Travel Tuesday: What's in your carry-on?

Welcome back to Travel Tuesday! This week's suggested prompt is "What's in your carry-on?" but as always, please feel free to link up any travel-related post. The more, the merrier. :)

Personally, I rarely check luggage when I travel, so I've learned to fit everything in a carry-on (or two). For the purposes of today's post, however, I'll be focusing on what I put in my "personal item." My most important items always include ample reading material, snacks, a water bottle, lots of chapstick and all my electronic chargers. Here's a sample peek inside my personal item from a conference I attended in southern California a few weeks ago:

The Five Coolest Winter Olympic Sports

Of course I had to get an Olympics post on here before the Games end! I will admit, I'm more of a Summer Olympics fan (mostly because I love gymnastics but also because of the greater variety of events), but any Olympics are awesome in my book! So, without further ado, I bring you the five coolest winter sports (in my humble opinion). Pun intended! ;)

Travel Tuesday: At the Home of the King.

Welcome back to Travel Tuesday! After devising suggested prompts for the past two weeks, I thought I'd leave this week wide open regarding the topic. I already shared some Instagram photos of my trip to Tennessee last fall, but today I thought I would go into more detail and share some photos of our afternoon at Graceland.



Graceland, as you probably know, was the home of Elvis Presley. I have to admit, I had always expected a much bigger and more lavish home, and I was somewhat surprised when we pulled up to the exterior. It's not that the house was not large; I just picture something very different when I think of a "mansion," and the house looked fairly traditional from the front yard. The inside definitely did not disappoint, though, as each room was more eclectic than the last. The upstairs rooms are not open to the public, out of respect to Elvis and his family, but we explored the ground floor and the basement.

5 Historical Fiction Novels Set in the United States

I love historical fiction. (Are you surprised? No. Hmm ... you know me well.) Even as an avid reader of this genre, though, I typically imagine tales of the Tudors or stories of Holocaust victims when I hear the term "historical fiction," and I often forget how many great historical fiction books take place in my very own country: the United States. Therefore, today I bring you:

Travel Tuesday: Where should I go on my honeymoon?

Welcome to Travel Tuesday, a weekly link up for all things travel! The suggested prompt for this week is romantic destinations (in honor of V-Day at the end of the week, of course), but all travel-related posts are always welcome! Today, I'll be sharing some possible honeymoon destinations for my fiance and I, and I'd love to hear your input (or other suggestions!).

Originally, we had planned on traveling to Turkey and Croatia for our honeymoon. These were two countries we really wanted to go to last summer and just couldn't fit in, so we figured our honeymoon this fall would be the perfect excuse.

2013 Reading Challenges in Review

Photo via @mcstroup

I've already announced that I'm not doing any reading challenges this year (except for my own, of course!), but I did want to recap my participation in the 16 challenges I joined in 2013. (All book titles link to my reviews on Goodreads.) Read more after the jump!

5 Awesome Things Your Local Library Offers

When my fiance and I got DVR in our apartment last summer, I started recording all the Criminal Minds episodes that aired and kept an Excel spreadsheet on my computer to track which episodes which were recorded and which episodes were upcoming, so Jonathan and I could start watching the show in order from season one, episode one (#nerdalert). After three seasons of this meticulous record-keeping and sifting through the 50+ episodes on our DVR, I had an awesome idea: the library.

Of course I always knew the library had DVDs and CDs, but for some reason it had never occurred to me that I could rent entire television seasons! It's way better than DVR because I don't have to fast-forward through commercials, and the library has shows Netflix doesn't offer (Exhibit A: Criminal Minds). That got me thinking about all the other awesome resources my local library has, and yours probably does, too! Here are five such fantastic things:

Photo via @mcstroup; design by Megan.

That time I fell off a ski lift in Switzerland.

Welcome back to Travel Tuesday! Today I'm sharing a pretty hilarious story about that time I fell off a ski lift in Switzerland, like I promised to do back on Christmas Eve. Whoops! But I'm here now! And I hope you enjoy. :)

Note the helmet! This is key.

Looks like a perfectly pleasurable day on the slopes, right? Wrong! This photo was taken before my brother and I managed to fall off a ski lift, hike all the way up to the top of the mountain, and fall off another lift before we could get back to the car. Sheesh! Here's how it went down....