2012 - Book Club Fun

Most of the book clubs I've chatted with set their reading lists pretty far in advance. That's nice because it really does give you lead time to come up with fun themes and activities to go with the meeting and keep them fun.

The Suffolk Book Club Babes read my Sweet Tea and Secrets in September 2011. I loved having the opportunity to join them as they discussed the book and shared a night of book club fun. This group has a couple of awesome traditions that you might want to try.

#1 They rotate the meeting to different members homes and they serve a full meal. Whoever is hosting does the main dish and other members bring sides or desserts.
#2 This is my favorite part. They do a scrapbook page for each book they read. What an amazing memory book of their time together. Sandy was nice enough to share some of the scrapbook pages with me to share with you.

BE INSPIRED!!
I'll be posting them next...so come back and check them out!

Setting a better pace in 2012

Okay, so I have to admit that I almost fell out of my chair when I realized the last time I posted to my Book Club Planning for Book Club Fun blog since September! That was pretty poor planning on my part.

I'm turning over a new leaf in 2012 and will be posting once a month to include ideas and recipes and fun stuff from y'all that will hopefully help make your book club meetings memorable.

So here we go.
Nancy

Book Club Babes : Suffolk VA

I've been invited to join the Book Club Babes for their September meeting. I can't wait!
Thanks for choosing Sweet Tea and Secrets for your book this month.
See you soon!
Nancy

Novel Night Book Club

Thanks to the gals that get together for Novel Night the second Wednesday of every month. Sweet Tea and Secrets was their book of the month for August 2011 and I joined them for some fun via telephone during their meeting.

This creative bunch had a blind sweet tea taste test...
McDonalds -vs- Hardee's -vs- Chick-Fil-A ...
no homemade sweet tea in the bunch with these working girls and that really tickled my funny bone.
They did promise to use Pearl's Perfect Sweet Tea recipe someday.

Thanks again for the invite, Novel Night friends. I sure enjoyed our time together and really appreciate your support of my debut novel. I'll keep you posted on the November release of the second story with ties to Adams Grove...OUT OF FOCUS.

I'll try to figure out how to podcast the call by the next time we get together in December.

Hugs and happy reading~
Nancy

A summer treat

June is when we all think about all those years as kids when we had the summer off.
No matter where you are the temperatures are rising and we all want to spend a little less time in the kitchen.

Here's a couple options for a cooler meeting:

• Serve southern iced tea for a change. You can get Pearl's Perfect Sweet Tea recipe here
• Find some good old fashioned ice trays and pop a piece of fresh fruit in each divet....add water and freeze for a beauiful garnish to your refreshments.
• Pinwheels - Easy as can be and yummy, too. Use large flour tortillas and spread a generous serving of your favorite filling (pimento cheese, tuna salad, egg salad) roll and slice into colorful bite size tidbits.
• Watergate salad - Whip up a lovely green (hey, it matches my book cover!) treat by mixing a tub of cool whip, pistachio pudding packet dry, can of crushed pineapple drained, marshmallows and chopped nuts if you like. waaalaaaa....pretty and delightfully refreshing.

What are your favorite quick and easy get together dishes??

It's April!

It's hard for me to believe we're already a quarter of the way through 2011! Time is zipping by and that makes our get together's that much more important.

So, it's April. The Cadbury bunny is bwak-bwok-bwaaaking on the TV between every other commercial and that makes me think about Easter eggs. For April's get together how about a smorgasbord of anything that has eggs in it in hors d'oeuvres size. 

• Deviled Eggs
• Quiche
• Cake (hooray!)
• Souffle
• Meringue
• Potato Salad with the pretty hard boiled egg slices in a flower shape on top!

Yeah, not as hard as it first sounds is it? It'll be interesting to see what everyone pulls together.
Eggs-actly ;)

Now....tell me what kind of fun you have planned!