Libraries
When was the last time you visited a public library? The other day I had a half hour of time before an appointment so I stopped in at my local library to get some cookbooks for stepping up my weekly menu planning. I lost track of time and was almost late for my appointment. I forgot how much I loved free public libraries! Every season of my life has library memories, from filling a huge canvas bag of books as an elementary kid to checking out a big bag of books as a young mom with toddlers. We have Googled local libraries on rainy vacation days at the beach, visited library story times while traveling, and found joy in perusing the shelves of public libraries and bookstores across the country whether or not we take any books home. As a young mom, I got a new cookbook every time I took my kids to the library. Recently I had houseguests with school age kids for a few months and we took regular visits to the library where I told them they could get as many books as they could carry. Benjamin Franklin started his own lending library company in 1731…
Travel Review: Ultra Minimalist Travel
What products would you hate to be without if you lost your luggage? If you have been following me for some time, you know I’m a huge fan of travel and carry on bags. I have mastered the art of of packing light for a long adventure. My items multi task, and I like to think I’m a minimalist, but I see no need to try ultra minimalist travel. Turns out the airlines wanted to test that theory this summer. I had crafted my packing list and prioritized what I could fit into my backpack (weighing 18 lbs or less) and a laptop bag for a 3 week European adventure. Saving my crazy travel story of cancelled flights for another time, let’s just say “I saw Europe, I saw France, and the airlines kept my underpants!” I truly became an ultra minimalist when I had to survive with one pair of underwear, a change of clothes, and just my liquids bag when my carry on bag, checked at a destination, got lost. Of course there is travel insurance to cover lost things, but what about when you hit the ground running and don’t have time to shop for basics or…
Travel Review: Food Tours
What is the best way to get to know a new town? Food tours are a great way to get to know a new town. Want to get the lay of the land, a quick history lesson, and some restaurant suggestions? Take a food tour on your first day of vacation. Want to see your hometown in a new light? Take a food tour. Want a fun date night with friends? Take a food tour. Our first food tour was a free food tour by foot in Washington DC on a family vacation years ago. We were hooked! Since then we have gone on food tours on vacations across the globe, always delighted with the tours and the tourists. On a typical tour, you will meet at a designated spot to start and end your tour. Your tour guide will give a brief welcome and let the guests introduce themselves. It’s fun to hear whether people are local or just visiting. Usually, the tour is a leisurely walking tour of the town, visiting 4-6 restaurants within a few hours and a mile or two of distance in total with some history of the town or restaurants thrown in. Some restaurants…
Book Review: Road Trip Book Lists
Where will you go this summer? Bethany House Publishers produced an annual “Road Trip Guide” for seven years where they suggested books to read based on the settings. It’s such a clever idea! Summer beach reads abound, but what about those who vacation in Montana or India? There’s a book for them too! Grab a book set in your vacation destination, childhood home state, or bucket list destination and take a book vacation. The blog post has links to past road trip lists as well. While everyone is waiting in line to get the newest books, grab copies of these books online or at your local library and take a road trip to a new or favorite place! Where will you go this summer? Want other book reviews? Check out these posts. Got some book suggestions for summer travel? Post in the comments below! Table Talk: What was the destination of your favorite childhood vacation? What destination is on your wish list? Like this post? Share it with a friend! Facebook Email Pinterest Print
Product Review: Uptime Robot
Do you have your own robot working for you yet? Uptime Robot is a free website monitoring service that works so you don’t have to. This business tool is my secret weapon. Uptime Robot checks your website every few minutes to see if it’s up and running and notifies you if it’s down. Downtime happens to the best of us, but hopefully, you can catch it before your customers do. Just this week I was trying to find the menu and hours of a new business but I got an error with every link I tried. Bummer. When I visited the restaurant that day, I let them know and they thought I just had the wrong link. It was up and running today, but using a service like Uptime Robot could have saved them egg on their face. It takes just a few minutes to set up this free service and you can choose to receive an email or text message when your website or course page is down. Plus their smart team of robots can monitor all sorts of other things for you, except what’s in your fridge or when you are running low on basic supplies like…
Book Review: Imperfect Disciple
