Thankfulness And A Little Downton Abbey

Happy Thanksgiving my lovelies, I hope you’re having a wonderful, relaxing, and family and friends-filled holiday!!! Today I’m celebrating with a Downton Abbey marathon, which kind of feels like I’m having Thanksgiving at Downton itself (which is a delightful prospect truth be told)! I can only too easily imagine the sumptuous feast Mrs. Patmore and Daisy could prepare…

Image From Google. All Rights Belong To Artist.

 

But wondrous feasts and impeccable manners aside, there really is so much that I’m thankful for in my life: my family and friends, my characters, their stories, and new exciting and terrifying new prospects on the horizon, just to name a few. But right now I want to say how incredibly thankful I am for each and every one of you. You my lovelies — whether you be old friends or new or even first-time readers — you make my life rich and absolutely wonderful. Your support, friendship, banter, and your own incredible blogs mean the world to me and I am just so thankful for all of you and for all the love and support I receive here at Moonstonemaiden! Thank you so much, you all rock something fierce! (And I’ll make sure to save you a piece of Mrs. Patmore’s delightful pecan pie!) ❤

Happiest of holidays,

— Tara

P.S.

Here There Be Witches

Happy Halloween my lovelies, I hope you all have a fun-filled, candy-strewn, and above-all safe holiday! Remember to keep an eye out for the impossible and eerily unexplainable because tonight magic is most definitely real and the Faeries will be a-roaming!

Image From Google. All Rights Belong To Artist.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

As your very own proud Irish lass, I’m wishing you all a happy and safe St. Patrick’s Day my lovelies!!!

Image From Google. All Rights Belong To The Artist.

And just for fun, here’s some of my favorite Ireland themed posts from the Moonstonemaiden vault:

Daydreaming of Ireland…And Warmer Weather!

Brighid: The White Maiden

Sea Salt

The Adventures of Ratha James: Part Four

Happy Halloween and NaNo Eve!

Happy Halloween my lovelies!!! I hope y’all have a safe and fun-filled night with loads of candy and caramel apples (save me one!) and remember NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow! So good luck everyone and let’s write our way through November 😀

Image From Facebook.

 

Happy 4th!!!

Happy fourth of July my lovelies!!! I hope you all have a fun and safe holiday filled with chili-dogs, sweet tea, boiled peanuts, and thousands of twinkling sparklers! –Moonstonemaiden 😀

Image From Facebook

The Best Of Romance: Love, Passion, And Desire

Image From Google

Happy Valentine’s Day my lovelies!!! I hope you are all having a great day, whether it’s spent with a significant other, friends, family, or solo! And solo means you get the entire box of chocolates to yourself guilt-free, and you don’t have to shave, so really…ENJOY IT 😀 Smile at the dopey love-struck goobers milling around you in a love-drunk daze, or at the dopey love-struck goober next to you (who’s staring at you so ardently he/she’s beginning to drool a little bit, which means he/she’s pretty secure in the knowledge that lingerie is in the near future), and know that Moonstonemaiden loves you just the way you are (Bridget Jones Reference!) and you are my favorite valentine ❤

Image From Google.
From Me to You with love my lovelies!

I’m rather fond of the Valentine’s Day post from last year — probably because it’s a list of my favorite literary men! — but I think this year’s is pretty freaking awesome too 😉  I had so many idea’s for Valentine’s themed posts and I couldn’t quite decide which way I wanted to go, so I figured…what’s better than a collection of romantic-themed mini lists?! Nothing I tell you…NOTHING!!! Except a pile of love letters from Richard Armitage and other devastatingly handsome men, telling me of their undying love and devotion to me…but I digress.

Image From Facebook.
…Yours Forever –RA

Moonstonemaiden’s Collection of Romantic Mini-Lists!

