Penny's Passion: September 2025

Thursday, September 4, 2025

Five on Friday - September 5, 2025

Happy Friday!  We are so excited over here because tomorrow is the day to leave for Disney!  Our niece and nephew will be joining us and this is their first time visiting the parks.  I can't wait to see their excitement and share the experience with them!  Before we head out, let me share my five for this week ~

1.  The Paper
There's a new comedy on Peacock starting yesterday titled The Paper and I can't wait to watch!  If you loved The Office, you are probably going to want to catch it too.  Here's the summary ~
Do you miss The Office? Well, Greg Daniels (creator of the US version we’re talkin’ about) is sending the documentary crew that chronicled the exploits of Dunder Mifflin’s variously wacky employees to follow around the staff of a Toledo, Ohio newspaper. With Dunder Mifflin’s own Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nuñez) on the paper’s masthead, it sounds like Daniels and co-creator Michael Koman (Nathan for You) wanna recapture some of The Office’s lightning in a bottle. I hope they do. The Office (and Parks and Recreation) are two comfort comedies I sorely miss. Recycled ideas or not, I’m ready to subscribe to The Paper. Four episodes debut today, then two eps will drop weekly until September 25.


We always seem to cook more once fall and winter roll around. This new cookbook feels like the perfect fit for the season! Packed with over 100 quick and easy one-pot and one-pan recipes—each inspired by the Blue Zones and ready in 30 minutes or less—it’s a great way to add fresh variety to our recipe collection.  Here's the summary ~

After more than 20 years spent uncovering the secrets of the blue zones—the happiest and healthiest places around the world—Dan Buettner puts the lessons he's learned into practice with 100 research-backed recipes designed to boost your longevity.

Inside you'll find easier-than-ever plant-based breakfasts, dinners, snacks, and sides inspired by the blue zones, with grocery store-available ingredients and made with flavors Americans love best, including:

A protein-packed Tex-Mex Breakfast Skillet
The perfect crunchy snack: Crispy Roasted Chickpeas
Good-for-the-soul Creamy White Bean and Tomato Soup
A twist on a classic: a Deluxe Blue Zones Minestrone
Veggie-loaded Spanakopita Pasta
Crowd-pleasing Southern Style Sheet Pan BBQ Tofu with Sweet Corn and Green Beans
An easy Slow Cooker Bourguignon
No-Bake Peanut Butter and Honey Cookie Bites
Written with busy households in mind, these one pot, one pan, or one baking sheet recipes enable you to eat like the world’s longest-lived people without spending hours in the kitchen.

Perfect for busy families, health-minded home cooks, culinary enthusiasts, and anyone interested in eating the Blue Zones way, this is a cookbook that will change your diet—and your life.
3.  Pumpkin Spice Waffles
Aldi’s seasonal section is brimming with autumn goodness right now, and it’s making me so ready for cozy mornings and crisp evenings. I can’t wait to try the pumpkin spice waffles—they seem like just the right mix of comfort and fall flavor.  Next trip to Aldi's, these are going straight in my cart!

Rock painting is such a fun and creative craft for the kiddos, and I have to admit—I might just enjoy it myself! There’s something so satisfying about picking up a plain rock and turning it into a little work of art. Right now, these markers are on sale, making it the perfect opportunity to grab a set for the whole family. They’re not just for rocks either—they work beautifully on fabric, wood, and glass, so the possibilities for creative projects are endless. Whether you’re decorating the garden, personalizing gifts, or just enjoying a relaxing craft session, these markers make it easy and fun to get creative.



5.  My poor husband...


Have a great weekend!  We will be on vacation, but I'm hoping to have an Amazon purchase post for you on Monday.  See you soon!

Wednesday, September 3, 2025

What I Read in August 2025

Hi friends! Welcome to Thinking Out Loud Thursday. This is my little space to share what’s been on my mind and to invite you to join in by linking up and sharing your own thoughts. On the first Thursday of each month, I like to look back and recap the books I read in the month before. So, here we go ~


Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
I loved this book so much!  As a matter of fact, I'm going to be recommending it to every book club I belong to!  I can totally understand how it became a Reese's Book Club Pick.  Here's the summary ~
“The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him.”

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.

A sweeping love story with the pace and twists of a thriller, Broken Country is a novel of simmering passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences that toggles between the past and present to explore the far-reaching legacy of first love.

This was our August library book club selection, and it was a big hit with everyone. The book was packed with fascinating stories and details—I especially enjoyed gaining a deeper understanding of this period in history!
Timothy Egan turns his historian's eye to the largest-ever forest fire in America and offers an epic, cautionary tale for our time.

On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in the blink of an eye. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men to fight the fires, but no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them. Egan recreates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force, and the larger story of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, that follows is equally resonant. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by every citizen. Even as TR's national forests were smoldering they were saved: The heroism shown by his rangers turned public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, though it changed the mission of the forest service in ways we can still witness today.

We All Live Here by JoJo Moyes
JoJo Moyes’s newest release was another winner in my eyes! From the very beginning, I felt connected to the characters and completely invested in their stories. The pacing kept me turning the pages quickly, eager to see what would happen next. It’s one of those books that pulls you in and doesn’t let go—I didn’t want it to end!
Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Her career is in freefall and her love life is . . . complicated. So when her real dad—a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago—suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw. But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach you: about love, and what it actually means to be family.

 
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
I have to admit, reading this book made ME a little bit anxious!  There were a lot of words that seemed, at times, to just go on and on.  That being said, the ending was very sweet and I'm glad I hung with it.  
Looking at real estate isn’t usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can’t fix their own marriage. There’s a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can’t seem to agree on anything. Add to the mix an eighty-seven-year-old woman who has lived long enough not to be afraid of someone waving a gun in her face, a flustered but still-ready-to-make-a-deal real estate agent, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment’s only bathroom, and you’ve got the worst group of hostages in the world.

Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue. As the authorities and the media surround the premises, these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next.
Now it's your turn.  What are you thinking out loud about today?  Link up and share!

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Monday, September 1, 2025

Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop - September 3, 2025

 

Welcome to the Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop!  We are so glad that you stopped by.

Here you will find inspiration from dozens of bloggers, including recipes, home DIY, gardening, decor, family fun, traveling, fitness, and so much more.

A friendly reminder to our guests that, as a courtesy to the hosts, we ask that you follow every host on at least one social media channel.

If you are a blogger, then be sure to link up below. You may be our next feature! 

Before we get this party started, let’s meet the hosts and check out this week’s featured favorites.

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Add as many family-friendly posts as you would like to. NO Etsy shops, adult sites, or blog parties please.  Visit others. Caring is sharing. Like, comment, and pin posts.

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