The Saturday Six

One.

This really well-written article has some great marriage advice in it. Highly recommend! (I was so thrilled she talked about leaving and cleaving. Most writers skip that one!)

Two.

This is a really encouraging post if you're facing a bunch of impossibilities (or even just one!) in your life right now. Give it a read!

Three.

Darling, darling house. But that PRICE TAG!!! Three cheers for living in the affordable Midwest. (Blows my mind how much some areas cost. I remember hearing a lot about that in my financial aid days!)

Four.

Some of you asked earlier this week about the recipe for the clean eating frosted lemonades I made on our monthiversary. It's a Dashing Dish recipe, and it's actually not one of the member-only ones, so here's the link to it! We enjoyed them very much!


Five.

This just made me laugh! (And it kind of made me mad that I hadn't thought of it on my own!) I believe this photo originated on Instagram, but I found it here on Pinterest. Also - can we talk about these letter boards? Do any of you have them? Like them? I toyed with getting one with birthday money, but I am not sure I have enough creativity to keep up with it!

Six.

Source

Delightful would be the word I'd pick for my book of choice this week. My friend Leslie introduced me to this book - and to Debby Mayne, too. Apparently I've been living under a rock, because Debby has written other books, but the one I read, thanks to Leslie's generosity in sending it to me, is called High Cotton.

This is a contemporary novel set in the south, where the sweet tea is authentic, people push buggies (rather than carts) at the grocery store, and couples named Digger and Puddin' are perfectly common. This is the first in a series of books called the Bucklin Family Reunion Series, and if I could pause for just a moment, I'd like to say I'm excited there will be more books! I fell so in love with all these people and want to see what happens to them next!

The Bucklin family is known for its...ahem...excessive reunion habit. They don't just do a reunion every few years or even every year. They have them every time someone gets a whim to organize one, which means they're sort of legendary. And not just IN the family. Everyone around town knows about the Bucklin reunions. The young women of the family (whether part of the family by blood or marriage) have a love/hate relationship with the reunions and sometimes with the family as a whole.

The book is set up so that every chapter is told from a different woman's point of view. Shay, Puddin', Missy, and Sally share their viewpoints of life in the family and life preparing for the reunion. At the beginning, I thought this constant switching might confuse me, but it never did until the very end, and then it only did because I wanted to read so fast to find out what was going to happen that I didn't pause to remember whose chapter I was in. Reader error.

I loved all the women and felt their respective pain, even if it was something I'd not personally experienced. I also thought there were some very true points in there about the love and frustration of family! (You know - the kind of things you'd never dare to say out loud, but you can sure nod in agreement when you see it written in fiction.)

Love stories, parenting drama, dreams and failures, insecurities and successes...they're all in there, woven around the conundrums of what from-scratch foods these women need to take to the family reunion, so as not to be cast out as poor representations of good southern women.

High Cotton was a completely enjoyable summer read. It didn't make me think too hard, which made it feel kind of like a southern vacation, but there were some twists I did not see coming scattered throughout, so it wasn't a fluffy book at all. I'm excited for book #2!

Thanks, Leslie, for sending me the book, and for introducing me to a new author! :) You're a gem!