4 hours ago
I like talk radio, and Hugh Hewitt is one of the talk show hosts that I like listening to, when I can. So when I saw that a book of his was up for review, I knew I had to request it!
(Yes, I realize putting a book down this way can ruin the spine. But they're my books, and I will continue to do it anyway.)
In The Happiest Life, Hewitt examines some of the characteristics of a happy person, which he calls "gifts", because they are also things that can be a blessing to others. These include encouragement, energy, enthusiasm, empathy, good humor, graciousness, and gratitude. He also examines seven different "givers", people who are in a unique position to give these gifts to others - namely, spouses, parents, family members, friends, coworkers, teachers, and the church.
There were a lot of good nuggets of wisdom in this book, and several of his points made me think. I especially liked his chapters on good humor, which talked about what a gift cheerfulness is, and spouses, which focused on the importance of giving these gifts of happiness to your spouse.
This book wasn't quite what I was expecting in that a lot of it seemed more autobiographical than practical. I went in thinking that most of the content would be practical advice, but more of the content was focused on personal examples and people who had touched Hewitt's life with these gifts.
Since I didn't know some of the people he referred to, some of the content was a little slower for me - but I did take several useful points away from the book that I appreciated. It was also interesting to read some of the "behind the scenes" information in this book since I do listen to Hugh's radio show.
You would probably appreciate this book more if you are a listener of Hugh Hewitt's show - if you do, then it is a book worth checking out! If you are not a listener of the show I think there are still things you could take from this book, but just be prepared for the autobiographical content.
Note: I received this book for free from Booklook in exchange for this review. This is my honest opinion.
My philosophy is that my kids can never have too many storybook Bibles. I feel like every one has something a little different to offer, and you never know which storybook Bible will offer an explanation that will resonate with their little hearts.
I was pretty excited to read the Jesus and Me Bible Storybook, because I wanted to see what this one would be like. And you know what? I love it. It's probably my favorite of all the ones we have so far.
This is a storybook that is entirely focused on Jesus - each page has a story, fact, or characteristic about Jesus. It also includes a prayer and a "Jesus and Me" section - which is like a practical application of whatever was discussed in the story. It's almost more like a devotional than a story book, but the devotions are appropriate for young kids - Wyatt listens when we read it, and I try to pull out a lesson for him to remember from each page.
This is seriously my favorite thing of everything I have from Tommy Nelson. Wyatt really loves it too - he asks for more than one story when we read it at night, and he carries it around with him during the day. The other morning he came downstairs to our room, wanting to climb in bed with me, and he had the Jesus and Me storybook Bible in tow! I tucked him in next to me and we had morning devotions together.
(I have to share this, because it's so cute - the other night we read a story from this book about how Jesus healed people. Derek mentioned that he was feeling like he was getting sick, so I told Wyatt and said we should pray for Jesus to make Daddy feel better. So we said a prayer, and then I sang him a song and tucked him in, but he said he wanted to "pray for Daddy" again. So I started praying again, but he jumped in and said "Please Jesus, make daddy feel better . . . in Jesus name, Amen." It was his first real prayer that he has prayed all by himself, and it pretty much made my heart explode listening to his sweet little voice, talking to Jesus.)
Another thing I love about this book is that it includes telling kids about believing in Jesus as their Savior in the majority of the stories - and I love that. I love the constant reminders of what Jesus did for us and how to spend eternity with Him.
We're a little over halfway through the book (we've been reading one or two stories every night), and I'm already sold on it! I would highly recommend this book to any parents with young kids!
(You can get a sneak peek into the Jesus and Me Bible Storybook here.)
Tommy Nelson has also offered to give one of my readers a copy of the Jesus and Me storybook Bible! Enter below for a chance to win!
Note: I received this book for free from Tommy Nelson in exchange for this review. This is my honest opinion.
One of the questions that I got in my reader survey from a couple months back was "What makes a good blog design?"
