The Stone a Collective- May

The Stone Collective is a community making much of Jesus as we create art, photography, prose, poems or music that commemorate the wonderful things God does in our life. Based on the passage in 1 Samuel 7:12-14, each month we will collect Ebenezer Stones as a regular practice in the art of worship via our creativity. Want to join in on The Stone Collective? Create your own Stone and link up to LIVE IT OUT! Blog. #TheStoneCollective on FB, Twitter, and Instagram.

Urban Watercolor Sketching

Urban Watercolor Sketching
By Felix Scheinberger

About the book:
A guide that shows painters, drawers, doodlers, and urban sketchers how to bring their drawings to life with colorful, bold, yet accessible painting methods.

COLOR YOUR LIFE

Bring new energy to your sketches of urban scenes with this fresh and simple approach to watercolor painting. Whether you’re an amateur artist, drawer, doodler, or sketcher, watercolor is a versatile sketching medium that’s perfect for people on the go—much like pen or pencil. Accomplished designer and illustrator Felix Scheinberger offers a solid foundation in color theory and countless lessons on all aspects of watercolor sketching, including:

Fundamentals like wet-on-wet, glazes, and washes
Materials and supplies to bring on your travels
Little-known tips and tricks, like painting when water
isn’t handy and seeking out inspiration

Vibrant watercolor paintings grace each page, and light-hearted anecdotes (why do fish make great subjects to paint, you may be wondering...) make this a lively guide to the medium. With an open mind and sketchbook, you will be ready to capture the moments around you in luminous color with confidence, creativity, and ease—no matter what your skill level may be.

My thoughts:
I've been watercolor painting for about a year and I love it. It's so relaxing and fun. Each chance to learn a new technique excited me.

"Urban Watercolor Sketches" is all about being you in your art while cover all the watercolor basics from color theory to different types of glazes.

The entire book is filled with bright and sketchy pictures to spur you into to trying out watercolor for yourself.

This is a great book for someone wanting to start out in watercolor or anyone wanting to re-inspire there hobby!

*i received this book free for review from Blogging For Books*

Rating: 4 carats

Spoken For

Spoken For
By Robin Jones Gunn and Alyssa Joy Bethke

About the book:
A great romance was set in motion before you were born. A relentless Lover is pursuing you, and He has made His intentions clear. He wants you to be His forever. How will you respond to the One who longs for you to be His with your whole heart?
In Spoken For, Robin Jones Gunn and Alyssa Joy Bethke speak to your heart about what it means for you to belong to Christ, who you are because of His love, and how that affects the way you live. Drawing on biblical promises and their personal experiences, these two friends share what it’s like to live out God’s unfolding love story.
You are not up for grabs. You are spoken for.

My thoughts:
I couldn't wait for this book because I love all of Robin Jones Gunn's books, both fiction and non-fiction. They are filled with warmth and whimsy. Robin enlists the help of her good friend, Alyssa Joy Bethke, blogger and wife of author Jeff Bethke. In the first chapter we learn how Alyssa and Robin became friends. Alyssa was doing an internship at a church in Mauai, Hawaii when she met Robin and told her how much Robin's Christy Miller series meant to her. Does anyone remember that fun story from Robin's book "Victim of Grace". It was exciting to see that the Alyssa from the book is Alyssa Bethke.

The premise of the book is that we all, as children of God, are spoken for. The book lives up to its title. Every chapter showed a way Alyssa and Robin learned to see who they were in Jesus Christ and how they began to live there life differently.

" Spoken For" is full of encouragement and reminders that we are precious to Christ.

