14 hours ago
I never really considered myself a "people pleaser". I fancy myself one of those people who wouldn't change my own opinions or convictions just to please someone else, and I always thought I had pretty good boundaries.
But I realized last year that no, I am kind of a people pleaser. The way it manifests itself for me is a difficulty in saying "no". This really became a problem this last fall. All of a sudden I had several writing commitments and other commitments at church, and barely time to breathe!
Unfortunately because of this busyness, I decided I needed to let some things go, and one of those things was co-hosting the With Grit & Grace Linkup. However, I don't see any reason why I can't still share what I want to work on each month! As far as goal-setting goes, you all already know that I'm not a resolution-making, goal-setting kind of girl. When I pick a goal for the month, it's one thing, and usually a bit vague at that. Another blogger wrote recently about how she accomplishes more when her goals are vague - and even though all goal-setting experts say that vagueness is a no-no, I find the same thing is true of me.
So here is my one, not-super-specific goal for February.
I want to give Valentines!
To whom? I don't fully know yet. However, this goal fits in with my larger focus for the year, and it's also something I just want to do. I have a hard time with the love languages concept, because I feel like I could claim all of them as a personal love language, but I do enjoy giving gifts, even small gifts. I like to make my own gifts occasionally too, especially when they are simple. It makes my non-crafty self feel like I'm not a complete failure in the DIY area!
(Affiliate links below.)
Especially every year around Valentine's Day, I get the urge to make something, which is convenient because Valentine's Day is a great creative outlet! This is one of the things I came up with for the kids to give their friends this year. Did anyone have some of these crayon melts growing up? I wrote a whole post once about my first-grade crayon melt wishes. We have a bunch of broken crayons around, so I bought a heart mold, melted the crayons in the oven, and let them cool completely before I removed them!
They turned out pretty well, and I am planning on making enough for all the kids' little friends. I'm still looking for the perfect valentines to include with the crayon melts though! I've had the opportunity to work with Minted in the past, and this year they gave me a chance to pick out some classroom valentines. Oh my goodness. The choices are endless because every single one is so cute!
To help you out in your valentine-giving efforts, I put together a few ideas for little gifts to include with some of Minted's classroom valentines. But do yourself a favor and check out the entire collection, because there were so many cute ones I didn't have room to share here! (Also, I'll take feedback on which one you think goes best with the crayon melts. As I type this, I'm still not sure which ones to pick.)
Firefly Love Valentine - This is a great Valentine for glow sticks, or glow-in-the-dark anything, really.
Banner Takeoff Valentine - I have given airplane gliders as valentine gifts in the past, and this one is the perfect valentine for that!
The bottom line is that you could choose almost any valentine treat or theme, and Minted probably has a classroom valentine choice that will go with it! I seriously had a horrible time narrowing down which valentines to show you in this post - it's going to be even harder to pick the ones I want for my kids to hand out. I'm still debating on whether I'll stick with the "melted" theme, or not!
To help you out in your valentine-giving efforts, I put together a few ideas for little gifts to include with some of Minted's classroom valentines. But do yourself a favor and check out the entire collection, because there were so many cute ones I didn't have room to share here! (Also, I'll take feedback on which one you think goes best with the crayon melts. As I type this, I'm still not sure which ones to pick.)
Firefly Love Valentine - This is a great Valentine for glow sticks, or glow-in-the-dark anything, really.
Banner Takeoff Valentine - I have given airplane gliders as valentine gifts in the past, and this one is the perfect valentine for that!
Sharp Student Valentine - Cool pencils would go with this one. You could even include a sharpener if you wanted to add something extra.
Bee My Valentine - Minted has a few adorable bee-themed valentines, and if it were me, I'd include a honey stick!
Precious Gems Valentine - So many possibilities with this one. Ring pops, gem-shaped erasers, plastic jewelry.
Sweet Bubbly Valentine - A bubble gum valentine! Tuck a stick of gum in with it, and there you go!
You Rule Valentine - Colorful plastic rulers, obviously.
