Of course I missed most of it. And if you missed it, too – don’t worry. There are plenty more virtually unknown national holidays where that one came from. June 3rd is a holiday I can get in to – Donut Day. October 30 is Candy Corn Day, which I confess I LOVE.

October 17 is Gaudy Day – but that’s so much fun, we shouldn’t limit ourselves to just one day a year.

I find it kind of ironic that August 15 is both Relaxation Day AND Failures Day. Probably a lesson in that.

The 4th week of April is Reading is Fun Week, and there are plenty of great days for those who love books:

October 5 – Storytelling Day
October 16 – Dictionary Day
November 7 – Bookstore Day

September is Be Kind To Editors and Writers Month and December is Read a Book month.

What are some of your ideas for great days/weeks and months? Although every month should be Read A Blaze Book, but August could be specifically devoted to this great line, as it began that month in 2001.

By the way, today is National Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day.

Typically New Years is the time to be reflective, but I’ve been thinking about the past year since Thanksgiving. It was just before Thanksgiving last year when we found out the job my husband held for 16 years would end – they were closing the plant. Of course we weren’t isolated – seemed like you couldn’t turn on the news without hearing about layoffs and job cuts all across the country.

But rest assured – this is not a blog about that (only the info dump backstory). This is a blog about how our family opted to make our Christmas gifts last year, and because I’m a Girl Scout leader, we made s’mores in a jar and because I have elementary aged school children – we made candles out of old crayons. Both easy, and I’d love to share my s’more recipe – what’s more – I’d love to hear your homemade gifts!

S’mores In A Jar

1. Crush one sleeve of graham crackers and place at bottom of mason jar (I have notations on my card this may have been too much – so there’s wiggle room).
2. Place 1/2 cup of chocolate chips on top of graham crackers (can use festive colored M&Ms).
3. Place one holiday peep so pretty side is facing jar.
4. Hold in place with 1/3 cup of brown sugar.
5. Fill to top with mini marshmallows.

Attach to jar:

1. Empty the contents into a bowl. Snip the peep into bits. Add bits to the mixture. Mix well.
2. Melt 1/2 cup butter; add 1 teaspoon vanilla and pour over dry ingredients. Mix well. Pat into a greased 8″ or 9″ square pan. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes. Cool and cut into bars.

This year our Christmas is different. Spring brought a new job for my husband, and this Thanksgiving was filled with thankful and grateful and any other kind of ful we could think of. Tuesday I was wrapping gifts with my daughter and she said, “Remember how much fun last year was when we made all our gifts together?”

Wow, that’ so not how I remember last year. There’s a lesson in that for me. When the ball drops and it’s no longer 2009, I’ll be glad to put this roller coaster year behind, but I’ll keep trying to remember that lesson in 2010 and beyond.

I know this is still a stressful time for many out there career wise – please know I am praying that the job will come to you soon.

So – now share your favorite “in a jar” recipe.

If you see this word and are of a certain generation, you might just think Mork from Ork. It was actually Na-Nu Na-Nu, but it’s still what I think about when I see it written.

Anyway, this is an acronym for the National Novel Writing Month – 30 Days and nights of literary abandon! It runs from November 1-30th and many many writers I know not only participate, they complete whole rough drafts of a novel during that time. For more information, check out their website here.

Despite my urgings to move NaNo to March due to the week long break I take to clean house and cook so I can have my entire family over for the Thanksgiving holiday, NaNo is firmly set in the time of Science Fair and PTA Reflections. This is pretty rough – but that’s not an excuse. You can always mentally move NaNo into another month that works best for you, or still do a month of work, just break it down into one week timeframes throughout the year.

I’ve put together a running list of things that I have to do BEFORE I start NaNo – feel free to add to this list – it’s fun to see other ideas.

1. Laundry. Wash every towel, delicate and school spirit t-shirt. Inform family that any “special” item of clothing that needs to be cleaned must be requested BEFORE November 1 and if not, they will have to do laundry themselves. This last part CAN be dangerous, and I must admit I’m a bit controlling when it comes to laundry in the Monroe household.

2. Inform family members and friends what you are doing, and that you’re on an “emergency only” phone status until November 30. During this time, I don’t answer the house phone, but keep my cell phone nearby – people who MUST get a hold of me know that number.

