Stolen from other Blogger's Blogs

This blog is just for fun. I "borrowed" both of these off two of the blogs I read on a regular basis.

The first one is from my friend Angela's blog.
A few days ago (actually I think it was more like a few weeks ago) Angela had this contest on her blog asking her readers to give their 5 "sense" that they have gained from their personal experience as a homemaker. I did not get it done in time for the contest, but I still think it is pretty fun so I thought I would do it now.

("borrowed" this from her blog too!)

A few of my 5 "sense" are products that I love to have in my house that I tend to use everyday and the others are things in my day to day life that have worked for us.

#1 Coffee:

Its true - I do not like coffee by itself, actually I can't stand it, but with a little french vanilla creamer...YUMMY! I am not even sure if it is the actual coffee or just the daily morning routine of drinking it that helps me start off my day.

#2 Having a weekly cleaning schedule:

Neither K nor I have ever been people that like to clean, so keeping the house clean has always been something that we constantly have to work on. A weekly cleaning schedule of doing the laundry, bathrooms, bedrooms, etc. on different days, breaks up the work helps me keep the house semi-clean (to tell you that my house is always clean - would be a big fat lie!) and I then I usually don't have to do everything in one day --unless I cheat and have to catch up :) Its much easier to be in a good mood when the house is clean.

#3 Glade Scented Oil Candles:

They really do fill your room up with fragrance in very little time. In our house, we used to have two in diapers and now one is potty training...sometimes things don't always smell that great. I just keep a pack of refills in the house and as soon as I light one, the house begins to smell amazing! They also have an amazing Apple Cinnamon scent that always puts me in the mood for Christmas - even in July!

#4 Disney Movies & A Baby Gate:

Being a mom of two VERY active girls, I do not get much time to myself to do anything (shower, makeup, curl hair, etc.). I find that in the mornings if I put on one of my kids favorite Disney movies and put up the baby gate in the living room door - I can take a shower and get ready for the day with out the kids running around and getting in trouble. Shaves a good 30-40 minutes off my morning routine.

#5 Time With Other Adults:

Whether its time to talk with K after the kids go to asleep, talking to friends during playdates, or even a phone calls or text messages from family...time with other adults is the one thing that keeps me sane after spending all day and some nights with my kids. These times remind me that there is more to me then just being a stay at home mom - time that I can have an adult conversation even if it is all about the kids.

Wow...that was actually harder then I thought it would be. I challenge all of you to post your 5 "sense" on your blog even if you are not a stay at home mom - we want to know what 5 things help you get through the day.

The Second thing that I swiped from a blog is from The Smith's Blog. I have seen it a few times before but they just posted it this week and I always wondered how I am do on their reading list so here it goes....

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. How do your reading habits stack up? Share with your fellow readers. Copy, edit, and paste into a note of your own.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen YES

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien NO

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte NO

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling NO

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee YES

6 The Bible - Old Testament YES (most of it at least)

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte YES

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell YES

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman NO

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens YES

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott YES

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy NO

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller NO

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare Complete? NO

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier NO

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien NO

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk NO

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger YES

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger NO

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot NO

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell NO

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald YES

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens NO

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy NO

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams NO

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh NO

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky NO

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck NO

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll YES

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame YES

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy NO

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens NO

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis YES

34 Emma - Jane Austen YES

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen YES

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis YES

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini NO

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres Mais NO

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden NO

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne YES

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell NO

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown NO

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez NO

44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving NO

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins NO

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery YES

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy NO

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood NO

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding NO

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan NO

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel NO

52 Dune - Frank Herbert NO

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons NO

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen YES

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth NO

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon NO

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens NO

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley NO

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time NO

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez NO

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck NO

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov NO

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt NO

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold NO

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas NO

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac NO

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy NO

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding NO

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie NO

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville YES

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens YES

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker NO

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett YES

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson NO

75 Ulysses - James Joyce NO

76 The Inferno - Dante NO

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome NO

78 Germinal - Emile Zola NO

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray NO

80 Possession - AS Byattn NO

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens YES

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell NO

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker YES

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro NO

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert NO

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry NO

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White YES

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom NO

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle YES

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton NO

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad NO

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery YES

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks NO

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams NO

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole NO

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute NO

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas YES

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare NO

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl YES

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo NO

I did better then the 6 that they predicted but not as many as I thought. I guess now I have a great list of books that I can pick books from...though probably will not be reading a few of them...some just dont interest me.