Spinning is so much cooler than not spinning.

I think I went a little overboard with my birthday spending Thursday (oops....NOT).

I've been slowly re-building my Little House book collection from years ago. That meant ordering a copy of "Laura: The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder" by Donald Zochert, which thankfully I did via the Amazon marketplace (I completely skipped "The Rose Years" the time around because I am NOT fond of Rose Wilder Lane) a few years ago. I regretted tossing away my old copy which I oddly found at a Wal-mart in the 1990's

But let's skip that, it took me several months but I finally have all of my favorite "Little House" books in the full-color illustrated editions From "By the Shores of Silver Lake" to "The First Four Years". But I have yet to re-own any of the first 3 books in any form.

Personally, I find that no one can call themselves proper "Little House"/Laura Ingalls Wilder fans if they don't own or have read (by library or by owning) or coveted (sadly, not everyone can find or afford it) "Pioneer Girl". It took me a while but I got it for my birthday (ha!) eventually in 2015 (I think) but to keep it short but sweet I LOVED IT!! STILL DO!!

But I admit "Pioneer Girl Perspectives" disappointed me a bit. It took me months to finish and my eyes glazed over so many times. But I did enjoy the pictured in this book and the whole bit about Rose Wilder Lane and her yellow journalism ( in "The Strange Case of the Bloody Benders")! Ha!! But I will continue to buy the "Pioneer Girl" books as I find them/released.

This post started off as a birthday shopping post but evolved into a Laura Ingalls Wilder book post, ha, whoopsie!

There are some years that I really love my birthday and today (Tuesday) was one of them. :) I'm afraid to total the amount of money that I spent today!


The day started badly, as I could not get to sleep no matter how hard I tried . Thankfully I do think I managed to get some sleep. But once it started it got 100% better. At first I was against going to Wal-Mart before we went out to eat at the Cracker Barrel but I'm glad I did. In addition to the $170(!) I received throughout the day. And so with a larger amount of money than I expected I bought a couple of essentials (jewelry cleaner, shampoo new earbuds) plus a few things I couldn't resist (The Runaways on DVD, a paperback Breaking Dawn (don't judge me! lol)), The Vampire Archives; Vol.1: Bloodsuckers ((dude! Popsy by Stephen King, creeped me out!!)) with a preface by Neil Gaiman, and an $25 iTunes gift card). Mom gave me this uber-cute birthday card. It has a picture of a white fancy-cut poodle wearing a tiara sitting on a fancy dog bed (or is that a chair?) and it says on the front "The best thing about birthdays?". Inside it says: "On your birthday you get to be the queen." The whole thing tickled me to no end, and it still does Inside was money from mom and a $10 gift card to McDonald's to get frappes or smoothies or whatever I want.

Then after a birthday lunch, we hauled tail to Bed Bath and Beyond. I looked for a decent pillow sham to match my bedding but I didn't see anything that stood out but I did get Wild Wild West and Batman Begins on DVD. Then finally Books-A-Million! I spent a small fortune there but all of it was thanks for the $100 bill my Aunt gave me.

-The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
-Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Graphic Novel
-Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, 2011 calendar (Hey! they didn't have a Harry Potter calendar)
-Steamed: A Steampunk Romance by Katie MacAlister
-Android Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters

Then I toddled over to TJ Maxx right next door (where I bought my pink and green Nautica comforter last year) and they had this gorgeous pink and green paisley pillowsham with ties on the side for $13. (again thanks to Auntie B)


And..then... the mall! which was practically right next door to BAM! Went to Belk to pick up a lipstick or two,
I needed a new tube of Black Honey as the one I currently had was about 2 years old if not older. In the long run I got the Clinique free gift set (Yay!) which made my day (Nearly, heh, Truthly it was Mom's card that made my day.) Ans then on to Bath and Beauty Works got this gorgeous little purple reusable shopping bag along with a small bottle of "Vampire Blood", no really! LOL actually it was hand sanitized labeled as "vampire blood" (they're already stocking the Halloween stuff out I see!) but its really a plum scent/ And a small tube of Japanese Cherry Blossom anti-bacterial hand lotion (I have there perfume and I saw this and said what the hell.)


And one last stop before I left the mall. Victoria secret! I went there to pick up some of their lovely undies but alas their stock of high-leg briefs were disturbingly low, even more so when they didn't have any of the pairs I wanted in my size, but I settled on a lovely Pear Glace-scented body lotion. Yummy.

Nothing much else happened after that other than slipping of to McDonald's on the way home for a Mixed Berry smoothie and medium fries. But what a lovely thing it was to be "Queen for a day". heh