Book Review: The 60 Minute Money Workout

I was sent The 60 Minute Money Workout to review from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing this past month. The author, Ellie Kay, is a financial expert on Good Money (ABC news), CNBC, CNN, and Fox News.

Here is the summary from the back of the book:

"You can revolutionize your finances in only sixty minutes! Looking for long-term economic stability and not common quick-fix schemes? Now a nationally recognized financial expert and best-selling author, Ellie shares her one-hour-a-week program that has made it possible to take care of her family and do it all debt-free! With entertaining anecdotes, easy-to-follow charts, and practical advice, The 60-Minute Money Workout is both fun and feasible. You’ll be able to:

> Get out of debt and save for your kids’ college
> Have meaningful and debt-free vacations
> Pay cash for your cars
> Make a difference in the world by giving generously
> Find financial peace with your spouse
> Be content with your current circumstances
> Latch onto hope for your financial future

In just one hour a week, you’ll be financially stronger and smarter. Revolutionize your quality of life with the Workout and you’ll never look back!"

This book has taken me a while to review, but I enjoyed reading it. I agree with a lot of the information in the book. I like how she explains that spending one hour a week discussing your finances and making plans can make a difference in your financial life. There are 12 sections in the book that detail how to go about discussing subjects and planning for the future.

Bret and I followed the discussion guidelines for creating a spending plan (budget). It was very helpful to sit down and discuss a budget together. I think it's important for both of us to know what's going on with our finances. Our discussion led us to go and get Quicken and figure out how to make it work for us (we'd bought the Quicken 2008 a few years ago and didn't realize it's only good for 3 years - after that they stop allowing you to download information from the credit cards and banks).

I like the information in this book and the idea of meeting together weekly to discuss the finances. I didn't love the whole work out analogy for the hour meeting (warm up- prep for your money workout, strength training- set financial goals, cardio burn- put goals into action, heart rate- measure financial performance, and cool down- reward yourself).

The author has a great website with a tool center including many different calculators and planning tools. I think this book is a great one to check out from the library and peruse. I'm not sure I would recommend owning it, most of the information in it were things I already knew.

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.

Poor Frosty...

At the end of the previous post I showed the cute snowman Anna and Andrew had made. Once the sun came out it didn't take long until Frosty was melted.

Birthday and Snow

Bret had a birthday on Saturday. We held a little surprise party for him with our family. I tried to do something special for him since it was his 40th. I did a pretty good job keeping it a secret until the very end. I hadn't finished working out how to have him away from the house so the guests could arrive. He decided to go out and work in the front yard about the time people started arriving. We had a nice dinner and then he opened gifts. My brother, Jake, asked to go first since his gift was ALIVE! No he hadn't checked with me to see if I was ok with raising chickens. Bret had mentioned a few times that he'd like chickens and every time he brought it up I said absolutely not! We're now the proud parents of 6 baby chicks.


Anna drew a picture for the chicks to look at.

The kids love these baby chicks.


Anna and Andrew decided to make a snowman today. It was so cute, but melted within hours. Tomorrow it's going to be in the 60's so I imagine that will be the end of frosty.

IHMS Basketball

Sarah decided she wanted to play basketball this year for the 9th grade team at her middle school. She'd never played before, but went to all the open gym practices, tried out for the team and made it. Her team practiced M-F for two hours a day from November until last week. There are 8 middle schools in our school district and they all advance to the final tournament. Going into the tournament, Sarah's team was in 6th place. They ended up playing great and winning some painfully close games. They finished with second place for the season.


One of the girl's dads is a professional photographer (Kevin Lunt Photography) and did a full photo shoot for each of the girls. He then gave them each a disc with all the pictures on it. So generous!

Lioness Arising Book Review

I recently received the book Lioness Arising, Wake Up and Change Your World by Lisa Bevere to review. This book appealed to me with the imagery it evoked when I read the summary.

"The lioness rises from her slumber, a magnificent image of strength, passion, and beauty. Her mere presence commands the landscape, protects her young, and empowers the lion. In groups, lionesses become a creative and strategic force to be reckoned with, acting as one to change the world around them."

Here are links to the first chapter and how to find the book on Amazon.com.

I've never read a book like this (Christian motivational) and I found I had a hard time with it. The first three chapters moved pretty slowly and it seemed very disjointed to me. I did like the fourth chapter where the author shared a personal story about her desire to get in shape. She talks about hiring a physical trainer and not realizing how weak she was until she met with him and he tested her strength. She uses that story to talk about how women must be strong in all areas of their lives.

I also liked the eighth chapter, "Lionesses Are Strategic". In this chapter she talks a lot about the characteristics of lionesses in the wilderness (protecting each other's children, working together to hunt, etc.). I found those insights very interesting.

Other than those two chapters, I had a very difficult time with the book. I didn't like the author calling me (or the reader) "lovely ones" in the text. I didn't care for some of the analogies like lionesses groom each other or the one about lionesses smelling their children. (Although, the author had a great point that she kissed her children goodnight each night and she could smell if her sons had been up to something they shouldn't have been - alcohol, etc.).

I would give this book 2 out of 5 stars and probably not recommend it to a friend unless they liked information about lionesses or enjoyed Christian motivational books.

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.

Little Star book review

I was recently asked by WaterBrook Publishing if I wanted to "Blog for Books". I said sure. I get to choose a book that they will send to me, read it and then write a review on it. The first book I chose was Little Star since it was Christmas time.


The book starts out with a little boy asking his father which star in the sky is the Christmas star. The father then tells him the Christmas story from the point of view of the stars. Little Star is sad because the other stars ignore him, but on the night of Jesus' birth, he shines the brightest.

Here is a video clip about the book.

I love the illustrations in this book. They are cute and fun at the beginning when telling about the stars, and then elegant when showing scenes from Christ's birth. I really enjoyed reading this book to my kids until I got to the end. The author writes that Little Star burned so brightly that he burned himself out that night. The picture of the little gray burned out star is so sad and I couldn't get past the fact that I don't believe the star only shined for one night. The wise men had to follow the star for months to get to the baby Jesus. This is probably not a big deal to most people, but it really bugged me. The author does end the book on a happy note with the star being remembered each time it's placed at the top of a Christmas tree.

Overall I'd give this book 3 out of 5 stars. I absolutely love the illustrations, but I wish the book ended differently.

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.

Tombstone Party

We were excited to win one of the Tombstone Parties from houseparty.com in October. We received a fun party kit with lots of fun items and coupons.

(I can't find the picture I took of the kit so I borrowed one from houseparty.com.)

We asked the kids to dress up. Here are a few of them. I really wish I had got them all together for a group picture!


Mr. Clean, Pippy Long Stocking, and baby duck.

Playing the madlibs game.

Aaron's amazing garlic bread.Cute witch's hats.


We put together little gift bags for the kids to take home after the party.

Andrew and his preschool teacher at Alta High. He is loving it. Each Senior in the program is assigned to one preschooler. We were so lucky to get Amberly. She just moved into our neighborhood and she is wonderful.