A Cat and Flowers

(or, in which I give you a short preview on the surroundings of my house)

This cat is a lovely cat. He loves sleeping around my house somewhere almost every day, and once I even caught him inside! This morning, I was sitting on this chair, and he came and curled up on my lap—something he NEVER does! He’s always been an aloof cat, only bearing the occasional scratch behind the ears, and definitely not curling up on people’s laps. I think old age must be mellowing him quite a bit.

A flower out front of my house. Don’t know what kind it is.

 

And some flowers on a bush behind my house…don’t know what kind they are, either, but they sure are pretty!

 

 

 

 

 

Another unknown flower. I find it amazing to think of all the varieties there are! I’m sure God had fun creating them!

 

I know what this is! First rose of the season. I’m sure there will be more later—a rose bush covers one side of my porch. It will be fun to see the colors when everything is in bloom!

Alright. I need to get busy on writing again after this little break. I hope you’ve enjoyed the pictures!
-Esther

A New Idea

I just shared this on Facebook, and thought I could share it here as well. If you have any thoughts or ideas, I’d appreciate hearing them!

The last while I’ve been praying about a way to have a home business (so hopefully I can save enough to go to Nursing School). An idea came to me this morning that perhaps I could start a website for homeschool parents to go to to find books (and other resources) to supplement curriculum (or build their own curriculum from).

So here’s my question for everyone: If there was a website geared toward homeschooling that had a big list of good books that are interesting and informative, would you use it?

I’m thinking it would be sorted several different ways (genre, time period, etc.), and each individual book would have a short synopsis at the top along with a little “quick” information about it. Then, if you click a “read more” link there would be several paragraphs of an in-depth review of the book (not giving away the plot, but saying how it was helpful), and warnings if there was something that parents might want to censor, etc. Also, I would provide links to where you can find it to buy it, so the work would already be done. (And we could even have a place for others to put in their opinion of a certain book.)

Along with books for homeschooling, I thought eventually I might also be able to list helpful movies and games that parents could use as well. And, perhaps, as time will allow, have resources for aspiring writers as well (such as helpful books for researching Australian history, or blindness, etc.).

So once again—if there was a website like this, would you find it useful? Or do you prefer finding things yourself?

Thank you in advance for sharing your opinion!
-Esther

P.S. I’ve already had one question about how I’d earn money from the site. At the moment, it would be through affiliate links (such as where to buy a particular book) and through ads on the sidebar (which I’m hoping would come as publicity increases).

Five Reasons You Should Write 100 Words Every Day

Beginning on Monday (the 15th), Go Teen Writers will be holding their fourth 100 words for 100 days challenge! Next to NaNoWriMo, the 100-4-100 challenge rates as my favorite one of the year. It’s simple; 100 words generally takes about 10 minutes to write. And with those 100 words, times 100 days, you end up with about 10,000 words in the story you’re writing!

I joined their second 100-4-100 challenge, back in 2012 (remind me if that’s the wrong year). That year, I did it for a couple weeks and flunked. Then, last year, I joined again, and that time succeeded—in total, for those 100 days, I had about 4 days off total that I didn’t write.

So while it does take a little time, if you’re a writer who would benefit from any of the following things, I think you ought to join as well.

• Fresh inspiration, which generally only comes for me only after I’ve been writing for a little while (not always, but most of the time). Something about writing juices getting going again….
• The knowledge that there are others who are doing it—and succeeding at it, and you can too—an encouragement when it seems like the only progress you’re making is backwards.
• Having the sheer thrill of feeling a story grow through your fingertips, and knowing that you are an author, after days or weeks or however long it’s been since you last wrote anything.
• Realizing that it is possible to get closer to the end of your story—even if the end seems a long way away, and it’s been sitting in basically the same state for a long while.
• Getting into a daily habit of devoting 10 minutes—or however long it is for you—to honing the craft you love working on, something that is invaluable to writers.

That’s just a few off the top of my head right now. I know there are other reasons as well. But, this is my bottom line: If you’re a writer, and you can make 10—or 20—extra minutes in your day, I think you should join the challenge.

Signing up ends Sunday night—don’t put it off until too late! Otherwise, you’ll have to wait a whole year!

(There are rules to the challenge—visit their page to find out about them.)

~Esther

The “Ultimate” Healthy Living Bundle

There is an Ultimate Healthy Living Bundle that is about to go on sale. It contains a lot of of ebooks covering all sorts of topics related to healthy living, plus $200 worth of bonus products. The bundle is valued at over $1000, but it will soon be on sale for $29.97.

There is a way to get it absolutely free, though! Go here, and sign up to get an email when the bundle goes on sale. They will automatically generate a referral link for you, and you can use that link to share the deal with your friends. If one friend signs up, you can get $5 off the bundle. Further amounts of friends signing up will give you bigger prizes until you get the entire bundle for free in the end if enough friends sign up!

There is one good perk to this—it doesn’t matter if your friends do not actually buy the bundle—for you to get it free, they just have to sign up to receive the email about it. The offer will end, though, when the bundle goes on sale, which happens very soon. So if you want to take advantage of the deal, you should probably start telling your friends soon…before the bundle goes on sale!

Once again, here’s the link to the place you can sign up to hear about when the sale comes on…and so you can get the referral link to give to your friends!

(Yes, that is my referral link…just so you know. I’d be grateful if you used it to sign up with!)

~Esther