Book Review of The Terrestria Chronicles

Terrestria Chronicles by Ed Dunlop
Ages: 10 and up

Price: $7.99 per book or $47.99 for the entire series

Visit the kingdom of Terrestria, a land where knights and their ladies live in castles and hwere dragons still roam (occasionally).

The Terrestria Chronicles allegory series was written with a three-fold purpose: to honor Jesus Christ as King, to challenge young readers to love and serve Him, and to teach them to guard their hearts for Him. The focus of the series is always on the King.

Fast-paced action… powerful imagery… heart-pounding adventure… These life-changing books are captivating and once you start reading, you’ll find them hard to put down. This adventure series has a particularly strong appeal to today’s young people: it’s a series with knights and castles, dragons and princesses. . . but these are books in which every page points to truths of the Christian walk. Biblical doctrines and character principles are taught in such a compelling, fascinating way that they will stay with the reader for a lifetime.

Written for ages ten and up, the Terrestria series is ideal for family devotions, classroom use, or individual enjoyment. So grab your sword and take your family on a quest to Terrestria! Your heart will be changed forever.

Also available: Visits to Terrestria , $5.99

A Study Guide for Parents, Teachers, and Students

Covering all seven books in the Terrestria Chronicles allegory series, this study guide is designed to invoke discussions of the life-changing messages and powerful imagery within each story, much of which might be missed with a casual reading. Visits to Terrestria takes the reader to a new level of understanding of the series. Adults and young people alike will more fully grasp the wealth of meaning in these captivating books.

My Review:

I have fallen in love with these books and so has my family!  They captivated us from the very first page and pulled us right in.  They are books that are written to share the message of the gospel to children and they do such an excellent job.  I love allegory books like The Chronicles of Narnia and Hinds Feet on High Places and these books will earn a special place on our bookshevles by them.  

We read the first book in the series,  The Sword, the Ring and the Parchment.  


In this book we were introduced to Prince Josiah, who is a slave to Argamor  in the land of Terrestria.  Argamor represents Satan and is the evil villian in the book.  We also learn of a character called King Emmanuel who represents Jesus.  The characters come alive in these books in such wonderful ways!  This was one of the first books that I have read to my girl where she asked me to continue to hear more of the story.  That alone is worth more that gold to me!  We couldn't wait to get to the end and were thankful that we have more to go through in this amazing series.  Ed Dunlap has such a great way with words and makes some very complex spirtitual concepts so easy to understand.  As I was reading, I just had to stop and marvel at how he did it!  


There is a study guide that goes along with the books as well and we loved that.  There are so many options and great questions that are given for each book and very easy to follow along with.  And there are even activities that you can do together as a family that looked pretty cool.  We didn't get a chance to do any of them because of time but I look forward to hopefully getting to some of them as we read the rest of the series.


I could not recommend these books highly enough!  If you are looking for books that will capture your childs (and adults!) attention from the very first page then look no further!  And better yet books that display the message of the gospel in such a clear fun way.  I have a little girl that loved these books so I can only imagine what someone with boys would say as they are full of adventure, knights, dragons, kings, and so much more!  


Thank you Ed Dunlap for creating such a wonderful series and introducing us to a new set of books that will earn a special place on our bookshelves and will hopefully be passed down to many others in our family and beyond.

(Disclosure: We were provided this series, free of charge, by Ed Dunlop, in association with MamaBuzz.)