What do you do when you struggle to get your act together but keep failing? Imperfect Disciple: Grace for People Who Can’t Get Their Act Together, by Jared C. Wilson, is the perfect book to read with a friend this summer. Wilson’s conversational style of writing makes you feel like you are sitting across the table at a coffee shop or at an airport waiting area having a chat. His wisdom makes you feel smarter not smaller once you finish a chapter. Read a chapter, let it settle in, then discuss it with a friend or two. Repeat 10 times. Preferably with an iced coffee. Wilson takes readers on a discipleship journey through his own stories with humor and honesty. Knowing you are not alone in this journey nor do you have to have it all together all the time will build your confidence. Discipleship is doing life on life with someone else. Normal life. Messy life. Wilson understands a life full of questions and knows a Book full of answers. After hearing Wilson speak in person a few years ago, some friends and I did a book study with Imperfect Diciple. There are not questions at the end of…
Book Review: How to Read Books Like a Professor: For Kids
How does seeing figurative language help you be a more thoughtful reader? You can read a book and think it’s a good story. Or you can read a book and notice the symbols, setting, and figurative language and understand the meaning of the story on a whole different level. This book is for the reluctant reader and the avid reader, the young and the old, but especially for the middle schoolers. Written by New York bestseller author and professor Thomas Foster, How to Read Books Like a Professor: for Kids teaches the reader some secrets to understanding books and points out helpful examples and connections along the way. Through humor and insight, the Foster teaches how to read books using familiar books, stories, and movies as examples. With chapter titles like “Nice to Eat You” and “Where Have I Seen You Before,” readers learn about the skills needed to find meaning and make connections. Not only will they read better, but their summaries and conversations about literature will also be much richer. This book is so good I suggest you get a copy this summer and read it aloud to your kids, ages 5th grade and up, especially the middle…
Product Review: Bankroll Coffee
Can drinking coffee make you a millionaire? I self identify as a coffee snob. No doubt about that. For Christmas my kids got me a coffee bundle from Bankroll Coffee, and it was the perfect gift! Good coffee, catchy packaging, and amazing prices per cup. Names like Double Down, Morning Drip, and Diamond Hands grace the bags. I can’t even pick a favorite, but maybe Hodl, the espresso roast. Eventually, I’d like to try the decaf, Buy the Drip. If you read my earlier post, you’ll know that I make cold brew coffee at home. I always have some regular and some decaf in my fridge. Check out my cold brew coffee review here. Graham Stephan, with his interest in personal finance, real estate, and investing, has an interesting recipe for brewing coffee at home and saving money to invest so you can be a millionaire when you retire. According to Stephan, millennials spend more on coffee than they do on retirement! He says in his video that he wants to create a business that will continue to grow on its own without him having to be constantly involved as the influencer. I resonate with that business goal. That’s what…
Book Review – Relationships: A Mess Worth Making
What relationships are a mess worth making? There’s no denying that relationships are messy, but there is hope for improving them. After the added stress of distance or close confinement during Covid, most of our relationships could use some strengthening. This book, Relationships: A Mess Worth Making, by Paul David Tripp and Tim Lane is a guide for deepening our relationship with God and improving our relationships and reactions with our fellow man. I first came across this book when our small group chose to do it as a book discussion. There was plenty to discuss and reflect upon with each of the chapters. When a friend came to me with some relationship questions, I immediately thought about several of the chapters of this book. I tried to summarize and quote large chunks of it. Then I gave up and bought her the book! It’s that kind of book. You will benefit greatly from the personal reflection, but you will also find yourself using this as a resource for others. Go ahead and add it to your shopping list. It’s available in paperback, audio book, or ebook. In fact, add a couple to your list and stock up. It’s a…
Product Review: Pinch of Yum
What’s your go-to website for recipes? Finding healthy, exciting, and approachable recipes, such as those on Pinch of Yum, can be a challenge in the giant universe of cyberspace. It’s not that they don’t exist, but that there are so many websites to choose from. Let me introduce you to one of my favorites. Pinch of Yum is one I discovered in the last few years when a friend shared a yummy recipe I had tasted at her house. Now I regularly find myself clicking on the links in their newsletter or searching the blog for a recipe featuring whatever food items I have on hand that night so I don’t have to go to the store just to make dinner. The ability to sort recipes on Pinch of Yum by categories like quick and easy, dinner, Instant Pot, vegan, tacos, freezer meals, etc. makes it easy to find particular things. Another thing I love is the beauty of the website! Not only are the recipes a delight to taste, the website is a feast for your eyes from the fonts to the colors to the photos. Whether you want printed recipes, videos to follow, or explanations, you can get…