School Of Fish Valentine - You could go with gold fish (the crackers), or any sort of fish toy with this one.
Color In My World Valentine - Crayons, and the valentine recipient can finish coloring this one themselves! Minted has a few valentines that are also activities, like this one. This one might be a contender for our crayon melts.
Bugs And Kisses Valentine - I would go with inexpensive plastic bug toys or magnifying glasses with this one. This is also a great example of one of the activity valentines!
Smart Cookie Valentine - Bake some cookies!
The bottom line is that you could choose almost any valentine treat or theme, and Minted probably has a classroom valentine choice that will go with it! I seriously had a horrible time narrowing down which valentines to show you in this post - it's going to be even harder to pick the ones I want for my kids to hand out. I'm still debating on whether I'll stick with the "melted" theme, or not!
Do you hand out Valentine's (for your child's class maybe?).
Am I having a little too much fun with this? I have this sneaky feeling that putting together Valentine's gifts for other people's kids is supposed to be burdensome, but I think it's so fun!
(And just as a little bonus - check out these Valentine-inspired prints! Perfect for a gallery wall or as a Valentine's gift for a grown up.)
(And just as a little bonus - check out these Valentine-inspired prints! Perfect for a gallery wall or as a Valentine's gift for a grown up.)
(I love a beautiful vow print - I have one on our wall!)
(You can customize this print with your own photo.)
Stay tuned and I'll update in a week or two on which valentines I picked to go along with the crayon melts!
Note: I will be receiving Valentine classroom cards to review in exchange for this post. This is my honest opinion.
(Affiliate link below.)
The first couple chapters talk about the way the Bible was put together, and what qualified different books to be included in the Bible. I thought this was really interesting. I think there has been a lot of confusion and misinformation about how we came to have the Bible we can hold today, and these chapters explained why we can have confidence in the Bible as the inspired word of God.
The next two chapters give a timeline of the Bible, from Genesis to the writing of Revelation. I've read through the Bible several times, but I really liked this condensed version of the story to give a bigger picture. The part I liked best was the historical details that the author included, placing biblical event sin historical context.
Finally Lasseigne gives tips on how to study the Bible, and how to teach the Bible, along with an entire section with a summary and quotes about each book of the Bible. I thought these sections were a great encouragement and resource!
This book is sound, and the author holds the Bible in high esteem - and I think this is something we need more of, even within the church today. I highly recommend this book! It was readable, but full of information and encouragement to dig into God's Word!
Note: I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for a review. This is my honest opinion.
(Edit: Please see first comment! It explains how to turn off affiliate links in Disqus. Very helpful, but at this point I personally am not putting it back on my site because I still don't like other people making money off of my hard work and I'm a little upset that this is apparently the default setting.)
Today, I have a sad blogging tale for you, especially if you use the commenting widget, Disqus, on your blog. I started writing a quick blurb about this for my Tuesday old-fashioned blogging post, but it became rather long, and considering the popularity of Disqus, I thought it might be worthy of it's own post.
A couple years ago, I jumped on the Disqus blog commenting bandwagon. A lot of bloggers (especially those on Blogger) were using it because Disqus makes it easier to respond to comments on your blog. You respond once, and the person who commented gets an automatic email with your response in case they want to continue the conversation. Since responding to every comment via email was becoming more popular, this streamlined the process.
I was a little skeptical, because I think Disqus also makes it harder to visit the blogs of commenters (unless they add their blog to their Disqus profile, there is no way of finding their blog). But the ease of responding and the clean look won me over. I got the widget, made sure my blog was linked from my Disqus profile, and I didn't look back.
Where It All Went Downhill
A few months ago I was offered a sponsored post from an online clothing company. It was before Christmas, and I could use the extra cash for presents, so I jumped on it. One of their few requirements was that I not use affiliate links in that particular post. No problem, I thought, because I rarely use affiliate links anyway unless it's for something very specific.