Top Love Songs For My Characters:

1) Hero: Enrigue Iglesias, Never Alone: Barlow Girls — Rosalie and Jackson (The Butterfly Garden WIP)

2) Near To You: A Fine Frenzy — Freyton and Alaina (Battle-scarred WIP)

3) Beautiful Disaster: Kelly Clarkson, Almost Lover: A Fine Frenzy, Spanish Eyes: Backstreet Boys — Calahada and Mytheous (Believe)

4) You’ll Be In My Heart: Phil Collins — Ravenna and Varrick (Ashes WIP)

5) Just A Kiss: Lady Antebellum — Kalisada and Mordred (Prophecy WIP)

 

Image From Facebook

 

Top Five Romantic Disney Ballads:

1) Now I’ve Seen The Light: Tangled

2) Love: Robin Hood

3) Tale As Old As Time: Beauty and the Beast

4) Once Upon A Dream: Sleeping Beauty

5) A Whole New World: Aladdin

Image From Google.
* Swoon *

Top Five Romantic Movie Moments

1) Smithy regain his memory for the second time: Random Harvest

2) Tristan and Isolde (Entire Movie!)

3) Christian Forgives Satine, Satine Saves Christian: Moulin Rouge

4) All the Lyla and Louis moments: August Rush

5) The Bridge in the Rain scene: Sliding Doors

 

 

Image From Google.
Come What May!

Top Fictional Relationships:

1) Katniss and Peeta: The Hunger Games

Image From Google.
All Rights Belong To The Artist.

2) Muller and Chime: The Charmed Sphere

3) Ally and Nawat: The Trickester Series

4) Daine and Numair: The Wild Mage Series

5) Gemma and Kartik: The Gemma Doyle Trilogy

6) Clary and Jace: The Mortal Instruments Series

Image From Google.

7) Mia and Michael: The Princess Diaries Series

8) Claire and Jamie: The Outlander Series

9) Sorcha and Red: The Daughter of the Forest

10) Liadan and Bran: Son of the Shadows

So there we have it, my Valentine’s Day romantic mini-lists! I hope you guys enjoy and let me know what you think! What songs do you’re characters share, and what romantic movie or couple tops your list?

And here’s some extra Valentine’s cards…just because I thought they were awesome (and they’re Downton themed)!

Image From Google.
Why yes Branson!

Image From Google.

 

A Little Holiday Vacation

Hello my lovelies, I just wanted to let you know that I will probably not post again until after Christmas, but have no fear, I shall return! That being said, I’m sure I’ll still comment and like and continue to read my favorite blogs, I just won’t post anything of my own for a couple of days (or a week, lol). But before I begin my Christmas blogging vacation, I want to share something with y’all that the amazing Juliette from Vampire Maman created for all her friends in the blogosphere:

Isn’t it lovely! I think it’s utterly gorgeous 😀 If you haven’t checked out her awesome blog by now you need to just go ahead and hop on over and read all her brilliant posts and join in on the fun! Thank you Juliette, I hope you know how much I enjoy your writing as well as the funny Christmas-themed pictures of late, and I especially can’t wait to hear what happens next in that Mysterious Stranger story!

Well, that’s all from me for the moment folks. I hope everyone has a safe, adventurous, fun-filled, present-strewn, and generally love-infused holiday season! –Moonstonemaiden 😀

Mythic Snow

I have something to admit…I’ve never seen snow before. *Gasp* I know! Here I am in my twenties and I’ve still never seen more than a single flurry of snow, and that little flurry was such a big deal my second grade teacher stopped the entire class on our way to lunch that day and had us gather around to stare with bated breath at the awesomeness that you could barely see floating in the wind. It’s a memory I treasure, though it makes me thing of that scene in Finding Nemo I swear. (If you don’t know what scene I’m referring to you can remedy that by clicking here.)  A part of me still wonders if snow’s just a hoax/conspiracy thing, because…well I’ve never seen it and it looks too good to be true (you know, except for the whole blizzard and avalanche thing). I mean, I’m sure it’s real (it is real right?) and I have big dreams of one day building a snowman and an ice-fort, but in a way snow and icicles seem as mythic and fantastical to me as dragons and mermaids do to other people. I fully believe in them, I’ve just never seen them either, lol. I’m now sensing a bit of a theme here…I seriously need to go somewhere where they have snow, and dragons, and mermaids…are you thinking what I’m thinking?! Let’s book the tickets!

