Wishing everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Blogging For Books Review: A Sound Among The Trees

A Sound Among the Trees by Susan Meissner is a great book!  I love the way it follows the history of the family from the civil war to the present time.  Rumors of espionage and ghosts add to the mystery.  I really liked the characters and the flow of the book.  I liked this book so much I am definitely going to read her other two books The Shape of Mercy and Lady in Waiting.

Blogging For Books Review: Enemies of the Heart

I liked this book a lot.  It is written in an easy to read conversational style.  I love the way the author explains biblical stories in an easy to understand way and I ecspecially love the real life examples of these stories and the lessons to be learned from them.

It is clear that the author is a gifted pastor with a knack for giving common sense advice about why we do the things we do. He explains where our feelings of guilt, anger, greed and jealousy come from and how to confront these feelings and gives sound advice on getting past them.

Another great thing about this book are the discussion questions for each chapter at the end of the book that you can work on with or without a group.

This book was provided free of charge by WaterBrook Press for this review.

Blogging For Books Review: Where Will You Go From Here

I really liked this book by Valerie Burton who is a Certified Personal and Executive Coach.


When life takes an unexpected turn and knocks you off your course this book guides you to ask yourself the right questions and helps you to figure out what your next step should be. I like that she used her own personal experiences as well as those of others and takes you step by step through the initial shock to coming out on the other side stronger and better able to handle future unexpected setbacks

Using a unique combination of faith, common sense and psychology the author teaches what it means to be resilient in the face of adversity.

She takes you from assessing where you are, how you got there and how to begin the healing process. She calls this recovery "post-tramatic growth" and explains that all traumas, large and small, leave us changed. But by making wise decisions and looking for the lessons to be learned from this setback we CAN be strong, happy and confident no matter what life throws at us.

This book was provided free of charge by WaterBrook Press for this review.

What to do...

What to do when your snowed in and your family wants dessert?

Make the easiest chocolate cake ever...

Easy Chocolate Cake

I'm not kidding it takes 5 minutes to mix.

And best of all you can be out of eggs and milk and still whip this cake up.

Easy Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:

3 cups flour

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups water

1 cup vegetable oil

1 tbl spoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup semi sweet chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Butter/grease and flour cake pan(s)

   3 8" round or square

   2 9" square

   1 9"x13" or 7"x11" rectangle

   1 10"x15"x1" jelly roll pan

Combine all of the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking soda & salt) in a large mixing bowl.

Add the wet ingredients (water, oil & vanilla).

Whisk all ingredients together until well mixed.

Pour evenly into your pan(s).

If your not going to ice the cakes at this point you can sprinkle the chocolate chips evenly over the top before baking at this point.

Bake for 25-35 minutes.  Until toothpick comes out of the center clean.

(I baked a 9"x13" pan for 35 minutes)

Let cool completely and sprinkle with powdered sugar or ice.