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The Promise Box

By Tricia Goyer

With her heart – and her loyalty – on the line, can she let true love in her life?

Every year, young Amish men descend on the cozy little town of West Kootenai, Montana, arriving in the spring to live there for six months and receive ‘resident’ status for the hunting season in the fall. They arrive as bachelors, but go home with brides! Lydia Wyse, a book editor from Seattle who grew up Amish, returns to the small community of West Kootenai, Montana to give comfort to her father after her mother’s death.

She is drawn back to the familiar Amish ways after finding her mother’s most precious possession, a Promise Box of prayers and scripture. What her publisher sees, though, is an opportunity for a sensational ‘tell-all’ book about the Amish. Lydia soon finds herself falling in love with Amish bachelor Gideon Hooley. She wants nothing more than to forget her past and look forward to a future as an Amish bride.
Will the pain of her childhood-and her potential betrayal of her community-keep her from committing her whole heart?

ISLAND BREEZES

You’re going to need those tissues when you read this book. There’s heartaches and secrets here. Love, but also pain.

Lydia came home for her mother’s funeral, but stayed to help her father. What she had planned for a couple weeks turned into the summer and more – all because of her mother’s promise box.

Unable to cope with finding out details about her birth had sent her out into the Englisch world. Her adoptive mother’s promise box drew her back. Mem’s words brought Lydia home, both to Montana and her faith.

But that didn’t guarantee a happily ever after. Both Lydia and Gideon, the Amish man she was beginning to fall in love with, had secrets that could break their fragile relationship and upset friends and family. They learned the hard way that secrets refuse to stay secret.

Lydia learned through Mem’s words, “You can’t heal unless the junk is cleaned out.”

Tricia Goyer has never disappointed  me. I’m looking forward to the next bride and bachelor story.

***A special thanks to litfuse for providing a review copy.***

   Tricia Goyer is a busy mom of six, grandmother of one, and wife to John. Somewhere around the hustle and bustle of family life, she manages to find the time to write fictional tales delighting and entertaining readers and non-fiction titles offering encouragement and hope.

A bestselling author, Tricia has published thirty-three books to date and has written more than 500 articles. She is a two-time Carol Award winner, as well as a Christy and ECPA Award Nominee. In 2010, she was selected as one of the Top 20 Moms to Follow on Twitter by SheKnows.com. Tricia is also on the blogging team at MomLifeToday.com, TheBetterMom.com and other homeschooling and Christian sites.

In addition to her roles as mom, wife and author, Tricia volunteers around her community and mentors teen moms. She is the founder of Hope Pregnancy Ministries in Northwestern Montana, and she currently leads a Teen MOPS Group in Little Rock, AR. Tricia, along with a group of friends, recently launched NotQuiteAmishLiving.com, sharing ideas about simplifying life. She also hosts the weekly radio podcast, Living Inspired.

First posted March 21, 2009

Yes, I like to play with those kind of yo yos too, but I’m not talking about that little round wooden toy on a string.  I’m talking about fabric yo yos.  Yo Yos are fabric circles gathered to form little rosettes. I first worked with yo yos as a kid when I made yo yo clown dolls.  I’m still playing with them.  I made simple yo yo Christmas ornaments a couple years ago.  I just strung them together and added a big jingle bell at the bottom and a loop at the top.

Yo yos have grown up since I first learned how to make them.  They’re even simpler to make if you buy yo yo cutters.  You can get them in various sizes of round, hearts and flowers.  You can even buy quick yo yo makers for the round ones.  Lazy Girl Designs has a good tutorial on using the yo yo maker to make perfect little yo yos every time.  You can even make square yo yos, but you have to do it the old fashioned way entirely by hand.  Penny Sanford has a tutorial and pattern for making the heart shaped ones. You can go here to learn how to make the traditional yo yo by hand.  This video gives you details on sewing them together.

Update I’ve found the ladder stitch makes a neater joining.

