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Is there anything better than Agatha Christie?

9/19/2019

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For me, the ultimate staycation consists of new pjs, a cup of tea and an Agatha Christie book. I love anything Agatha Christie. I love the books. I love the movies and television shows. I once dragged my husband to a production of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap at a local theater. To his amusement, the audience consisted of us and a bunch of senior citizens. I didn't care. I loved every second of it. 

I love Agatha Christie books because they are well-written cozy mysteries. Sure there's murder, but there's never undue gruesomeness. The characters are amusingly drawn and the towns are often quintessential English villages. If set in London or the Middle East, you still have lots of tea and crazy British characters. The most important point is that the books are well-written. Christie writes beautifully in a perfectly light tone, while always being in control of her plot. 

During our recent trip to New England, we stopped at a favorite bookstore, The Book Barn in Niantic, Connecticut. I was terribly disappointed that their mystery section had been moved from their Haunted Bookstore building to another location in the town. First, I missed the ambiance of the little building. Second, our family of five was scattered all over Niantic trying to find the genres we wanted. That being said, I was thrilled to find a coffee table book entitled, Agatha Christie at Home.
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I did not even know this book existed. I have had so much fun flipping through the book and reading biographical facts and seeing pictures of Agatha Christie's various homes with a special emphasis on her home, Greenway. 

I have also recently discovered several fun editions of Agatha Christie's books. I simply adore this Harper Collins edition of 4:50 From Paddington, which happens to be one of my favorite Christie mysteries. Lucy Eyelesbarrow is an absolutely fantastic character. 
Facsimiles of early editions of Christie's books are also being produced. I recently purchased The Thirteen Problems, which is a fantastic collection of Miss Marple short stories. Characters in these short stories later appear in books such as The Body in the Library and A Caribbean Mystery. 
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I purchased the Crooked House facsimile edition after watching the fabulous movie of the same title starring Glenn Close and Gillian Anderson. While I love having these special editions displayed on my bookcase, there is certainly nothing wrong with an Agatha Christie paperback. I have a shelf full of those as well and many happy memories reading them. 
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That being said, I have enjoyed decorating with my beautiful editions of Agatha Christie books. In addition to the books I mentioned above, I have compiled a decent amount of books from Bantam's Agatha Christie Mystery Collection. These are often found in used bookstores or thrift stores and I highly recommend them. I like these editions because they look great on a shelf, but also are packaged nicely for reading. The covers are soft to hold in your hands and the pages remain nicely white for easy reading by those of us with less than perfect eyesight
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If you haven't embraced Agatha Christie, I recommend starting with any of the books I mentioned above. I also recommend The Murder of Roger Ackroyd or Murder at the Vicarage. Both of these books are simply amazing. 
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The Beach and Duck Pin Bowling (Summer Vacation Journal Entry #1)

8/7/2019

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We have settled into our summer vacation at our house just off the Narrow River in Rhode Island. We have walked to the river beach numerous times with girls and they have spent hours swimming in the water--sometimes in their street clothes and sometimes in proper swimsuits. We are so happy the beach is dog friendly and we can have Cubby join us. He'll wade in the water for a few minutes, but he gets nervous as it gets deeper. He prefers sunning himself on the beach and keeping a close eye on the girls as they swim. 
While the girls have had a blast at the river beach, they were very anxious to swim in the ocean. There were threats of rain, but we decided to risk it and head to the ocean. In all honesty, my fair-skinned children do best with a cloudy day at the beach. We ran into the water and jumped into every wave that came. We practiced floating on our backs and riding the waves as they came to us. When she wasn't in the water, Anne worked on her ninja skills on the beach. Meg and Clare focused on collecting beautiful seashells--some of which they plan to paint. 
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After a quick lunch at the well-loved local establishment, Aunt Carrie's, for some chowder and clamcakes, we headed to Meadowbrook Lanes for duckpin bowling. Duckpin bowling uses a smaller ball (without finger holes) and smaller pins. It is so much fun for kids and has become a favorite in our family over the last few years. My husband has remained the undefeated champion in our family games--until today. As the ninth frame approached, he appeared unbeatable, until Clare managed a spare. On the tenth frame, she scored another spare and was permitted to bowl another ball for scoring purposes. With that ball, she knocked down eight pins and beat her father by a whopping six points. 

