Living as a Victorious Christian Woman

 It is absolutely thrilling for me to share this album with you today. It's been a labor of love (even though I'm a dog person) that took several days to complete.  In case you aren't familiar with this Little Golden Book, it's the story of a mama farm cat who has a litter of four kittens. Each one has to find out which kind of cat it's going to be when it grows up. When I tear down a book, I save all of the original illustrations and turn them into something new and different. In this album, for example, I only tack down three of the four sides of each picture so a tag can be slipped underneath. Here, the brown tag slides between the illustration and the page like an envelope. The fibers on the tags then stick out the side for a beautiful rainbow of colors and textures.  The embellishments are all punched from coordinating papers, and there is a paw print on every page. They're accented with tiny acrylic dots. Perhap...

Love the crunch that fried shrimp have but hate the grease? Try baking them and see if your mood improves! Set up a simple breading station with panko bread crumbs and you'll create the most addictive shrimp ever. You have been warned. Ingredients: 1 bag (12-14 oz) raw large shrimp - peeled, deveined and tail off, thawed 1 cup flour salt to taste 2 egg whites 1 1/2 cups panko bread crumbs 1. Preheat oven to 475 degrees. Cover a baking sheet with foil and lightly spray with nonstick spray. 2. Set up a three-bowl breading station: one with the flour, one with the egg whites whipped until foamy and one with the bread crumbs. 3. Coat shrimp in flour, then egg whites, then bread crumbs and place on baking sheet. Keep one hand for wet ingredients and the other hand for dry ingredients. 4. Bake coated shrimp at 475 degrees for 7-8 minutes. Flip them all and bake for an additional 5-6 minutes. Bread crumbs will become golden brown - remove from the oven before they black...

We all have a difficult time admitting that we’re incapable of something. We want to be self-sufficient and self-reliant, which makes us self-absorbed. We’re convinced that we should be able to take care of everything ourselves with no interference. That’s what society has taught us, and that’s the conclusion we come to when pride gets in our way.   And if we’re not capable, then there must be something wrong with us. Or so we’re told. Just dig deeper, try harder and reap the rewards. Do more. Think more. Have more. Just a little more of something and everything will be ok. Unfortunately that’s not how it works. Here’s the monumental news you’ve been waiting for: there are many, many times when you are not enough. I am not enough. None of us are “enough” enough to do what needs to be done. Reality hurts sometimes, doesn’t it? I have a problem in my life right now that I cannot change. It is deep, it is personal and it is incredibly painful. There is nothing I can d...

It's that amazing time of year when the nests on the property are filled with baby birds. Our favorite, by far, is the nest a mama wren built on top of our driveway security light. She comes back every year and has babies there twice. We saw the eggs on Wednesday night, and by Thursday morning there was one sweet baby in there. On Friday morning two more had made an appearance. At this point, it's hard to tell where one begins and another ends. And this morning Baby #4 made its appearance. Now there is an adorable pile of fluff in the nest, just waiting for Mama to come back and love on them. I can't wait to see them grow up and fly on their own. But one step at a time!

While we were at the IFDA convention last week, in a seminar about a completely different topic, I learned this amazing trick. Very few of us carry a tripod around to hold our phones steady while we take pictures ... right? Grab a plastic cup, and you're good to go! Turn the cup upside down to start with. Using a pair of scissors, cut two triangle-shaped notches about a third of the way down on either side of the cup. Then connect the two by cutting out the strip of plastic across the bottom. This gives you a trough through the cup to put your phone in. It also leaves the buttons free to use and lets you see exactly what you're documenting. Love this! The possibilities are endless when you're by yourself and need an extra set of hands to take pictures or video.