The Best of Chick Lit Is Not Dead 2010

2010 has been an AMAZING year. On a personal note, Lisa schmoved across the country to be with her man, got married and is soon to have her first baby (due Jan 3rd!). Liz celebrated her ninth wedding anniversary (next year is the big 10! What's the gift for that? Paper? Hmmm..Lisa better figure that one out soon.).

On a professional note, We're very excited about the tremendous support Chick Lit Is Not Dead received from all of you and we again must shout THANK YOU from the top of our lungs for being so freakin' awesome! And although it hasn't happened overnight (WTF with that anyway?!), we're confident our manuscript, The D Word will find a home. And we're super excited that we've already planned our next novel and will begin writing it in early 2011!

But back to CLIND. We love this site because we can write about one of our favorite things-reading. We can share our favorite books and authors with you. And of course, we love having an outlet to tell our personal stories that we find so amusing (hopefully you do too?!). And with so many magazines doing the "Best of 2010", we were inspired to pick our favorite blog posts of the year or what we consider the Best of CLIND 2010. 

You'll notice this won't be including any author posts-we found it impossible to choose just a few! We've loved having each and every one of them on sharing their 5 things we didn't know or their bucket lists with us. Each in their own way, they've been funny, insightful and honest. And we look forward to having many of them back next year and also meeting some new ones too!

And if you leave a comment today, you can win bundle o' books of some of our favorites of 2010 including, Life After Yes by Aidan Donnelley Rowley, Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang by Chelsea Handler, Love In Mid Air by Kim Wright, You Had Me At Woof by Julie Klam and Gunn's Golden Rules by Tim Gunn.  We'll choose the winners after midnight EST Friday, Jan 31st.

So grab a glass of champagne and review the year in CLIND with us!

CHICK LIT IS NOT DEAD PRESENTS: LIZ & LISA'S BEST OF CLIND 2010

1. Mommy Monday: Till Death Do Us Part When Liz's beloved German Shepard was diagnosed with cancer, she struggled with how to explain death to her kids without scaring them to, well, death! And when she passed away a few months later, Liz considered this post as her swan song to her.

2. The Bride Card by Lisa- Lisa's wedding in February was a shining moment for both us in 2010.  And because Lisa AND Liz had so much fun playin' that Bride Card during (before and after!) Lisa's wedding, we had to choose this post.

3. Maternity Monday: Open Letter to the Third Trimester We're happy that Lisa's struggles with the last trimester of her pregnancy (heartburn!  Waddling like a duck!) made y'all LOL a bit.  And Liz was just happy that she finally understands why she was so cranky during her third trimester!

4. Mommy Monday: Mommy is Tired! When Liz sat down that Sunday to write her Mommy Monday, she was so tired that she could barley lift her fingers to the keyboard.  In fact, she couldn't think of anything else except how damn tired and cranky she felt.  So she did the only thing she could-she wrote a post about it!  And she was overwhelmed by the support it received from other Moms were also so f*cking tired they couldn't see straight.

5. Writing Wednesday: Does this manuscript make my ass look fat? We can't remember which rejection letter sent us over the edge, but we're so happy it did because we finally realized that our manuscript might be giving us camel toe... We had a blast writing this one.

As much fun as we had writing these posts in 2010, we can't wait for 2011!  We've got some exciting things planned for our 2nd anniversary and as always, we'll be bringing you the very best authors and books.  Oh, and we'll still be ROCKING the giveaways too!

So cheers to all of you-because without you guys, we'd just be two girls talking to ourselves.  Happy New Year-we love you guys!

xoxo, L&L

Maternity Monday: Nesting In Overdrive!

I had heard this thing called "nesting" happens to you when you get pregnant. And I figured I wouldn't be immune- being somewhat of a *cough* *cough* anal retentive control freak anyway. But I (or I think I can safely speak for my husband) never in my wildest dreams imagined that it would hit me so hard and fast. Let's just say before I nested this past weekend, I'd never cleaned an oven... It all started innocently enough, when I woke up at 5:30 a.m. and announced to no one in particular (although the hubs probably wished he could've avoided my speech as it was Saturday morning) that I'd be making Thanksgiving dinner- that night. I dragged my big belly self out of bed and went into the kitchen to take inventory. But it was then that I noticed how raunchy and unsightly the inside of our refrigerator was. How had I let it get so bad?

Before I knew it, those long rubber ill-fitting yellow gloves were out and the cleaning frenzy was on like Donkey Kong. Once I figured out how to get in position to actually be able to clean (turns out one can sit rather easily on a child's step stool!).  I went off. Scrubbing and scouring and simultaneously gagging at certain unidentifiable stains and spots I found lurking within (I'll spare you the details).

And the refrigerator then led to the stove. How? I have no freakin' clue. But when my own scrubbing and scouring weren't enough to tackle it, I popped on something called the "self cleaning" button. Who knew? And then I moved on to the baseboards. Yes, baseboards. I haphazardly squatted and ran my duster along the edges while making a mental note to paint them. How did they get so dirty? And non-white?

I was a site as I frenetically moved from corner to closet to under every surface including the couch (ahhhh) and cleaned like I'd never cleaned before. I was like Molly Maid on crack as I mopped and vacuumed and removed rugs and window shades to be professionally cleaned. I was like Superman with X Ray vision as I noticed dust that I'm quite confident the non-prego human eye could not discern.

Midway through my cleaning frenzy, I started to freak out that I was harming the baby by inhaling cleaning products, so I made a trip across town to Target to get "green" everything. I was truly out of control.

But I marched on until exhaustion took hold (I'm proud to report I cleaned the entire house before I had to call it quits) and it was time to make that Thanksgiving dinner. Yes, I made it. Even after all that. The mashed potatoes were from scratch but the stuffing was from a box. And the pumpkin soup, well, let's just say it wasn't a big hit. And turkey? Well, that didn't happen either. But I was still happy with my poor man's "prego" Thanksgiving. And the fact that the house was spotless. In fact, we could've eaten that dinner off the kitchen floor- had I been able to get my pregnant self down there, that is.

So ladies.. please leave a comment- tell me I'm not alone! (Even if you're lying!) And be entered for a chance to win a $25 Target gift card!

xoxo