Savvy & Sweet Reads (and Watches!): The Time Traveler's Wife

{Before I get into my actual post, I wanted to let you know that I've recently resurrected my love for reading and I've been reading quite a bit lately!  So you can expect to see more Savvy & Sweet book reviews!)

Over the weekend I finished reading The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.  I had heard a number of people say they really liked the book quite awhile ago (it first came out back in 2004) and I've always wanted to read it, I just hadn't gotten it into my hands until now.  A couple of months ago we bought The Time Traveler's Wife on DVD and I refused to watch it until I read the book first.  When I finished the book on Saturday I followed it up with the movie, so now I can review both for you!

A quick synopsis of the book (but I won't give anything away if you're thinking about reading it!):

Henry is a time traveler.  It's something in his DNA that makes him time travel and he can't control when it will happen or where he will go in time.  He rarely visits the future, but he often visits the past- even past versions of himself.

Clare meets Henry when she's just a little girl and Henry is a full-grown man.  She became close with Henry as she was growing up and knew that their lives would always be intertwined- even though she never knew when Henry would show up or when he would disappear.

In "real time" Henry is 12 years older than Clare, but during the time that Henry is visiting her when she's under the age of 18, he's always in his 30's.  This is where the whole concept of Henry's time travel is a little hard to grasp- the 30-something Henry who is visiting Clare happens in the future when Henry actually is 30-something. So the "real time" Henry is somewhere else out in the world in his late teens/20's and has no idea who Clare is.  Are you throughly confused now?

The amazing thing is that the author, Audrey Niffenegger, writes in such a way that it's not as confusing as one would assume.  I'll admit, I was confused a bit at some points, but not to the extent that it took anything away from the story whatsoever.  

And the story- my goodness.  Possibly the best love story I have ever read.  I think a piece of it is that it's completely unique due to Henry's time travel, but I don't feel like that's what made it so wonderful.  I have trouble finding the right way to describe it, but the connection that Henry and Clare have is so unfathomably deep and their love for one another is so completely pure- it's the best example of true love that I have ever seen in writing.

I was excited to watch the movie right away after I finished the book.  I didn't have high expectations for the portrayal of the love story because I just felt like the book did such an incredible job with it- that would be hard to live up to.  I was very much looking forward to seeing how the movie moved through the timeline of the story though.  With all of Henry's time travel, I thought that being able to visually follow it in the movie would take away the moments of confusion I had while reading the book.

I though that the movie was good (but not great), but I don't know if I would have felt this way if I hadn't read the book first.  I think that if I saw it before I read the book I wouldn't have understood the depth of Henry and Clare's relationship- which was the most incredible part of their story.  The filmmakers did do a fantastic job with the time travel though.  As I had hoped, it helped me to connect all of the different time lines together and understand more fully how they all worked together.  Plus Clare is played by Rachel McAdams and I've always enjoyed her as an actress.

My final recommendation: Without a doubt, read the book- it's beautiful.  Once you've finished the book, then watch the movie.  It won't do the love story justice, but it's a good clarification of how the time travel works.

Have any of you already read the book or watched the movie? What did you think?

The Path Of Destruction Continues

Colby is really lucky he’s so darn cute.  Like REALLY lucky.  He doesn’t get in nearly as much trouble as he probably should just because his cute little puppy face melts our hearts every. single. minute. of. ever. single. day.  He is our fur baby.

Anyway, here’s his latest handiwork:

Goodbye cute peep-toe wedges.  You’ve been good to me over the past few years.  I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to find a replacement since I got them for less than $10 at Target a few years back.  I’m sure the cork wedge was irresistible for puppy-chewing purposes.

So much for our beautiful comforter...I think this can be somewhat salvaged though, I just gotta use some of my creative sewing skills.  For some reason Colby is obsessed with pulling stuffing out of ANYTHING.  Meaning he no longer has a bed of his own, only a blanket because he pulled all of the stuffing out of the last TWO.

Oh and it didn’t stop at the comforter.  I think his goal was to tackle the entire mattress, because he chewed a hole in the fitted sheet as well.  Luckily we caught him at this point, or I’m sure we would have walked in to see the entire contents of the mattress on the floor.

Savvy & Sweet Beauty: Spin Pins

A month or so ago I was in the hair care aisle at the store and I saw a display for a new line of Goody brand hair accessories.  This particular display featured one of them- the Spin Pin.  

Ooohhh.....sounds fancy!  I was intrigued.  The model's photo on the display had a cute swept up hair-do.  

Sadly, I had no idea what this Spin Pin looked like because they were completely sold out.  Bummer.  A week or so later I had wandered down the same aisle and found myself looking for the Spin Pin- sold out again!  Now I was convinced it must be amazing because it was always sold out.  Well, a week or so later I checked back again and they had it!  Success!  As it turns out, it's called the Spin Pin, but there's actually two "pins" in the pack, so it's more like Spin Pins.  

