The best gift at Christmas? The gift of time, family and love!
About the Spirit of Christmas
Bells jingle, sleds dash through the snow, trees are topped with sparkling stars, and children everywhere dream of candy canes and presents. But the best gift of all-the most magical gift of the season-is when we spend Christmas with those we love.
My Thoughts
What a perfect, heart warming book just in time for the Christmas season!
It is perfectly sized for little ones hands and comes in a board book format giving it sturdiness for little hands. The images are adorable and bring you back to your own childhood. The book is written in rhymes that allows you to read aloud quite easily to your child with natural pauses.
It is the actual story that brought tears to my eyes and which makes this the perfect gift from a parent (or grandparent to a child). It is love and the birth of a child that is celebrated at Christmas. All the other things may be toppings we enjoy but it is love and family that means the most especially at this time of the year. It is a fantastic book to remind not only yourself and child about the true meaning of Christmas but also how much we love our children. This will be one of the best books you could buy a special child in your life this Christmas season!
You can purchase a copy of The Spirit of Christmas on Amazon.
Rating: 5/5+
About the Author
Nancy Tillman is the author and illustrator of the bestselling picture book On the Night You Were Born ; its companion journal, The Wonder of You: A Book for Celebrating Baby’s First Year ; The Spirit of Christmas ; The Heaven of Animals ; and the New York Times bestsellers, Wherever You Are, My Love Will Find You ; The Crown on Your Head ; and I’d Know You Anywhere, My Love. She also created the mischievous cat Tumford in Tumford the Terrible and Tumford’s Rude Noises, and illustrated It’s Time to Sleep, My Love by Eric Metaxas.
Nancy’s mission in creating her books is to convey to children everywhere that “You are loved.” She lives in Portland, Oregon.
Disclosure: I received a copy of The Spirit of Christmas in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.
After an exhausting day at work, hitting the drive-thru or nuking a pre-fab meal is all too often the go-to decision for feeding a family. Cooking a meal from scratch using fresh ingredients can seem beyond the average person’s time, energy, or financial means. But with mounting evidence pointing to processed food and our industrial food system as the culprits behind many of our nation’s health problems—including obesity, diabetes, and cancer—it’s now more important than ever to be fully informed about what goes on your family’s dinner plates.
About Ditching the Drive-Thru
If you’re ready to take control of your food choices but don’t know the difference between grass-fed versus grain-fed, pastured versus free-range, or organic versus sustainable, read this book to discover:
• How to create your own thirty-month plan to convert your family from junk food to real food, without a revolt!
• Recipes and advice on planning and prepping meals so you can make home cooked a habit for your family
• Instructions for getting the most out of produce using techniques such as lacto-fermentation, dehydrating, and canning
• introduction to the world of farm-direct sales, including tips on locating local farms, seeing through marketing buzzwords, and shopping with CSAs Ditching the Drive-Thru exposes the insidious hold the commercial food industry has taken over the fast-paced lives of the average American and the danger these processed foods and diet plans pose to our health, environment, and emotional wellbeing.
Learn how to break free from the grind and return to a simpler relationship with food from farmers, not factories, and home-cooked meals that are created in your kitchen, not on a conveyor belt.
Book Excerpt
Getting Your Family to Eat Better ─ Meet Your Sherpa Guide
by Joel Salatin
Every time I talk to a group about getting in touch with their food supply, healing the planet one bite at a time, or cultivating enthusiasm for domestic culinary arts—all common sound bites— I receive thunderous applause and then . . . then the queries and excuses start:
“I don’t have the time.”
“I don’t have the money.”
“I don’t know how to cook.”
“My kids are picky eaters.”
The script plays out every time, on every socioeconomic level, in every geographic region. Our modern American culture is profoundly ignorant about eating.
Most modern Americans demean and cheapen body fuel to a mundane afterthought, less than a comma in our helter-skelter, plugged-in, harried lives. Running on dirty fuel, our people now lead the world in per capita health care costs, all the while spending the least—in both money and time—on food.
It’s time to leave the sidelines. It’s time to play the game. Natalie Winch, through her book Ditching the Drive-Thru, is both mentor and coach. Yet this New Jersey high school English teacher, with husband and two children creates a plan as simple and fundamental as a shopping list. Applying the most tried-and-true goal-setting templates to the traditional heart of the home, Winch takes us on a delightful journey—along with her beloved Homer’s Odyssey as metaphor—and leaves us empowered to exit our bleacher seat, charging onto the field, game plan in hand.