The post went live, and I sent the company my links so they could approve the post...and they emailed back letting me know they had detected affiliate links in the post. What? So I went to click on a few links to see if I could catch what they were talking about, and indeed, an affiliate network redirect was attached to each link. What was this? Had I been hacked?
I apologized profusely to the company and let them know I was getting to the bottom of these links. My mom picked up the kids to help me out, and I spent literally the entire day trying to figure it out. I checked the html of the post. Nothing. I clicked on product links in other posts, and spotted the same redirect, and realized it had to be something in my blog template. I spent hours scouring the html of my template, trying to find the piece of code that was doing this. I tried out my template on my design test blog, and it was the same problem. I tested out an entirely new template and it didn't fix the problem. I could not figure it out! I was crying as I finally decided to remove every gadget on my blog to see if that helped anything.
And then I deleted the Disqus gadget I was using for blog comments. Poof. Problem solved. I no longer saw any affiliate links in my posts.
Of course by then my template was in shambles from all my hunting, and I had to re-install everything and contact the girl who designed my current template so she could help me fix it. What a mess!
I tried spreading my sorry tale in a small Facebook blogging group, and no one else reported the same problem back (yet), but I can't help but wonder if they weren't looking close enough. I checked out a couple other blogs with Disqus, and I did see the same type of affiliate links on those blogs as well. I tried to find an email for the company who runs Disqus to let them know that their gadget may have been hijacked to insert affiliate links without the site-owner's permission (which is what I thought was happening at the time), but I couldn't find any contact information or support email.
So now I'm telling you, in case any of you has Disqus! You should know that somebody somewhere might be making money off of your blog links without your knowledge.
It is possible there is some sort of permission for affiliate links in Disqus's terms of use, but I wasn't aware of it before signing up, and I wouldn't have installed the gadget if I had known about the links. I would have never realized this was happening unless that company had told me they had detected affiliate links.
It is possible there is some sort of permission for affiliate links in Disqus's terms of use, but I wasn't aware of it before signing up, and I wouldn't have installed the gadget if I had known about the links. I would have never realized this was happening unless that company had told me they had detected affiliate links.
I had this same problem one other time with a different gadget, an old analytics gadget called Sitemeter that had apparently been hacked to include affiliate links as well (Sitemeter has long since been deleted from my blog). Some external gadgets don't necessarily update their security measures, and over time they can be hacked and the code used for purposes like this. I don't know if that is what is going on with Disqus or not, but my experience with Sitemeter makes me wonder. I wish I had remembered that previous problem gadget before I tore my whole layout apart trying to figure out the culprit - which was Disqus!
What Should You Do?
If you want to see if your Disqus gadget has turned on you as well, try linking to an online clothing store in a post (I tested with a Forever21 product link). Then go to the post on your blog, and click the link while watching your web address bar. It should go to the page smoothly and show only the clothing store link in the address field - if you see an odd flash of a different address before it switches to the clothing store link, that's an affiliate link.
Needless to say, I removed Disqus, and I have since been a little more suspicious of externally-made gadgets (i.e. those outside of the ones that are included in Blogger). Finding unsuspected affiliate links has happened to me twice now, and I know that I have never had problems with Blogger's internal gadgets.
If you want my recommendation, I would test out your links. If you find the same issue of affiliate links that you didn't add yourself and weren't aware of, remove all Disqus code from your blog (update! or view the first comment below on how to turn off these affiliate links).
If you want my recommendation, I would test out your links. If you find the same issue of affiliate links that you didn't add yourself and weren't aware of, remove all Disqus code from your blog (update! or view the first comment below on how to turn off these affiliate links).
The good news is that Blogger has improved the look and formatting of their internal commenting system since the days when I installed Disqus! I still have to respond via e-mail separately, but that is a price worth paying to keep my blog free of these types of issues.
Do you use Disqus for blog comments?
Another year, another bunch of books! Let's talk about the favorites from 2016, shall we? Unlike publishers or crazy book blogs, I am not constrained to what was published this year. No, this is a list of the favorite books that I've personally read this year.