Anyway, they're these spirally metal do-dads that supposedly do the equivalent job of 20 bobby pins (so says their commercial).  You just hold your hair in a ponytail, twist it around into a bun, then twist the Spin Pins in- one from the top and one from the bottom.  No ponytail holder necessary- just the two Spin Pins.  I tried them out as soon as I got home- pretty impressive!  My hair didn't look as nice as the model's did in the picture (Does it ever? For anyone?), but I think some of it was due to the length of my hair- if my hair was a few inches longer the ends probably wouldn't stick up in all sort of crazy directions like mine tends to do.  I've also found that I can use them to hold a relaxed French twist as well.  They hold my hair incredibly well- the other night I even forgot about them and went to bed with them in my hair and in the morning my bun was still intact!  I think the fact that my hair is thin and fine helps them to hold really securely.  I definitely think they can work well in thicker hair too though- my best friend and I tested them out on her thick hair last weekend while we were out on the town for her birthday and they held up pretty darn well.  I wear mine at least a few days every week- if I'm wearing a bun in my hair it's nice to use the Spin Pins instead of a hair tie because hair ties can sometimes get tangled in your hair and end up breaking strands off.  The Spin Pins just sort of twist into your bun and then you just twist them the opposite direction to get them out- simple as that!  Here's a video tutorial from YouTube- there's a bunch of different video tutorials/reviews on there for Spin Pins, but this one is short and to the point so that you get the idea:

I love them.  Good luck to everyone who wants to snag your own Spin Pins- they seem to be hot sellers all over the place!!

I Love Vacation.

Hubby G and I just returned home last evening from a spectacular long vacation- hence the lack of posting around here!  We went up to Michigan's Upper Peninsula to visit my parents for a whopping 10 days!  The last time we were able to travel there to visit (since it's a 9 hour drive) was last November, so this trip was long over due.

I won't lie, I didn't take many pictures like a good little blogger, but I'm not sorry.  We relaxed and had such a good time- it was nice just to take it all in.

My parents live in the Keweenaw Peninsula (I wrote about it a little bit here).  It's an unbelievably beautiful place.  I've heard numerous people refer to it as "God's Country".  If you don't like the outdoors, you might hate it, but I love the outdoors and it's heaven to me.  I swear the sky is bluer, the trees are greener, and the air is fresher.

We were happy to be there for 4th of July as well- it's a big deal up in the Yoop! (That's the slang for U.P.)  I think more people come into town for the 4th than do for holidays like Christmas or Thanksgiving.  And I'm not gonna lie- it gets interesting.

My parents live close to the festivities that happen in the park in Lake Linden, Michigan.  This park fills up with hundreds of people to watch the fireworks.  When Hubby G and I stopped by early in the evening Hubby G made this comment: "I have never seen so many mullets in one place".  Now, I won't argue with the statement- the typical backwoods, redneck stereotype of the Yooper isn't 100% completely untrue of all residents.  Personally, I don't even think it's a bad thing- it's kind of endearing!  I mean, the U.P. wouldn't be the U.P. without a few crazies thrown in :)

Anyway, hundreds of people packed into a park and loaded up on 4th of July celebratory booze isn't really my scene (I get stressed out around large, loud groups of people no matter where we are) so we just stopped by the park for a little bit before heading back around the lake to my parents place where we headed out on the pontoon boat and then watched the fireworks that are shot off over the lake.  The fireworks display was fantastic- especially for the size of the Keweenaw community- and we really enjoyed the show.  Colby however, did not.  He came on the pontoon boat with us and the loud bangs scared our poor little pup.  Even though he was scared, he tolerated it quite well...except when we realized upon returning home that the fireworks literally scared the shit of him.  Poor little buddy!  He recovered fine though, and now we'll know that our little buddy is not a fan of fireworks for the future.

Another 4th of July celebration that we (unintentionally) hit up with the Gay Parade.  Now hold up just a second- Gay is a tiny town in the Keweenaw and every year they hold a 4th of July parade that is quite popular.  Neither the town nor the parade have anything to do with being homosexual, it just happens to be the name of the town.  We hadn't planned on going to the Gay Parade, we really had just wanted to stop and have a drink at the Gay Bar with my parents, but we happened to pull into town just before the parade was about to begin, (and the bar was ridiculously packed because of all the parade-goers) so we stayed to watch.  It was interesting to say the least.  In addition to the ridiculous and funny parade entries, the number of people packed in town to watch the parade was crazy!  A quick search didn't yield many resources other than Wikipedia, but according to that, the population of Gay as of 2000 is 60.  Yeah.  I didn't forget a zero.  Just 60 people.  And there were probably 10 times that in town for this parade.  And the only other thing in town besides those 60 residents is the Gay Bar- hence it being so packed on parade day.  Anyway, even though we didn't get our drink at the bar, it was amusing to watch the locally famous Gay Parade.

The rest of our vacation days were mostly spent enjoying time with family, taking Colby swimming in the lake, running for this goal I'm still sticking with, eating  and drinking at our favorite local restaurants, and sitting around bonfires.  It was fantastic.  My parents live right on the lake and that makes us lucky enough to enjoy a scene like this just about every single night while we were there:

{Photo taken by me- this is seriously the view from my parents house- I hope that some day Hubby G and I can live on a lake and have a spectacular view like this EVERY DAY.  Ahhh...this is reason number 5,768 why I LOVE the U.P.}

As amazing as vacation was, it is nice to be back home now.  Although, while Hubby G and I were out for a run this morning I was cursing the fact that I no longer can end my run with a convenient jump in the lake!

Now that we're back and work will be much less busy for me for about 2 months, I'm looking forward to blogging more!  Thanks for hanging in there during my extended vacation absence!