Episode #218-A Different Beautiful with Courtney Westlake

by kathilipp | Sep 20, 2016 | Hard Stuff, Podcast | 0 comments

When Courtney Westlake’s family was given the shocking news that their daughter, Brenna, was born in 2011 with a severe, life-threatening skin disorder, they began to discover a new and different beautiful in their lives–one that values extraordinary differences and appreciates the wonderful sameness found in humanity. In A Different Beautiful, Courtney explores what her family has discovered in raising a child with physical differences and what she has learned about true beauty. Through her personal insights and experiences, Courtney shares how you, too, can learn to find and celebrate God’s version of beautiful in your life, especially within our differences and struggles. How do you respond when someone looks different? Can you see the beauty in situations even when they are challenging? Today I talk with author, Courtney Westlake, about her journey with her daughter who was born with Harlequin Ichthyosisa a severe, life-threatening skin disorder which makes her look very different from others. Listen as we talk about the beauty Courtney has found in life by being Brenna’s mom and what it has taught her about true beauty. We have two copies of Courtney’s Book A Different Beautiful to give away. Listen to the episode and share with whom you would share the book and we will give you two copies: one for you and one to share as a gift.

Meet Our Guest

Courtney Westlake

Courtney Westlake is a writer and photographer with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a passion for storytelling. Courtney is wife to Evan and mother to Connor and Brenna. After Brenna was born with a rare and life-threatening skin disorder in 2011, Courtney began blogging at CourtneyWestlake.com to chronicle family life and experiences parenting a child with physical differences and special needs. Her writing has been published on sites such as Good Housekeeping, the Huffington Post, Woman’s Day and Yahoo Parenting. Courtney is the author of A Different Beautiful, releasing August 1, 2016.

Episode #217-5 Habits of a Woman Who Doesn’t Quit

by kathilipp | Sep 12, 2016 | Podcast, The Me Project, tips and ideas | 0 comments

Buy 5 Habits of a Woman Who Doesn’t Quit

Have you ever gotten to the place where you just couldn’t take it anymore?

Dreams. Programs. Jobs. Relationships. There are so many different areas where we feel like calling it quits.

It’s time for an honest conversation on how not to give in to the temptation to give up.

Nicki Koziarz is a woman who has thrown in the towel a time or two. In fact, she’s quit just about everything in her life. But with God’s help, she’s discovered a few habits that have helped her and others conquer the choice to quit.

5 Habits of a Woman Who Doesn’t Quit will enable you to:

Evaluate the internal personal struggles that make you want to quit.
Cultivate consistent habits to help you progress toward your goals.
Receive a fresh dose of perspective from the Bible that will help you develop perseverance.

You are not made to quit! Join Nicki as she identifies five habits to help you keep going no matter what struggles may come your way.

Do you find yourself starting things, but not finishing them? Would you like to learn from someone who broke that habit and replaced it with other habits that help her finish strong? Today I talk with author Nicki Koziarz about her book 5 Habits of a Woman Who Doesn’t Quit about not quitting including the five questions to ask yourself before quitting. Does Nicki’s name sound familiar? That’s because I did an awesome interview with her for the Husband Project. Be sure to listen to it here:

Episode #206-Nicki Koziarz and The Ultimate Resource Guide for (trying to be) Awesome Wives

FREE DOWNLOAD

What kind of quitter are you? Take this quiz and see what you can do to stop being a quitter based on your personality.

Take the Quiz!

Meet Our Guest

Nicki Koziarz

Nicki Koziarz is an author and speaker with Proverbs 31 Ministries. Each week she helps leads thousands of women through P31 Online Bible Studies. She and her husband, Kris, own a fixer upper farm just outside Charlotte, NC. There they are raising their three beautiful [but hormonal] daughters, a barnyard of misfit animals and one slightly famous pug. After a broken experience in the Church, Nicki is consumed with learning to lead her generation on the pursuit of Truth and Love.

Episode #216-The Basics of Canning with Melissa K. Norris

by kathilipp | Sep 6, 2016 | Home, Podcast, Recipes, tips and ideas | 0 comments

Buy The Made from Scratch Life

Do you long for simpler days? Do you wish you had the time to offer your family home-grown meals? Does your heart cry for a quiet place in this fast-paced world?