My reading was kind of all over the place in 2016, partially because I unofficially decided somewhere along the way to try reading some books that I normally would not pick up, especially in fiction. I'm not sure it was a success. While I enjoyed exploring a little, it left me with less books that I am actually comfortable recommending, and definitely less on the favorites list.
A Quick Side Tangent On Books And Politics
(You may skip this section if we are not of the same political persuasion, and it won't hurt my feelings! *wink*)
Let me just go on a little side-tangent real quick, because if there is one thing I've learned this year through all my book exploring, it's that if you are going to be a responsible reader, you have to go into each book looking for the worldview that is being communicated through that book. I was shocked at how many of the more current general fiction books that I picked up insisted upon including subtle political or moral statements - and if I wasn't looking for them, I would have totally missed them, or been influenced by them without realizing it.
I think in 2016 there was a lot of backlash related to how biased the media generally is toward a certain political viewpoint. For me personally, I realized how biased a lot of the general fiction that so many people in this country are reading is too - but the trick about fiction is that you usually don't notice it without looking for it. Most people read fiction to relax and their guard is down. It was all actually a little scary and discouraging to me.
A really good example is the way abortion is addressed in books these days. You know I am strongly pro-life and have started volunteering at a pregnancy center, so I especially noticed this in my 2016 reading. I was surprised at how it some of these more liberal authors can't seem to help themselves when it comes to supporting abortion. The plot demands that the character keep their baby, and yet the author insists on making the character reference abortion as if that is what they should have done, but you know, "it was too late". Why can't they just leave that out altogether? Why do these authors have to try to subtly foist their own political viewpoint on us, as if a character choosing not to have an abortion is a moral choice the author doesn't agree with, so some sort of disclaimer is needed? I abandoned several books this year for this reason.
And book podcasts! I tried listening to several different book podcasts this year, but I've abandoned almost all of them because I can't stand how they impose their own political viewpoints upon their listeners (some more obviously than others). I basically can't even trust their recommendations anymore. Some of these hosts even describe books that should be mostly neutral in political terms but they impose their own controversial viewpoints onto the book when they talk about them, and I'm just sick of it. They do realize that there is another half of the country that doesn't necessarily share their political persuasion, right? I'm looking at you, Book Riot.
On To The Books
So yes, 2016 was kind of a black hole of reading for me, I abandoned almost as many books as I finished, and I don't have a lot of great ones to recommend from my little reading experiment. I've got eight that stood out to me, and as for 2017...I think I'm going to stick closer to authors I already like or classics. You can't really go wrong that way.
A Quick Side Tangent On Books And Politics
(You may skip this section if we are not of the same political persuasion, and it won't hurt my feelings! *wink*)
Let me just go on a little side-tangent real quick, because if there is one thing I've learned this year through all my book exploring, it's that if you are going to be a responsible reader, you have to go into each book looking for the worldview that is being communicated through that book. I was shocked at how many of the more current general fiction books that I picked up insisted upon including subtle political or moral statements - and if I wasn't looking for them, I would have totally missed them, or been influenced by them without realizing it.
I think in 2016 there was a lot of backlash related to how biased the media generally is toward a certain political viewpoint. For me personally, I realized how biased a lot of the general fiction that so many people in this country are reading is too - but the trick about fiction is that you usually don't notice it without looking for it. Most people read fiction to relax and their guard is down. It was all actually a little scary and discouraging to me.
A really good example is the way abortion is addressed in books these days. You know I am strongly pro-life and have started volunteering at a pregnancy center, so I especially noticed this in my 2016 reading. I was surprised at how it some of these more liberal authors can't seem to help themselves when it comes to supporting abortion. The plot demands that the character keep their baby, and yet the author insists on making the character reference abortion as if that is what they should have done, but you know, "it was too late". Why can't they just leave that out altogether? Why do these authors have to try to subtly foist their own political viewpoint on us, as if a character choosing not to have an abortion is a moral choice the author doesn't agree with, so some sort of disclaimer is needed? I abandoned several books this year for this reason.