I've been designing my own blog from the beginning, and it has changed a lot - even the styles that are popular have changed a lot since five years ago, so anything I say in this post is up for adjustment to future trends, etc. Personally though, I think there are a few timeless elements of good blog design. And I have probably broken all of these before coming to my current conclusions! But here are my tips, in no particular order . . .
Blog name at the top.
Obviously. I don't care whether it's in your sidebar, stretches across the page, or whatever, but just make sure it's at the top.
Make it clean.
When your blog design becomes too cluttered it's hard for people to find what they want. Plus it just doesn't create a peaceful, welcoming environment for readers. If there are too many things going on above the fold (the part of your blog that shows up before someone scrolls down), it just gets confusing, and that applies whether it be too many ads, too many buttons, too many graphics, too much text, or whatever. Keep it simple. Try to keep your sidebar well-organized. Just don't let it feel too chaotic.
Add pages.
It is important to make it easy for readers to find critical information about you or your blog without having to scroll through all of your content. The pages I think are critical? An "About" page - every blog should have one, even if your blog is very small. A "Contact" page - create a blog e-mail and make it available so readers who want to contact you personally can do so. And if you are accepting ads or reviews at all - a "Sponsor/PR" page. You can have more pages than this, but just keep in mind the above rule - don't let it get too messy. Also, not all pages have to go in your tabs section - you can put some in your sidebar.
Put social media buttons up high.
Keep your social media buttons near the top of your blog - you want to make it easy for readers to subscribe, and easy for them to find you other places on the web. If you do not have blog accounts for other social media sites like Twitter or Facebook (which I strongly suggest you consider doing if you don't), you at least need to have subscription links - an RSS button linking to your feed, a button for Bloglovin (right now that's a big way people are subscribing to blogs), and an e-mail button (to "link" to e-mail, just insert this where the link usually goes: mailto:youremailaddress). For more info on how to create social media buttons you can check out this post.
Put some sort of intro or picture of yourself in the top of your sidebar.
Once again, make it easy for readers to know who they are reading about!
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Those are the basics that I think are important, but I do have opinions on a couple other things - some may disagree with me on these, and I have seen nice blog designs that don't obey the following "rules". But as a rule of thumb, I think it's good to keep these things in mind.
Make sure the title of your most recent blog post is visible before scrolling down.
I think this is important to draw the reader down into your blog. Don't make your header too tall, and don't put other things above your posts.
Stick with a light background.
This is definitely personal preference on my part, but I prefer a white background. In general a white or light background is just happier and cleaner and more calming than other colors. This rule can sometimes be broken and still work, but in general lighter backgrounds are just safer.
Stick with basic (aka: boring) fonts for your main page text.
It's all about making it easy for your readers to . . . well, read. And fancy fonts as your main text can be difficult for some people. Have fun with your blog titles and post titles and sidebar titles and graphics, but keep the main text simple.
Other people may add more to my list, but those are the things that I think most good blog designs have. I've been a little specific with those last three, but I don't think people should get too much more picky than that. You have to leave some room for personal style! If you like to play with your post formats and alignment of the text - go for it. If you want to experiment with the position of your header or pages - have fun with it. Just keep the above rules in mind and you'll be fine.
After reading the description for Friend Me by John Faubion I was too intrigued not request it.
In Friend Me, Rachel and her husband Scott discover a new social media platform that allows them to create a "virtual friend". While Rachel tries to re-create her friendship with her deceased friend, Suzanne, Scott falls into the trap of setting up an "intimate" virtual friendship through the service, trying to convince himself that he is not being unfaithful to Rachel. What neither of them knows is that an insane employee of the virtual friend company has fallen in love with Scott and is targeting both of them through their "friends". Scott and Rachel slowly figure out what it going on and try to come up with a plan to rescue their marriage and lives.
What I wasn't so sure about:
The plot line creeped me out a little bit, just because it was so believable. If a social media company ever figured out how to use artificial intelligence to create realistic virtual people, I think everything in this book could potentially happen, which is a little scary! It made m
e want to avoid reading it at night so I didn't freak myself out (I avoid all suspense books at night anyway though).
