I wrote this book because I needed to. . . . I had forgotten about life in the process of living. . . . What we really need in life is simple . . . and, most of it, we already have. This book reminded me of how full my life really is." --Sandy Gingras For the world's three billion-plus women, an illustrated list of what really matters most. Less gravity, good lighting, words of affection, to escape from her own head, romantic comedies, an off switch--these are among the charming and unique entries Sandy Gingras lists as necessities for the female existence. Chocolate and an elastic waistband are obviously included. Gingras's relaxed watercolor images meld with her compelling, poetry-like verse to help strip away life's day-to-day complications and strife. This is a book you will buy both to keep and to give as a gift.

What a Woman Needs

Gingras, Sandy

Reference

Andrews McMeel Publishing

Sandy Gingras evokes how good things can be when you and your environment are in happy agreement." --Stephen Dunn, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
An illustrated keepsake for your BFF that encompasses the ups, downs, and in-betweens of true friendship.
Celebrating the fun and fulfilling, as well as the "flaws, fizzles, and foibles" of friendship, Sandy Gingras fuses her relaxed watercolor illustrations with an original narrative to craft the ultimate ode to friendship.
With a special textured cover and heartfelt thoughts, Gingras reminds us that friends help friends forget and remember the bigger picture, they keep us in line, cheer us up through the gloomy times, respect our desire to be alone, and enable us to become a better version of ourselves.
Without being overly saccharine, Gingras writes, "True friendship is bigger than anger . . . and we'll be friends until the end of always . . . because liking is a thing that grows and grows (even through the hard parts).

I Like You: (a little book of friendship)

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Channel your inner Zen turtle with Sandy Gingras's gorgeous watercolor gift book. Long ago, Sandy Gingras read "The Tortoise and the Hare," a fable that teaches "slow and steady wins the race." But she didn't learn the lesson! Instead she lived the race of hurry-up and do-it-all every day. And it was tiring. But now, Gingras presents readers with a different kind of lesson from a different kind of turtle in the charming book Lessons of a Turtle. And it's a good lesson: Go with the slow! Life is about enjoying what's around you now and finding your own path. It's about the beauty of the journey more than the achievement of the finish line. So be like the turtle . . . notice, savor, bask, risk, grow. Put some life back in your life! Gingras helps readers get through life by using charming "turtlisms" that complement her just-as-cute turtle illustrations. She teaches us about life's little lessons with little treats like, "You can't move forward until you stick your neck out." and "The slower you go, the more you see." The author's little observations make a big difference on the journey through life. This book makes a lovely and inspiring gift.

Lessons of a Turtle: (The Little Book of Life)

Parenting & Relationships

In Reasons to Be Happy, Sandy Gingras shares a heartfelt and eclectic list of things that should make everyone smile, all illustrated with her unique watercolor painting. From puppies in a basket to a walk in the garden to the quiet of early morning, each reason is a reminder that there is so much around us to be happy about. The perfect gift for any occasion, Reasons to Be Happy will put a smile on your face and a skip in your step! A few reasons to be happy: * That clean-as-a-whistle feeling of the world when the sun pops out after a rainstorm * Summer nights . . . catching fireflies on the lawn * Hearing an old song on the radio * When he calls you just to hear the sound of your voice * Politeness * Mini hot dogs at a fancy party

Reasons to Be Happy

Arts & Photography

Individual Artists

The perfect last-minute gift for your favorite teacher. As artist and writer Sandy Gingras so aptly points out in the introduction to her book Thank You, a life lived well is perhaps the highest form of thanks a person can give to teachers as a way of repaying them for their attention and effort. A simple thank-you is also nice. Thank You is Gingras's own delightful way of conveying this sentiment. This charming keepsake book features her soft, sweet watercolor artwork and thoughtful original text celebrating teachers and all they do for us. Always striking the right tone of gratitude without being overly sentimental, Thank You is a wonderful way to show appreciation to teachers for their enduring gifts to us both great and small.