While Anne came in last, the game was quite an accomplishment for her as well. For the first time, she bowled every ball herself and did so without the help of a ramp. During one frame, she even managed to get all ten pins down. She was a champion in her own right. 

Meg and I might not have been champions today, but we had a great time. We were typically within a point of each other throughout the game and were even tied for several frames. 
If it appears to you that Anne is in her pajamas in the picture above, you are correct. Anne's view of a vacation is that you stay in your pajamas as much as possible and linger at home. The rest of us force her out of the house more than she likes, but our compromise is that she can wear pjs, so long as she wears shorts or otherwise properly covers herself. That's our way of honoring her view of a vacation, though I am wishing I had packed her a lot more pjs. 

We finished out the day at the Twin Oaks Restaurant in Cranston, Rhode Island. This local favorite has been around since 1933 and has huge serving sizes. We brought home a lot of leftover spaghetti and meatballs. 

Today was a great start to our vacation adventures. 
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Paint This!

7/24/2019

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Adventures have not come easily recently. Anne ran a low-grade fever for nine consecutive days. With a headache and lethargy, she had no interest in leaving the house. A ridiculous heat wave didn't help matters either.

On Tuesday, we tried our best to get out of the house. Our intent was to go to Paint This! in Old Town Alexandria. Unfortunately, we realized they weren't open on Tuesday just as we reached our destination. Doing our best to make a bad situation better, we drove a few blocks to Lavender Moon Cupcakes and indulged in some yummy treats. In addition to their unbelievably good cupcakes, we love the charm of the cupcakery itself. It has that urban brickish charm, while also being painted in pinks and teals. There are tiny table with beautiful antique chairs. It is just adorable. I asked Clare if she could live in a place like this. She assured me she would happily move in. 

A few doors down from Lavender Moon Cupcakes is a children's clothes consignment store called 529 Kids Consign. We have found some amazing clothes here over the years, so we stopped by after eating our cupcakes. Each of the girls found a dress and we splurged on some very cute hair accessories. Just a note: the hair accessories are not used (just in case you were worried), but rather many of them are made by local crafters and are very cute and unique. 

We returned to Old Town Alexandria today for another attempt at Paint This! I am happy to say we were successful this time. Paint This! is a paint-your-own-pottery store and Meg has been begging to go there for awhile. Both Meg and Clare have been to Paint This! with friends, but this was our first trip as a family. Anne was very reluctant to go (mostly because she hasn't wanted to leave the house since she first became sick), but with her temperature back to normal, we convinced her to give it a try. As you can tell by the pictures below, she had a blast. She now wants to know when we can go back again. 
If anyone is wondering why Clare looks like Harley Quinn, she went straight from painting pottery to Wacky Wednesday at her dance camp. She and her friend planned very detailed outfits for Wacky Wednesday and she didn't hesitate to wear the outfit to Paint This! Besides, it added to the artistic feel of the outing. 

We really enjoyed this creative adventures. It was fun to pick our pottery and paint colors. It was also fun to sit and paint together. Everyone offered suggestions to each other and helped one another out. We enjoyed conversations with other patrons and the staff was very helpful. Anne finished earlier than the rest of us, but she happily curled up on the sofa in the store and waited for the rest of us to be finished. In fact, she had been eyeing that sofa from the moment we walked in. It was a surprisingly successful two hours considering how challenging the previous week and a half had been. 
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    Author

    I am Sandra Penfield--a one-time lawyer who is now a very happy stay-at-home mom. This blog is about making every day the very best it can be and preserving those memories for my children.​

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