Wednesday, May 30, 2007

How Much Is Too Much?

I have a lot of stuff! It is all good stuff, but there is a lot of it. In the past month I have really gone to town and "gathered" lots of new art supplies, books, and music. What is about these things that I can never seem to get enough of? I am so in love with books, music, vintage photographs, scrapbook paper, and rubber stamps!!! Above are two stamps that Jane brought back for me from her trip to Red Lead in St. Louis. Aren't they gorgeous?
About three weeks ago Jane and I had to go to a party downtown. Well, lo and behold, there was a scrapbook store on the way to the party. Well, actually we worked it out so there were four stores along the way! Anyway, we found these new papers by Tres Jolie. Aren't they tres beautiful???

Remeber the wonderful quilt store from a few posts ago? Well, my Mom and I went back last weekend for a few things. I bought a little bit of this wonderful alphabet fabric. I love alphabet anything.
Now for a typical Mike and Laura story. It was last Monday, Memorial Day. We drove up to Evanston (about 45 minutes away from us) to see a movie that was only playing there. First stop was Barnes and Noble, then Borders, and then we decided to keep going to bookstores instead of seeing the movie! I got the above two great magazines at B&N. I bought the totally rocking Van Halen CD at Half-Price books which is a great used bookstore chain that is just starting to come into the Chicago area.

Speaking of books, here are the books I got on Monday. They all look very interesting. I wrote down a ton of other titles that look very good too.

Book Note: Remember the previous post where I was going to read The Next Thing on My List. I could not make it through the book. It was just too light. I still think the author is a very good writer, but I just could not keep going. I am currently reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, the author of The Kite Runner. It is SO GOOD! I cannot put it down. I am really learning alot about Afghanistan and really love the main characters. In fact, I am really feeling upset about all the horrible things that were going on there and probably still are. I need to educate myself about the current happenings there.

As we were browsing I found tons of books I wanted to read. I wanted to buy 20 books and be shipped off to a cabin by a lake for the entire summer!! Anyway, here are some of the books I put on my list:

Ivy Briefs:The Tale of a Neurotic Law Student

Casting with a Fragile Thread: A Story of Sisters and Africa

The Sun Farmer

Incendiary Circumstances by Amitav Ghosh

Sharon and My Mother-In-Law: Ramallah Diaries

The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones

If Today Be Sweet by Thrity Umrigar

A Life Less Ordinary by Baby Halder

By the way, Mike found a great website. It is called LaLa. It is a CD trading site! You list all of your CDs and then you make a list of CDs that you want, and then you trade with people. It is $1.75 per trade, but so worth it! If you sign up mention that I sent you and I might get a t-shirt.

6 comments:

dogfaeriex5 said...

you so rock!! jane went to red lead- ok jealous!! okay-van halen cd-which one with david lee roth or sammy hagar? my vote is for sammy hagar, i so love him with van halen,so much i got their logo tattooed
on my ankle!
xox`kim

Anonymous said...

I think you should road test LaLa and let us know of how effecient they are. I only ask as I spent most weeks last summer on swap-bot.com swapping art. Some was wonderful, and some just never showed up. Do share!

beth said...

Ohhhh....you are such a BW!!!!!

I'm still reading everything by E. Berg and savoring every minute of all of them !!!!

And for your sidebar "places to visit".....I can promise you, without question, that you will get to visit the cottage..I can't wait to have all of you there when we take our class at ValleyRidge....and before then, sometime this summer, if possible !!!!!

Sarah and Jack said...

Those papers are gorgeous, but it is too funny that you didn't go to the movies as planned.

Diane Duda said...

I can only really put my two cents in on the paper portion of your question. NEVER TOO MUCH!

Lotus Reads said...

Laura I just love your enthusiasm for books and pretty stationary, they are my weaknesses too! I love your list of books, they are so diverse and interesting. I just mailed out a copy of "A Life Less Ordinary" by Baby Halder to my blogger friend HollyDolly, I can't wait to find out what she thinks of it...I thought it was a most unusual story!

I just read that Martha Stewart has launched a line of branded scrapbooking supplies...have you seen the line yet? I'll bet it's quite classy. I think it's called Martha Stewart Crafts?