 

Purple Trail Review

I love to entertain and have parties so anything that helps me keep that organized and have fun with that is perfect for me!  I also love to send cards so that was just another reason I was excited to review this site.  Purple Trail is just that online tool!  Here are some quick facts about this very cool site:

1. PurpleTrail is totally ad-free. So your guests do not see any pesky ads along with your invites.
2. PurpleTrail has hundreds of pre-designed online invites, ecards and announcements. You could choose one and send it as it is OR customize it and make it yours by adding your own photos, videos, music and embellishments.
3.You could choose to even make your design from scratch. The PurpleTrail Design Centre makes it all very simple and easy for you to use.
4. Easily share your invite over social media sites like twitter and facebook.
5. It's easy to import your guest list from your yahoo/gmail/hotmail account.
6. PurpleTrail has features/modules keeping track of your guests, chatting with your guests in real time, adding a map to the event venue, pot-luck feature which helps each guest specify what they are getting for the party. And many more which makes your life easy as a party-planner.
7. PurpleTrail takes care of all your party planning needs from the start to finish. Besides invites you could design your own thank-you cards that could be sent post the event. Share your party photos and videos with your guests and vice-versa. The PurpleTrail party blog helps you come up with the invites wordings, party ideas, games, craft activities, decor and recipes for your event.
8.PurpleTrail was the first service where you could send invites over sms
9. You can even Print your invites, cards and announcements from PurpleTrail.com
10. Easy to use Interface and a reliable service.


Price: Depends on which membership you choose.....memberships range in price from free to $49.95 per year.
http://help.purpletrail.com/getting-started/purpletrail-club-membership

Here is a video that will explain it as well...




Pros that I found:
1.  The are hundreds of different choices to choose from in just about any holiday or event you may be looking for.
2.  You can directly import or address book from yahoo/hotmail or google for sending out your cards and invitations

3.  The ability to design your own from scratch and even to change the premade ones a little with different backgrounds, texts and removing objects you may not want or moving to a different place on the card

4.  The ability to see what others have designed and even use them for your own
5.  You can save your design and re-edit it at any time later on
6.  Different levels of membership and one is free
7.  The thank you that you can send out to your guests after the party is over


Cons that I found:
1.  I don't think it's the most user friendly site as I got lost a few times and couldn't figure out where I needed to be
2.  I had some trouble importing some pictures on a few cards I was trying to make and thought that could be easier to do
3.  You can print a card you make for the price of $3.95 which I think was kind of high.  But if you get the yearly membership you get to print them for free.  
4.  The site did seem a little slow at times




Overall, I like the Purple Trail and would recommend it to everyone. 

*This is a Mama Buzz review, and we were provided a free trial to Purple Trail in exchange for a review of their website.

When Moms Pray Together Book Review

 This is a Mama Buzz review. The product was provided by: Tyndale Publishing for this review

When Mom's Pray Together is a book by Fern Nichols  that tells 25 true stories of what happens when moms come together to pray.

Here is some info from their website about the book:

Moms in Touch International is an organization that brings moms together to pray for their children and their children’s schools. As MITI prepares to celebrate its 25th anniversary, Fern Nichols, the founder and president, has collected some of the most inspiring and encouraging stories of God’s work in answer to those prayers. When Moms Pray Together will inspire and equip mothers to pray more consistently and hopefully for their children while encouraging them through the stories from moms everywhere.

Each chapter in this book is a true story about a child facing some sort of hardship and how their mom gets involved in a prayer group during this time.  If you ever questioned if there is really power in prayer this book with put that question to an end.  No matter how big or small the problem may be, prayer is something that brought these moms together and changed the lives of each child mentioned in this book.  Each story pulls your heart right in and you can't wait to read the outcome of each one.  Whether it's dealing with a child suicide, being bullied, sexual trauma, divorce, there is nothing too big or small to pray about and this book shows you just that.

As I finished this book all I wanted to do was get down on my knees and thank God for the beautiful daughter that He has given me and for the wonderful gift of prayer that we have that allows us to touch His heart in ways nothing else can.  It gave me hope that no matter what we have and what we will face is nothing we can't handle through prayer. 

I encourage you to read this book and have your heart filled with the hope I did.  And even get involved in a local Moms In Touch group if there is one near you or even start your very own.  I know my heart has been moved in ways to really be committed to praying more for my daughter and even her friends and any way I can do that I am all for! 

Jansten's Gift

(Disclosure: This book was provided , free of charge, by Hachette Book Group, in association with MamaBuzz.)

