Tag: book

Upcoming Show 2019!

Come join us for fun!!

April 25, 2019

Upcoming Show: 2019!

It’s that time of year again!

April 27, 2019 is the fourth annual Family Fun Fest in Saint Augustine, Florida!

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Check out this video (the smiling butterfly is my niece, Anastasia!) and “like” them on Facebook to keep in touch with updates!

Come join us for a wonderful day!  I’ll be at a table with books, DVDbooks, Audio CDs, (some of the girls’ craft goods) and an activity center where children can make a complementary bookmark to take home!

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My oldest two girls will be volunteering (probably gone all day and might drop in for water occasionally), Kimberly and Jaquline will be “on younger duty” in rotation (meaning they get to play with Anastasia, Jillian, and Lucas), and Jillian, Jaquline, and Kimberly will be rotating “salesgirls” at the table!  Lucas and Thea will be entertaining others (most likely Grandma & and friends who stop by) and I’m sure Kimberly, Jaquline, Jillian, Lucas, and Anastasia will be familiar faces for everyone monitoring a child’s activity!

There will be an obstacle course to watch – many teams have already signed up, it is amazing!

There is other live entertainment, vendors, bounce houses, information booths, food trucks, and raffles!  All of this will be supporting the Alpha Omega Charities!

Our table gives 50% of what we make plus usually, the girls give all of their “tip jar” money!

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Come enjoy an awesome family fun day at Francis Field, downtown Saint Augustine, Florida on April 27, 2019 between 10am to 8pm!  (We will be there all day, please find us and chat!)  Oh yes, your kiddos will definately sleep well afterward!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later… (And see you on Saturday!)

~Nancy Tart

Upcoming Fun Day!

Mark Your Calendars! Saturday, April 27, 2019 is Family Fun Fest!

March 14, 2019

Upcoming Fun Day

Mark your calendars!  (If you are near Saint Augustine, Florida.)

Saturday, April 27, 2019

This is the day of the Family Fun Fest at Francis Field in downtown Saint Augustine!

This family friendly event (with lots of fun activities for all ages) with include obstacle courses (registration is required ahead of time for that!), blow-up activities, and lots of games, food, and a show filled with local talent.  All of this is to benefit a great local charity; Alpha-Omega Outreach!

This will be our third year participating as a vendor.  Three of my teens/preteens will be volunteering (meaning I likely won’t see them all day).  The younger ones (and whichever of the cousins joins us) will be enjoying the activities with an Aunt or Grandma in rotation (and coming back to “base” for snacks and water!).  Meanwhile, I will be presenting my books and the girls’ various craft items will be decorating the table (and hopefully we sell a lot of these things so we can donate more money back).

These are photos from last year, but we had a blast.  We expect to have a wonderful time this year as well and would love for you to join us in our family fun annual tradition!

(My children make plans to be at the next Family Fun Fest as we drive away from the current one! – my niece has been asking me since the week after 2018 Family Fun Fest, “when can we go back to Family Fun Fest?”)

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

Goofy Meme

A meme shared by their uncle provides for a funny, entertaining morning!

March 2, 2019

Goofy Meme

One thing Christina and Becky like to do is look through my FaceBook feed.

Hilarious laughter exploded one morning as I showed them a meme one of my brothers shared:

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Becky adds:  “Me: Uncle Buddy, Uncle ChaCha, how did you get in my birth room?”

Kimberly, Jaquline, and Christina went into laughing debate over which of their uncles would fit which roles.

Christina and Becky decided this would be the most awesome thing to do after their first baby’s birth.  Becky started talking about how it would be her and her husband mimicking this exchange.

I told them to do a ToyActs video play with it.  (Don’t know if they will.)

This did turn the entire breakfast table and schoolroom into a discussion that led into movie/book differences, how nerdy our family is, a few recitations from the movie, and one of the girls looking at Thea and saying, “You’ll understand this soon enough.”

Their interactions certainly kept an amused smile (and a few chuckles) on mom’s face.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Fresh New Year

Who else is excited for 2019? Who else looks at the new year like a child on Christmas morning looks at presents around the tree?

December 31, 2018

Fresh New Year

“It’s still 2018, right?” asks Kimberly, working on her History.

“Yes, it’s the last day of 2018,” I respond.  Christina pipes in with, “and our Aunt’s birthday!”  (One of their aunts is born on December 31!)

This makes me think: (uh-oh, I just heard two kids say “Mom’s writing another blog in her head.”) Yes, my children know me!

