Nattie's Friday Felicities

Today marks the six-year anniversary of the passing of my beautiful niece, Natalie Rose York, aka Nattie. Over on Facebook her friends have been posting lots of pictures and sweet memories of her on the Paint It Purple - Nattie Week event that Becky created.  What a joy it's been to read again about how much Nattie was loved and is still missed! https://www.facebook.com/events/659983047349816/

Becky also created a page for Nattie's Friday Felicities, a blogging tradition that Nattie started wherein every Friday she listed things that made her happy. She had a tremendous gift of finding the positive even in the midst of very difficult circumstances. https://www.facebook.com/FridayFelicities

For years I've wanted to participate in Friday Felicities, but I've shied away from learning how to blog, link blogs to Facebook, etc. I'm going to try again.

Today we are to list things about Nattie that made us happy. I'm going to include a few things we shared that made us both happy.

• her love of giving gifts
• her artistic bent and abilities - she made beautiful scrapbooks and did lovely lettering
• her willingness to help others (that would be me!) with their scrapbooking projects - without her persistent help, I never would have completed a scrapbook for my youngest son's graduation, and I am so glad I did!
• books, libraries, books, favorite authors, books, shared books, and more books!
• her love of family and her loyalty to them
• Diet Coke and cappuccinos
• Chinese food (I'm going to eat some crab rangoons tonight - she loved them)
• and the list could go on and on

Love and miss you, our Natalie Rose!

~ Aunt Anne

Reading Challenges

For the past several years I've listened to the buzz about reading challenges, and while I've sometimes unofficially participated just on my own, this year I'm taking the plunge.

There are two challenges in which I want to participate:

• The Year-Long Memoir Reading Challenge  - My friend Pattie is hosting this challenge that involves reading memoirs of people who have taken on year-long projects, then written and published a book about the experience.
• Reading to Know Book Club 2013  - This one I heard about through my friend Leann. I'm not completely sure how it is structured, but the chosen books interest me. Some of them I would never take time to read were I not challenged to do so. But is that not at least part of the point of a reading challenge? :-)

Now, though, comes a challenge of a whole 'nother kind - figuring out how to participate electronically. For starters, I'm writing this post.

For the year-long memoir challenge, I've read A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans. While I may not agree completely with all of the conclusions drawn by the author, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book. It was well-written, thoroughly researched, and her year-long project was imaginatively carried out. I applaud "Team Dan and Rachel."

January's book for the Reading to Know Book Club was to be the reader's choice of any book written by children's author L.M. Montgomery. I have long loved her Anne of Green Gables books, and have collected not only the Anne series (yes, I am also Anne, with an "e") but also several others. I chose this month to read Pat of Silver Bush, which did not disappoint. In fact, I couldn't resist following it with Mistress Pat, which I am enjoying every bit as much. I'm an old-fashioned girl at heart. 

A reviewer of books I am not, so I'll stop writing and go back to reading! 

The Beginning - "a very good place to start"

I love to learn new things, new skills, new techniques, but I've never had a burning desire to be a blogger. More and more often, however, I'm encountering the need to have a blog from which to link to multiple facets of my eclectic life. Things such as book challenges, and Friday Felicities (you can find out more about them at my friend Becky's blog - Counting My Days @ http://bedky.blogspot.com/).

So, I'm going to attempt to learn how to use Blogger to connect some of the dots of the eclectic life that is mine. We'll see where it goes. For now, it's a very good place to start!