Jansten's Gift captured my heart from the very first chapter.  It was one of those books that I could hardly put down until I reached the last sentence.  It is a true story of loss, grief, hope and passion.  I'm not a big crier but this book brought tears to my eyes many times.  The writing is so refreshing and you really feel like you are sitting on the couch having a conversation with the author.  It is one of those books that makes you want to hug your family closer at the end of the night and to make sure you are living your life to the fullest.  This book is raw and I think that is why I loved it so much.  Pam does not hide her feelings at all and she writes her true feelings, even if they may offend some.  I love so much when people are real no matter what!

Our of her grief, Pam and her family end of going to Vietnam over Thanksgiving.  This trip changed their life and the life of so many others that she would touch through the organization they started called Touch A Life. They have adopted two children from there and these children helped heal her heart from the grief of her son Jansten.  The organization that Pam and her husband started has a main focus to stand in the gap for hurting and explointed children and to give them a voice.  You can find out more about them here.

This is one of those books that makes you realize you don't have to be somebody important to help others.  It makes you feel that no matter what may come in your life that you can pick up the pieces and make a difference and simply go on living.   I'm so thankful that Pam shared her story in this book and I plan on sharing it with many of my friends. 

Here is a quote from the back cover:

"This is a story of a journey that took seven years and the loss of everything I had.  What I learned along the way is that maybe the answer to grief, or to feeling lost, is to give recklessly and passionately.  It is in those acts of giving that you become open to receive life's most tremendous blessings."

A Description of the book from Hachette Book Group:


Nine years ago, Pam Cope owned a cozy hair salon in the tiny town of Neosho, Missouri, and her life revolved around her son's baseball games, her daughter's dance lessons, and family trips to places like Disney World. She had never been out of the country, nor had she any desire to travel far from home.

Then, on June 16th, 1999, her life changed forever with the death of her 15-year-old son from an undiagnosed heart ailment.

Needing to get as far away as possible from everything that reminded her of her loss, she accepted a friend's invitation to travel to Vietnam, and, from the moment she stepped off the plane, everything she had been feeling since her son's death began to shift. By the time she returned home, she had a new mission: to use her pain to change the world, one small step at a time, one child at a time. Today, she is the mother of two children adopted from Vietnam. More than that, she and her husband have created a foundation called "Touch A Life," dedicated to helping desperate children in countries as far-flung as Vietnam, Cambodia and Ghana.

Pam Cope's story is on one level a moving, personal account of loss and recovery, but on a deeper level, it offers inspiration to anyone who has ever suffered great personal tragedy or those of us who dream about making a difference in the world

Wow Imports Personlized Necklace Review

This is a Mama Buzz review. The product was provided by: WOW Imports for this review

I had the wonderful opportunity to receive the above necklace to review from WOW Imports. Here is some info about who they are from their website:

Wow! Imports, a family business, is the premier online store for African fair trade bead & wire art, including beaded animal figurines, piggy banks, beaded key chains, beaded zipper pulls, wire wrapped and beaded serving pieces, beaded Christmas ornaments and recycled plastic bag animals.
We offer the widest selection of styles and languages of handmade sterling silver and 14k gold personalized name jewelry. This includes Carrie necklaces, name necklaces, name rings, name earrings, name bracelets, name anklets, personalized key chains & zipper pulls and personalized cufflinks.
Our master artisans are dedicated to handcrafting the finest wire & bead art, recycled art and name jewelry.
We are committed to socially responsible and fair trade practices. Our African crafters are disadvantaged artisans from Zimbabwe and South African townships. They set their own wages and hours and are provided with materials and pleasant work accommodations. We provide them with useful customer feedback to help them create the finest and most marketable designs.

