, but just as uni finished I found out I was pregnant. It was not a fun time and now my tiny one is 6 months old and I am just starting to feel as thought I can start doing things again!
Once again we had a handmade Christmas. I will have to dedicate an entire post to that. I started sewing in October and was still making things for Little One the night before Christmas Eve!
But once the new year arrived, the focus has been on more general gift-giving. It seems that there are more and more birthdays to celebrate every year! To kick the year off, I made one of my oldest and dearest friends a chicken (inspired by Ikat's amazing design http://www.ikatbag.com/2010/03/chicken.html).

'Jessie' the chicken softie

Then we found out that the amazing midwife who delivered Tiny One was moving away. She has been an amazing friend and we couldn't have made it through the labour without her! So, to give her a parting gift, I used my girls' and Little One's best friend's silhouettes to create a wall hanging for her to remember the girls by.

Silhouette wall hanging

Now with Valentine's Day tomorrow, I am thinking that this afternoon we will break out the pink and red felt and create something to show the girls' friends that we love them!

Uni is finally finished!

Uni is finished and Christmas is over. This year was particularly stressful because we decided to make all of the Christmas presents. This means that I made all of the presents. Thank goodness I had some amazing books for inspiration. The two that I used were Sew Darn Cute and One Meter Wonders.
My favourites were this bag (adapted from OMW) for one of our friends. She had given me a stack of her old clothes to use as scrap fabric. So I repurposed one of her old shirts:



I also had a great time making my step-father's birthday present. The pattern for the laptop bag is adapted from SDC and to get the design on it, I had Bel draw with my fabric pen and then I stitched over the top of her markings (extremely hard to follow the scribbles of a 2 year old!). She said that she had drawn 'big fish'.



As for Christmas decorations, I made a nativity scene and advent calendar which I am very proud of. David got annoyed that I had so many pieces of scrap fabric lying around, so I tried to use them up making the gifts and decorations. I didn't use a pattern for either of these projects, but did search the net extensively for inspiration. For the advent calendar, I ended up painting or appliqueing each of the squares, but was extremely happy with the result (except for my inability to paint the numbers on uniformly!)