Category: Ramblings

Ramblings

End of Year Writing Adventure Recap

Brigitte BrulzLeave a comment

(This post contains affiliate links, which means I may make a small commission at no extra charge to you if you make a purchase after clicking on a link. Thank you!)

This year has been busy, yet amazing! My family relocated in the midst of publishing my first book, Jobs of a Preschooler. In between homeschooling, settling in at a new location, exploring the new area, spending time with my family, and life in general, I was still able to have a lot of fun writing!

Below is a list of what I have done this year in what I have been calling “my writing adventure”. Unless stated otherwise, I have attached links to past posts incase you were interested in reading more about them.

I hope to continue writing in 2018, and I am eager to see where my writing adventure will take me next. Thank you for being a part of this writing journey. Happy New Year!

What are some things that you have accomplished this past year? Do you have any goals for the upcoming year?

 

 

Christmas pickle ornament Thankful Tree with a Pickle
Crafts and Projects · Pickles, Pickles, I Like Pickles · Ramblings

Thankful Tree with a Pickle

Brigitte BrulzLeave a comment

Each Thanksgiving for the past few years, my daughters and I have decorated a very small artificial tree with homemade tags labeled with things we are thankful for. This year, we literally stood back and threw these little tags at the tree, which made us all laugh. This tree may not be the prettiest, but it’s definitely a fun tradition that I like to do with my daughters. Below is a picture of the little Thankful Tree:

In addition to the “Thankful Tree”, we did another simple project together on Thanksgiving that anyone can do at home. We cut strips of construction paper and wrote various things that we were thankful for on the papers. I was surprised when one of my daughters said she was thankful for “laundry”, but the fact that we have laundry means that we have clothes to wear. The fact we have dirty dishes means we have dishes to eat from and food to eat. (Just a side note: this reminds me of 1 Timothy 6:8) Once the strips were written on, I stapled them together into one long thankful chain. We definitely have a lot to be thankful for!

Thankful Chain

So why am I talking about Thanksgiving when today is actually Christmas? Well, today, I will hide a little pickle ornament somewhere in this little “Thankful” tree. This is another activity that we have been doing for the past few years, which I had mentioned in Pickles, Pickles, I Like Pickles. My daughters enjoy trying to see who can find it the fastest Christmas morning. Since the tree is so small, it really isn’t much of a challenge, but they insist I still do it.  It’s amazing how important some traditions seem to be.

Do you have any special holiday traditions? I would love to hear about them!

I think the little pickle ornament is cute, don’t you?

Christmas pickle ornament

I know this time of the year can be especially challenging for many people. I hope that no matter what you may be going through, you are still able to have a nice day today. Merry Christmas!

PICKLES written using pickles It’s National Pickle Day!
Pickles, Pickles, I Like Pickles · Ramblings

It’s National Pickle Day!

Brigitte BrulzLeave a comment

There are all kinds of fun national days – National S’mores Day (the same day as my birthday), National Penguin Day (my daughters and I had a lot of fun celebrating this one year), and (drum roll please) National Pickle Day. Today, Tuesday, November 14th, 2017 is National Pickle Day. Will you do anything special to celebrate? I am looking forward to a fun-filled National Pickle Day, which I will tell you all about in a future post.

Happy National Pickle Day!

Pickles, Pickles, I Like Pickles book cover

 

PICKLES written using pickles Yummy Mt. Olive Pickles
Ramblings

Yummy Mt. Olive Pickles

Brigitte BrulzLeave a comment

For the past few years, my family has enjoyed growing cucumbers in our garden and making homemade bread and butter pickles (my favorite) using my grandma’s recipe. Unfortunately, we were unable to grow cucumbers this year, so we didn’t make any homemade pickles. We were disappointed when we ran out of all of our homemade pickles, and we had to go to the store to buy some.

Today, as we were looking for pickles at the store, my daughters were really excited to find Mt. Olive pickles on the shelves. (The Mt. Olive pickle company has been selling Pickles, Pickles, I Like Pickles in their gift shop in North Carolina, which I wrote about here and here.)

Needless to say, we had to buy a jar of the Mt. Olive bread and butter pickles to sample. Even though we didn’t wait for them to chill in the refrigerator before eating them, they were delicious!  They may not be our homemade bread and butter pickles, but I would recommend these yummy pickles.

This is the jar we bought to sample pickles:

Yummy Pickles!

Ramblings

October 2017 Recap

Brigitte BrulzLeave a comment

I am continuing to have fun on my writing journey. Here is an update of what has been going on with my writing journey in the month of October:

After an author meeting in September, I decided to start working on an alphabet type book.  It is a nonfiction book, so I have been doing a lot of research. A few weeks ago, I went to the local library and checked out a total of 73 books to get some information about the topics I am writing about. I received a few funny glances from people as I was checking out the books, which I found quite entertaining. I am thankful my daughters were willing to help me load all of the books into multiple cloth bags and carry them all to my car. Books are heavy! Since writing is still not a full- time job for me, I am hoping to have this book finished by the end of the year. There is a specific publishing company that accepts this style of books, so I am hoping to send my finished product to them. If they do not accept it, I’m not sure what I will do with it. I guess we will see what happens. As soon as I finish this book, I hope to move forward with another book idea that I have.

I attended the author meeting for the month of October this past weekend. One of the authors has written multiple nonfiction books, so I was able to ask her about sources that are considered reliable when doing research. She mentioned newspapers, diaries, books, magazines, and websites that end with .gov, .edu, and .org. Even those may have conflicting information, so it helps to cite sources properly and do thorough research. She mentioned an online library resource to use to get more information, which I hope to look into more. There was a lot of other information discussed at the meeting that I am interested in finding more information about. Unfortunately, I will be unable to attend the November author meeting.

Last month, I had an article published on Hands On As We Grow entitled 25 Ways to Build Towers Without Blocks.  After that post was published, I was offered the opportunity to be a monthly contributor on Hands On As We Grow, which I am really excited about. I will let you know when my next post is published on Hands On As We Grow, which will probably be some time in December.

National Pickle Day is Tuesday, November 14th! To celebrate, I will be doing various events in the month of November with my book Pickles, Pickles, I Like Pickles. I plan to write about these events in future posts.

Have a wonderful day!