Final 2021 Friday Finds Wrap-up: Books, Party Food, Giveaways, Hats, & More
Hello & welcome to the final Friday Finds of 2021. This has been a rough year for many, yet it seems to have flown by to me. I find the older I get, the faster time moves.
If you celebrate, did you have a good holiday? Mine was very relaxing compared to past years. I’ve enjoyed this time immensely.
I’m one of those people that love to create goals for the new year. I’m also one who is quick to fall behind on those goals. I learned a long time ago not to set resolutions. I tend to break them quickly when life gets in the way, so it’s best to not be too specific.
I also choose a word of the year to be my focus for the upcoming year. This gives me a bit of clarity on what direction I want to take. I plan to revisit my word every quarter to see if it is still relevant. I should have a post up soon about my plans for 2022. My head is full of possibilities for next year! Do you use resolutions, goals, or some other trick to motivate yourself for the new year?
Let’s chat in the comments about any tips or tricks you have to stay accountable for 2022. I need all the help I can get!
Today’s Friday Finds is a mashup of lots of categories. Whether you love the section on books, blogs, recipes, or creating, I hope you find something useful in today’s post.
Onward!
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Books
2021 Friday Finds Wrap-up
I received this book from my The Write Reads group Secret Santa. It’s been on my to-be-read list for a long time. Perhaps this is the motivation I need to read it soon.
One of the Ten Best Books of The New York Times Book Review
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Now a miniseries from Hulu starring James Franco
ON NOVEMBER 22, 1963, THREE SHOTS RANG OUT IN DALLAS, PRESIDENT KENNEDY DIED, AND THE WORLD CHANGED. WHAT IF YOU COULD CHANGE IT BACK?
In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King—who has absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer—takes readers on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it.
It begins with Jake Epping, a thirty-five-year-old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching GED classes. He asks his students to write about an event that changed their lives, and one essay blows him away—a gruesome, harrowing story about the night more than fifty years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a sledgehammer.
Reading the essay is a watershed moment for Jake, his life—like Harry’s, like America’s in 1963—turning on a dime. Not much later his friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. And Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession—to prevent the Kennedy assassination.
So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson, in a different world of Ike and JFK and Elvis, of big American cars and sock hops and cigarette smoke everywhere. From the dank little city of Derry, Maine (where there’s Dunning business to conduct), to the warmhearted small town of Jodie, Texas, where Jake falls dangerously in love, every turn is leading eventually, of course, to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and to Dallas, where the past becomes heart-stoppingly suspenseful, and where history might not be history anymore.
Time travel has never been so believable. Or so terrifying.
Doesn’t this sound fascinating? I can’t wait to give it a read.
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The Year We Learned to Fly by Jacqueline Woodson
Jacqueline Woodson and Rafael López’s highly anticipated companion to their #1 New York Times bestseller The Day You Begin illuminates the power in each of us to face challenges with confidence.
On a dreary, stuck-inside kind of day, a brother and sister heed their grandmother’s advice: “Use those beautiful and brilliant minds of yours. Lift your arms, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and believe in a thing. Somebody somewhere at some point was just as bored you are now.” And before they know it, their imaginations lift them up and out of their boredom.
Then, on a day full of quarrels, it’s time for a trip outside their minds again, and they are able to leave their anger behind. This precious skill, their grandmother tells them, harkens back to the days long before they were born, when their ancestors showed the world the strength and resilience of their beautiful and brilliant minds.
Jacqueline Woodson’s lyrical text and Rafael Lopez’s dazzling art celebrate the extraordinary ability to lift ourselves up and imagine a better world.
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Blog Roundup
2021 Friday Finds Wrap-up
These are a few of my recent book reviews or you can always find all my book reviews HERE. Starting next week, you can look for special posts with highlights of some of my top posts from 2021.
Christmas in the North Woods by Cricket Rohman | 5-Star Children’s Book Review
Colorado Takedown (The McAllister Brothers Book 1) by Cricket Rohman | Book Review
My Best Genealogy Tips: Quick Keys to Research Ancestry by Robin R. Foster | Review
Chandelier (Phantoms #2) by Michael Leon | $50 Giveaway & Excerpt
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Recipes
2021 Friday Finds Wrap-up
These recipes are perfect for a New Year’s celebration whether you are entertaining a group or just yourself.
Mediterranean Seven Layer Dip with Hummus from CookingLSL
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Jarcuterie makes snacking fun & healthy
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Creative Finds
2021 Friday Finds Wrap-up
The Holidays may be wrapping up, but the cold is just setting in around here. There’s nothing better than sitting in your cozy chair knitting quick & easy hats for everyone in the family or donating to someone in need. During the cold months’ schools, shelters, hospitals, and daycares can always use donations of hats, scarves, and mittens.
Classic Beanie Knit Hat Pattern in 5 Sizes!
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Crochet Hat Pattern Bundle with or without pompom!
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Let’s Chat About 2022
2021 Friday Finds Wrap-up
I’ve been cooking up some new plans and ideas for the website, newsletter & Friday Finds post to implement in 2022. Do you have any suggestions? Here are a few possibilities:
- I can now offer Rafflecopter giveaways with Indie-requested reviews. Are you interested?
- A blog roll call where I list the blogs I visit regularly.
- Featured promotions of authors and bloggers.
- More list posts
- More books, recipes, or crafts.
- Fewer recipes or crafts (My book review schedule is already booking into April!)
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Well, that’s it for this week, my friend. Please leave a comment and let me know what you liked or didn’t like this week. I’m always open for chats, discussions, and input from my readers. I can’t wait to hear from you!
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I have always liked time travel books. 🙂
Have a very happy, safe, and healthy new year!
Thanks, Jessica. Wishing the same for you & your family.
Ackk! My goals were soft prayers mumbled about a month ago and vroom, I’m a busy writer! Hope to try that jarcuterie one day when we can entertain again. Stay healthy and Happy New Year Gina!
Yay for writing. Wishing you a healthy, happy New Year too!
Happy New Year!!
The books you found look like great reads
Happy New Year, Crystal!
Speaking of knitting, the book Extra Yarn is a favorite children’s book in our house. Our daughter and I have read it over and over and it just never gets old. I highly recommend this award-winning book if you haven’t yet read it.
Ooh, it’s a favorite here too. I bought it at a fiber festival years ago. The grandkids never get tired of it. I should write up a feature on it, shouldn’t I?
Gina – did you ever attend the Midwest Folk & Fiber Art Fair at Lake County Fairgrounds in IL? My folk band Trillium played there every year during the fest’s eight-year run. I’m not a ‘needlewoman’ — other than broomstick crochet vests many years back — but was thoroughly in awe of all the gorgeous creations. Wishing you a Happy New Year! ~ mim
I always wanted to but we had a local festival that ran at the same time. How cool would it have been if we had connected there years ago.
Happy New Year to you too!
Your knitting projects reminds me of a fun book I read this year, The Unlikely Yarn of the Dragon Lady about a group of church ladies who knit prayer shawls for cancer patients.
I should read that book. When I worked at the yarn shop, we did a lot of donation knitting. It’s very satisfying.
It’s a cute story! 🙌