Posted November 14, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Link Up / 10 Comments
My little boy turned 9 months old earlier this month, and I can hardly believe it. When I look back at pictures of him when he was born, it blows my mind that the teeny baby in the pictures is the same adorably chunky kiddo currently zooming around the house on all fours with a floof of brown hair and a grin that’s equal parts charming and mischievous. He’s already an industrious little guy, packing as much activity into his day as possible (Crawling! Trying to chew computer cords! Dumping entire plates of rice on the floor when Mommy isn’t looking!).
He may seem like the sort of kid who’d never sit still to read a book, but story time is among his favorite activities. I tucked a few stacks of books around the house when I baby proofed, and we pull one out a few times a week for reading. And he loves to look at (and chew) them on his own.
I did a post before he was born about the books I wanted to read to him as a baby, but I recently got to thinking about the books I’d like to introduce him to in the years to come. Of course, he’ll have his own favorite books, but there are some I want to be sure to squeeze in there because they’re just too important to pass up. I figured it’s probably a reasonable goal to introduce one of these books each year, so I sat down and made a list! So here are the 10 books I want to read to my son before he’s 10!
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Posted October 31, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Link Up / 4 Comments
A lot of bibliophiles love a bit of seasonal reading, especially around Halloween time. There’s something about curling up with a big blanket, a mug of cocoa, and a super spooky read that turns the early darkness of chill autumn nights into something cozy and fun. I always like to save recipes from books like this for my October blog menus, because this is just the right time of year for them. Some of my fondest blogging memories are of making recipe posts for books like Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, various Edgar Allen Poe titles, and most recently The Phantom of the Opera. They allow so much room for creativity, and I often get to use fun colors and plating styles that normally wouldn’t fit the tone of other books.
Below are my Top 10 Bookish Halloween Recipes, a roundup of my favorite blog recipes from Octobers past. I hope you all enjoy them and that they make the spookiest day of the year just a little bit sweeter! 😉
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Posted October 17, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Link Up / 5 Comments
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt—“Ten Yummy Foods in Books”—seemed tailor made for my blog. After all, food in books is what I DO. As excited as I was to tackle the prompt, it only seemed fair to up the ante and make it a bit more challenging. So instead of ten yummy foods, I chose ten books (some of them are series) that all have iconic dishes associated with them. In the end, I got closer to 20 foods than 10, but everything’s better when there’s more food, right? Hope y’all enjoy! 😉
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Posted September 19, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Link Up / 3 Comments
The complete manuscript for my cookbook is due mid October, so it’s currently crunch time at my house. Husband and baby have been very understanding of how much time I currently spend tapping away at my laptop as I make final edits to my manuscript, but I’ll admit I’m SO READY to be done with this stage of the process. I’m a rather detail-oriented person who I often likes editing, but I’ve been applying the correct abbreviation of “tablespoon” and rewriting ingredients in order of use for almost two months now. Needless to say, I’m ready to get back in the kitchen.
Even though editing process can be tough and tedious, I’ve been motivating myself with the promise that I can do some fun reading once it’s complete. Here’s my post-cookbook TBR, which I plan to dive into as soon as I submit my manuscript:
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Posted September 12, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Link Up / 2 Comments
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt was a freebie, so I decided to cover a topic I’ve had on the brain for a while. When I made astronaut pudding for my Amelia’s Notebook menu, I loved how kid-friendly it was, and I got to thinking about how tough it can be to find fiction-inspired recipes for kids. Dishes like Turkish Delight or Deeper ‘N Ever Pie are fun recipes, but they can be intimidating for kiddos who are just starting to get curious about cooking.
I decided to do a roundup of quick, easy literary recipes for kids here on the blog, so here are ten of my favorites! These recipes require minimal cooking or cutting, and several of them are well known foods from history (sugar plums, hardtack, johnny cake, etc.) that kids are likely to come across in classic books. You can incorporate them into a homeschooling lesson, use them to satisfy your children’s curiosity about foods they’ve read about, or just whip them up for fun. The choice is yours! 🙂
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Posted August 22, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Link Up / 8 Comments
The new school year is just around the corner! Now’s the time for what I consider one of the best parts of the back-to-school season: shopping for school supplies. I loved school shopping as a kid because every item was an opportunity to show my personality. I remember purple and teal composition notebooks, novelty erasers, highlighters in every color of the rainbow, and scented markers (but you wouldn’t believe how disappointed I was that my graphing calculator only came in black).
So when The Broke and The Bookish announced that this week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt would have an open-ended back to school theme, I knew I wanted to make a list of back to school items for book lovers. Below you’ll find everything from backpacks to study materials, all with a bookish theme. May they help you ace that classic lit exam…and maybe strike up a friendship with a fellow book lover!
P.S. Since we’re all book lovers here, I just wanted to note that your supply shopping can benefit National Novel Writing Month by shopping through Amazon Smile! (NaNoWriMo didn’t sponsor this post, I just think they’re really awesome. :))
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Posted August 9, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Link Up / 2 Comments
Intimidating books. No matter how deeply rooted our love of books may be, we’ve all encountered a daunting book at some point. Sometimes it’s a book big enough to rival the dictionary, or maybe the language is so complicated as to be overwhelming. Sometimes it’s just a genre we’re not sure we’ll like!
But all books were made to be read, even the intimidating ones, so I’ve resolved to read the ten books that intimidate me most. Here they are! 🙂
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Posted August 2, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Link Up / 9 Comments
Unlimited money for books. It’s what every book lover dreams about, right? Just last month I published a post describing my dream library, so I was all set to continue fantasizing about more books when this Top Ten Tuesday prompt came up. In fact, I’ve been saving books on my Amazon wishlist for ages, so I just had to pop over and see which ones I wanted most. Here’s my dream book haul master list!
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Posted July 26, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Link Up / 5 Comments
One of the many things that make books magical is how they expose us to worlds, cultures, and lifestyles we might never have known about. A truly great book can get us so excited about the lives of the characters that we want to live that way too!
As a kid, I DEFINITELY spent a lot of time pretending to live in different time periods and countries, but I often overlooked how books piqued my interest in new activities. Looking back, there were TONS of subjects I got passionate about after reading about them…and it still happens today! Here are my top ten things I wanted to learn/do after reading books about it. Enjoy! 🙂
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Posted June 14, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Link Up / 10 Comments
Happy Tuesday! I’m prepping for a camping trip this week, so this post is going up a little later than usual. But better late than never, right? Originally I wanted to write a top 10 episodes post (in keeping with my current Star Trek theme), but it proved to be super intimidating. I’ve only seen the whole series once, so remembering what happened in the early episodes was tough. To kick start my brain, I tried to think of my favorite character moments, and I had so much fun reminiscing, I decided to do a post on that instead!
Below are my top 10 funniest character moments from Star Trek: The Next Generation. If you’re a fan of the show, you probably remember these moments. And if you’ve never seen Star Trek, these may inspired you to give it a try! 🙂
P.S. Even though I’m posting this now, I’m going to link it to next week’s TTT prompt, since that’s a freebie week.
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