You can make large projects such as a quilt or smaller ones such as garlands.  The quilts have been around for awhile.  This was a popular style of quilt making in the U.S. from the 1920-40s.  The tiny circles of fabric, gathered up at the edges and sewn together to create a three-dimensional effect, were popular because women could carry these little circles with them and make yo yos whenever they had a few minutes.

What have you made with yo yos?  Any more ideas for us?

Afloat

By Erin Healy

Who will you trust when dark waters rise?

Eagle’s Talon is an architectural marvel-shining residential units afloat in a protected cove of the gorgeous Rondeau River. The project is nearly complete, partially occupied, and ready to make investors rich when a sinkhole gives way. Then torrential rains and a flood leave a ragged collection of builders, investors, and residents stranded in one floating building, cut off from the rest of the world.

They’re bitterly divided over what to do next.

Architect Vance Nolan insists they should sit tight and wait for rescue. Developer Tony Dean wants to strike out into the darkness. And single mom Danielle Clement, desperate to protect her young son, Simeon, struggles to hold their motley band together.

Power failure, a pall of unnatural daytime darkness, explosions in the distance, then a murder ratchet tensions to a boiling point. But Danielle’s young son, Simeon, has spotted something strange underwater-beautiful, shifting lights in the dark water below.
In this watery world where everyone’s secrets will eventually come to light, salvation may mean more than just getting out alive.

Another stunning exploration of the human spirit and supernatural possibilities from best-selling author Erin Healy.

ISLAND BREEZES

I used to work on ships and lived afloat for ten years. When the rains came and the waters rose, it was nothing at all like the experience of these people at Eagle’s Talon.

It’s at a time of crisis that an unusual group of people, all with different strengths, needed to band together in order to survive. That’s difficult to do when you have a control freak in your midst.

Frightening times bring out the best and the worst in people. Some lives are touched as the secrets start to come out. Other lives are snuffed out in the attempt to keep secrets hidden.

I didn’t want to stop reading this book. Forget eating. Forget sleeping. Nothing was as important as finishing this book.

I’m eagerly awaiting Ms Healy’s next book.

***A special thank you to litfuse for providing a review copy.***

  Erin Healy is the best-selling co-author of “Burn” and “Kiss” (with Ted Dekker) and an award-winning editor for numerous best-selling authors. She has received wide acclaim for her novels “Never Let You Go”, “The Baker’s Wife”, “House of Mercy”, and “Afloat”. She and her family live in Colorado. Erin can be contacted through her website ErinHealy.com or through Facebook at erinhealybooks.

Erin Healy is celebrating the release of her latest novel Afloat (Thomas Nelson) with an iPad Mini giveaway.

One winner will receive:

• An iPad Mini 
  
• iTunes gift card
• Afloat by Erin Healy 
  

Enter today by clicking one of the icons below. But hurry, the giveaway ends on June 15th. Winner will be announced on Erin’s blog on June 17th. Save the date and click HERE to see if YOU won the iPad Mini!

Don’t miss a moment of the fun; ENTER today. Tell your friends via FACEBOOK or TWITTER and increase your chances of winning. Visit Erin’s blog on the 17th!

First posted May 1, 2009

Obama still wants to give illegal immigrants a “pathway” to become legal.  I’m sorry, but that pathway should have started at the border.  Instead, they enter illegally and continue to break the law on a daily basis.  I know that Obama wanted the Hispanic vote and a good way to get it is to tell them that it really doesn’t matter if they do not abide by our country’s laws.  How many of us who are citizens or legal immigrants receive that same message?  We are expected to obey our country’s laws and subsidize the illegals.

I know that many like to use that old “they do the jobs we don’t want to do.”  That isn’t good enough.  Maybe at one time that argument might have had a little more validity.  Right now we are losing jobs right and left while we’re waiting for the “stimulus” to start giving us jobs.  We are sliding so far into a pit of debt, that our children won’t even begin to see it’s ending.  I know many people who are willing to work at any job, any time, any place.