What makes her saga even more special is that she’s not a scientist, food nutritionist, or gourmand. She didn’t wait for a grant or a reality TV show offer. She started where most of these stories start—how can I be a better mom for my kid? It’s really that simple.
So if you want to walk instead of talk. If you want to do instead of dream. If you want to play instead of observe. If you want to change instead of wish, here is a great little book to get you going on your own food empowerment odyssey.
Joel Salatin is a Virginia family farmer who was made famous by Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the award-winning film Food, Inc. Time magazine called him “the most influential farmer in America.” This posting was excerpted from Ditching the Drive-Thru, by J. Natalie Winch.
My Thoughts
Changing my eating habits has been a huge item for me in the last two years, more so in the last six months. What we eat affects our health and well-being, and I had come to realize I was not eating things that were making me feel good (nor helping with my weight!). I have done a complete overhaul of my habits but there is always something new to learn and try out.
Ditching the Drive-Thur helps you work through some of the new and emerging terms that you probably hear a lot about (GMOs, organic,etc) by breaking these themes down chapter by chapter and explaining them in simple terms.
The layout in this book is perfect and makes sense from a readers standpoint (with the progression of terms, recipes,etc..). The writing is easy enough for most adults and youths to understand and relate to their own lives. She also provides great recipes, tips and ideas on how to make healthier choices and how to stock your home. All of which are key themes to eating healthy!
For me this was a great reminder of why I am choosing to eat healthier and why it is so important for my family to do so also. It gave me fresh new ideas to try out while giving me opportunity to adapt it to my own home. A great read for those looking to change bad habits and adopt a healthier lifestyle!
J. Natalie Winch lives in southern New Jersey, not far from where she grew up, with her husband, two children, and dogs. When she isn’t mothering, teaching, grading, or making lesson plans, Natalie runs the Hebrew School at her synagogue, coaches soccer, teaches lacto-fermentation classes, writes the occasional entry for her blog Food Empowerment (tradsnotfads.com), and fights the dust bunnies that threaten to take over her family room. You can connect with her on her website.
The Giveaway!
You can now enter to win one of twenty copies of Ditching the Drive-Thru and One $30 Amazon Gift Card. You can enter via the Rafflecopter form below. Good luck!
Sometimes God’s ways are not at all what we expect and exactly what we need.
About Another Way Home
Grant and Audrey are adding grandchildren to their family left and right, but middle daughter, Danae, and her husband, Dallas Brooks, have been trying for years with no baby in sight.
Though Danae is ready to consider adoption, Dallas will not even discuss it. Despairing of ever having a family of her own, Danae decides to pour her passion and energies into volunteer work with a newly opened women’s shelter in town. Looking for a good cause to fill her lonely days, she never expects to give her heart to the hurting women she meets there. She’s finally learning to live her life with gratitude, but then heart-wrenching events on Thanksgiving weekend threaten to pull the entire Whitman clan into turmoil-and leave them all forever changed.
My Thoughts
Another Way Home is a touching, heart warming story that so many women can relate to. It touches on pregnancy, infertility and the pain that comes with this. I am one of those women. I struggled with miscarriages and infertility and it is painful, especially when you see others pregnant. You want to be happy but it is hard not to feel selfish. Deborah does a fantastic job of addressing these emotions on both sides, the side of the person dealing with infertility and the pregnant couple. She did a wonderful job showing both sides and how these emotions can affect families.
I love how adoption was tied into this story. It was a good portrayal of adoption and the love that forms from these relationships. The end shocked me in many ways (definitely not what I was expecting but in a good way). I love how Dallas and Danae grow as not only a couple but how as a part of their extended family and the relationships that are strained as they deal with infertility.
This is one of the book in the series but is great as a read alone but even better when you have read the other stories. It gives you an even more intimate view into the feelings and lives of our characters. Another Way Home will be the perfect addition to your home library!
You can find more reviews on Another Way Home on the Litfuse blog tour page. You can purchase a copy of the book here.
Rating: 5/5
About the Author
Deborah Raney’s books have won numerous awards, including the RITA, National Readers Choice Award, HOLT Medallion, and the Carol Award, and have twice been Christy Award finalists. She and her husband, Ken, recently traded small-town life in Kansas-the setting of many of Deborah’s novels—for life in the (relatively) big city of Wichita, where they enjoy gardening, antiquing, movies, and traveling to visit four children and a growing brood of grandchildren who all live much too far away.
Disclosure: I received a digital copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.
Too many people, too much snow, and too little room should be a recipe for disaster in An Endless Christmas.