Blogger and homesteader Melissa K. Norris inspires with practical and easy methods to help you cook from scratch, garden, preserve your own food, and see God’s fingerprints in your everyday busy life. You’ll learn how to

plan, plant, and harvest for eating and preserving
troubleshoot common gardening problems with natural solutions
improve your family’s health with natural cooking and cleaning methods
Whether you live in the middle of the asphalt jungle or on the side of a mountain, you can experience the pioneer lifestyle and start your own homesteading journey. Because when you surround yourself with things made from the hand of God, you can’t help but see Him.

Melissa’s Canning Applesauce Recipe

Start your canning with this delicious recipe from Melissa K. Norris! Click on photo for free download.

Does the idea of canning your own food scare you? What do you need? What CAN you can? Will I give someone botulism and kill them???? Today I talk with Melissa K. Norris, author of The Made from Scratch Life, about how to get started with canning. We talk about which foods get canned using different methods, what the basic equipment needs are and did you know there is a difference between Pressure Cookers and Pressure Canners??? Melissa teaches us about all of these things and more! Let’s all give canning a try and post pictures in the comments! Mentioned in this podcast: Online Canning Course: Live Home Canning Class Presto Canning Kit Melissa’s podcast: Pioneering Today Podcast Win a copy of Melissa’s book The Made from Scratch Life by leaving a comment telling me one step you are going to make towards homesteading!

FREE DOWNLOAD

Start your canning with this delicious recipe from Melissa K. Norris! Click on photo for free download.

Meet Our Guest

Melissa K. Norris

Hey, there, I’m Melissa K. Norris. I’m just a plain country girl who loves Jesus, playing in the dirt, stuffing food into Mason jars (after I wash my hands of course), and hunting down as many traditional old-fashioned skills as I can to put into use on our homestead.

Occasionally I chase down a chicken and I’ve been known to wrangle a cow or two back into the pasture when they get the hankering to leave our field.

Visit www.MelissaKNorris.com for heirloom gardening, preserving the harvest (all forms of canning, dehydrating, and any other way to preserve food at home), raising critters aka livestock, from scratch cooking, frugal living, and any other kind of old-fashioned skill I come across and am determined to master.

P.S. I love to chat, so you can visit with me and listen to my podcast at www.MelissaKNorris.com/podcast

Episode #215-Listener Question About Being Overwhelmed with Cheri Gregory

by kathilipp | Aug 30, 2016 | Overwhelmed, Podcast | 0 comments

Great Resources for Highly Sensitive People

Check out the over 40 blog posts on the topic of being an HSP including “When Facing Your Clutter Feels Too Overwhelming” and subscribe to a 10 Day Resource email series to encourage and restore hope.

Have you been feeling like you can’t get it all done? Are you overwhelmed? Kathi talks with Cheri Gregory, her co-author of their upcoming book Overwhelmed, How to Quiet the Chaos and Restore Your Sanity, to answer a listener’s question.

“Hi Kathi! I found your blog via Cheri Gregory’s blog. I’ve been enjoying (and hopefully learning) from your blog posts and podcasts. I’ve been looking at my stuff, my house, my responsibilities, my kids, etc, lately and feeling like I am somewhat out of control. The physical stuff generally is used and gets put back within a one foot radius of where it belongs. I can purge stuff without any problems and have done some throughout my married years. But when it comes to getting everything done in a timely manner without missing anything, I start to feel like my brain is too full or too small or has some kind of black hole somewhere! (Maybe the mysterious force that normally eats socks has taken up residence in in my head? )

Four homeschooled kids ages 9, 7, 4, and 1 tends to add a whole other load of responsibility and tasks. Where do I start and what do I do?

Signed, a slightly frazzled mom otherwise known as A.”

Listen to this episode to get great advice and tips from Kathi and Cheri.

FREE DOWNLOAD

Are you thinking you might be a highly sensitive person, and get easily overwhelmed? Download this free assessment and then visit Cheri Gregory’s blog for great resources. Click here to download.

Meet Our Guest

Cheri Gregory

Cheri Gregory is a teacher, speaker, author, and Certified Personality Trainer. Her passion is helping women break free from destructive expectations. She writes and speaks from the conviction that “how to” works best in partnership with “heart, too.”

Cheri is the co-author, with Kathi Lipp, of The Cure for the “Perfect” Life and the upcoming Overwhelmed.

Cheri has been “wife of my youth” to Daniel, her opposite personality, for twenty-eight years and is “Mom” to Annemarie (25) and Jonathon (23), also opposite personalities.