I have to say to the illegals, please go home and re-enter our country legally.  I am not anti-immigration.  I am all for giving legal immigrants the help they need to get settled in and become part of our community.  But please, don’t start breaking our laws before you even get here and expect me to say, “Welcome.  Would you like for us to take a job away from someone and by the way, we’ll even pay for your health care and education, as well as your share of the taxes, ? ”

Sorry for the rant today, but I see too many people struggling right now.  You can read a little more about this subject in the New York Times.

Update This really hasn’t changed all that much four years later except the country is in a bigger financial mess and we are paying more and more for the entitlements given to illegals.

First posted March 19, 2009

I traveled for a long time last night and managed to cover a lot of territory.  Some of it was exciting, some inspiring, some sentimental and some just made me smile.  A lot.  I started with the incredible sounds of Il Divo andAmaging Grace.  I just recently discovered this group when a friend sent me the link.  I still get chills when I hear this.  Of course, while I was there, I had to listen to every Il Divo song on YouTube.

From there I jumped back in time to the Righteous Brothers and Unchained Melody.  I’m not sure now just what connection I was making between the two, but it seemed like a natural transition at the time.  Then I slid on over to the Mamas and the Papas and listened to Mama Cass and Dream a Little Dream of Me.  That bit of dreaming took me over to Audrey Hepburn, Moon River and a lot of dreams of the young girl who wanted to grow up to be Audrey Hepburn or at least Holly Golightly.

Okay, now the mood needed to lighten up a bit so I hit the New England coast and spent time with the Kingston Trio and a fun song called MTA.  Then on to the beach where I wrote Love Letters in the Sand with Pat Boone.  After that I checked out his daughter, Debbie, and dreamed about Consumer Man lighting up my life and sang along with her on Baby, I’m Yours.  You Light Up My Life was her big hit, but I’ll take Baby, I’m Yours any day.  So, while I was checking out famous offspring, I strolled on over to listen to Nancy Sinatra and These Boots Are Made for Walkin.’  That was a theme song of mine for awhile.  And then there was Something Stupid with Nancy and Frank, Jr.  After that I had to let Frank, Sr. Fly Me to the Moon.  And, of course, Frank reminded me of the Rat Pack, so I had Dino remind me that Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime.  Oh, yes.  We all loved Dean Martin and that seductive voice of his.  Now, I couldn’t leave the Rat Pack without a little visit with Sammy Davis, Jr. and two of his signature songs, Mr. Bojangles Man and I’ve Gotta Be Me.  Mr. Bojangles was part of Sammy’s act when he was only a 7 year old.

I traveled through YouTube territory for way too many hours, but couldn’t leave without dropping in on our own poet laureate, Rod McKuen.  The words, the voice.  The poet who can sing.  Songs and memorable poems.  A Cat Named Sloopy, The Tender Earth, A Man Alone.  I could keep traveling all night except someone is playing a lullaby and I’m going to have to go lie down for awhile.

First Posted March 18, 2009

I listened to an NPR program on the way home from work last Saturday night that taught me about an incredible place in New York City.  It’s called the rubber room.  A site about The Big Apple gives us the definition so we’ll know why the “reassignment centers” for NYC teachers are called rubber rooms.  A teacher can be sent there for any reason and might be there days, weeks or months without knowing why.  Some have even spent years in the rubber room.  They are sent there for both real and perceived wrongs against students, other teachers or administrators.  And there they’ll stay, getting paid, but not being allowed to teach.

The Village Voice calls this “the Guantanamo Bay of the school world.”  Initially, it sounds great.  Just sit around and read or do whatever to entertain yourself and get paid.  But being in limbo is not such an easy thing.  Some of them who have spent years there want to form a chapter of the teacher’s union, United Federation of Teachers, for those teachers who are “employed” in the rubber rooms.  You can read some of their stories here at The New York Times and a teacher story.

Update

These rooms closed at the end of the 2001-2010 school year. You can read that story here.

