The Sunday Salon (04.12.09): Week In Review

Happy Sunday, everyone! Hard to believe another week's gone by, isn't it? I really haven't had much time for reading today... Went to church this morning to celebrate Easter and came home to have a quick bite of lunch before getting out in the yard to plant some flowers. It was a beautiful day for it!
But now for last week in reading... I read and reviewed three books and am about a quarter of the way through a fourth. Not too bad, all things considered (those things being that I have to work and had a pretty busy weekend). I finally started the Uglies series, by Scott Westerfield and made it through Uglies and Pretties, both of which I really enjoyed. (Please click on the titles for my reviews.) After those two I took a break from the Uglies series and tried a Christian fiction novel, No Place for a Lady by Maggie Brendan. Unfortunately that one was a disappointment. I'm currently reading A Deadly Exchange by Geoffrey M. Gluckman. It's rather dry so far but I really think there's a lot of potential for the story to be pretty exciting.
And as most of you have seen from yesterday's post, I had a great week in terms of mail. Now if only I could find some time to read it all!
I also posted my first week-long Mystery Mondays poll, asking everyone who their favorite mystery author is, and so far there haven't been too many responses. Please click here to participate, I'd like to have a nice list of results to post tomorrow!
I'm also grateful for several awards that I received this week. (Some of which I haven't had a chance to post yet, but will soon, I promise!) Medical Librarian of A Passion for Books gave me the Let's Be Friends Award, which I think is a great one! And on top of that, J. Kaye of J. Kaye's Book Blog and Mishel of mis(h)takes both gave me the beautiful Splash Award! Please be sure to check out these ladies' great blogs, as well as the fabulous blog's I passed along these awards to! I'll be handing out more awards soon, which is the part I really enjoy--I love sharing the love! :-)
It was also a week of milestones for me. I had my 100th post, my 100th reader in Feedburner, and my 100th follower on Twitter! Wow! I'm up to 75 followers so hopefully I'll see my 100th follower soon, too! Crazy!
And while I don't usually post much about my personal life, since I like to keep things book-related, I thought I'd leave you all with a few pictures what I accomplished outside today. Everyone likes flowers, right?! :-)

Our patio area (the pavers make up the extension we put in last summer). I alternated pink impatiens and lavender violas, with hydrangeas flanking the area. Hanging plant is a petunia, I think. Eventually the whole area will be filled with flowers!!

We're looking for a more permanent patio set of two chairs to seat at this end. We have a table with folding chairs that is also usually out here, but the folding chairs are a pain since we have to put them up after each use. A permanent seating area will be a nice addition!

Close-up of the plant stand. The rocks at the base were some we dug up when we dug out the yard for the extended patio!

Love these violas! (Yes, they're related to pansies.)

These sweet little hydrangeas should get big in no time!

And last but not least, the new azaleas (in a formerly empty area) going to our front door.