It was also disturbing to me how Scott used the site to cheat on his wife, while justifying that it wasn't really cheating because it was virtual. Disturbing, but also a reasonable premise with this website's technology. Let's just say I hope such a company/social media site never exists!
I felt like more of the book focused on the infidelity than I would like. The other thing that confused me was an attack scene that was thrown in toward the end of the book - it didn't seem to fit in or add to the plot at all.
What I liked about this book:
It was a very interesting premise, and (in a scary way) quite believable. The book was suspenseful and kept me wanting to read more to find out what happened.
I also felt like it opened the door to look at social media with more critical thinking skills - social media as it is now can be misused in so many ways, and the extremes in this book bring up issues that people should be thinking about with current social media use as well - like online predators, the dangers of letting your virtual life become more important than your real life, marital unfaithfulness online, etc.
I felt the ending was rushed, but it was also an ending with a positive note. If you like suspense and want an interesting read that will make you think, this book might be one to check out.
P.S. There is a Kindle Fire HDX giveaway going on with this book release - you can check it out here!
Note: I received this book for free from Litfuse Publicity in exchange for this review. This is my honest opinon.
What I wasn't so sure about:
The plot line creeped me out a little bit, just because it was so believable. If a social media company ever figured out how to use artificial intelligence to create realistic virtual people, I think everything in this book could potentially happen, which is a little scary! It made m
e want to avoid reading it at night so I didn't freak myself out (I avoid all suspense books at night anyway though).
It was also disturbing to me how Scott used the site to cheat on his wife, while justifying that it wasn't really cheating because it was virtual. Disturbing, but also a reasonable premise with this website's technology. Let's just say I hope such a company/social media site never exists!
I felt like more of the book focused on the infidelity than I would like. The other thing that confused me was an attack scene that was thrown in toward the end of the book - it didn't seem to fit in or add to the plot at all.
What I liked about this book:
It was a very interesting premise, and (in a scary way) quite believable. The book was suspenseful and kept me wanting to read more to find out what happened.
I also felt like it opened the door to look at social media with more critical thinking skills - social media as it is now can be misused in so many ways, and the extremes in this book bring up issues that people should be thinking about with current social media use as well - like online predators, the dangers of letting your virtual life become more important than your real life, marital unfaithfulness online, etc.
I felt the ending was rushed, but it was also an ending with a positive note. If you like suspense and want an interesting read that will make you think, this book might be one to check out.
P.S. There is a Kindle Fire HDX giveaway going on with this book release - you can check it out here!
Note: I received this book for free from Litfuse Publicity in exchange for this review. This is my honest opinon.
Today my sweet Wyatt-Boy turns three years old!
He is the sweetest little three year old I know. Favorite things right now include trucks, cars, Thomas the train, Winnie the Pooh, chocolate milk. Balloons (especially filled with helium) are his favorite, and he asks for one every time we go to the grocery store.
He has been chattering for weeks about how his "birthday is comin' soon", and he has asked about his birthday "cek", and birthday balloons, and birthday presents - he was definitely wanting a party, so a Thomas the Train party it was!
He holds conversations with Derek and me, and he loves to make us laugh. He crawls into bed with me in the mornings to snuggle. He tells me he loves me without being prompted and gives me sweet little hugs and kisses that melt my heart.
He asks sometimes to "come up da stairs" with us at church instead of going to his class, and he sits next to us, with his blankie and truck, through the church service. He likes to help put Gwen to bed, and always shouts "G'night Gwen, I love you!" on the way out the door. He likes to brush his teeth.
I call him Pumpkin Pie, Bugaboo, Bug, Wyatt-Boy, and any variation thereof, and he knows I'm talking about him. He likes to point to my stomach and announce that "New bebe is getting bigger!"
He tries to bargain in more time at night by asking to "sit wif you for few mimutts." He giggles and shouts with glee when Dad plays "rocket ship" with him, launching him into bed at night. When he sees someone fall, or a car crash, or similar things on TV (which we try not to let him watch too often) he always looks at me and says "he's okay though. He's okay," until I reassure him.