3. Cooking. This is my big time waster because I cannot make meal plans. I just never know what I want to eat for dinner a week ahead. My husband and I usually decide what we’re going to eat in the evening (and who’s going to cook) over the phone in the morning. So I do end up going to the grocery store about every other day, but in NaNo – we stick to a true meal plan (even if I don’t feel like pizza that night). We also eat a lot more frozen foods. And sandwiches, but I also bring out a lot of crockpot meals (which last longer than just one meal). Here’s my favorite crockpot meal – and I’d love to read yours!

Mulligan Stew

Sausage (optional)
Stew Meat
3 Potatoes
Green Beans
Cabbage
2 Roma Tomatoes
Carrots
Celery
2 Cubes Beef Bouillon
Green Onion

Brown meat and throw in crockpot. Prepare veggies as desired and toss in crockpot. Boil two cups of water, add bouillon cubes and pour into crockpot. Heat on high for four hours – easy breezy!

4. Writing – During a NaNo you should be free to absolutely write, so prep work ahead of time might be research, character worksheets and a working synopsis.

5. Have fun with it!

The NaNo might not be the right thing for you at this time – one thing I tell people who ask me how to write a book is that if you write one page a day, just one, you’ll have a book done in a year!

Good luck. I’d love to hear any experiences you might have with a NaNo and don’t forget to share those recipes – I’m always on the lookout for something good!

A lot of discussion goes into what makes a great Blaze hero. A discussion I particularly like.

A quick search of our own Blaze blog reveals a gold mine! Joann Rock talks about how heroes are made here.

Lori Borrill wrote about Favorite Heros here.

Karen Foley talks about how much she likes a hero in a uniform here.

And be sure to check out where Jillian Burns talks about a favorite topic of mine, bad boys, here and Nancy Warren shares what makes a man sexy here.

Now what about those Blaze heroines? I decided to ask a few author friends what makes a great Blaze heroine.

Julie Kenner said, “To me, the great thing about a Blaze heroine is that she can be anything-she can have a strong personality, a great career, and an unabashed sense of her own sensuality. But she doesn’t have to have all of them. Maybe she’s confident in the boardroom and shy around men. Maybe she’s a flirt, but fears commitment. The point being that a Blaze heroine is like the women we know, women you could imagine hanging out with. And, yeah, they can be just a little bit larger than life.”

Lori Borrill added, “I think a good Blaze heroine is one who takes chances. She may not start out having embraced her inner strength, but by the time her story ends, she’s dug deep and found the courage to go after what she wants.”

Candace Havens talks about a heroine’s attitude. “To me a great Blaze Babe is a strong, fiesty woman who takes the world, and her men, on her terms.”

I’m giving Alison Kent the last word. “A Blaze heroine is SMART: Sexy, Mindful, Accomplished, Resourceful, Together.”

By the way, if you want to keep reading about the Blaze heroine, check out Tawny Weber’s recent blog or Bonnie Edwards’ here.

I began writing this blog while at camp with my daughter. This is camp, see how pretty it is?
The perfect place to write, yes? That is until I realized I was sharing my bed with someone who wasn’t my child. Who had four legs and was covered in fur. I tell the full story here, but if you are unable to click let’s just say at one time I had a point to what was written below, but then it was gone, and I’m going to blame it on a mouse.

I don’t drink coffee, so instead of beginning my morning with a latte I run to the convenience story for a 79 cent diet coke. It never fails that the person ringing me out always suggests something else. Would you like chips? Perhaps a newspaper? Even when I do have multiple things, there’s always something that could be suggested. The other day, I told my husband I wanted to go in and buy a pop, a newspaper, a magazine, some nuts, package of diapers, gatorade, chips, tankful of gas, cigarettes, bottle opener, six pack, gum, milk and a lottery ticket, and see what the person behind the counter would suggest, because I think I had everything covered.

Husband told me I’d forgotten the Mickey Mouse lighter.

Ugh!

And that’s where my notes ended. I had no more for this blog post, and what’s worse….I couldn’t remember the original point. I can’t tell you how long I stared at that spiral notebook willing for some small snippet of a memory to show up.

Nothing did.

So, I tried to come up with points. The value of being organized. Being happy with what you have. Or the opposite of that – reaching for something new. Maybe it was goal setting. Go in for a drink, come out with a drink. Okay, okay, I know reaching. And not very good at that.

You know what really makes this sad, what really burns me up about this… I’m thinking that perhaps, just maybe, it was the best idea I’ve ever had in my entire life and now it’s gone.

