the MapleStone home

• find something else to do, (i.e. walking,exercise, so on) when you would normally be smoking - Well for me, for instance, I would read or check my emails (I always smoked outside). I made the decision that I was not going to replace a cigarette with walking or something like that. If I was going to quit...I wasn't going to NOT substitute one habit for another.

• Barnes and Noble | Kindle | Audible: 15hr 55min | ☆☆☆☆
• "By 1920, the movies had suddenly become America’s new favorite pastime, and one of the nation’s largest industries. Never before had a medium possessed such power to influence. Yet Hollywood’s glittering ascendency was threatened by a string of headline-grabbing tragedies—including the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, a legendary crime that has remained unsolved until now...Along the way, Mann brings to life Los Angeles in the Roaring Twenties: a sparkling yet schizophrenic town filled with party girls, drug dealers, religious zealots, newly-minted legends and starlets already past their prime—a dangerous place where the powerful could still run afoul of the desperate...A true story recreated with the suspense of a novel, Tinseltown is the work of a storyteller at the peak of his powers  - and solution to a crime that has stumped detectives and historians for nearly a century. "
• I love true crime - and even better is a unsolved true crime. Many of the reviews on this book complained that it dragged on, the audio version is the unabridged version and they're longer. But being a true crime fan sometimes the backstory, I feel, gives you a better insight into all the characters involved and since this took place in the 1920s shopping the history of Hollywood and many of the players also makes the story more interesting as to why the crime went unsolved for so long. So if you're a true crime fan and you haven't read this book  - pick it up - read it - let me know what you think!

• Barnes and Nobles | Kindle | Audible: 8hr 36min | ☆☆☆☆½
• "You shouldn’t be here. It’s too late . . . “These, heard over the phone, were the last recorded words of successful celebrity-divorce lawyer Richard Pryce, found bludgeoned to death in his bachelor pad with a bottle of wine—a 1982 Chateau Lafite worth £3,000, to be precise. Odd, considering he didn’t drink. Why this bottle? And why those words? And why was a three-digit number painted on the wall by the killer? And, most importantly, which of the man’s many, many enemies did the deed? Baffled, the police are forced to bring in Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, the author Anthony, who’s really getting rather good at this murder investigation business. But as Hawthorne takes on the case with characteristic relish, it becomes clear that he, too, has secrets to hide. As our reluctant narrator becomes ever more embroiled in the case, he realizes that these secrets must be exposed—even at the risk of death . . ."
• Do you love a who done it? I do and I thoroughly enjoy Anthony Horowitz. 

SAY NOTHING: A true story of murder and memory in Northern Ireland. AUTHOR: Patrick Radden Keefe (read by: Matthew Blaney)

• Barnes and Nobles | Amazon | 14hrs 40m | ☆☆☆½
• "In December 1972, Jean McConville, a 38-year-old mother of 10, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the IRA was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress - with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.....Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing audiobook on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also IRA members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders. From radical and impetuous IRA terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious IRA mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his IRA past - Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish."
• This was another unabridged book. I remember hearing about the bombings that we're going on in Ireland and Great Britain during the late 70's into the 80's. . . So this was an interesting but long and there was a lot of details on many things that I didn't know. The one thing that struck me was how the children were just thrown into a system that abused them and really didn't care about them; and then to be treated the same way as adults after their mother remains were found. There has been no justice for these kids or anything resembling Justice.

• Wal-Mart | AMAZON | Target | 13hrs 31m | ☆☆☆☆
  
• "On a warm Florida evening, Karen Gregory saw a familiar face at her door. What the beautiful young woman could not know was that she was staring into the eyes of her killer--a savage monster who would rape her, stab her to death, and leave her battered body on the floor outside the bedroom." Her neighbors heard her scream but no one called the police...
• This is one of those books that has you shaking your head in disbelief from the beginning. 

• Clear Gorilla Glue for crafts
• 4 - 5in round plaques
• 4 - 4in round plaques
• 6 pkg ½in round beads w/⅛in hole
• White nylon thread
• Hot glue + glue gun
• Black craft paint
• Antique gold rub & buff
• 2 sets of 3 'whitewash and gold bottle taper candle holders '

Assembling

• Wipe down candle holders
• Apply glue around the top edge of holders (below)

• I found this recipe on Shannon @foxhollowcottage Instagram account and I love how easy it is! The one thing different is I don't like olives so I add diced green chilies and any seasoning I like. 
• Cecelia at My Thrift Store Addiction posted this recipe for Creamy Chilled Strawberry Soup that I can't wait to try.

• I'm in love with this rug Marie Natural Rug from Ruggable but I don't know where I want to use it!

TV/MOVIES

• I'm waiting not so patiently for Season 6 of Peaky Blinders on Netflix (I've watched season 1 thru 5 twice already)

• I'm wanted this DRESS from CHICOS but it sold out! So now I'm on the hunt for one similar.
• I also have a crush on these MULES and SLIDES

READING 

• Did you miss this month's what I've read? Continue to WIR|vol.24 

INSTA-SCROLL STOPPER 

• This account is swoon worthy ... if you've never checked out Bambi @number131 squares you're missing out.

Do you have any suggestions you'd like to bring to my attention?