A Very Thankful Prayer Seek and Find is a children’s book written by Bonnie Rickner Jensen and illustrated by Natalia Moore.
This sweet book contains a beautiful rhyming poem about being thankful for the things around us. The fall-themed illustrations are adorable, the colors are vibrant, and the added feature of a seek and find make this book the perfect autumn choice for any toddler in your life.
I really enjoyed this charming book, and it is definitely worth purchasing for a cozy read with little ones.
A big thank you to Thomas Nelson for providing me with a free digital copy of this book in exchange for my review. Thank you!
*Please note: This book will be released on August 2, 2022.
Bookshop by the Sea is a contemporary romance novel written by Denise Hunter.
Summary: Sophie Lawson has been taking care of everyone since she was a kid. An absentee father and a mother who she nursed through a traumatic illness until her death a few years back, forced her to be a surrogate parent to her twin brother and younger sister.
But now, her baby sister is finally getting married, her brother has a new job, and it’s time for Sophie to follow her dream of opening and running a bookshop.
If only a hurricane hadn’t thrown everything for a loop. Now she has days to renovate her shop in time for the grand opening, and to complicate things further, her ex is back in town.
Can she pull everything together in time to make her dreams come true?
My Thoughts: This was a lovely easy-read romance. I liked the characters, the plot, the situational drama and how they worked through their problems, and the cute romance.
I enjoyed reading the book, and would recommend it.
I would like to thank Thomas Nelson-FICTION for providing me with a digital copy of this book in exchange for my review. Thank you!
Amazon Prime Day came and went. And we bought a Ninja CREAMi. 🙂
I have had this device sitting in my Amazon cart for quite some time, and at $70 off, I thought now was the time.
We bought this for two main reasons.
First, I have been making “nice” cream for a couple of years now (mainly for my dairy-free/gluten-free kiddo.) If you don’t know, this is ice cream made with frozen bananas as its base. It’s quite good.
BUT. You have to eat it right away. If you don’t, you get a super hard ice crystal block the next day. Not great.
The CREAMi has a feature where if you put something in the freezer and it gets too hard, you can re-spin it and make it soft again. Yes please!
The second reason, is just to give The Boy more choices of dairy-free/gluten-free flavors.
There are more and more companies coming out with alternatives, but if you go buy a pint of any dairy-free ice cream these days it’s at least $6-probably more since I haven’t priced it recently.
Breyers has come out with a few wonderful options that we love, but I am only able to find them at one store. Sometimes.
So, back to the CREAMi.
I have tried several recipes so far, and thought I would share my thoughts.
First, I cannot get over how creamy the end result is. It really lives up to the name. I am so impressed.
You do have to plan ahead because you have to freeze your concoction for 24 hours before making it, but otherwise it’s great. It definitely helps to have extra pints on hand.
To start, I really wanted to put the machine through it’s paces. I made dairy-free ice cream, nice cream, and lemon ice.
The dairy-free ice cream was a recipe straight from the CREAMi recipe guide: 1 can unsweetened full-fat coconut milk 1/2 cup sugar tsp vanilla
I will admit, I don’t care for coconut-flavored things so much. I like coconut, but really dislike coconut oil, or coconut milk due to the flavor. BUT, this was amazing. Everyone in the family loved it. It was delicious, and we even added sprinkles just so we could try the mix-in feature. This is a great recipe-so easy too.
I also made a chocolate version of this recipe by adding two tablespoons of cocoa powder. Surprisingly, this recipe tasted more like coconut than the vanilla, which is really weird.
Neither my husband nor I like chocolate ice cream, but we did try it, and it was decent. The kids really liked it.
Next, I tried nice cream with just some mashed-up bananas. The consistency was much better than when I make it in the food processor, but it was way too sweet.
So, I tried this Pinterest recipe to help cut the sweetness. I didn’t follow the listed directions (I just mixed everything together), but I thought adding peanut butter and chocolate chips could only make it better, right?
This definitely turned out better, although I think I would put the chocolate chips in as a mix-in at the end next time instead of freezing it all together. Otherwise, this was good, and I will make it again.
It was easy enough to make (one ingredient!), but although it was refreshing, it didn’t have quite enough zing for us. I think I might try this again with my own homemade lemonade, or add more lemon juice and a bit of sugar to the Simply Lemonade. I think strawberries might be nice to add as well.
It definitely needs a little more sugar, because even though we did a re-spin, it was still a little crumbly.
This recipe has potential, but I need to mess with it, so we’ll see.
Well, that’s it for this first round. I have plenty of recipes I still want to try (including regular ice cream), so I am looking forward to playing more in the future!
And, maybe once I have made several flavors, we will be able to try out the re-spin option. Right now, flavors are getting eaten as soon as I make them-a pint doesn’t go far with five people! 🙂
Overall, I think this purchase was worth it for us. All five of these recipes The Boy could eat. That’s so awesome.
Would it be worth it for everyone? Probably not. But if you have specific dietary requirements, or just like to get fancy with your desserts, this is a fun machine.
National Scrapbooking Day was in May, and I had a lot of fun creating layouts for various challenges!
Today I am sharing the final layout I made:
Supplies: Patterned Paper: October Afternoon; Letter Stickers: October Afternoon; Gold Star and Dot Puffy Stickers, Teal Puffy Stars: Elle’s Studio; Other Stars and Flair: Studio Calico; Enamel Dots: Echo Park; Other: Puffy Label Sticker
I went a little crazy on the stars, but I like how it turned out, and had fun using up some of my stash.
Well, that’s it for the National Scrapbooking Day challenge projects!
I had a lot of fun with the challenges, ended up winning one really great prize ($100 Persnickety Prints gift card), and was very happy that I was able to complete 6 layouts and a card in just a couple of days!
Slow Down, Enjoy, and Create 