Tomorrow starts a fresh new year.  We are given a new beginning each day as the dawn warms our skies and the sun rises to dry the dew.

In the service industry, all days blend together and all the New Year has meant for me in the past 8 years was a barrage of people calling to order reservations at 1am on New Year’s Day from the Bayfront downtown or 11pm from the Saint Augustine Beach peir (two locations at the times we can never promise) so then it turns into irritated people who don’t understand the simple line, “I can’t guarantee that time at that location, you can try to call us at the time to see where our cabs are.”

I’m so glad today does not involve dispatching!  I’m only answering questions from the school table – awesome!

In 2018:

  • I started working at WGV Gymnastics as a coach (LOVE this job).
  • We closed our taxi company in December.  It feels awesome to be able to shut off my phone and not worry about missing a reservation call!
  • I’ve finished, polished, and published four new children’s books: A Foundling Furball, Alena’s Baby, The Tightrope Dare, and Fibbing Fishermen!
  • I’ve rejoiced with the addition of my best friend’s 10th baby!
  • I’ve rejoiced with my sister who is due about the same time I am!  (They will be close cousins!)
  • I’ve mourned and rejoiced with my family after my Daddy passed.
  • I celebrated the first Christmas ever without him – that was his favorite holiday.
  • Christina achieved CAP rank of C/CMSgt, become Red Cross certified, started officially babysitting, started working as needed at what she calls “my somewhat part time job,” and completed her third college semester.
  • Becky completed her second college semester, bred and raised a few dozen chicks up to “independence” for clients, raised her batches of “babies” (aka Guinea Piglets), joined gymnastics classes (finally finding something to encourage her fitness!), and has taught most of her siblings the Latin terms for every body part since she’s been dissecting animals in her biology labs!
  • Kimberly joined gymnastics classes with her gung-ho attitude and is expecting great things from herself, was gifted a bunny (she’s been saving to adopt one for almost a year but her awesome big sisters beat her to it) and Minuit has never left her side.
  • Jaquline discovered the amazing world of Geometry and everything is now interpreted in shapes or gymnastics skills!
  • Jillian started losing teeth, is studying sketching (she’s getting rather good actually!) and digital art along with Becky, and getting herself lost in the world of reading!
  • Lucas started trying to write his name!

We are all expecting amazing things to come in 2019.  God has paths lined up for us that we may not even be able to see yet – if you’d told me at the start of 2018 that I’d be teaching gymnastics for an awesome Christian boss, be pregnant again, and have no taxi company, I would have laughed.

But (positive!) God knows the desires of our hearts!  He knows I love children, love teaching, and that gymnastics has always been a dream. (Dream job come true?  YES!)  He knows Lucas loves babies and is super excited about getting to “take MY BABY home from church.”  (All the other babies he’s been around are those of church family, so he can’t take them home.)  He knows that rebuilding hybrid batteries is something else I love – tinkering with electronics as Daddy taught me & a niche few offer around here so maybe that will be our main income soon!

I’m about to polish and release a few more children’s books (maybe an entire new series working around my budding illustrators’ work!) and my goal for this year is 12 releases.

Who else is excited for 2019?  Who else looks at the new year like a child on Christmas morning looks at presents around the tree?  I see each day as a gift from God to be opened at each dawn.  I see gifts we can’t even dream of yet sitting there, waiting God’s perfect timing for us to unwrap and enjoy.  I’m praying that certain things are there – which day holds the gift of my child’s birth?  Does a gift in that pile include a property or home of our own?  Is there a gift of being able to read my books before a class, teach a grammar workshop, or tutor another child?  Only God knows what each gift holds.  My Daddy loved seeing the smiles and squeals of excitement on Christmas morning as his children opened presents – I love this part of Christmas morning as a parent too.  I can only imagine God smiling as we open each gift and yelp with excitement!

Enjoy your daily gifts in 2019!  Happy, blessed New Year!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Upcoming Show!

Come join us for some craft show fun! Sunday, October 14, 2018 between 1pm & 4pm

September 30, 2018

Upcoming Show!

The girls are ecstatic about October 14th.

It isn’t someone’s birthday (although it’s two days after Becky turns thirteen!).

It isn’t an anniversary.

