I sooooo do not have time to be doing this right now but I CAN'T miss a good party so here I am.

This week, I learned what a Tony Luke's cheesesteak tastes like! AWESOME. I learned that you CAN see me as a nurse extra in Tony Luke's independent film, "The Nail: The Story of Joey Nardone." Woohoo. It's a Philly film – about grit, emotion and redemption. Read about it in my previous post HERE.

This last weekend, I also went to the PA Leadership Conference in Harrisburg and learned scary, scary facts from the conservative orators of our state about what is going on in our country. We heard Michael Reagan speak about his father, former president Ronald Reagan. That was tear-jerking. He shared special moments and details that made his father the great man who he was. Unfortunately, I will have to share those later because I am seriously running on seconds here.

I also met the great Twitterer Ethan Demme who was hilarious and shared with me how he is up to over 11,000 followers on Twitter. (He is also the COO for Math-U-See.) SECRET: Follow a couple hundred people, wait a few days, unfollow those who don't follow you. After a couple of days, start the process over again. Genius.

I also met Scott Ott, ScrappleFace, who writes a political parody site mentioned by Rush Limbaugh and is running for Lehigh county executive. Great guy! Knows how to tell you what is going on in a way you can understand it.

Now, I really do have to run. Will check in later. You ladies ROCK!

Head over to Jo-Lynne's for more What I Learned This Week!

P.S. My new Story of My Life story on Adrienne Mazzone "People Became My Medicine" went live last night. Read the first paragraph here. CLICK HERE to head over to the site to read more!

Relaxing into the airplane seat, Adrienne Mazzone thought to herself, my life has really changed. She was returning from a business trip with her father in Vienna where they stood in front of OPEC covering the story as Freedom Watch Founder Larry Klayman waved his proverbial "smoking gun" in the form of a gas pump nozzle as he protested the financial crisis he says OPEC has caused in America. Several years ago, she had no idea she would be traveling around the world with her father. Then, suddenly, her husband, John, died of rare duodenal cancer and she was faced with the decision of what to do next.

You learn, and you learn and it seems that every week there are new things to learn.

1) I learned that my daughter's shoes are now bigger than mine! I am so not ready for this.

2) I learned that it is okay to want to write for the sake of writing, the sheer joy of putting words together to express a thought, an emotion, a belief. I share this after hearing a very lovely godly woman tell me that she wrote several books because there was a need, not because she just wanted to write. I struggled with this all week because I started to think: is my writing just about me or can God use my creative desire to help others and still let me enjoy the process? Is that too selfish sounding? Is it all just work? And then, God brought some more incredible people in my life.

 Dr. Meyer, at Valley Forge Christian College, spoke to my class last Tuesday night. He talked about the weekly column he writes called "Think About It." He shared that he has been writing that column for eight years, for no pay. He has obligatory writing that comes with his job, but this column was something he enjoyed putting together each week, week after week. The college gets some press out of it but more importantly, he loves doing it. You could see it in his eyes. A student asked, "Do you ever get tired of it?"

He replied, "Respectfully, that is irrelevant. Once I commit to something, I do it." He was very nice about it but he didn't even consider stopping the column an option. He shared how he has 5-8 weeks planned out, in varying stages. It is his ministry to the public too as he shares little ways each week on how to be inspired and how to think about things a little more deeply in this world we live in, each and every day.

Another opportunity to meet creative writers offered itself on Thursday. In researching writing conferences, I had learned about the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writers Conference that comes up in August. When I was invited to a writer's group this last week, I had no idea I would meet the delightful Marlene Bagnull who both runs this monthly group and runs the entire conference. She has written a wonderful Christian devotional book for writers called Write His Answer. In the book, she encourages writers in both their devotional life and in the craft of writing. I am still working my way through it, but I love it.

3) I learned that I have small writers "feet" and I have meet some BIG SHOES lately in the field of writing and I have so much to learn. I have been reading another book this week called Spunk and Bite by Arthur Plotnik. It is absolutely delightful! It talks of neologism, umamis and more words forms that either I had never heard of or forgot.

4) I learned that with risk come the potential for embarrassment and failure, but more importantly the potential for success in knowing that you tried, success in the joy of the journey and potential for real accomplishment when you keep at IT, whatever IT is for you.

Have an awesome day! Go learn & grow. Jo-Lynne has more learning moments over at Musings of Housewife.

For a chance to win a $15 Amazon giftcard as a part of the Ultimate Blog Party, click HERE and leave a comment. It is that simple this time!!

Hi everyone! I learned how to create an e-newsletter this week. I have been putting it off for months because it was more than I wanted to figure out at the time. After going to last week's leadership training for women, I saw an example by another woman and decided to try it out. Here's what I did:

1) Went to Constant Contact.com.
2) