What Holiday Drink Are You?

You Are Hot Chocolate

Your holiday personality is generous. The holidays are your favorite time to practice the art of giving. You enjoy picking out presents, sharing treats, and making everyone's day a little brighter. And you don't even notice if you don't get anything in return.

What Holiday Drink Are You?

Merry Christmas!

You Can Say "Merry Christmas" in 11 Languages

You can say "Merry Christmas" in: English Spanish French Italian Portuguese Greek Hawaiian Dutch Korean Latin Esperanto

How Many Languages Can You Say "Merry Christmas" In?

The Wrapping Paper Test

You Are Whimsical and Imaginative

You approach the holidays with creativity and imagination. For you, it's yet another opportunity to express your glorious view of the world. Whether you're decorating your house or baking cookies, you like everything to have your personal touch. You do your best to make the holidays a unique and special time for everyone around you. Of all the types, you are the most likely to give delightfully surprising and interesting gifts. You're also the most likely to wrap your gifts in an quirky, beautiful way.

The Wrapping Paper Test

Day 18 - 2008 Blog Advent Tour

I'm so happy of being part of the Blog Advent Tour, which is being hosted by Marg and Kailana.

I love Christmas! I love buying presents, and wrapping them up... I don't even mind the craziness of the holidays. But if you were to ask me what is my favourite part of Christmas I would I have to say it's Christmas goodies, music and movies. And I want to share my favourites with you.

Favourite Christmas cookie:

Surprise Snow Kisses

1 cup butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup finely chopped hazelnuts, toasted
60 milk chocolate kisses, unwrapped
3/4 cup icing sugar

In a bowl, beat together butter, sugar and vanilla until fluffy. In a separate bowl, whisk the flour with the hazelnuts. Stir into the butter mixture.

Shape a rounded teaspoonful of the dough into a ball around each chocolate to cover completely. Place balls 1 inch apart on parchment paper lined rimless cookie sheets.

Bake in centre of 350F (180C) oven until firm but not browned, about 10 minutes. Let cool on pans on racks; roll in icing sugar.

Enjoy!

Favourite Christmas Songs:

As a child I loved these two:





And as an adult these are my most cherished:





Favourite movies:

I just couldn't choose one.





Merry Christmas!

Historical Tapestry

Why don't you stop by Historical Tapestry? I'm guest blogging there today, I'm sharing my historical mystery obsession.

Let me know what you think!

Bookworm Award

I've been awarded! The lovely Ana has tagged/awarded me! Thank you Ana!

Here are the rules:

Open the closest book to you, not your favorite or most intellectual book, but the book closest to you at the moment, to page 56.

Write out the fifth sentence, as well as two to five sentences following there.

Pass this on to five blogging friends.

I just got back from the library, and I have my tote right here with so I came out with Crazy For You by Jennifer Crusie.

"But you'd think somebody would notice me standing next to a guy."
She screwed the cap off of her own bottle and drank, and he watched the curve of her neck as she leaned back and the movement of the muscles in her throat, willing his eyes not to drop farther down that curve to that damn pink sweater. Her hair fell back in the same smooth bell cut she'd worn since she was fifteen. No kink to Quinn at all, he thought, keeping his mind off curves. Just all that smooth silky red-gold hair, the kind that looked like it would fall like water through his fingers.


I'm going to tag:

Luisa's Corner
Amy's Corner of the World
~debbie's~ Crazy Mixed Up Life Stories #1
Thrifty Reader
Nose in a Book

Sci-Fi Movies & Books Meme

I saw this one at Aneca's and I just had to join. It looked like a lot of fun.

Here are the rules:

1. Copy the list below.
2. Mark in bold the movie titles for which you’ve read the book.
3. Italicize the ones that you’ve watched.
4. Tag 5 people to perpetuate the meme.

Here's the list:

1. Jurassic Park
2. War of the Worlds
3. The Lost World
4. I, Robot
5. Contact
6. Congo
7. Cocoon
8. The Stepford Wives
9. The Time Machine
10. Starship Troopers
11. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
12. K-PAX
13. 2010
14. The Running Man
15. Sphere
16. The Mothman Prophecies
17. Dreamcatcher
18. Blade Runner
19. Dune
20. The Island of Dr. Moreau
21. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
22. The Iron Giant
23. Battlefield Earth
24. The Incredible Shrinking Woman
25. Fire in the Sky
26. Altered States
27. Timeline
28. The Postman
29. Freejack
30. Solaris
31. Memoirs of an Invisible Man
32. The Thing
33. The Thirteenth Floor
34. Lifeforce
35. Deadly Friend
36. The Puppet Masters
37. 1984
38. A Scanner Darkly
39. Creator
40. Monkey Shines
41. Solo
42. The Handmaid’s Tale
43. Communion
44. Carnosaur
45. From Beyond
46. Nightflyers
47. Watchers
48. Body Snatchers

Like the previous post I won't be tagging anyone, please feel free to join in the fun.

Six + Seven Random Things About Me

I've been tagged! The lovely Ana has tagged me to do Six + Seven Random Things About Me.

Here are the rules:

1. Link back to the one who tagged you, write these rules in your post.
2. Post 6 or 7 facts about yourself, positive, negative or just plain weird!
3. Tag 6 or 7 people at the end of the post by name and blog link.
4. Let them know they were tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Random Things About Me:

1. As a child I was painfully shy. I was the type of child that would hide so I wouldn't have to play with other children at family gatherings. Eventually I grew out of the shyness, well not completely, I can still be shy.

2. Growing up I spent most of my summers in Portugal. My parents are Portuguese, and they emigrated to Canada when I was three. They have a house in Pataias, where my father was born.

3. I'm fluent in Portuguese both spoken and written. I took Portuguese throughout school. At one point I considered going to University in Portugal.

4. I love to eat. No, it's really a love affair of sorts. I love trying different foods. But, I live with a bunch of picky eaters, so I can only experiment when we go out to eat.

5. I used to work at a bank. The branch was in a busy mall. Although I loved my job, I hated the location. Craziness! Let's not get into holiday shopping...I cringe at the thought.

6. I'm addicted to nail polish! I love, love, love it! I keep my finger nails with a french tip, but my toe nails are always brightly polished. I absolutely love OPI and their new line, Nicole. I'm wearing Change The World, it's a gorgeous magenta.

7. Another addiction: handbags! I really would like to get this one, but it will have to wait.

and

8. I occasionally like to break rules. So I won't be tagging anyone for this, but if you want to join the fun feel free to add this meme to your blog. And don't forget to let me know...

I Love Your Blog!

I start off my day by checking my favorite blogs, and wasn't it my surprise to find my name on Ana's blog. Thank you, my friend. It was a wonderful surprise and you made my day, heck, you made my week!

Here are the directions for this award:

1) Add the logo of the award to your blog
2) Add a link to the person who awarded it to you
3) Nominate at least 7 other blogs
4) Add links to those blogs on your blog
5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs!

And my nominations are:

Lauren from Baseballs & Bows

Ana from Bola de Berlin

Teena in Toronto from It's All About Me!

Rosie from Nobody Asked Me

Kristie (J) & Katiebabs from Rambling's On Romance

Mad from RR@H Novel Thoughts & Book Talk

Jennifer from Snapshot

I take different things from all these blogs. Some make me laugh, some make me think and contemplate, some make me look out differently, some make me spend money on books (which I don't mind at least), all are beautiful and entertaining. And thank you for being around and sharing your day with me.

Manic Monday

If you could take more control of one aspect of your life, what would it be?
My diet. I've been trying to lose weight for a while now, but's so hard to stick with it.

If you were to name the difference between the male soul and the female soul, what would it be?
I think there are no differences between male and female souls. The differences are in the choices that the individuals make.

If you had to admit the most selfish thing you do on a regular basis, what would you say it is?
I want quiet alone time. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does...it's bliss.

Join the fun here.

What Olympic Sport Are You?

Saw this over at Ana's and I had to join in the fun!

You Are Gymnastics

You are agile, expressive, and precise. You have the drive to practice until you get something perfectly right. And you have the confidence to perform difficult moves when under pressure.

What Olympic Sport Are You?

Go Team Canada!

What Kind of Flower Am I?

I am a Snapdragon What Flower Are You?

"Mischief is your middle name, but your first is friend. You are quite the prankster that loves to make other people laugh."

TOP 50 BOOKS OF ALL TIME

Saw this list over at Aneca's World. And I just had to do my own. It's an addiction...seriously.

Books that I've read will be in blue and the books that are in my TBR are in red.