He likes crafts, especially anything involving glitter. He asks for us to sing "Jesus Loves Me" to him every night. He is quiet, but when we read Bible stories together at night I can tell he is taking a lot in even if he doesn't say much.
He has such a sweet, soft heart.
I can hardly believe sit was already three years ago that we packed up our bags and headed to the hospital, knowing we would be coming back with a baby. I was nervous - nervous about being a good mom, nervous about meeting my son, nervous about how a baby would change our lives.
But then he was here. The doctor handed him to me and I wasn't nervous anymore. Just so, so grateful for this precious little life.
And I am still so grateful for the privilege of having him as my son. Back then I had no idea how much joy was in store for me, but I know now. And I thank God every day for that little boy who made me a mama.
(For more pictures of his party, click here.)
This year I decided I really wanted to send out Valentine's to all of Wyatt and Gwendolyn's little friends! There are a ton of homemade Valentine ideas on Pinterest, but none of them seemed quite right for me, so I decided to make my own.
I got these fun little airplane gliders (I think they came out to about 11 cents each?), and I made my own printable to go with them.
I painstakingly created that little paper airplane graphic myself (yes, I did). I really like the way the valentines turned out!
I painstakingly created that little paper airplane graphic myself (yes, I did). I really like the way the valentines turned out!
For the actual valentines I just printed them out on some card stock, then cut them out and taped them to another piece of card stock with some cute wash tape. Then I made little labels to wrap around the gliders.
I tucked it all in an envelope, and off they went. We had a little hiccup at the post office (it turns out the airplanes were a little too thick - ah!), but the mail-lady let me stamp them all as non-machinable letters, and I think most of them got through to their destinations.
Today, I want to talk about social media buttons. I've written about social media buttons before, but I thought it was time for a little refresher since that was several years ago and I have been using a different style of button more recently.
Social media buttons and/or subscription buttons are important because:
1. They make it simple for people to find a way to follow your blog.
2. They make it easy for people to find you other places on the web.
If you want to connect social media accounts like Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook to your blog, social media buttons are a must. And if you don't want to have social media accounts associated with your blog - it is still helpful to have buttons that make it easier for people to subscribe or contact you (like a Bloglovin button, a button for your feed, and a mail button).
So if you are a blog design DIY-er (like moi), how do you create those cute little social media buttons that line up in your sidebar? It's actually really simple once you know how to do it!
1. You need to start out with some images to use for your social media buttons. These usually include the appropriate social media or subscription icons, and they should all be the same size (or really close).
Hint: If you are creating your own icon images and want them to look like the icons are laying flat against your background, either make sure the background of the image is the same color as your blog background (most commonly white), or put your shapes against a transparent background and save as a .PNG. (.PNG files keep the transparency when you put them on your blog).
2. Get them sized the way you want. If you want them to line up in your sidebar, you need to make sure they are sized so that they will all fit - my sidebar right now is 360 pixels wide, and I have seven social media icons - I have my icons sized to 35 pixels wide each to ensure they all fit with plenty of space. I might be able to get away with 45 pixels, but 50 pixels would probably be cutting it too close because Blogger likes to put a buffer space on each side - so if I did 50 pixels Blogger might push one of them into a second row. You'll have to experiment with the sizing a little bit depending on your sidebar width.
3. Upload them to a photo hosting site. I use Photobucket.
4. Find the direct URL for your images. This is what that looks like on Photobucket:
5. Plug the following info into this bit of button code:
<a href="url of your social media site" target="_blank"><img src="direct url of your social media button image" /></a>
Replace the red words with the appropriate URLs. Make sure not to alter other parts of the code or it may not work! You'll need to create a copy of this code for each individual social media button, with the appropriate URLs.
Hint: For a button that will open email, put mailto:youremailaddress where you would normally put your social media page link. Obviously, inserting your email address in that space.
Hint, Hint: Go To Feedburner.com and set up your blog to get a url you can use for your RSS feed. There are probably other ways to establish/find this URL, but that's just the way I did it.
6. Next go to the Layout tab in your blog dashboard and create a new gadget. Choose "HTML/Javascript" and then insert the codes into the gadget.