But did they? One teacher was still making over $100,000 yearly as a rubber room “leftover” in 2012. You can read more about him here.  Would you want to retire if you were paid salary and benefits like Alan Rosenfeld?

Ray of Light

By Shelley Shepard Gray

Bestselling author Shelley Shepard Gray brings inspirational romance to life in this sweet tale of love in the Amish community, Ray of Light, the second installment of her Days of Redemption series.

Roman Keim just wants a break from the family drama at his snowy Ohio home when he heads to an Amish snowbird community in Florida. There he meets Amanda Yoder and her daughter Regina who soon are warming his heart. But will Roman return to Ohio or will he stay and help the young widow embrace a second chance at love?

The author of the series Sisters of the Heart and Seasons of Sugarcreek, Shelley Shepard Gray delivers an honest, tender love story in Ray of Light, featuring the challenges of faith, family, and romance.

ISLAND BREEZES

Yes, you’re going to need that box of tissues while reading this book. Roman and Amanda are on the brink of love, but the circumstances can seem almost insurmountable.

Their’s was a long distance relationship after a brief acquaintance the week they met in Pinecraft, Florida. Then the church got in the way. Roman’s family was full of secrets and problems that he had come to terms with, but now?

This story is about more than Roman and Amanda. It’s a story about Roman’s entire family. It was easy for me to get caught up with this family. I’m going to have to read Daybreak, the first book in this series. And I’m really looking forward to book three. There’s a little teaser at the end of this book that will give you a little idea of what may be in store for us and the Keim family when we read Eventide.

***A special thank you to litfuse for providing a copy for review.***

Shelley Shepard Gray is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the “Sisters of the Heart”, “Seasons of Sugarcreek”, “Secrets of Crittenden County”, and Families of Honor series. She lives in southern Ohio, where she writes full-time, bakes too much, and can often be found walking her dachshunds on her town’s bike trail.

First posted March 10, 2009

Sounds interesting, doesn’t it?  How on earth can you give a fish a pedicure?  Since you have to have toes in order to have a pedicure, that means no pedicures for anything living in your aquarium.  Now if the owner of the fish (or any other pet) wants a fish pedicure, it can happen.

But not down here in Florida.  It’s against the law.  They’re worried about sanitation and any kind of animal (except a service animal) is banned in salons.  This procedure apparently originated in Japan and involves putting your feet in a vat of water and allowing a bunch of little fish to nibble away at dead skin.  Now doesn’t that sound as if they’re performing a service?  I guess it’s just not the right kind of service.

When I was a teen, my family lived near a strip pit.  For you city folks, that’s the hole that’s left in the ground when the miners get done stripping it of all the coal.  It just sits there, fills up with water and becomes a small lake or maybe a really big pond.  These can be very deep and thus the threat warning from my parents that we were to never go swimming in the strip pit.  Obedient child that I was, I waited until some friends were visiting before climbing the fence and going swimming.  It was both fun and exciting.  After all, we were doing the forbidden, plus we got our toes nibbled by the little fish who joined us for a swim.  At least, we thought they were little fish.  I think that’s as close as I’ll ever want to get to a fish pedicure.

Celebrate the release of Catch a Falling Star (Howard Books) with Beth K. Vogt by entering to win a Romantic Weekend Getaway and RSVPing for her June 4th Author Chat Party.

One “lucky” winner will receive:

• A $200 Visa Cash Card (Perfect for a weekend stay at a hotel or B&B!)
• Catch a Falling Star and Wish You Were Here by Beth Vogt (Swoon-worthy!)
  

Enter today by clicking one of the icons below. But hurry, the giveaway ends on June 3rd. Winner will be announced at the “Catch a Falling Star” Facebook Author Chat Party on June 4th. Connect with Beth for an evening of book chat, trivia, laughter, and more! Beth will also share an exclusive look at her next book and give away books and other fun prizes throughout the evening.

Don’t miss a moment of the fun; RSVP today. Tell your friends via FACEBOOK or TWITTER and increase your chances of winning. Hope to see you on the 4th!