There’s not a writer I know who hasn’t lost a really amazing idea because they didn’t write it down. I know writers who carry around a portable tape recorder. Or leave a notebook by their bed just in case. I have ideas jotted down on anything from napkins to the back of receipts. Hey, maybe that was the point. The importance of keeping something close at hand because you never know when the big idea will come. Of course if that were the case, I would have had to have known that I was going to lose the ideas I’d originally developed while at camp.

I’m giving up now, but hopefully I’ll leave you with this one profound thought…Mickey Mouse lighter with that?

I double checked with our wonderful Blaze blog administrators to verify that we could basically blog about whatever we wanted, and the answer was yes. So pardon me, but I decided to get something off my chest, particularly about the Tooth Fairy.

Quite frankly, I dislike her.

This is probably a dislike of my own making, but I’m owning and taking responsibilities for my feelings.

It all began when I decided to make the experience my kids would have with the Tooth Fairy educational.

First Mistake!

Like many, I’d collected a few coins of foreign countries, and since the Tooth Fairy goes ALL OVER the world to pick up teeth, sometimes she drops a strange coin while delivering her quarter per tooth. Yeah, it’s true, my kids get a quarter per tooth (they were 5, quarter = BIG money). So, they’d wake up and find their two pieces of $$ and then we’d go over to the globe, find the country where the money came from and have one big educational moment, right?

Second Mistake!

Each child has 20 baby teeth, and I have two kids. That makes 40 coins from different countries I needed to find. Every year, I’d put out a request from my Romance Writer’s of America friends to bring me their extra foreign money. If it weren’t for those annual conferences, I’d be in a lot of trouble. Thanks, ladies!

At some point around the first grade, I decided that I needed to be just a little more educational, and encourage writing to the oldest. This would be in the form of writing letters to the Tooth Fairy.

Third Mistake!

What I didn’t realize was that the Tooth Fairy would have to WRITE BACK. Apparantly, children write QUESTIONS to the Tooth Fairy, not interesting facts about themselves, so mom would have a shortcut in documenting her children as they grew. Many, many questions. And I’ll just admit it here – I’ll never be a Childrens writer, because coming up with answers is tough with the right amount of whimsy is tough. Google is not always so helpful, and there’s not a lot of call for rhyming skills in a Harlequin Blaze.

So, if you could help me out, and if your kids ask you questions about the Tooth Fairy, perhaps, and this only for consistency’s sake, you could use the same answers I’ve come up with. I’ve put together a little Tooth Fairy FAQ.

How do you know when a child loses a tooth?
A small tickle forms along the back of the Tooth Fairy’s neck, and the tickle grows stronger as she nears the fallen tooth AND sleeping child.

Are you married?
No, because she works nights, and most male fairies work during the day. This was completely illogical to someone who is 7, by the way.

How do you get inside my house?
This secret is only given to children who have lost their last tooth, and who the Tooth Fairy knows will never share the secret. Here is is:

!od seiriaf tahw s’that dna yriaf a m’I

What’s your house like?
The Tooth Fairy’s home is made of pinecones and her bed is soft dandelion petals blown in on the wind (there had to be a reason for that plant!).

Where do you put the teeth?
On a pink cloud behind a rainbow (an instance when google was helpful).

Do you have a sister?
Yes, her name is Lull and she helps young babies go to sleep by whispering gently into their ears. All babies understand what she says.

What do you eat?
The Tooth Fairy does prefer the petals of daisies and carnations and drinks the dew of blades of grass first thing in the morning (which is actually her bedtime.) She takes the dew with a kiss.

Do you like Harry Potter?
Yes, but I only get to read it one page at a time as children leave their books open.

Do you have a pet?
Yes, the tooth fairy has a beetle. She has two, one is a boy and the other a girl. She also has a fish, but there are just so many, she can’t list all their names. By the way, the answer to this question changed from child to child, but no one seemed to notice. Whew!

Do you collect the teeth of dogs, cats, etc.?
No, but the Tooth Fairy suspects there is another fairy who picks these up, she’s just never met him or her.

May I have some fairy dust?
The answer is “Of Course!” Fairy Dust is comprised of iridescent glitter and gold glitter. By the way, my youngest is absolutely convinced she witnessed the oldest levitate off the ground just a bit after using the fairy dust.

I have lots and lots and lots of stories about our adventures with the Tooth Fairy – like the time youngest lost a tooth while mom was at an RWA conference and dad had to write the letter and provide the Fairy Dust. Or how the kids decided to “test” the Tooth Fairy and not mention to mom or dad they’d lost a tooth.

Anyway, there’s my sad tale, and just to make this an educational moment, you might want to reconsider doing any of the things I’ve done.