Results of My Spring To-Do List 2017

Memorial Day is past, and since that's the day that (in my mind) kicks off summer, I'd say it's time to see how much I accomplished from this year's Spring To-Do List.

~ Read Hood by Stephen Lawhead  Check!  My review is here.

~ Read Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome.  Fail.  I'm putting it on my summer to-do list.

~ Read 4 more books from my TBR shelves.  Check!  I read The Merchant's Daughter by Melanie Dickerson, Wizards, Hobbits, and Harry Potter edited by Mark Whitlock,  and two books for the INSPY Awards (I don't want to say which ones so I don't want to seem to have favorites based on which books I read first).

~ Read 4 books from the library.  Check!  In fact, I read TEN.  They were The Trouble Begins at 8 by Sid Fleischman, Rogue One by Alexander Freed, Black, White, Other: In Search of Nina Armstrong by Joan Steinau Lester, Jane and the Stillroom Maid by Stephanie Barron, Something Rich and Strange by Ron Rash, The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend by Glenn Frankel, April Twilights and Other Poems by Willa Cather, Superman Versus the Ku Klux Klan by Rich Bowers, I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, and one book for the INSPY Awards (but again, I don't want to name which one).  It was a great spring for reading!!!

~ Watch The Great Gatsby (2013)  Fail.  I wanted to get it watched before I started my read-along, but that's kind of not happening, I guess.

~ Watch 4 more movies from my TBW shelves.  Check!  I watched Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004), Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008), The Three Musketeers (2011), Francis the Talking Mule (1950), and Ambush at Cimarron Pass (1958) -- that's five, and a nice mix of modern and classic.  I also finished season 6 of Castle and watched Alan Ladd's episode "Committed" from General Electric Theater (1954), so I got those off my TBW shelves too.

~ Start blogging about how 2017 is the 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation  Check!  My first post is here, and there will be more to come.

~ Sew a skirt using a new pattern (I want to try this one) and the Jane Austen fabric I bought a while ago from Etsy shop Cute Little Fabric Shop  Semi-check!  I did make a new skirt for Easter using that pattern, but I used different fabric because I'm not sure the straight lines of the fabric I wanted to use would really work well with that pattern.  Still searching for one that will.

~ Finish knitting my Newt Scamandar scarf  Fail.  It's getting longer, though!  Almost 3 feet long, I reckon.  As long as I finish it before cold weather sets in again, that's what matters, right?

~ Finish the rewrites of "Cloaked" and be into the pesky line-editing stage.  Check!  My "editing team" has the story again, and I'm looking forward to their input.  Still planning on a summer release, probably in August.  This has gone from a long short story to a short novel, and I am looking into releasing it in print as well as e-book form.

~ Bake myself something ridiculously chocolatey for my birthday.  Check!  I made chocolate-orange cake from this recipe.  As you can see, we didn't wait quite long enough for the topping to set before we dug in, but it was soooooo moist and dense and delicious!  And a great size for us to just have it a couple times and then be finished with it, and thus not have cake around the house for days and days.

~ Make a miniature Hobbit home in one of my flower containers out on my deck.  Check!  You can read all about it here.

~ Hold my annual group yard sale.  Fail.  But only because we got rained out -- we will have it later this summer instead!  I have it all organized, and a whole passel of my friends have their sale items tagged and ready to go, so it's just a matter of there being a Saturday that works for all of us where it doesn't rain.

I had such a productive and enjoyable spring!  Did you get something accomplished, read, watched, cleaned, or made?