It’s the day of the Shores Fall Craft Fair at the Shores Clubhouse in Saint Augustine!  For the girls, this is a chance to meet people, show off their wares (they like to make various crafts), talk about illustrating Mommy’s books, and enjoy looking at all the amazing crafts for sale.  (Usually, they pick up Christmas gifts here, too.)  One of Rebeccah’s favorite crafts (she gave a bunch out as Christmas gifts one year) is her glittery ornaments.

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Just after church, we’ll drive to the clubhouse to set up, and enjoy the day!  The show starts at 1pm and runs until 4pm.  (My mom will be there too, as she’ll be there presenting some of the most amazing photo artwork I’ve ever seen – she takes photos and my Daddy paints on them to turn them into realistic, fantastic creations.)

Of course, my only real craft is writing.  I am very proud of my artsy offspring but it’s hard to duplicate what they do!  I will have my printed books for sale.

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And the Audio CDs and the girls’ favorite DVDBook, “Long Tail and Red Hawk,” which although it was the second in the “Long Tail” books, it is the first one my Dad created an educational DVD for!  (The girls love it because their Grandmother is narrating it and the comic-book-style artwork is theirs!)

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But most of the table will be covered in beaded jewelry like these because even Jillian has crafted some of those pieces.

Or, to see a giant room full of beautiful and unique crafts, join us from 1pm to 4pm on Sunday, October 14th at the Riverview Club in Saint Augustine Shores – we’ll be at one of the round tables!

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Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

School Supplies

School supplies on a budget – our methods

August 31, 2018

School Shopping

Lots of people do school shopping in late July or August, just before school starts.

Since we do school year-round, I’m constantly replacing school supplies by stopping in at my favorite thrift shops and scooping up extra pencils, notebooks, erasers, or expo markers (the most commonly used items in our school).

I do try to take advantage of the school sales that pop up at the end of school supply shopping months.

Take notebooks: one independent writer in our home goes through an average of five single-subject notebooks a year!  (That’s not a lot when you consider that each notebook usually has 70 pages.)  Our history, science, and most upper math courses require a paragraph or page of written work.  Grammar practice is to edit said paragraphs or pages and rewrite them correctly.  So we use a lot of paper.  I prefer to use notebooks because they keep all the papers together and they are easier to carry than loose leaf paper (we often do work in remote locations).  This year I have four independent writers and one still using training paper (the ones from tablets with three-line-spaces).  But my training-writer is writing times tables and measures this year.  She will need one or two notebooks.  I always add one extra for each student because I would rather have extra than to buy them at 4 to 10 times the sale price!  (Most of us homeschool on a budget, don’t we?)

Oh, yes, another trick I learned was to buy college-ruled notebooks because you get extra lines at the bottom.  (Silly, but it also makes you write smaller thus more work ends up on one page.)

We bought 22 notebooks this year!  Staples & Officemax both claimed the “normal” price for a college-ruled store-brand notebook with 70 pages was $2.49.  I know Walmart has them for $1.20 or so and the thrift shops have partially used ones for $0.50. They were on sale for $0.25, usually I can find them for $0.10, but this year if someone had them super cheap, I missed that sale.  Shopping the sales essentially saved us $20.90 just on notebooks.  (The receipts claimed we “Saved” way more, but I base my savings off the cheapest normal price, not the inflated office supply store price.)

Pencils, erasers, markers, rulers, and other assorted small things I usually buy from thrift stores because you can get a lot more used items less expensive than the sale price on new ones.  Rebeccah does Sunday School and likes to buy cute craft stuff for it, which is also less expensive (and a much larger collection for choose from) at the thrift stores.

Backpacks are another thrift store buy.  I generally choose to spend less than five dollars on a backpack.  Someone’s hand-me-down from last year often has a lot of wear left in it.  We use backpacks for school stuff, travel bags (you can only carry what you can fit in your backpack), and overnight bags for Grandma’s house trips.  Even Lucas has a backpack (a cute smaller Cars one we found for a dollar at a thrift store).  He’s funny, when we’re headed to drop off at college, I’ll say “grab your school stuff.”  (Generally, a writing tablet or book)  Lucas puts two books (usually two the bigger girls have been reading – lately a favorite has been Prince Caspian), his crayon box, and his tablet in his backpack and will say “I’m ready for my school!”  His backpack swallows him!

We have learned to use the before-school sales to help keep our expenses low yet still get the items we like to use.  (Filler paper is cheaper than using notebooks, but I’ve learned notebooks are neater and easier.)  The older girls need computer paper for some college assignments and CAP work, so we also tend to buy computer paper during the sales times as they will have some super mail-in rebate offer or something.

