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A Playlist: The Top Encouraging (Mostly) Christian Songs I Know Of

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Do you know the times when you just feel tired? Like you want to curl up in a ball and sleep for about a thousand years so that when you wake up, everything will have magically fixed itself?

I (and most of my family too) are going through a season like that right now. We stepped up to host a little girl from Ukraine for eleven weeks this summer, and instead of a sweet little one to play dolls with my sisters and snuggle with us in bed, we got a child who is frequently physically violent, probably has mental health issues, and likes to throw things and laugh like a lunatic about it.

The times like these are the times when it's so easy to look at your life and say, "Why, God? Why would you do this to me? Why me? Why now?" Heaven knows I've done it enough times in the past few days.

But Jesus is Emmanuel- God with us -and he will never leave us or forsake us. Even when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we need fear no evil, for He is with us. (Psalm 2…
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Love is a Good Thing

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I am embarking on a new challenge for the rest of this summer. Each week, I am going to be focusing on incorporating one of the Fruits of the Spirit (Galations 5:22-23) into my daily life, adding one a week. One post a week will be focused on that trait here on my blog. If you want to join me, feel free, and let me know in the comments :)

 Love. It's a word we use a lot. And the new cliché, rather than "love is blind" or something like that, seems to be "love is an action, not a feeling." It's been said so many times that we tend to go, "Yeah, yeah, whatever," and shrug it off.
But the action of love is a very real thing, and it's not something that can be summed up in a single paragraph.
Love is when you roll out of bed in the night and sing the baby back to sleep, even though you could just sleep through it and let her cry.
Love is doing the dishes in the dead of night instead of watching that movie.
Love is sitting by the bedside of a wr…
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The Voices of YA Tag

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I've been hoping to do this tag since I first saw it, and some of the folks who have answered it have such awesome answers that I'm afraid of trying it. But I will anyway. Mwah ha ha.
[in radio announcer voice] This tag is created, sponsored by, and brought to you today by Caitlin. Quills and Coffee.
The Rules1) Thank the person who tagged you
2) Link to the original creator
3) Answer the ten questions
4) Tag AT LEAST two other YA writers/bloggers

Thanks to Lisa for tagging me!

THE BEAUTIFUL QUESTIONSABOUT THE WRITERS:

#1 - What draws you to YA?
Oh, my. Um. Probably the fact that it's written for my age group? Although I am not at all embarrassed to read a really good middle-grade book. The thing I like most about YA (when it's done well, I mean), is that it can pull off the whole "shades of grey" thing. Where good and evil are not painted with such broad strokes, and redemption and brokenness is a very important factor.
And also because I just enjoy the charac…
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Wonder Woman: A Ramble about Female Leads (I promise it's not whiny, angsty, etc.)

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"Oh, no," you all say. "Please, not this topic," you beg. "Hasn't there been enough of this?"

Well, as my dad would say, No. No there hasn't. And this is my blog, so I will talk about whatever I want. If you don't want to read this, you may leave. I won't judge. :)


I went to see Wonder Woman exactly a week ago. And it was kind of epic. Besides two brief slightly uncomfortable scenes, this was the best superhero movie I've seen in a long time, mostly because it didn't feel like a superhero movie. It gets four stars out of five from me (star off for those aforementioned moments of inappropriateness and the overuse of slo-mo), and I'd be happy to see more of Diana in the future. The themes that run throughout are human depravity and grace. Both of which are prominently discussed. It was so good.

And it had a female lead.

But when I think about it, is that really all that important? Had Diana been a man, would this have been a wo…
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Blog Tour: The Reluctant Godfather by Allison Tebo

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Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! (Why does it go in that order, BTW? Sorry, rabbit trail XD) May I present to you today.... The Reluctant Godfather!


About The Book
A humorous and magical re-telling of Cinderella from a unique perspective.

Burndee is a young and cantankerous fairy godfather, who would rather bake cakes than help humans. A disgrace to the fairy order, Burndee has only two wards entrusted to his care…a cinder girl and a charming prince.

A royal ball presents Burndee with the brilliant solution of how to make his wards happy with the least amount of effort. He’ll arrange a meeting and hope the two fall in love.
First of all: let me say that I absolutely LOVED this book! I was lucky enough to get a free copy of it for review, and that was a marvelous thing :) I'm thinking I'll buy a couple of paper copies for my little sisters, however - they love Gail Carson Levine-like stories, so this one will be right up their alley.
My review:This was a very NEAT book!…
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#Rebellious Writing: Why We Need Better Books

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(Hey everyone. I just wanted to apologize for missing my Thursday post and getting this one up so late- on Thursday I went to see Wonder Woman with my pals [I'll do a post about that in a few days ^-^ and I've been sick this morning. So sorry - posts will be a little irregular this month. :P)

 Once upon a time, there was a little girl.

Okay, so this girl wasn't so little - in all honesty, she was a high schooler. But I digress.

Our heroine was out for a walk with her mother when she asked a simple question: "Mama, do movies and books include lots of cussing because people cuss a lot, or do people cuss a lot because it's in movies?"

Her mother responded: "I think it is a vicious cycle. People swear more and movies swear more and that makes people think they should swear more and around and around it goes."

This is a true story, y'all, and yes, I am the protagonist. ^-^ But the question is true: Why must there be so much cursing and crud in ever…
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The Best Version of Les Mis?

Short little post today, everybody. I just wanted to share with you my top versions of each song in Les Mis. I've compiled a Spotify playlist that I call "The Ultimate Les Mis", although that doesn't mean that none of the other versions are good, just that these are my particular favorites.

I was planning a much longer post, but I am in the throes of school finals and studying and CLEP testing coming up and... bleck. So I'm sorry. I will have a much better post on Thursday for you!

But for now...
That playlist.





I hope you'll give this a listen - it really is the best.

And if you'd rather listen to just one version, for first-timers I would recommend the Complete Symphonic Version. It's free on Spotify and has every song regardless of popularity/hit material.

Peace out!
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