Calling Homeschool Bloggers!

Do you enjoy blogging about your homeschool experiences? Would you like to receive free books in exchange for book reviews on your blog site? 


If this sounds like you, send an e-mail to homeschool@kregel.com and ask to be put on our homeschool book review list. The first book will be Across the Wide River by Stephanie Reed, a fiction book for tweens. 

Don't delay--the first round of books will be mailed soon!

Happy reading!

The Kregel Publications Team

Feast on These Thanksgiving Savings from Nancy Twigg

Some cost-saving tips from Nancy Twigg, just in time for this Thanksgiving season! Taken from Celebrate Simply: Your Guide to Simpler, More Meaningful Holidays and Special Occasions.

Besides adding meaning to your Thanksgiving, you’re probably also interested in ways to trim down the cost. If you’ve ever planned a Thanksgiving feast, you know that the cost of buying all the food and decorations can add up faster than you can say, “Gobble, gobble.”

Because it’s a special occasion, we tend to think, “Oh, why not splurge a little?” Add this splurge component to the fact that most holiday meals include extra mouths to feed, and before you know it, you’ve got a major expense on your hands. Here are some practical ideas for saving money on your holiday celebration.


• Serve ham or turkey, but not both. Choose one meat or main dish and plan the rest of your meal around it. This saves not only the cost of the additional meat, but also the cost of special side dishes that go with it. The cost of electricity for cooking both meats is reduced, too.

• Go potluck. If it isn’t already a tradition in your family, make Thanksgiving dinner a potluck meal. Why should one person do all the work and bear all the expense? Besides, everyone will have fun tasting favorite recipes of several different cooks.

• Balance expensive and cheap dishes. Mashed potatoes are less expensive to make than a creamy vegetable casserole; a pumpkin pie is generally cheaper to make than a homemade cheesecake. Limit the number of dishes requiring expensive ingredients. Choose your family’s favorites and serve inexpensive dishes to complement them.

• Trim down extras. Do you really need four different vegetables and three different desserts? Usually there’s too much food at Thanksgiving dinners anyway. Who’ll miss that extra casserole or choice of bread? From each food category, try to cut out at least one extra that no one will miss.

• Serve inexpensive beverages. Sodas and fruit juices can be expensive add-ons to your Thanksgiving shopping list. Water, coffee (approximately 3 cents per 8 oz. serving), tea (4 cents per serving) and Kool-Aid (6 cents per serving) are very economical beverage choices. Soda and juice generally cost between 11–37 cents or more per serving.

• Dispose of disposables. Disposable plates, cups, napkins, and utensils are an added expense to your holiday meal, especially if you buy the decorative variety. Carefully consider if the convenience is worth the extra cost. If everyone pitches in, doing the dishes might not be so bad after all.

• Maximize oven use. Try to do as much of your baking at one time as possible to cut down on electricity use. Conserve electricity also by using the microwave oven whenever possible.

• Decorate naturally. Use natural decorations such as dried autumn leaves and pinecones. Fall fruits and vegetables, acorns, and tiny pumpkins also make for a festive look. Look in magazines for ideas, then adapt those decorating ideas using things you have on hand. With some advanced planning, you can even grow your own pumpkins and winter squash for the occasion.

• Watch those giveaways. Grocery stores often run promotions in which they give away turkeys with the purchase of other items such as hams. Don’t let the idea of getting something free cause you to cook a bigger meal than you actually need. That free turkey isn’t really free when you factor in the extra items you bought to go with the ham you didn’t originally plan to purchase.

• Plan in advance. Decide on your menu and make your shopping list several weeks in advance. Then watch for sales on those items you need. Remember the old saying, “Haste makes waste”? You’ll probably spend more when you buy at the last minute.

• Take advantage of loss leaders. A loss leader is an item offered below cost as a sales promotion to get you in the door. In the weeks before Thanksgiving, grocery stores typically run loss-leader specials on traditional holiday foods. They hope that, while visiting their stores to get the specials, you’ll also buy a shopping cart full of other things. Be a savvy shopper. Take advantage of each store’s specials without falling into the extra-spending trap.