The coolest part of shopping for school supplies is the practical math lessons that go along with it!  (I can find lessons in everything!)

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

New Release! The Tightrope Dare

New Squirrel Book just released! Read an excerpt from The Tightrope Dare!

August 24, 2018

New Release!  The Tightrope Dare

Today I’m really excited to announce the release of “The Tightrope Dare,” the second adventure in The Landmark Tribe (furry squirrels lighting the way)!  The illustrators have finally finished with this project!

Rebeccah did this illustration.  She drew and colored both the cute little squawler and the full background!

Kimberly accented the drawing for digital copy and enhanced the details on the computer (some digital art manipulation).

Each of the Landmark Tribe books is narrated by a different member of the Tribe.  This adventure is narrated by Nutty, a crunchie (the squirrel’s word for teenager) who may be just a bit over-confident (okay, maybe he likes to brag and exaggerate, as you can see from the excerpt below).

Our Landmark Tribe books are written for our church.  Any sales we get go straight back to church because it is our squirrely church family who inspires characters in the Landmark Tribe and this series was created during a trip to church!  (Read that story here!)

Come read a bit from “The Tightrope Dare” here:

 

This is the story of how, me, Nutty, greatest Crunchie in the Landmark Tribe and in all of the squirrel tribes in the Wooded Lands, saved the day with my big brawny arms!

“Nutty.”

And that is Walnut, whose favorite thing to do is do that deep sigh and say Nutty, like I’m really doing something wrong.  He is a Crunchie in the Landmark Tribe too, but he is ages older than me.  Walnut is almost as old as Kahoona, our great and powerful leader.

“Nutty.” Sighed Walnut again.

Okay, so he isn’t really that old, but almost.

On the day my story takes place, the winds were ripping squirrels from their nests and squawlers from their mother’s clutching paws.

“Nutty, seriously?” Walnut chided.

Okay, okay, so maybe the winds were just enough to make leaves dance, Walnut is only a season older than me, and maybe I am not the greatest Crunchie in all of the squirrel tribes and maybe I didn’t use my big brawny arms to save the day, but I’m telling the story and that sounds cool, doesn’t it?

And that sigh from Walnut means he agrees but doesn’t want to say I’m right about anything.  Ever.  And he certainly doesn’t want to admit that I, Nutty the Great, am cool.  But I so am.

“Why do you start every sentence with a conjunction?” Walnut said in a bookish voice.

Honestly, he sounds so much like Grizzly, a new member of the Landmark tribe, that he seems like his real son.  Grizzly talks with a gruff bear voice but through his nose like it is constantly pinched shut.  And now Walnut has walked away so he can’t hear my awesome story.  Okay, well, you will have to do.  Stay right there and don’t move.

 

If you liked that and want to see how the Landmark Tribe of furry squirrels light the way in the Wooded Lands, click on the link to buy a copy or check out my Book List to view all the available formats!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

Growing Up Gaming

When your family loves board games, nerdy movies, books, and video games, you’re probably Growing Up Gaming…

August 10, 2018

Growing Up Gaming

When you are born into a family that loves board games (Risk, Catan, Life, Monopoly, Scrabble, and Poker are serious around here), discusses Star Ocean and Nancy Drew mysteries as if they are reality (if you walk in and we’re discussing Ned, Bess, and George and whose clue to follow, that’s Nancy Drew, but if we’re debating the character traits of Claude, Dias, and Leon, that’s Star Ocean), gets into serious nerd debates (you know, book versus movie for classics and bouncing theories about Rey’s parents, Gandalf’s childhood, or what cool stories Superman had as a youngster doing chores), and it’s pretty routine to hear someone say, “no, no, he’s a book person,” (unless both parties know the book, which is more common) you are likely to grow up gaming, reading, and being rather serious about such fun.

This is a family thing, since there has probably not been a get together where the verbatim replay of “Meat’s back on the menu” by the uncles and the older cousins didn’t happen.  (It’s entertaining, but a bit freaky if you don’t know the movie!)

For me, it was Zork, Teddy Boy, and 3D Adventure (Atari, the huge ducks or dragons that ate you and the castles where you saved the blocks).

My younger siblings introduced me to Playstation (Star Ocean and Legend of the Dragoon) as an 18-year-old.  That was cool, except I kept trying to look around the monitor screen instead of turn the view with the controller!  My kids know both of those… with their Playstation 2.

We are rather old school when it comes to games… the newest is probably Minecraft.  It’s a building exploration game that the girls create elaborate homes and castles in since they can’t run out of bricks (we have a finite amount of Legos and their imaginations are way bigger than the few bricks we have).  We actually have two old computers and keep them up because they run our 90s games (and the educational software I own runs on 32 bit instead of the new 64).

It’s always easier to learn something when you smash your head in between their head and the screen…

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Lucas considers himself very independent.  He likes to load the girls’ Minecraft lands and explore their castles (they call it “destroy” the castles – just like with Legos).

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He is very happy when someone discovers him doing this.

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(Game rules say electronics after dark… notice the daylight?)

Christina thinks it’s hilarious and calls him “gamer dude” when she sees him with the game phone that was put away for the daytime.

I’m going to slide back into the gaming world… a furious game of Pictionary is happening on the kitchen table right now – and even Lucas is jumping around as Becky sketches two triangles, a round thing, and dozens of dots… this is supposed to represent “Star Wars.”

 

20180805_151359-18307848812238740806.jpgAnd this is supposed to be peanut butter… Becky yelps, “Can’t you see Peter Pan?” and circled it…

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

 

You Can’t Rush Art

“You Can’t Rush Art” say my illustrators while I’m waiting on cover art for two new releases!

July 24, 2018

You Can’t Rush Art

I love finishing a new book!  I actually have two (One is the pilot in a new young adult series, the other is the second in the Landmark Tribe Books) that are finished.

Now comes the part I’m always excited about… illustrations!

I never know exactly what my illustrators are going to come up with for covers.  Rebeccah is designing the one for the Landmark Tribe book because she loves drawing animals – and I love her furry squirrels!

She was discussing how to make a “quirky” Crunchie (aka teenage boy squirrel) but still keep the soft style she did with Granny Pecan for the “Busting Berry Bath” cover.  I can’t wait to see what she comes up with!

For the new series book, my illustrators get to come up with a whole theme!  With no pre-set design constraints, I’ve already seen a pastel sunset background, a sharper, darker, hard pencil background, and an oil-paint-style grid.  They haven’t decided on a “perfect” theme yet, but watching their imaginations run while they figure it out is amazing!

For now, I have to wait (trying to be patient – because “you can’t rush art!”) as they do the artistry part of my story.  Regardless of what people say, audiences DO judge a book by its cover.  This is why my illustrators make commissions off of their work!

I can’t wait to release these stories for ya’ll to enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

Rejoice Over Little Things

July 10, 2018

Rejoice Over Little Things

Sometimes, in the middle of junk life throws at us, we need to choose to be excited over “little” things!

Like this month.  I was going through bills (yes, “adulting” is fun, guys, it’s full of never-ending bills) and as I checked my bank statement I yelped, “Yippee!”

Christina looks up from my computer screen, buried in something: CAP emails, college emails, or some online chat with a friend.  “What happened?”

My first thought was “how silly am I to rejoice over that?” and my logical brain said “seriously?  You are excited over $6.47 when you just got another hospital bill for almost $15,000?”

But I chose to rejoice.

“Someone bought three books from Barnes & Noble and I got paid $6.47!”  I told the girls.

“Wow,” Becky nodded, “that’s way more than Amazon.”

Yes, she was right – Amazon sells my ebooks for the same user price, but I usually make $0.01 per book or less.  This month’s Amazon deposit was three cents.  This Barnes & Noble deposit was for three ebooks – I was thrilled.  The books were: Two of the Five Alive: Stories of the Funny Sisters ebooks, Becky’s Crazy Day and Gale at the Ghost Town and my toddler illustrated ebook, The Skating Pony.

“Mom,” Christina shook her head, she is getting good at practical stuff. “That’s not a lot, is it?”

“It’s $6.47 more than we had,” I laughed.  AND, it’s three more books sold.  That tiny deposit holds the record for the largest gross payout from any sale yet! (Even my $20 retail softcover novels at the book sales gross less than $2.40 – if we cover venue costs.)

Thank you, Jesus!  And I remember this as I go back to bill stuff – “despise not the day of small beginnings.”  (Of course, my logical brain reminds me, “that was seven years ago and three cents from Amazon!”)

Is it silly to rejoice over less than $7 when you are buried in medical bills?  Nope.  It’s part of life.  Rejoice in the good, always!  (It seriously helps you not think so hard on the bad.)  You may not be able to choose your circumstances, but you can choose your attitude!  I choose to rejoice – even in the little things!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

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