7. When you insert the codes you created, make sure there are no spaces between the end of one button code and the beginning of the next. This will make them all line up in a row.
8. Save and view your lovely new buttons! I recommend going through and testing each one to make sure the links work.
Now the big question - where do you get social media button images?
Option 1: If you have Photoshop Elements, it's pretty simple to create your own - you can save images of the logos for each of the social media sites to your computer, open them in PSE and use the magic wand selector tool to "grab" the logo shapes and move them into your button images.
Option 2: There are certain fonts that look like specific social media icons. Check out this Facebook font and this Twitter font.
Option 3: You can also create text buttons in Picmonkey, kind of like this:
I messed around with it a little bit and didn't see a good way to extract social media logos to use in Picmonkey, but this is a good alternative.
Option 4: The final option for getting social media icons is to search for free ones that you can use. Which leads me to a fun announcement . . .
I'm posting my first blog design freebie today!
Here are some social media icons that I'm giving to all of you, for free! I made these little heart icons in honor of Valentine's Day, since it's a week from today!
If hearts aren't your thing, I'm planning on creating more free social media buttons to include with future posts - so comment with any ideas you have and stay tuned!
These social media buttons are free for personal use or commercial use (crediting me isn't necessary, but appreciated). They may not be redistributed or sold though, so don't even go there - please just send people back here to download for themselves if they would like to use them.
How To Use These Icons:
1. Save the image by clicking on the images above and then right-clicking and saving to your computer.
2. Pick the size you want to use (I've provided 35 pixel, 50 pixel, and 65 pixel buttons).
3. Crop each icon you want to use out of the whole image and save individually to your computer. Just in case you haven't seen some of the symbols before, the buttons are for:
Facebook
Twitter
Email
Pinterest
Bloglovin'
Rss feed
Instagram
4. Follow the above tutorial for turning the images into social media buttons for use on your blog!
These are .PNG images, so they should let whatever background color you have on your blog show through. I'm including the color codes I used in case you want to use the color scheme other places on your blog.
Enjoy!
I push the hair out of my eyes and squint at the clock on my bedside table, barely registering a number starting with 4. A little voice comes squealing through the baby monitor, and I bite back a sigh.
I flip the covers back and climb the stairs, the dog following close behind, thinking about how soundly I used to sleep back in the day. I open the door and turn on the light and she gives me a squinty-eyed look and desperate little whimper. I go pick her up and hand her a blanket, ready for screams when I tell her she's fine and she needs to go back to sleep.
But before I can say anything she tucks her head into the place between my chin and my collar bone, eyes closed, sucking away on her tiny thumb. I melt a little and forget what I was going to say.
All of a sudden I can't put her down, so we stand there and rock for a few minutes. I think I could stay there forever, but I know I better get back to bed myself, so I lay her quiet form down and tuck her back in.
I collapse in my own bed and fall asleep again almost immediately, but a couple hours later I hear a familiar, thump, thump, thump, coming down the stairs, the signal that my rest is almost over. I roll over and open my eyes, and two little brown ones stare back at me over the edge of the bed.
I ask if he wants to climb in bed with me, and he nods his head - this is our routine. I hoist him off the floor and deposit him into the spot next to me where he always sits after his daddy has gone for the day. I settle him against the pillows and pull a blanket up to his chin, but he isn't satisfied because he "f'got blanket". His favorite blanket isn't in sight. I tell him I'll get it and climb the stairs again in the dim beginnings of morning light.
Once he has his blanket he settles down with his toy car, his balloon, and his thumb in his mouth. This is our time together before the day begins.
As I close my eyes with my son curled up next to me, not all is quiet - another son of mine tosses and turns and kicks, trying to get comfortable inside my womb. Only I know, his movements and habits our secret for now.
He settles down, and I settle down, and the house is quiet until the sun bursts through the window a little while later. One little voice calls from upstairs again, one little voice jabbers about brushing teeth, and one little kick greets me with "good morning, Mama".
No, I don't sleep like I used to. But I wouldn't change a thing.
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