French Cooking, Demon Hunting, and My Little Ponies

This week's theme for Head or Tails Tuesday is 'List Three'. You may have noticed before that I love lists, so it was hard to pick one thing to write about! I finally decided to write about three ways I've been relaxing and entertaining myself lately!

1. Reading. I love books, I love to read. Last year I reached a goal of reading 50 books that year, and decided from then forward that my ongoing goal is going to be to read 52 books every year. It doesn't actually work out to one book a week because some weeks I don't read and other times I devour books one after the other. I just finished reading 'Julie and Julia', a book about a woman who decided to undertake cooking all of the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year. I'll be posting a full review on that later, but I definitely enjoyed it. Right now I'm reading 'City of Bones' by Cassandra Clare. I love Young Adult fiction, especially science fiction. Loved Twilight, love the House of Night series. I think that part of the reason is that the Young Adult books are always really character driven. I'm about to start reading 'The Lost Girls' for book club, and am looking forward to that one as well. People sometimes ask me how I have time to read all those books... it's just like anything else - you have to make time for it. Learn to steal a few pages when you're waiting for the water to boil or the rice to cook. Read a bit at night before bed. Forego TV one night to just settle down with a good book. There are NEVER enough hours in the day, but we can decide how to spend the ones that exist!

2. TV. I have no problem admitting that I love watching TV. I follow an absurd number of shows, and I don't apologize for it. It's something I love, it helps me unwind, and I love looking at things with a critical eye. Right now, I am loving Supernatural. It's one of my favorite shows, and I look forward to it every week. I like it that there are ongoing story arcs, but they do get wrapped up and new ones are started each season. To me, this show is VERY reminiscent of The X-Files, which is one of my favorite shows of all time. Also, Jensen Ackles is hot. I've also really been enjoying the new show Eleventh Hour with Rufus Sewell and Criminal Minds.

3. Coloring. I KNOW, adults are not supposed to plop down with 100 crayons and a coloring book on the couch. Do I care? Not really. I love coloring. I have several coloring books. I love the Dover coloring books, because you can get ones that are more complex or intricate. I often use colored pencils for those ones. But I also like stupid, silly coloring books that give me pretty things to decorate, like Barbie and My Little Ponies. There's something about using that creative part of your brain to pick out the colors, then looking at the finished product that is just so fun! I think that when we grow up, we lose too much of our creativity - we give up making up stories and adventures, we don't do as much art, we don't give ourselves permission to use glitter and crayons. But why not? It's still totally fun!

So, those are a few of the things I've been up to. What have you been reading, watching or doing to relax lately?

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