Two Tickets to the Christmas Ball by Donita Paul

Yet another book review. :)  I received the book Two Tickets to the Christmas Ball by Donita K. Paul to review for Waterbrook Multnomah Publishers.  I was actually looking forward to reading the book because I thought the premise was kind of cute: "Mischievous matchmakers. Two special tickets. One unlikely couple."  I'm a sucker for a good, clean romance novel and thought this would fit the bill.  It even had a cute cover (yes, I judge books by their cover!).  Yes, it was a romance, but it also involved wizards and "oddities" that I just wasn't fond of.

If you like magic or things of that sort, then you may enjoy the book, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone.  Even removing the wizards, the story itself dragged a little for me.  I did finish the book but if it weren't for the review, I would probably have put it down and not picked it back up again.  SO, you probably want to rush right out and buy this one then, don't you? ;)

Wish I had a better review of the book, but I do not.  The story line was too unbelievable for me, and I'm really not into the whole fantasy genre.


This book was provided to me by the Waterbrook Multnomah Blogging for Books program but all opinions are my own.  (really, do you think THEY would want me to say this!?!?)

Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half by Steve and Annette Economides

Through the Booksneeze program of Thomas Nelson, I received the book Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half by Steve and Annette Economides.  If you know me, you know that over the past year and a half or so I have become quite the coupon/deal junkie, so I was excited to read this and see how much further I could take my grocery shopping adventures (I still have a LONG way to go...).

The book is an easy read and does go fairly quickly.  They discuss how they as a family do monthly grocery shopping (including monthly meal planning) and use coupons.  Their ides are quite simple and are really nothing other than I've already seen.  I have to say if you are interested in cutting your grocery bills while still eating a healthy diet, I don't think you need to buy a book to tell you how to do it.  There are NUMEROUS resources available through the web, one of my favorite being Money Saving Mom.  The book itself isn't bad per se I just know there are other resources and it would not be worth it (for me) to actually purchase the book.  However, if you are looking for a resource to keep at your fingertips and get you started down the path of lowering your grocery bill?  This book would be a good resource.

I did decide to try their idea of monthly meal planning.  Once again, this was not a new idea for me (my mom has been telling me about this for quite some time...) but I finally decided to give it a try.  I've been good about planning one or two weeks at a time, but maybe with a monthly plan I will get better about having ALL ingredients on hand. :)

This book was provided to me through the Booksneeze program in exchange for my review.  All opinions are my own.