Here are the TOP 50 BOOKS OF ALL TIME:

1. To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee

2. Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S Lewis

4. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

5. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

6. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

7. Animal Farm - George Orwell

8. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

9. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - JK Rowling

10. Lord of the Flies - William Golding

11. The Time Travellers Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

12. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

13. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kasey

14. Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell

15. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

16. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

17. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

18. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night -time - Mark Haddon

19. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

20. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

21. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

22. Sons and Lovers - DH Lawrence

23. Anna Kareninia - Leo Tolstoy

24. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

25. Emma - Jane Austen

26. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

27. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger

28. My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult

29. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

30. A Passage to India - E.M Forster

31. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

32. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres

33. Atonement - Ian McEwan

34. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

35. In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust

36. Middlemarch - George Eliot

37. White Teeth - Zadie Smith

38. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

39. It - Stephen King

40. Little Women - Louisa M. Alcott

41. Vanity Fair - William Thackeray

42. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

43. The Horse Whisperer - Nicholas Evans

44. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe

45. Moby Dick - Herman Melville

46. Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift

47. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

48. Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

49. Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome

50. The Island - Victoria Hislop

New Classics

I saw this list over at Ana's blog and then at Marg's blog. It looked like fun, so I decided to jump on the bandwagon.

Here's the list of The New Classics according to Entertainment Weekly:

The books that I've read are in blue and the books that I'm planning on reading are in red.

1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, Jose Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love In The Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A. S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Ann Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Material, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World's Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators' Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)

Top Ten Meanest Love Songs

Saw this over at Aol Music Canada and just had to share:

10. The Beach Boys "Caroline No" 1966
Kiss-off:"Could I ever find you again/Things that made me love you so much then"

9. Bruce Springsteen "Tunnel of Love" 1987
Kiss-off:"Lights go out and its just the three of us/You, me and all that stuff we're so scared of"

8. Justin Timberlake "Cry Me a River" 2002
Kiss-off:"Your bridges were burned, and now it's your turn/To cry"

7. Nancy Sinatra "These Boots Are Made For Walkin"
Kiss-off: see above title of song...

6. Bob Dylan "Idiot Wind"
Kiss-off: "You're an idiot, babe/It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe

5. P.J. Harvey "Dry" 1993
Kiss-off: "You leave me dry"

4. Carly Simon "You're So Vain" 1972
Kiss-off: "You probably think this song is about you"

3. Glen Campbell "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" 1967
Kiss-off: "She'll cry just to think I'd really leave her"

2. Lily Allen "Smile" 2006
Kiss-off: "When I see you cry, it makes me smile"

1. Alanis Morissette "You Oughta Know" 1995
Kiss-off: "Every time I scratch my nails down someone else's back, I hope you feel it"

Which Austen Hero?

Saw this quiz over at Aneca's World.

Here's my hero:

What Jane Austen gentleman is for you?

Colonel Brandon. Sense and Sensibility's Colonel Brandon has something of a checkered past and has been hurt in love before, but he's not afraid to fall again if you'll let him.
Take this quiz!








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Cuss Much?

Saw this over at Reading Adventures. And it got me curious...


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Weekend Away

I'm so excited! I'm leaving later for a Scrapbooking Retreat at the Elm Hurst Inn.

Six Unimportant Things About Me

I've been tagged by Ana for a new meme:

The rules are:

1. Link back to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Share six unimportant things about yourself.
4. Tag six random people at the end of your blog entry.
5. Let the tagged people know by leaving a comment on their blogs.

I love lipstick! I cannot leave the house without it. And I also have a huge collection... just don't tell my husband.

Another obsession: nail polish! For everyday use, here's my fav. And for special occasions or just when I want splurge I use this.

I'm an avid knitter. I love going to yarn shops and see the differect colours and feel all the different textures.

I HATE TO DRIVE!

I'm paranoid about my cat sleeping too much. He's getting older (14 years old), so he's sleeping a lot more lately and it freaks me out. I'm afraid that he'll pass away in his sleep.

I'm a member of Weight Watcher's. I've been since September 2007. I love the fact that I'm able to eat the foods I love and not feel guilty that I'm "indulging". So far I've lost 16 pounds. I'm losing them slowly and I'm okay with that.


Hmmm, who to tag? Well, I'm going to leave that one wide open....