About An Endless Christmas
Christmas takes a very different turn when the guests of honor break up instead of announcing their engagement. Trapped with his family, they learn that love looks different from either imagined. Both in their eighties, Dodie and Wilson Binder celebrate every Christmas as if it were their last. This year, their grandson Micah is planning to ask his girlfriend, Katie, to marry him so they can celebrate with the whole family. But things go very wrong when she says, “no.” Now they are stuck. Too many people, too much snow, and too little room should be a recipe for disaster. But sometimes too much is just enough. Especially when it’s Christmas.
My Thoughts
Love and romance can become complicated especially when we let our past dictate our future. Sometimes we feel like we aren’t good enough to feel love or have someone appreciate us the way they do. This is Katie. She is scared to let herself feel and receive love freely. She very much loves Micah with all her heart but is scared of how he truly feels or if he will leave her. This is what guides her decision to turn down his proposal.
Instead of angering Micah or encountering a difficult situation, Katie is encompassed by his family as they try to relieve some of the awkwardness of the current situation. She is welcomed by his family as they show her the true meaning of love, family and Christmas.
A very special story, especially so close to Christmas! It was a heart warming story of love and family, trust and faith in each other. The novel was well written, engaging and witty, something you can re-read over and over again.
Drawing from 33 years of on-air radio ministry, Cynthia Ruchti tells stories of hope-that-glows-in-the-dark through her novels and novellas, nonfiction books and devotionals, and speaking for women’s and writers’ events. Her books have been recognized by Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Awards, Selah Awards, the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence, Christian Retailing’s BEST Awards, and Carol Award nominations, among other honors, including a Family Fiction Readers’ Choice Award. She and her plot-tweaking husband live in Pittsville, Wisconsin, not far from their three children and five grandchildren.
Disclosure: I received a digital copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.
Ready to laugh about motherhood and be encouraged? Tired of feeling overwhelmed and stressed out in the baby and toddler season? Need some fresh vision and perspective so you can enjoy—not just endure—your young children?
About Stop and Smell Your Children
Stop and Smell Your Children: Laugh and Enjoy the Little Years offers moms-to-be and moms of young children short, real-life parenting stories that encourage and inspire. Leah Spina, mother of three children ages five and under, and former journalist, unleashes humor and perspective for tired moms who are parenting the “little” years. From the excitement of the positive pregnancy test to morning sickness and the banes of pregnancy, to childbirth, babies, toddlers and new parent struggles, the stories will make you laugh and see beauty in the chaos. Each story also includes thought-provoking takeaways to help busy moms gain a fresh outlook.
Strangers remind us that our children will be small only for a short time and to enjoy each moment. But then we return to the wild reality of parenting young children! All-night crying sessions. Never-ending laundry. Every-three-hour feeding schedules. Diaper explosions and projectile spit-up. Teething. Potty training. Yes, we enjoy our children, but we’d also like to enjoy a shower that lasts more than two minutes, or a meal that isn’t lukewarm (if we’re lucky). The truth is, pregnancy and parenting young children can be hard at times. But it can also be one of the best chapters of our lives, if we can learn to laugh and change our mindset.
My Thoughts
Have you ever received a book just in time? Something that you needed to read and hear from someone who wasn’t a family member or friend? Stop and Smell Your Children is THAT book.
Leah uses wit, personal experience and humour to make you see the light at the end of the tunnel, find joy in each rough moment and to cherish each moment. Our children grow so fast (honestly I can still remember my eleven year as a toddler and I am shocked when I look at him now!) and these are the most demanding years of us as parents. It can be hard at times not to be angry or resentful.
Leah uses humour (because if we are honest with each other – we have all been there before!) to help you see that behind every rough moment in time, take a deep breath and appreciate that moment of chaos. You will fall in love with her fresh writing and personal moments she shares. Stop and Smell Your Children should be the example all parenting books use when writing for parents. As parents, we need real life advice, humour and non judgemental views. We are all doing the best we can do! Stop and Smell Your Children will leave you in tears, smiling and remembering each and every special moment of your child’s life.
You can purchase a copy of Stop and Smell Your Children on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Rating: 5/5
About the Author
Leah Spina is a former journalist of a national newsweekly magazine and also worked as a childbirth coordinator at a large adoption agency. She has her B.S in Business Administration from Thomas Edison State College. She has two adorable children – Samson and Esther – and resides in Dallas, Texas with her husband, David. When she’s not changing diapers, she enjoys singing Broadway, sun tanning on Italian beaches and riding horses.
Book Trailer
The Giveaway!
My Canadian and American readers can now enter to win one of ten copies of Stop and Smell Your Children. Enter via the form below. Good luck!
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