Cheri blogs about perfectionism, people-pleasing, highly sensitive people, and hope at www.cherigregory.com.

Episode #214-Take Hold of the Faith You Long For with Sharon Jaynes

by kathilipp | Aug 23, 2016 | God, Podcast, The Me Project | 0 comments

Take Hold of the Faith You Long For

On the outside, many women are well-put-together Christians with trendy shoes, beautiful children, and wide, white smiles. On the inside, those same women are little girls cowering at the edge of the playground, hoping no one notices them, yet still wishing they could join in. They’ve professed faith and know the right things, but they struggle to truly take hold of the "life more abundant" that Jesus offers. Instead they settle for a life that’s less than what God has promised them.

Free Power Verses

Click on the image and download your own power verses to print out and put up in a place to keep you inspired.

Do you ever feel “not good enough”? Even as a Christian, you can know that all of your sins are forgiven, but still struggle with past mistakes or carry over feelings of inadequacy from life before becoming a Christian. How do we break the cycle of bad thoughts? In this episode, I talk with Sharon Jaynes, author of Take Hold of the Faith You Long For: Let Go, Move Forward, Live Bold who experienced these very same feelings. Listen and find practical tips and encouragement for your faith.

FREE DOWNLOAD

Click on the image and download your own power verses to print out and put up in a place to keep you inspired.

Meet Our Guest

Sharon Jaynes

Sharon Jaynes is an international conference speaker and author of 20 books, with over a half million sold. For ten years, she served as vice-president of Proverbs 31 Ministries and co-host for their daily radio program. Sharon is the co-founder of Girlfriends in God, Inc.,a ministry that touches nearly 500,000 women daily through internet devotions. Sharon is also a popular guest on radio and television programs such as Revive our Hearts and Family Life. Besides her own books, she has also been a contributing author in many books such as Chicken Soup for the Sports Fan’s Soul, Stories for the Teens Heart, Stories for the Man’s Heart, and the Women’s Devotional Bible. Her books have been translated into several different languages including Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, and Korean.

Episode #212-Loving My Actual Life with Alexandra Kuykendall

by kathilipp | Aug 9, 2016 | Clutter Free, Podcast, The Me Project | 0 comments

Loving My Actual Life: An Experiment in Relishing What’s Right in Front of Me

Feel Satisfied with Who and Where You Are

In a world of comparison and discontent, it can feel impossible to be happy with life as we know it. Other people seem to have it all together, to be finding success, to be having more fun. But we weren’t meant for a life characterized by dissatisfaction.

In this entertaining and relatable book, Alexandra Kuykendall chronicles her nine-month experiment to rekindle her love of her ordinary "actual" life. After wiping her calendar as clean as a mother of four can, Kuykendall focuses on one aspect of her life each month, searching for ways to more fully enjoy her current season. By intentionally adding one thing each month that will make her jump for joy, she provides a practical challenge women can easily replicate. With humor, poignancy, and plenty of personal stories, Kuykendall weaves together spiritual themes and practical application into a holy self-awareness, showing women how a few small changes in their routines can improve their enjoyment of this crazy-busy life.

Start Reading Right Now: Loving My Actual Life

Start reading Loving My Actual Life right now!!! Download the first 39 pages to read more about WHY Alex did the experiment to declutter her life AND start the first month’s challenge to find Quiet.

Is your calendar too full? Do you get stressed about meal planning? Does social media become a time suck? Living Clutter Free does not mean just dealing with the physical clutter, but also the emotional and spiritual. Author Alex Kuykendall embarked on a nine month experiment to see how she could better her home life.

Listen as she tells us about the little changes she made, because small changes are more likely to get done and more likely to be sustainable,yet they created a BIG impact on her life.

FREE DOWNLOAD

Start reading Loving My Actual Life right now!!! Download the first 39 pages to read more about WHY Alex did the experiment to declutter her life AND start the first month’s challenge to find Quiet.

Meet Our Guest

Alexandra Kuykendall

Alexandra Kuykendall spends most of her days chauffeuring her kids and searching for a better solution to the laundry dilemma. The author of The Artist’s Daughter, she was on staff with MOPS International for nearly ten years and is a trusted voice in mothering circles. She lives in the shadows of downtown Denver with her husband and their four daughters. Connect at AlexandraKuykendall.com.

Episode #218-A Different Beautiful with Courtney Westlake