• Look for substitutions. Many holiday recipes call for ingredients you don’t normally keep on hand. Before buying special ingredients you’ll only use once, check the substitution guides in your cookbooks to see if there’s anything else you can use. For example, 1 cup minus 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour can be substituted for 1 cup of cake flour; 1 cup of sugar plus 1/4 cup of liquid can be substituted for 1 cup of honey or corn syrup.

• Fresh is not necessarily best. Experts say there’s no real difference in taste between a fresh and frozen turkey. It’s all a matter of preference and convenience. Therefore, watch for sales and go with whatever is cheapest.

• Don’t waste. Stored in the refrigerator, cooked turkey should be eaten within three to four days. Kept in the freezer, it’s good for up to six months. Be realistic about how many leftovers your family can eat in the days after Thanksgiving. Freeze the extras right away so you won’t end up chucking them.

• Choose the right size bird. The turkey experts at Honeysuckle White recommend an 8–12 pound turkey for 2 to 4 people; a 12–16 pound turkey for 4 to 6 people; a 14–18 pound turkey for 6 to 8 people; an 18–20 pound turkey for 8 to 10 people; and a 20–24 pound turkey for 11 to 13 guests. These estimates allow for some leftovers. If your family doesn’t like leftovers, nip the problem of wasted leftovers in the bud by choosing a turkey on the low end of the suggested weight range.

• Love those leftovers. Some of the greatest Thanksgiving savings occur after the holiday if you know how to put your leftovers to good use. A family can be expected, however, to eat only so many turkey sandwiches. Look for interesting new recipes to give that leftover turkey a lift.

• Enjoy turkey all year round. Here’s another idea for saving money on groceries in the months after Thanksgiving. If your family loves turkey and you have plenty of freezer space, stock up when turkey prices hit rock bottom. A frozen turkey is good for up to a year in the freezer.

Happy Thanksgiving!

For tips on other holiday savings or information about Celebrate Simply, click here.

Attention Soon-To-Be College Students!

Coming in March 2008, Welcome to College: A Christ-Follower's Guide for the Journey encourages students to consider and engage the issues they will face in the dorm, on campus, and in the college classroom. Do you know any high school students who are going off to college in the fall? Encourage them to check back with this blog, as we'll periodically post some helpful tips from author Jonathan Morrow.

Unplugged and Offline

In July of 2006, the population of the United States was estimated to be 298,444,215—let’s call it an even 300 million. Dare to venture a guess as to the number of users on MySpace? As I write this, the number of user accounts is up to 160,000,000; that is over half of the U.S. population. Even if they all aren’t from our country, this is a very telling statistic concerning the type of world we live in. Everyone is online. As a college student you are more plugged in and online than any generation in history: MySpace, YouTube, IM, Facebook, eBay, ipods, cell phones, text messaging, wireless everything, and laptops (not to mention the classics TV, video games, and radio). But is this a good thing? Now before you tune me out, let me explain. I am not saying that these are all evil or that you should throw all your high-tech gadgets in the trash; opting instead for a telegraph machine and a quill. But there is a growing societal concern that this is not good for people. My main intention in this chapter is to challenge you to examine the amount of time you spend plugged-in and then to consider the benefits / drawbacks of time spent online.

Connected but not really…

Walking across a college campus these days is interesting. Almost everyone I pass is either listening to an iPod or talking on a cell phone and wherever their destination, a computer won’t be far away. We are more connected than any generation. The global has become local due to advances in technology. Ironically however, people have never felt more isolated. We are a fingertip away, but still not connected. In our day and age being online is difficult to avoid, but that does not mean that we have to be online all the time.

One of the drawbacks of electronic communication is that it depersonalizes human interaction. There is no body language or voice inflection in an email; it is merely text that must be encoded with your emotion—typically whatever emotion you happen to be feeling at the time. Moreover, email allows us to hide behind our computer and say things we would never say to people if they were standing in front of us. Paradoxically, it brings people close and keeps them at a distance at the same time.

Challenge: The next time you get on MySpace or IM or whatever with someone you go to school with, log off, and then go grab a coffee together and talk face to face.