Photo From Facebook

Funnily enough though, my first novel Believe is set almost entirely in the winter in an England-esque environment and is therefore filled with snow and freezing winds and all that delightful wintry stuff that I have yet to experience. I always found it amusing that while I was writing those snow scenes and describing how cold it was…it was the middle of summer for me and I was usually sweating my butt off! But hey, I’m a writer! And if a writer can’t pull BS out of nowhere and make it sound believable then they’re in the wrong profession or they didn’t get enough practice in college! You English majors know what I mean. But still, I can’t wait to one day experience snow for myself, to touch it, smell it, avoid the yellow stuff, and generally have a sensory overload and then come back inside and sip hot chocolate by a roaring fire. Cliche…maybe, but I’m betting I’ll be so cold I won’t mind. 😀

Photo From Facebook

So what about y’all? Any fun snow experiences you’d like to share? Or do you have doubts as to the existence of snow as well?

It’s Not Even December Yet!

It’s almost that time of year and it’s not even December yet! The nauseating, endless loop of Christmas carols are already annoying the heck out of hard-working people who deserve to have the remainder of November be carol-free (is it too much to ask…really?) and surprise surprise, Christmas trees are already being sold in nearly every parking lot/empty space by the side of the road. I’m not a holiday-hater or anything but I do find it…odd, when people start gearing up for a holiday that isn’t even in the same month that we’re in now. I don’t start unpacking my Halloween stuff in August or my Easter stuff in January but maybe that’s just me. In my family there was no hint of Christmas in the air until December 1^st and then and only then, did we dig in the hall closet for the ancient bag of ornaments and put up our tree (sadly we switched to a plastic tree sometime in my late teens, I’ll write more on my discontent concerning fake trees in a later blog). The tree (and any other decorations) stays in the living room until January 1^st and then that bad boy is packed away and stored until December 1^st rolls back around and we start the whole process over again.

I only mention this because over the weekend my best friend and I made a trip to Barnes and Noble (cue Heavenly music and random beams of light) and passed by a Christmas tree selling place/thing and since my friend knew the people running it we stopped in for a chat. I was surprised at how many families bought trees in the short fifteen minutes span that we were there and I couldn’t help but wonder why in the world they were buying their trees so soon? It doesn’t seems like the winter holiday season until December and yet people were dragging trees home left and right and it was still only November! Why are they doing this?! By starting this early you’re making the countdown to presents even longer and that just makes no sense! When I start counting down, I have twenty-five days until the boxes tormenting me under the tree are free-game and the brightly colored wrapping paper goes flying, but if you start decorating and preparing before December then you have more days to have to wait,  count down, and cross off the calendar! (I know it all adds up to being the same amount of time, but it’s a mindset thing and you’re just making it seem like Christmas is farther away and I don’t see how that helps anything or anyone.)

But my personal ranting aside, I do love the time of year that is almost upon us and seeing and smelling all the trees made me feel like I was five years old again. Well, except for the fact that I’m almost as tall as the trees now but that’s beside the point. There really is something magical about being inside a massive tent and surrounded by enormous trees; it’s like you’re in a forest or a labyrinth that smells like sticky sap and all that’s missing is snow. (Sadly the only snow that’s going to be on these trees comes from a spray-can.) I admit that I enjoyed being swallowed up and lost inside the rows and rows of trees and that I could see how the excitement of the moment might entice someone to buy a tree early (not me, but someone). I forgive you early buyers thought I still maintain that you should try to hold out for December. However, there is no excuse for the Christmas music taking over the radio stations already, that needs to be held off until the week before Christmas so people don’t go nutty listening to the same songs over and over again!

I can still smell the sap just looking at this picture!

What about y’all, do you start the holidays early or do you hold out for December? When does it start feeling like the holidays for you? And Christmas carols: love ’em or no?