games

 Uncle playing Angry Birds

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Thursday Challenge

Next week: SHINY (Mirror, Reflections, Chrome, Plastic, Glass,...)

best of 2011 - part 2

The theme for Thursday Challenge is Best of 2011 (again). One of my favorite photographic subjects is the little people in my life. As the grandkids grow older it's so much fun to watch them grow and develop--through play, which is really their work. Here are two collections of my favorite little boys.

Kids at work

Thursday Challenge

Next Week: TOYS (Stuffed Animals, Sports Equipment, Dolls, Video Games, Board Games, Lego,...)

new kidlit blog

UPDATE - Monday, May 18.

Though the Book Brew blog below is only one week old, I've already moved it.

I was feeling very out of my element in WordPress (though it's an excellent blogging platform with some nice features). So I've moved Book Brew to blogger. You can now find it here.

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I've gone and done something I never thought I'd do - started yet another blog! Am I crazy or what?! It's all Twitter's fault. Here's how it came about:

1. As I said, I joined Twitter a few weeks ago.

2. In my search to find kindred spirits to follow, last Friday I discovered a slew of people who write for children on one of those twitter directories.

3. I signed up to follow @susanwrites.

4. One of her first tweets was the children’s writers’ Poetry Friday roundup here.

5. This brought me face to face with the KidLitosphere – kids’ writers and book lovers galore, bound together by the love of children’s literature. One of the main things they do is review children’s books.

6. Besides Poetry Friday, they also have a weekly blog roundup called Nonfiction Monday.

7. My first thought: I want to play too!

And so I began my Book Brew blog, because in order to participate, you have to have a blog that’s devoted to books for young adults and children. And I’m so fine with that


Now I’ll have a place to post only about children’s writing! Whoo hoo!!

sneak peek

I'm having a lot of fun posting my children's devotional, Bible Drive-Thru. One of the things I enjoy most (and which takes the most time) is finding graphics to go with the stories. In my hunt for public domain illustrations, I've run into some wonderful sites with pictures that bring to mind Sunday School paper illustrations from my childhood, like this one, and this one.

In case you haven't gone over to take a peek at the kids' devotionals, today I'm posting one over here (I have had emails from a few adults who said they enjoyed them too!)

And if you know of any kids who would enjoy such a devotional, please pass along the URL: http://bibledrivethru.blogspot.com. It's updated daily.

(This devotion, "Perfect Timing," is for February 5)
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TODAY’S SPECIAL: Genesis 41:1-16, 39,40

TO CHEW ON: “Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘Since God has made this known to you, there is no one so discerning and wise as you. You shall be in charge of my palace, and all my people are to submit to your orders. Only with respect to the throne will I be greater than you.’” (Genesis 41:39,40)

Two years passed after the cup bearer was set free, Joseph was still in prison.

One night Pharaoh had a dream. It scared him and he wanted to know what it meant. But when he called his wise men and magicians, they couldn’t tell him the meaning of the dream.

Then someone remembered a dream he had had, and the young Hebrew prisoner who told him what it meant. It was the cupbearer. At last he remembered Joseph!

Servants came for Joseph. They took off his prison uniform, put new clothes on him and brought him to Pharaoh.



Pharaoh told Joseph his dream – and Joseph told him the meaning! Then Pharaoh did something amazing. He made Joseph the second boss in the whole land.

I’m sure Joseph often wondered, will the cupbearer ever think of me? Will I ever get out of here? But when it was God’s time, Joseph went from being a prisoner to a prince in one day!

PRAYER: Dear God, You have a perfect time for everything in my life. Thank you! Amen.

SUPERSIZE IT: Luck, Coincidence – or God?
Sometimes when things fit together perfectly, we call it good luck, or coincidence. But such times are really examples of God putting things together in the perfect way, at the perfect time.

Can you tell a story of a time when God did this for you?

new blog of daily devotions for kids!

Way back on March 13th of this year I announced that I had finished writing the first draft of my book of children's devotions, Bible Drive-Thru.

I put the manuscript away after that in order to get our house ready to sell and then we moved. It was not until about six weeks ago that I got that project out again. My plan was to rework it -- and then what?

I thought of submitting it to a royalty publisher, but no one has expressed any interest in all the places I've submitted a proposal. I looked (very briefly) into self-publishing. But it's too expensive.

During all this time I often day dreamed about how much fun it would be to blog these devotions. I could make them way more colorful and interactive than any publisher could afford, I reasoned. Plus, isn't the internet where kids hang out? If I made it available online, it would be accessible to kids of all kinds -- not just those whose parents or grandparents bought them a devotional book from the Christian bookstore.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to put up a couple of these devotions on the internet just to get the feel of how they would read online. And so the Bible Drive-Thru blog was born.

I was right -- they are a lot of fun to blog. I've been working on them since then, tightening, revising and adapting what I've written to work online.

Today I'm making that blog public. Right now it's in sample form and will be that way for December. This is to give kids (and parents) a chance to have a look and see if it's something they'd like to come back to on January 1st.

Then, starting January 1, I'll be posting a new devotion there every day for all of 2008.

So, you're invited to the Bible Drive-Thru blog. If you like what you see, be sure to tell the kids that you know, and their parents. (The target age group is Grades 4-6, although I'm sure younger able readers could read them too).

And if you have any suggestions on how I could make it better, I'd love to hear them!

book review: Arthur, the Christmas Elf

Title: Arthur, the Christmas Elf -- A Christmas Adventure
Author: Valerie Connelly
Publisher: Nightengale Press, 2006 - 68 pages
Genre: Children's Fiction, Children's Activities
ISBN: 193344923

Arthur, the Christmas Elf is a story book that will keep on giving long after the read-aloud part is done. Fine-tuned through years of retelling it to her own youngsters, author Valerie Connelly’s tale about two self-absorbed children, a storm and Santa’s elf Arthur will help kids gain a new perspective on Christmas gifts in both the giving and getting departments.

The author-illustrated 43-page story section is only the first part of this two-part book, however. In the second part are instructions on how to make the seven craft projects mentioned in the story. These easy-to-make, family-tested projects use materials most people probably have around the house. The instructions are well-organized, easy to follow and include traceable patterns and photographs that illustrate the projects at various stages of completion.

I can see this dual-purpose and prize-winning book being a great addition to the Christmas of any family with kids up to and including teens. The story will probably become a holiday favorite. And the book may be the catalyst for a new tradition of kids and parents (or older siblings) spending quality time together making things in the days before Christmas, and then giving gifts that come more from the heart than the wallet.