The Sunday Salon January 10, 2010

Welcome to my first Sunday Salon post for 2010.  I hope this year has been good for you so far.  For me, it has started off great!  I started the year with a whole new look by cutting my hair for Locks of Love just before Christmas and then going back to contacts instead of my glasses.  I feel so much lighter now!  It is amazing how two small changes like that can really change my outlook.  I've also started working out again and that is making a huge difference for me.  My dad and stepmom got me EA Sports Active for Christmas this year to to with the Wii they got us last year.  I've completed the first week of the 30-day Challenge and I really like it so far.  The work outs are only about 20 minutes long at this point but it is truly a full body work out and I am definitely feeling the results already.  Depression runs in my family and before Christmas I was seriously wondering if I was going to need to go back on anti-depressants.  Now that I am working out most days, I have more energy and actually feel motivated to get other things done.  I would much rather manage my mood with exercise, better nutrition, and other healthy activities than with anti-depressants if possible but I will not hesitate to talk to my doctor about going back on them if I truly feel that I need them again.

On to the book related stuff... I actually manged to read a few books in December that I just posted reviews for in January.  Somehow my reading really got ahead of my reviewing for a bit.  I still have one book waiting to be reviewed, which I should get to this week, and then I'll be caught up with reviews.  Unfortunately for you, that may mean waiting a little bit for another review to appear on here because I know The Gypsy Morph by Terry Brooks will take me a bit longer to read.  My favorite book of my recent reviews was truly, madly by Heather Webber which comes out in February.  I loved the characters and it was just a fun read.  I think Lucy Valentine would be a great friend.

As far as the blog goes... While I didn't participate in Bloggiesta hosted by Maw Books Blog over the weekend, I did get some great ideas for improvements that I need to make to the blog.  I'm really hoping that a complete redesign of the layout is in the works for this year but I need to find someone who can do what I want for a price I can afford.  I'm sure I could do it myself but I don't have the time or energy to put into learning how to do the HTML and all that right now.  So for now I'm going to start with small changes like redoing the labels for all my posts so they are less cluttered and things are easier to find.  I hope to get that done this week but I'm not going to make any promises :-)

Giveaway Notes:  If you haven't already, please stop by and enter my January 2010 Giveaway.  I'm giving the winner their choice of one of five books that I want to get off my shelves to clear some space.  If this one goes well, the giveaway will be a monthly event.

I'm not giving away an E-reader but Monica at The Bibliophilic Book Blog is so check out this post for details.  This one doesn't end until March 1, 2010 so there is still time to enter.

I hope that your 2010 is going well!  I'd love to hear what you are up to these days :-)

Note: All opinions provided on this blog are my own. If a product was given to me for review, the source of that product is noted in the post. Links to Amazon.com are affiliate links and I do earn a small percentage for each item purchased through those links. Any other referral or associate links will be noted within the post.