The personalized name necklace I chose is pictured above and I put my daughters name on it and will give it to her for christmas that has a value of $27.95.   It is the Gabrielle font with a 18inch sterling silver necklace.They have a large variety of fonts to choose from and I really liked that on their website you could put in the name you want and it would let you go through the fonts to see what they looked like before you order. I was also able to choose the length of the chain I wanted for the necklace.  You can also get different items added to your name such as flowers for an extra price of $5.95.  You could even get a birthstone added to your necklace for an extra price as well.  There are so many different choices and it's fun to look through their website to see them all.  I liked the animal and sports personalized name jewelry too!

I was very impressed with my necklace and I would recommend this for that fun personalized gift you want to get for that special someone in your life.  I am very impressed with the vision that this company has and I like supporting companies that are committed to fair trade practices.  And they offer free shipping which is a big plus in my book!

GIVEAWAY:

Win a personalized name necklace (up to $27.95) for one lucky winner!

To Enter:

Just visit WOW Imports and let me know which necklace you will choose if you are the lucky winner!

**make sure to leave your email so I can contact you if you win!**

For EXTRA entries:

**you must leave a separate comment for each one of these you do**

1.  Blog about this on your blog and leave a comment on here telling me you did so.

2.  Put this on your wall on facebook

3.  Tweet about this

4.  Follow me with google friends (the link is on the bottom right hand side of my front page of my blog)

5.  Add my button to your blog (this is located on the bottom right hand side on the main page of blog as well)

Contest will end on Friday December 4th at midnight

You may enter once each day until them as many times as you like on that day!

US participants and shipping only

Thanks for entering! And a huge thanks to WOW Imports for their generous offer!

Wright on Time Review Arizona Book 1 Review

This is a Mama Buzz review. The product was provided by: Wright on Time Books for this review.

Kiersten and I have been reading a new series of books that we are just loving.  It is about a homeschooling, or "roadschooling" as one of the kids puts it, family that travels in a RV across the United States and the adventures they face along the way.  We have really enjoyed the first book and I plan on ordering more to continue or study on the 50 states.  I love that it's about a homeschooling family since I don't know of too many books out there that are geared toward us.


This books starts off in Arizona with a family starting their "roadschooling" adventure by exploring a cave that they rented out for the day.  The adventure that follows for them is pretty exciting!

The books are very educational in nature as well and we learned a lot from them.  It was the perfect time for us as well as we were studying about bats in our Apologia Zoology book and this fit right in!  Love when that kind of stuff falls into place!  The book captured my daugters attention from the start and she looked forward to our reading time every day to find out what was happening next.

I would highly recommend these books, for homeschoolers and regular schoolers, as they are just wonderful!  They are a great length as well, not too long and not too short.  We finished the book in a week and that was just perfect for us.  My only wish was that I had another one on hand to keep going!

Here is a video you can watch to find out more about the Wright on Time Book 1 on Arizona:




You can find the book on their website here or on Amazon at this link.

The Ultimate Cloth Review and Giveaway!

This is a Mama Buzz review. The product was provided by the makers of the Ultimate Cloth for this review. I was not compensated for this review.

 The Ultimate Cloth is eco-friendly solution for homes as well as a money and time saver. The Ultimate Cloth is a brand new technology – in fact, it is the only cloth to receive a new patent in the last 25 years. The Ultimate Cloth is a simple, green and effective one-step cleaning process. The Ultimate Cloth cleans any hard surface – glass, wood, granite, stainless steel and many more – with just water! No longer do you have to use harsh chemicals in your home, nor do you need spend hundreds of dollars per year buying them. The Ultimate Cloth has been lab tested to remove 96% of bacteria, without the use of chemicals. And, can cut 50% off your cleaning time. The Ultimate Cloth is truly the ultimate in green cleaning.

Sounds pretty cool huh?!  I do have to say I was pretty skeptical that just one cloth could do all that and then some!  I had been looking for a new cleaning cloth ironically, so this came at the perfect time.  I put it to the test on my ultimate thorn, my glass top stove.  And I am happy to say that it worked marvelous and I was one happy girl!  It left no streaks and normally hard to remove stains came right off with just water.  Normally, I would have to let the stain soak overnight and then my husband would have to use his "elbow grease" to get it out even at that.  To be able to have it work that well on that so quickly I was sold instantly!  I cleaned my whole kitchen and I was very happy.  I do have to say I love the smell of some cleaners so I did miss that a little, but to have the results that I did are well worth it!  It did wonderfully in the bathroom as well and it was nice to just have one cloth to clean everything I needed.  I love this thing!

