Happy September! I don’t know about you, but I sure am excited for pumpkin spice, cozy sweaters, falling leaves, and all the fall things! Today, though, I am going to be sharing a wrap-up of my August!

Life Updates

• I finished my summer job this month. It was a fun end to the summer with the kids I teach as we played water games and did some special activities.
• Being between my main summer job ending and school starting again, I found myself having a lot of free time these last couple weeks, which was nice! (I am more ready than I expected to be for school to start again, though, haha… you can only have so much free time before you start getting bored.) I’ve been filling my time with reading more and lots of arts and crafts. My local library recently started a community art exchange box, so I have enjoyed creating bookmarks and cards to share with others. I’ve also been slowly working on a diamond painting of a stack of books with flowers and working through a Proverbs-themed sticker-by-number book.
• I do have one exciting announcement this month: I got two new pets! Meet Sushi and Gnocchi, my new gerbils (Gnocchi is the tan-colored one, and Sushi is the black-and-white one)! A friend of mine was moving and wasn’t able to take the gerbils with her, so my family decided to take them in.

Writing Updates

Due to some family circumstances in the earlier part of the month, I wasn’t able to focus on writing as much as I thought I would, but that’s okay! Towards the end of this month, I have been able to get back into writing again, and while I haven’t made any progress on The Sullivan Six, I was able to do another round of edits on my “Something” story. I am hoping to be able to submit it soon! I also wrote a little bit on a just-for-fun story.

Words written: 648

Pages edited: 9

Etsy Updates

I have been continuing to work on my new branding project, changing the listing images and adding videos to create a more cohesive brand. I also listed 10 new products! A few of my favorites are the Lifetime Access KJV Scripture Cards Bundle (where you can get all of the current and future Scripture cards in my shop for a fraction of the price!) and the Printable 2027 Floral Calendar.

Books I Read

August was a big reading month for me! I managed to finish 11 books! Here is the list:

• The Design of Providence anthology (4 stars)
• I Love to Tell the Story by Faith Blum (3 stars)
• The Penderwicks at Last by Jeanne Birdsall (2 stars)
• The People Beneath the Petals by H.A. Yang (ARC read; 5 stars)
• The Extraordinary Deaths of Mrs. Kip by Sara Brunsvold (5 stars)
• For the Children’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macauly (4.5 stars)
• Capture the Moment by Suzanne Woods Fisher (4 stars)
• Peace anthology (no rating since my story is published in here 😉)
• The Teacher of Nomad Land by Daniel Nayeri (3.5 stars)
• Pocket Bear by Katherine Applegate (4.5 stars)
• The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden (4 stars)

My August reading wrap-up from The Storygraph!

Favorites This Month

Book: My favorite book I read in August was The Extraordinary Deaths of Mrs. Kip by Sara Brunsvold. The strong Christian themes were incredibly inspiring, and I love Brunsvold’s writing style. Her books are always so real and packed with great Biblical wisdom. You can read my full review here.

Blog Post: I enjoyed this post from Hosanna Emily’s Substack, a guest post by Savannah Jane McCray about Glorifying God in His Art. There are some excellent reflections on art, the Bible, and life.

Bible Verse/Passage: I have been reading through the book of Luke, and there have been a lot of great verses that have encouraged me. Here is one that particularly stood out to me last month:

“Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest.” Luke 10:2

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I fall into the trap of thinking that people won’t really be interested in the Gospel message, that people my age wouldn’t even care about spiritual things (and on and on we could go with the excuses we make). However, Jesus says that he harvest truly is great! No matter where you are, there are souls who are seeking Jesus. This verse is a good reminder to me that we need to be laboring for the Lord and spreading the Gospel.

Blog Post Round-Up

If you missed any of my posts from August, here they are!

I hope you all had a good August! Let me know in the comments how your month was (and in honor of the beginning of September, what your favorite fall treat is!) I am going to be blogging more frequently this month due to some news and a fun blog party (more info about that coming soon!), so I will actually be back with another post tomorrow!