I'm happy to be joining Amy from Love Made My Home for her Five on Friday Series.

I am taking five minutes of my day to share five things.


1)  I love getting mani/pedi's in the summertime and last week I decide to pick out the color white for my nails.  My daughter had this color on her nails and I loved the way it looked on her.  This is a very popular nail polish color to wear right now.  What I like about the color white is that it goes with everything and I think it looks nice for summer.



2)  This is the lovely view I had last week while I was walking my dog Bosco.  I love taking early morning walks with him when everything is so quiet.



3)  My family and I decided one evening to go to caffe' bene for coffee and cupcakes.  We picked out this red velvet cupcake which was just so yummy.



4)  I love the color of my peach rose that bloomed recently.


5)  I went on a trip with friends from my church to Cape May, New Jersey and part of the trip was a boat ride to see the whales and dolphins.  I was able to get this beautiful shot of the sun setting.  We did not see any whales but we saw a lot of dolphins jumping out of the water.

I am happy to be joining Amy from Love Made My Home for her Five on Friday Series. 

I'm taking five minutes of my day to share five things:

Today I'm sharing some things that I love about the summer!


1)  I love refreshing drinks during the summer such as the ice tea at Panera Bread.  It's one of my favorite ways to cool off when it's hot outside.


2)  I'm so grateful for our summer vacation I just had with my family to sunny California.  We just got back yesterday and once I'm all settled in I will be sharing with you photos and more about the vacation.

Here are two photos that I'm sharing with you from our trip.  If you follow me on INSTAGRAM then you will recognize these photos.  I hope you will join me on Instagram to follow along!


I just love California and the sunny warm weather!


3)  I love summer and grilling food and BBQ's and not having to use the oven as much when cooking dinner or entertaining friends and family.  I made grilled corn and the recipe to make it was so easy.  I will share this with you soon.


4)  I am enjoying my container gardening and growing tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, mint, basil, lavender, and edamame (they are beans in a pod) and it's my first time growing edamame beans.  I love having a small garden to tend too.


5)  My family and I are looking forward to visiting and spending time at my mothers beautiful home and beach for the summer.

Hi friends, I'm happy to say that I accomplished reading a book this summer.

I started reading back in the beginning of July the book The Paris Wife by Paula McLain.

Let me explain why it's been so long since I have read a book.  I love reading books but I don't seem to have much time to read anymore due to family, crocheting, knitting and blogging and watching TV!

I promised myself for the summer that I would read one book and finish it.  It felt really good to be reading again and I didn't want the book to end because I was enjoying it so much.  Lol!  






If you have not read the book yet I highly recommend it.  To quickly sum up the book, it's about Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley Richardson and their life in Paris in the 1920's. 

I just started reading the book AND THEN THERE WERE NONE by Agatha Christie.  I love mystery books and this looks like it will be a good book.  This book was recommended to me to read by my daughter who had to read this book for school. 

I am on a roll right now with reading and I do hope it won't take me a long to finish reading the book.  I will let you know what I thought of it when I'm done reading it.

What book are you reading right now?

The color of these potholders/dishcloths sure do remind me of fall and it's just around the corner. 


I have been crocheting potholders lately and these are a fun and quick project to make.  I love crocheting these in the summertime when it is too hot to go outside.  I don't like working on anything heavy either like a blanket as it will be sitting on my lap.
  

Hi friends!  It feels so good to be back blogging again and I hope you all had a nice weekend.  While I was on my blogging break my family and I took a vacation to Los Angeles, California for a week.  I have been home now for one week since last Sunday.  I'm finally over the jet lag and I even felt it for a few days while I was on vacation.  I'd love to share with you my trip.  

The day started when we woke up early at 4:00am to get ready for a 7:00am flight to Los Angeles, California.  I read magazines and slept a little on the plane.  The flight was good but they did not serve any food on our 6 hour flight, only water, tea, coffee or soda.  My daughter and I were hungry when we were almost to our destination and we decided to wait to have lunch when we arrived in CA.  

Once we arrived in California and left the airport, we got our rental car and decided to have lunch at IN-N-OUT BURGER.  Boy am I glad that we waited to have our lunch!  It is so amazing!  



They have the best burgers and fries!  The burgers taste like the ones from Shake Shack and they are so juicy and good and the fries are homemade! You have to try IN-N-OUT BURGER if you are in the area and to see the link click HERE.  



We then settled ourselves and relaxed a little at our friends house where we were going to stay for the week.  I love our friends house and I felt like I was staying at a spa for the week!

These are photo's of our friends backyard and pool area.





Once we were all settled in we took a walk to Venice Beach, Los Angeles at the canals.  The canals are very similar to the ones in Venice, Italy giving this part of Los Angeles it's name.  Many people don't even know this part of Venice Beach or of it's existence.  It was so pretty and peaceful there.  I'm glad I got to see this part of California and take pictures of it.





I love this tree below and a lot of lanterns were hanging in the tree.  It looks so unique and I love the way it hangs over the sidewalk and water.