For more information about this book, go to Kregel's Web site at www.kregelpublications.com.

About the Author:

Jonathan Morrow spent his college years at a large state school. In between classes and hanging out with friends, he ministered to fraternities and sororities and served with Campus Crusade. Jonathan recently graduated with an M.Div. and an M.A. in philosophy of religion and ethics from Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, CA. His considerable experience makes him well prepared to equip students for what they will encounter in their formative undergraduate years. Jonathan lives with his wife and son in Tennessee.

An Interview About the German-Russian Migration in Marta's Promise

An interview with Jeanne Dennis and Sheila Seifert, authors of Marta’s Promise.

Marta Ebel has nothing left to lose, now that the last member of her family has died. If she gets caught, it could mean death—or the dungeon. It is worth the risk. She fingers the document tucked in the waistband of her skirt. Her guarantee of freedom and a place to call her own—far away in Russia—if only she can escape. If only they would hurry and load the boat before the soldiers come!

So begins Marta Ebel’s pilgrimage to the steppes of the Volga River in 1766, a journey of peril, intrigue, tenderness, courage, and faith.

What made you choose the German States and Russia in the 18th Century as the setting for your novel?

Sheila: I learned about my German Russian heritage when my mother and I researched one line of our family tree in the early 1990s. My great-grandfather, Adam Franzovitch Ebel, emigrated from Russia to the U.S. around 1914, just before World War I. Because records were closed in Russia for most of the last century, it took a lot of work to piece this information together.

Jeanne: Adam Ebel’s ancestors migrated to Russia in the mid-1700s at the invitation of Catherine the Great, who was Russia’s German-born Tsarina. From 1765 to 1768, about thirty thousand German people made the arduous journey across the Baltic Sea and through the Russian wilderness to settle in the southern region of the Volga River.

Sheila: This part of Russian history isn’t well known, and we thought it was time for the story of these German pioneers to be told. We used the surname Ebel to honor my grandfather’s line, but all the characters are fictional.

What made you decide to write this novel together?

Sheila: We had already written six children’s novels together, so it was a natural fit.

Jeanne: Sheila had already done six years’ worth of research, so I felt honored that she was willing to let me help her write the story.

How do two people go about writing a novel together?

Jeanne: People ask me that question all the time. I don’t know how others do it, but Sheila and I set up some rules right from the beginning. First of all, we revised all the writing as if it were our own.

Sheila: And we didn’t go back to old drafts. If one of us changed a passage, we couldn’t go back and copy that part back in. If the co-author wanted to rewrite the passage, that was okay.

Jeanne: And often it would still get deleted. At times it wasn’t easy, especially when Sheila deleted writing I was especially proud of or I deleted something she liked. But when we did the rewrites or changed the scenes, they were always better.

Sheila: I agree. We had to decide not to get too attached to what we wrote. We also took turns writing drafts of chapters. If I wrote the first draft, Jeanne would do the second, and vice versa. We each wrote about half of the first drafts for the twenty-four chapters.

Jeanne: We found that it took about seven drafts before we reached our united voice, which was necessary, because we also write alone.

Sheila: We had to make sure our distinct voices didn’t come through.

Jeanne: After that, it took about two or three more drafts to polish it.

What was the most intriguing piece of history that you came across as you researched Marta’s Promise?

Jeanne: For me it was the way these pioneers survived, both on the journey and once they arrived on the steppes of the Volga River. They must have been a courageous, determined people. I also enjoyed learning about izbas, the Russian peasant homes.

Sheila: I find the entire German Russian story fascinating. As a whole, once the German people settled in the southern Volga area, they lived in Russia, but they were able to remain small German communities, closed to the rest of the world.

Jeanne: The Russian government at that time exempted the Germans from military service and allowed them to retain their language, faith, and culture. Later, though, it was a different story.

Sheila: One we hope to tell someday. We look forward to writing about the changes that took place in the German Russian culture at the end of the 1800s and then in the early 1900s under Stalin.


Jeanne: But those are stories for another day.


Sheila: We hope you enjoy Marta’s Promise. We had fun writing it.

For more information about the authors and Marta's Promise, click here.