A Refuge at Highland Hall by Carrie Turansky

by Andrea Renee Cox

As an influencer for Carrie Turansky, I received a copy of A Refuge at Highland Hall in exchange for my honest review. Thank you, Carrie!

Now that I got the business stuff out of the way, let me dig in to the meat of this story.

First of all, it’s the final installment in the Edwardian Brides series. This series should be read in order for optimum reader appreciation. I was glad I read it from beginning to end, because I got to know the characters and watched them grow from one book to the next. What a cool experience. A lot of books leave you wondering what could have happened to the characters you fell in love with, but Carrie Turansky took us on a journey further into the lives of her dear, fictional friends.

Be My Guest: Jill Kemerer

by Andrea Renee Cox

Hello friends! It is my pleasure to introduce you to Jill Kemerer. Her posts to Facebook often make me smile, as does her blog (I hope you'll check it out!), so of course I just had to ask her to be my guest.

Inspired by a Rarely Used Room

by Jill Kemerer

Ah, the formal dining room. I never had one until three years ago when we bought our house, and frankly, I didn’t see the point. My husband and I aren’t big entertainers. We eat meals with our kids around an old table in our kitchen. Easy to clean, low key. That’s how we like it.

But the new house came with one. The empty dining room begged to be furnished, so we purchased a used dining set, added a few accessories, and were happy with the end result. We even occasionally eat there. I know—crazy! It’s still the least used room in our house.

4 Tips for Better Focus

by Andrea Renee Cox

Are distractions holding you back? Is your desk buried under clutter? What keeps you from checking things off your to-do list?

For most of my life I have struggled with focus and organization. My excuse is I have lived with undiagnosed attention deficit disorder. I only know this because several of my tutoring students have been diagnosed with ADD, and I share the same symptoms and struggles that they deal with on a daily basis. Thankfully, God has revealed to me through trial and error what works and what doesn’t for me where organization and focus are concerned. That is not to say I have it mastered by any means; I do not. It is something I have to constantly work at and force myself to try and try and try again until I get it right for any given moment.

Here are a few tips I’ve learned the hard way.

Prayer Works

by Andrea Renee Cox

The movie War Room speaks to the power of prayer. After seeing the movie on opening weekend, I was inspired to pray more boldly yet with more humility.

Over the week or two prior to viewing the film, I had been in a sort of panic. The research for one of my old writing projects that I’d set aside had seemed to vanish. I couldn’t find it anywhere. So I prayed every day, several times each day, that it would show up if that’s the next project God wanted me to work on. I also asked my family and a friend to pray for me in this matter.

But the research remained lost.