When we decided to adopt a 12-year old girl from Ukraine, people thought we were crazy. My mom actually told me it was a bad idea. After Thanksgiving dinner, she looked straight at me and said “What are you thinking?  You don’t have a clue!  What makes you think you can do this?”   It wasn’t a question. My only answer?  “This is what God wants me to do, so He’ll pull it off somehow.”  Since my mom wasn’t a Christian, she didn’t really get that.  But that’s ok, I guess.  I got it. One thing she was right about: […]

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I’m a little quiet this Spring Break week…this is why: We’re taking a few days to see the sights in Chicago. We’ve walked a million miles and I’ve realized I’m in pretty lousy shape, but we’re all having great time. I’ll be back on Monday! What did you do for Spring Break?  Tell us in the comments…

Even on vacation, I’m reminded that there are children both here and around the world that need to be protected.   There are 153 million orphans in the world. Many of them suffer from neglect and abuse. Over 2 million of them live here in the United States. What can we do about this? Leave a creative idea in the comments….

….And other bits of wisdom discovered in Saturday’s Killer Tribes conference! Download a full set of the notes here. ***We will return to our regularly scheduled random river of thoughts later this week…but for today, I want to share a new experiment in visual note-taking.  I saw a lot of great visual notes from the SXSW conference last month, and thought I’d try my hand at it, even though I suck at drawing.  So I have “drawn” a few of the key points from my notes from several of the sessions.  Let me know what you think!*** The Big Idea […]

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Wait!! Before you run and cover your children’s eyes and report me to the Internet Police for indecency and general depravity (which, if you didn’t do from the Piecaken post last week, I just don’t see why you would try it now), hear me out! Earlier this week, I joined Frank Fontana on his podcast: The Down and Dirty with Frank Fontana. You might remember Frank from HGTV’s Design on a Dime; now Frank hosts a weekly podcast where he shares design secrets and generally has a lot of fun with a wide variety of guests…like me!  So click on the […]

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