And having just gotten over the swine flu, I was wanting to lysol my whole house but with this I didn't feel the need to with it's 96% rate of removing bacteria.  It worked great cleaning my ITouch, cell phone and ipod too! 

The price of this cloth is $6.00 and well worth every sent!  And you can get one for free too!

All you need to do is follow Ultimate Cloth America on Twitter or become a fan on facebook:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Ultimate_Cloth
facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ultimate-Cloth-America/209222110335?v=wall&ref=ts

They will reveal how to get the free Ultimate Cloths via Twitter and facebook.  Give it a try....I think you will really like it!

Girl Talk Book Review

Girl Talk is a book put out by Five Star Publications and is written by Gigi Garner (who is the daughter of James Garner). 

Reading this book was like sitting in your living room or around your kitchen table with a bunch of girlfriends just chatting.  It was a very quick and easy read.  I laughed, could relate, learned and enjoyed the stories of the many wonderful women that shared for this book.  I think that it would make a great gift for the friend you don't really know what to get.  

The only downside that I see to the book is that the price it a little high at $15.95 in my opinion.  I think if it could be a little smaller in size to nicely tuck inside a gift basket or even mail in a card that would be a great idea.  

It's one of those books that is nice to just sit around, like in the bathroom because who doesn't like to read in the bathroom! I liked that you could pick up anywhere and read some fun stories, glean some good advice and just sit and relax with some good friends.

As far as recommending it, I am on the fence for the reasons above as the price and the size of it, but I am very pleased to been given the opportunity to read it.  I definitely learned some fun new ways to use olive oil, some great recipes,  a proven stain remover, some wonderful stories of hope and stories that made me laugh.

**This is a Mama Buzz review. The product was provided by Five Star Publications for this review.

The Simple Life book review

 

I read the Simple Life this past week for The Ooze Viral Bloggers and found it a good, but kind of long read, for the topic that has simple in the title.  It was easy to read and I liked the life stories that were shared by the father/son team as they interviewed over a 1000 people for this book.  I really liked the examples that they shared from the many people they interviewed and no matter how different people's life seem to be that it can all be taken down to the simple fact that we all desire change in some way or another.  And making life simpler is the answer to many people's issues and this book gives some very practical ways just how to do that. It covers 4 key areas in our life that affect us all in different ways that are time, relationships, money and God.  It is written by Thom Rainer and his son, Art.   There is an interview on Lifeway site I linked about that is a good about this book. 

For me personally, I can't say that I learned anything new by reading this book, but I did finish it with the desire to take a good inventory of my life and to see what areas I could simplify things.  So for that fact alone, I would recommend this book.  I think anything that causes us to slow our busy pace so many of us have and to focus on the important things, is good; very good. 

Finding an Unseen God book review

I am part of a blogger book review for The Ooze and this month I read Finding An Unseen God by Alicia Britt Chole. When I got the book I was surprised at how thin it was and even more surprised at how quick a read it was. I was pleasantly surprised by how engaging it was. Alicia gives you little snipits into her life and it is very easy and fun to read. She gives some history into her childhood years and how her family was very intellectual and how that played a big part into her belief system. She does seem to get a little preachy at times with her views now but it didn't bother me too much since it quickly moved onto something else. I would have loved to hear more detail in her story about her life but for a quick read this is an excellent book. I would highly recommend this to anyone that may not be a christian or if you know someone that is searching for God. It is definitely not a book full of arguments of why you should turn from Atheism to Christianity, but it is a delightful book with a sweet story of one girls journey to just that and to a God that loves her very much.