Believe it or not, despite the busy holiday season, I’m still trying to squeeze in some reading time.  I wanted to be sure and reach my 12 books for the year goal. It doesn’t sound like a big goal but when you have two little kids and run a website, it’s a HUGE goal. 🙂

In November, I mentioned in my Creating Good Habits series that I was starting to work on creating a weekly cleaning schedule. Several of you referred me to FlyLady. And I am so thankful to you all for that. While digging around on her site, I found that she has a book out called Sink Reflections. I’ve been reading it off and on and getting quite a bit of inspiration from it. I’m motivated now that my house can look great all the time and not have so much cleaning chaos to it. Since my plate is always pretty full this time of year, I’m just taking some notes of things to work on for next year. But I really do love this book and highly recommend it.

A few weeks ago, I was flipping through my iPhone and remembered I had the Amazon Kindle App. I was so lucky to have snagged a free version of The Simple Dollar: How One Man Wiped Out His Debts and Achieved the Life of His Dreams (no longer available for free, though. Sorry!)

I always try to read some type of finance book towards the end of the year. It gives me the inspiration I need to put my heart back into getting back on track with our budgeting and paying off our house. I’m only partway through this one, but so far, it’s pretty good.

These are my book picks for November and December. I’ll be doing a giveaway for them later so be sure to keep your eyes open for it.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to proceed with my book picks for 2011 or not. Have any of you found these picks to be useful? Time to chime in before I discontinue the series!

I’m going to do something different for the Read With Us for September. I actually chose two books so that my readers can have a choice at which one they’d like to win when I do the giveaway on it. I’ll just count one as my October pick.

I personally have been reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. It talks about a family’s journey towards trying to eat only what’s in season by either growing it themselves or buying locally.

The book has some funny one-liners in it. When I was reading this on one of my recent flights, I had some people glancing over at me on the plane because I couldn’t help laughing out loud several times.  I’m a big fan of reading about the journeys of other people as they often inspire me to start one of my own. Since I’ve been so busy with Jillian Michaels – 30 Day Shred I haven’t completely finished this one yet.

And for the second pick, I am choosing Eat, Pray, Love… as so many of my readers have read this one and so many others have asked me to pick it so they might have a chance to win it. I did see the movie version of it at the end of August and I’m looking forward to someday finding out how close the movie was to the book.

So when I do the Read With Us giveaway here soon, I’ll be letting my two winners have a chance to pick either book.

When it came time to choose my August Pick at the beginning of the month, I knew exactly which one I wanted to start digging into. This one actually came from a reader recommendation! 🙂

Over the last year, I’ve been working at slowly changing my lifestyle and weaning myself off depending on convenience foods and learning to make my own things. I’ve illustrated several of these things in my Conveniently At Home series and even through Freezer Cooking. Just doing these few little things has helped me on the path that I’m on.

I’ve slowly been switching us to foods from Sustainable Farms, joining a CSA and even starting my own bigger garden this year. With each step I take, I’m learning more about becoming a little bit more self-efficient,  reducing our carbon footprint and supporting local farmers and businesses. So when one of my readers suggested that I pick up a copy of More-With-Less Cookbook (World Community Cookbook) it was a great find for me!

Overall, it’s a recipe book helping you learn how to make more things for yourself. But it also has a great introduction on how and why to make more things yourself.

And while making more things myself has become a little bit more time-consuming, I’m finding that it opens up a new door for things to do with my kids. There are several ways that I’m finding for them to help me safely in the kitchen. They are getting more excited about dinner and honestly, dinner time has become much more enjoyable as it’s now a group effort to create and enjoy. My son’s connecting that this food came from the garden he’s growing or from the farmer’s market that we visited, etc.  I also grabbed a recent Groupon so my family can have a fun outing at a Pasta Class downtown Chicago. I can’t wait to learn how to make more of my own pasta recipes, as I only have knowledge of a few from a previous class I took with my sister!

I have much more to share with you on my discoveries, including a review on an insightful screening, but as a start, I wanted to share that this is my book pick for August. I also wanted to share that I’ve also been reading and using Simply in Season Expanded Edition (World Community Cookbook. I actually, just this week, used their Blueberry Raspberry Jam recipe for my first canning experience! (I’ll share more on that later!) The book is another recipe book that teaches you how to save money by using recipes for foods that are currently in season.

Remember, that I giveaway two copies of my book picks each month. I’ll be posting the giveaway for this one real soon—so stay tuned! I’m hoping that you’ll all check out one or both of these books and see if maybe you can add a few more homemade recipes to your menu plan and stretch your dollars by using more of what’s in-season.

To be honest, I really didn’t get to have a lot of reading time in July. If you’ve been following the Coupon Geek Facebook Page at all, you know why. I’ve spent a good portion of the month decluttering our house. I’m not talking simple de-cluttering but all out “everything will have a place” de-cluttering. I’ll share more on this with you all in another series but I did want to mention my book pick for the month, even though I haven’t finished it in its entirety.

One of my goals for this year was to learn the canning/preserving process. When I go to the farmer’s markets and farm stands, I’m always drawn to those little Ball jars full of good foods. So I told myself that before the summer’s over, I’ll figure out how to do this, if even just one or two items. You have to start somewhere, right?  In the end, I’m hoping to make up some salsa, tomato recipes and jams. We’ll see how it goes.

Thanks to several of my Facebook Friends, I’ve was steered towards the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving and Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.

The Ball Blue Book actually comes in the Ball Home Canning Kit if you needed one of them and can find a good deal on it. (It went as low as $39 on Walmart.com but sold out so fast!)

But overall, I wanted to make this my monthly book pick in hopes that it might encourage others to check it out at the library and possibly venture into the world of canning/preserving, too. I have a feeling that once I put the investment into the supplies I need, that it will save me money over the years. (and definitely get us some yummy foods on the table!) Stay tuned for the upcoming giveaway for this book!

I’d love to hear what things you’ve had good luck canning/preserving.

I have actually been reading several books this month, including All New Square Foot Gardening: Grow More in Less Space, The Complete Book of Running for Women and Charlie St. Cloud: A Novel.

I had just found the Charlie St. Cloud: A Novel at Target this last week and decided it looked interesting enough that I couldn’t pass it up. I finished it in just two days. It’s about two brothers that are in a car accident. The older one survives but promises his brother he’ll never leave him. He takes a job in a cemetery and this is where the book plays out.

What I liked about it is that throughout the book, it really gets you asking yourself if you are living life to its fullest and making the most of it. I was happy to see that they’ve also made a movie out of it and it looks like it might be releasing this summer on July 30, 2010. It stars Zac Ephron, whom you might know from High School Musical.

I hope that you are fitting in a little reading time for yourselves this month. I often find reading a nice way to unwind from the typical crazy-filled day.