My name is Izzy Cantrell, and I am a twenty-something woman currently living in Washington. I am originally from Southern California in a city called Banning, that’s where I lived until I was 20. After I got married to my high school sweetheart I moved to Fairbanks, Alaska where I lived there for about 2 and a half years. I am currently an online college student attending Oregon State University and I am majoring in Zoology while being a Botany minor. Hopefully, after graduating from OSU I will become a wildlife rehabilitator or a veterinary technician depending on which interests me more.
I have always had a love for reading, my parents really encouraged it by always taking me to the library from a young age and reading books together as a family activity. One of my earliest memories is of me, my sister, and my mom sitting around my dad while he read Harry Potter to us. It was my favorite tradition whenever my dad came home from deployments, and that just grew my love for reading. Every now and then my family used to sit in the living room after dinner reading our books in silence and sometimes we would talk about our books over coffee. Since I have been a kid I have loved fairy tales, mythology, and folklore I have always found stories that have been around for centuries to be extremely interesting. My favorite genres are fantasy, romance, the classics, and really anything mythological or fairy-tale-based.
My mom has always been and still is an amazing baker and cook and has worked alongside some profound chefs. She instilled the love of baking in me from a very young age and has always encouraged me to write in cookbooks and to start my own recipe journal. I am still trying to convince her to write a cookbook, though she is currently working on a children’s book that will have German recipes in it. I love to bake bread and any yeast-baked goods, I also enjoy baking muffins and cupcakes.
My mom LOVES to travel every summer we would go somewhere in the world and we would have amazing adventures. These travels would always include hiking, going to museums, and just getting lost in the city. My favorite aspect of the trip was always getting lost in the city with no agenda in my mind and just seeing the city that way. Of course, my mom who is a bit type A loves to plan everything out to the minute with activities of every sort in order to squeeze everything she could before we had to go home. I still love to travel even if it is just in the state where I reside now, and on these trips, I get lost in the city and I go on hikes with my husband and dog Dixie.
If you would like to know what books I like to read when I feel like I need to escape reality for a little bit, feel free to read about My Comfort Reads.