And book podcasts! I tried listening to several different book podcasts this year, but I've abandoned almost all of them because I can't stand how they impose their own political viewpoints upon their listeners (some more obviously than others). I basically can't even trust their recommendations anymore. Some of these hosts even describe books that should be mostly neutral in political terms but they impose their own controversial viewpoints onto the book when they talk about them, and I'm just sick of it. They do realize that there is another half of the country that doesn't necessarily share their political persuasion, right? I'm looking at you, Book Riot.
On To The Books
So yes, 2016 was kind of a black hole of reading for me, I abandoned almost as many books as I finished, and I don't have a lot of great ones to recommend from my little reading experiment. I've got eight that stood out to me, and as for 2017...I think I'm going to stick closer to authors I already like or classics. You can't really go wrong that way.
So here we go, in no particular order. If you do end up picking one of these up, please read my full reviews on Goodreads (the titles link to my reviews) for a more detailed breakdown of some of the content that may have required more commentary.
I'm Happy For You (Sort Of...Not Really) By Kay Wills Wyma - This was probably my #1 favorite of the books I read this year. I read it at just the right time and got so much out of this book, and it really made me rethink ways that I am still comparing too much on social media. I thought I was getting better at not comparing so much (and I have improved), but this book opened my eyes even more to the kind of person I want to be. I've been telling a lot of my friends and family about it because it was so good. I highly recommend it.
The Age Of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker - The disclaimer is that this book does have some profanity and taking Jesus's name in vain, which I hate. But other than that, I really liked this one. The whole premise of the book is that the Earth has started a "slowing" of it's rotation...which lengthens the days and wreaks all kinds of havoc. Obviously not biblically-based since we know this is not how the world will end - this book is purely secular. But the underlying theme is one of a coming-of-age story, and I've just kind of realized that I am a sucker for a coming-of-age story. Something about it resonated with me, and the overall plot of the earth slowing was just so interesting. I think that's the science nerd in me coming out.
Brain On Fire: My Month Of Madness by Susannah Cahalan - Did any of you ever watch Diagnosis: Mystery when it was on TLC? I LOVED that show, and this is basically that show in book form. A lady starts to go crazy and they are trying to figure out why. It's a true story that's written more like a novel, and I listened to it on audio. It was really fascinating. Some language in this one too.
What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty - Some language and the Lord's name in vain in this one too, and I hated how it included the "clump of tissue" myth when it comes to unborn children. So I hesitate to say I "recommend" this one. I include it here because I have never gotten so much out of a fictional story and it really made me think about where I spend my time and energy. If you have ever felt like you can't relate to people in other stages of life or wondered what your ten-years-younger self would think about the you of today, you might get something out of this book too (but please read my disclaimers first).
Adam And Eve After The Pill: Paradoxes Of The Sexual Revolution by Mary Eberstadt - I picked this book up because ever since I quit the pill all those years ago, I have been interested in the effects birth control (and the sexual revolution) has had on society. This book was fascinating. It's published by a Catholic publisher, but the book itself isn't geared toward Catholics but toward anyone who is interested in this topic. I had heard a lot of the data before, but the author had so many insights into our current culture. I generally think we need to think a bit more deeply about what we are doing to ourselves in this department, and I highly recommend this one.
Flirtation Walk by Siri Mitchell - I just really like Mitchell's historical fiction - I feel like it's usually really well researched, and I generally like her characters. This wasn't my favorite of hers because I felt like it took about a quarter of the book to get into it, but I still enjoyed it. And the short story you can get if you sign up for her newsletter relates to this story and was so fun!
Larger Than Life Lara by Dandi Daley Mackall - I wrote a full review on this book a couple months ago, so I won't go into too much detail here, but I really liked this one. It's a middle-grade novel, but I enjoyed it as an adult. It's a quick read, and the characters have stuck with me.
So what did you read in 2016 that stood out? Do you keep an eye out for the different worldviews in your fiction?
I hope you had a more joyous reading year than me. Here's to 2017!
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