Thank You: (a book for teachers)

A beach-themed keepsake book that will appeal to those who are lucky enough to live at the beach and those who dream to. Inside this inspiring little book, author and artist Sandy Gingras offers ways to find peace, hope, and healing at the beach. Each "walk" is a mini-essay about self-discovery, particularly a woman's self-discovery. Sandy muses about learning patience, leaving it all behind, taking risks and chances, recovering after storms, enduring and gaining strength, and loving and losing and loving again. Gingras finds inspiration in beachy moments and shows us that lessons are everywhere on her beach walks--in a split shell, in a dribble castle, in an upside-down horseshoe crab, in a green jetty, and in the freedom of wearing nothing but a bathing suit. Gingras's watercolors invite you to come along on her "walks." Even if you can't actually walk on the beach each day, Walks on the Beach gives you the sense that you have a little sand between your toes, a little beach in your heart, and a little beach philosophy in your everyday life.

Walks on the Beach

Collects thoughts and activities that encourage reflection, solitude, and inner peace

How to Live on an Island (A Cormorant Book)

Self-Help

Down the Shore Pub

This charming illustrated gift book encourages us to live happily on simpler terms. We are reminded to ''float'' and ''make a splash,'' to ''ebb and flow'' and ''run with waves'' or ''laugh like a gull''; to ''sugar yourself with sand,'' to ''walk tender'' and to ''thank.'' This book by author/illustrator Sandy Gingras is the first of seven in her very popular and uniquely inspirational ''How To Live'' series.

How To Live On An Island

Sandy Gingras

Relationships

Down The Shore Publishing

With delightful illustrations and simple prose, Sandy Gingras strips away the complicated, structured way of life we cling to and helps us find perspective and appreciation in simple things - like the beach. How to Live at the Beach is a gift book that is at home anywhere, on any coast, or far from it. For the beach is only a metaphor, and with every reading we are awakened: How we might live, how we can pace ourselves, how we can appreciate our world, how we can love.

How to Live at the Beach

Religion & Spirituality

Sourcebooks

About the Author\nSandy Gingras is the author and illustrator of over twenty gift books. She’s also published fiction, poetry and narrative non-fiction, and she won the Debut Dagger Award for mystery writing in 2012, for her story Beached. She’s designed hundreds of products for national stationery companies and owns two retail stores of her own. She lives on an island six miles out to sea in a happy cottage on the bay with her husband and a dog named Turtle. Paradise Girls is her debut novel.\nSandy Gingras's Paradise Girls features a broken engagement. A ruined vacation in paradise. One adorable little girl. The perfect recipe for the chance of a lifetime...\nMary Valley is in a funk. She’s a writer for home magazines, but she’s lost touch with what home means. Her life seems meaningless. The last house she wrote about was a gazillion-dollar mansion with a moat! Plus, she’s estranged from her daughter, CC and granddaughter, Larkin and mired in a dead-end relationship with her boss.\nDaniel is a man adrift since his son Timmy was killed in Afghanistan. He’s living on a houseboat in Florida with Timmy’s three-legged dog, Tripod and taking tourists out on fishing charters. But his life is on the edge. He’s painting his houseboat black, and he can’t stop thinking about “getting lost at sea.”\nWhen Mary’s boss tells her he’s spending Christmas with his ex, she books a trip with her family to The Low Key Inn, a hotel on the edge of the Everglades. But things go wrong from the get-go. CC bails out of the vacation, and Mary is stuck with an unhappy Larkin. The hotel is dated and down-on-its-luck, and perhaps its owner is a witch. Then Mary meets Daniel, casts a hook into his head and wrecks his boat.\nThis is the story of how wounded people can help each other heal, how lost people can help each other find their way home. How life can become a love story…

Paradise Girls: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

St. Martin's: Griffin

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Books by Gingras, Sandy