* I received the book free for review from Multnomah Publishers *

Rating: 5 carats

I've Never Been to Vegas but My Luggage Has

I've Never Been to Vegas But My Luggae Has
By Mandy Hale

About the book:
Wrong turns, humiliating flops, painful heartbreaks—and happiness? Yes, believe it or not, they can go hand in hand.
Blogger and author Mandy Hale, affectionately known as “The Single Woman” to her half-million social-media followers, is living an adventurous life that proves even our lowest lows and messiest mess-ups can point us toward our joy-filled destiny as single women.
In I’ve Never Been To Vegas, But My Luggage Has, Mandy delivers heart-to-heart, often hilarious stories from a life filled with love and loss, glamour and goose bumps, faith and friendship, big dreams and battle scars. She shares the bittersweet euphoria of her high-school romance, the panic-stricken cluelessness of her first day on a stressful job, and the foot-in-mouth horror of her red-carpet interview with a music legend.
Along the way, Mandy dollops personal anecdotes with encouraging insights. From thrilling first kisses to crushing break-ups, from soaring career milestones to promising flights that never quite got off the ground, she unfolds in often uproarious detail the zigzags along the path toward a pinnacle moment: sharing a table and a pinch-me-I’m-dreaming conversation with her lifelong hero.
In the end, Mandy turns Sin City’s infamous marketing slogan on its head: What happens in her life doesn’t stay in her life. She shares even her darkest moments in witty, winsome ways that make us not only feel her pain, but also laugh with her and apply her hard-won nuggets of inspiration to our own lives.

My thoughts:

"I've never been to Vegas, but my Luggage has" took me a while to get into but when I did it was good. This is Mandy Hale's biography and how she came to creat her brand "The Single Woman".

At first, I didn't really relate to her, it seemed like she was taking us through her job day to day telling is how great it us or when she did silly things. After a while, I started to see a bigger story and deeper struggles than just making a fool of yourself at work unfold. Through it all we see where she got the advice she now gives on her blog and how she learn to live the strong and independent of what other people think.

Mandy is really candid and open about her experiences, sometime surprisingly so. It's refreshing to see be honest about times the struggled with their faith or made a bad decision.

"I've never been to Vegas...." Is ultimately of story of hope and faith that people truly can change and when you allow God to guide you, He will take you places you never imagined.

*i received this book free for review from BookLook Bloggers*

Rating: 4 carats

A May Bride

A May Bride
By Meg Mosley

About the book:
She’s prepared for her wedding all her life … but she forgot a few things.
Ellie Martin, a country girl in Atlanta, often de-stresses from city life by tending the flower beds of a church near her apartment. She has dreamed of a traditional wedding all her life, a wedding like the one her younger sister is planning back in their hometown. Their single mom will pay for Alexa’s wedding, but Ellie started her own wedding fund years ago. She only needs to find a groom.
She bumps into a man who’s a guest at a wedding on the church grounds. She’s noticed him around the neighborhood, but today he introduces himself as Gray Whitby. They embark on a whirlwind romance, but her mother doesn’t trust freewheeling men like him. Standing up to Mom leads Ellie to stick up for Alexa too. When Ellie risks her own plans for her sister’s sake, Gray feels betrayed. Will he always play second fiddle?
Will Ellie and Gray reconcile their differences so her dream wedding can come true, or will the romance they’ve begun come crashing down?

My thoughts:
Ellie thinks she established a life all for herself but when Gray Whitby comes into her world he challenges how independent she really is. Does she want the life her mom has planned for her or does Ellie wants to make her own path.

Ellie's mother is very controlling and bitter. Her views and opinions took over the story and there are time a I wish there was more Ellie, even if she reflected on her moms bitter ways I wish it was contrasted with what Ellie really thought. Ellie struggled with how to stand up to her mom but Gray didn't always support the struggle and I don't understand why they wanted to jump into marriage so quickly, like I said there wasn't enough of them to really know it was simply Ellie's mom doesn't want a quick marriage of a marriage to someone she (Ellie's mom) hadn't known for a long time.

They did seem happy at the end and Ellie made some big strides in "cutting the apron strings" as Gray so often put it.

*I received this book free for review from Zondervan Publishers through netgalley.com*

Ellie: