Salad Recipes to Keep You Cool

By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Who wants to spend time in a hot kitchen when summer calls for recipes that beat the heat? See below for three of my go-to salad favorites. These are tasty and easy! Easy Broccoli Salad 3 cups fresh broccoli florets 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese 6 bacon strips, cooked and crumbled 1/2 cup toasted sunflower seeds …

Creating the Perfect Reading Spot

By Cathy Baker @DiAnnMills This week Cathy Baker @CathyBaker is my guest blogger. Do you have the perfect reading spot? “The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.” —Ursula K. Le Guin You’re handed a book by your favorite author and told …

13 Ways We Can Make a Difference in Our Communities

By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Summer has us busy—sometimes too busy. In the middle of fun-filled exhaustion, we hear a speaker or read an article asking how we are making a difference in our community. Ouch. We hadn’t thought about that. We’re busy planning and implementing a vacation which leaves us a bit stressed and needing a rest afterward. Work piles …

June 11 – National Making Life Beautiful Day

By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills National Making Life Beautiful Day is an opportunity to put a smile on someone’s face. Everyone needs a touch of beauty. Indeed, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford shows us the value of an esthetic experience. What makes your life beautiful may be acts of kindness or encouragement while another …

7 Reasons We Love Stories

By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Thousands of stories are released each year. So many wonderful and amazing books, and we’ll never be able to read them all. But we try. What’s the fascination for story? Why do we crave the next novel and the next? Here are 7 reasons we love story. Entertainment is the number one reason we love story. …

National Honesty Day

By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills April 30th is National Honesty Day. The value of honesty seems like an easy decision for most of us. It’s a virtue we want to incorporate in our lives, and we want our list of virtues to include trustworthy, reliable, upright, honorable, righteous, kind, and the list goes on. “Honesty is the first chapter in the …

Favorite Candy from the 50s – 70s

By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills A few weeks ago, I asked my friends on Facebook to share their favorite childhood candy. We had so much fun reminiscing that I decided to research the top-selling candy since the 1950s. Sweet Taste Explosions of the 1950s Anise Bears Atomic Fireballs Turkish Taffy Dad’s Root Beer Barrels Junior Mints Bit-O-Honey Sugar Babies Lemonheads Bubblegum …

7 Habits of a Highly Productive Reader

By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Readers come in all shapes, sizes, and ages. Some prefer short nonfiction pieces while other readers reach for book length. Fiction readers select type and genre of stories according to their taste and whim. Avid readers devour one book after another while many prefer to linger on each word. Word lovers highlight and underline passages that …

Samson’s Locks of Strength

By Darlene L. Turner @DiAnnMills This week’s guest blogger is Darlene L. Turner @DarleneLTurner Did you know every strand of hair on our heads is dead? So, where does it get its strength? It starts in the papilla (hair bulb), which feeds from cells in our blood vessels deep under the surface. One of my favorite Bible stories is Samson …