Six years ago, I wrote about a card game that my husband and I learned from our neighbors that very much became an addiction for us. That post has had more than 1.3 million hits which to me signals there’s a lot of gamers out there like us.
For you, we have a new drug – Pegs and Jokers.
Taught to us by new friends (and also neighbors), Pegs and Jokers is a combination card and board game. If you recall the childhood game Sorry!, the board looks a lot like that. …

‘Tis the season for everyone’s “best books” list. Here’s a round-up of the more popular (and maybe some lesser known) lists.
If I’ve missed one, leave it in the comments, and I’ll add it. Disclaimer: When a source creates multiple lists, I will always default to fiction / literary fiction for these lists.
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Bloomberg
Bookriot
Elle
goodreads
The Guardian
GQ
Harper’s Bazzar
Huffington Post
Indigo
Kirkus
NPR
The New York Times
Washington Post
Popsugar
Publishers Weekly
Time
Town and Country
Vulture
Did I miss a list? Let me know if the comments! ⇓

Yep, confession – I love hotel shampoo. Maybe it’s the unexpected variety. Maybe I haven’t gotten over the teenage notion that switching up shampoo is good for your hair – it strips away build-up, didn’t you know? Maybe it’s the occasional indulgence in brands I don’t regularly buy. Whatever the case, I’m a sucker for hotel shampoo. And body wash. And conditioner. And lotion.
And I bring them home. I guess this is the real confession. I’m the one who *might* slip a once-used hotel bottle into my bag hoping cleaning service will leave a …

It’s been years since I’ve written a “Things I Love Thursday” post. But because podcasts have become my new drive-time favorite, significantly reducing the number of audio books I listen to, I wanted to share them with you.
First, if you’re not listening to podcasts, you should be. Think of them as TV in radio format. The variety is just as broad as what you get on TV, so saying you don’t like them is like saying you don’t like TV. And while people like that exist, primarily it hinges on finding what …

Periodically, my book club will have members submit their top 10 all time favorite books. We did this recently, and as a result of the exercise, we have a top 100 books as determined by the SOC Sistas.
There are 11 of us, and together we represent well over 500 years of collective reading. That said, several of us thought it unfair to be restricted to just 10 books with so many years to have contributed selections, so we opted to take license with the number and submit more.
What is below …

For most of my life, I’ve wanted to have a respectable herb garden, and I think I’ve finally arrived. My love for herbs started one summer in grade school when I took a summer enrichment class on herbs and all the things you could do with them. At that point, the utilization centered around drying, adding oils and creating potpourri. But now, I love to cook with herbs. I flavor my water with them. I love to just run my hand through their lush greenness and take in the invigorating scents. Yes, I …

UPDATE: Congratulations to Rebecca & Ashley H. on winning this giveaway! I hope you enjoy!
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So, there are few things more satisfying than when a product you loves proves itself worthy of your admiration. So goes St. Ives.
Frequenters of Lit&Leisure may remember my very first “Love” post about St. Ives Green Tea face scrub. It was the product that inspired this theme of reoccurring posts for me.
Enter December when I purchase a new tube of the scrub and experience a product fail – the tube splits at the sides. I was …

I love games, but especially card games. Last year when we moved into our home, our new neighbors taught us a card game that we were immediately addicted to. We started teaching it to everyone we knew, and quickly the running joke became, knowing this game is a prerequisite of friendship. (Not really, but we may see you more often if you play!)
Over the recent holidays we had one such couple over. They couldn’t remember all the rules and had tried to find it on the internet, but couldn’t find …

I do hate that I had to keep this post until after Christmas, but today’s Things I Love Thursday is what I gave my parents, and since my mom has a habit of stopping by Lit&Leisure, I couldn’t spoil their surprise.
Raise your hand if your parents are hard to buy for. [Looking at all the hands raised.] Mine aren’t always – often they help us out with ideas – but let’s face it, most of us buy for ourselves the things we need (or want) so sometimes coming up with …

I can’t resist this opportunity to say that I love Apple. Steve Jobs was a creative genius that will be missed, especially by those of us who use his products every day. He pioneered technology that we all now take for granted.
I know many of you are like me, and the very first computer you touched was a Macintosh – part of the “Apples for Schools” program. I always thought that was a brilliant marketing strategy. Put Macs in schools and ensure future generations consider you their first love.
I’ve worked …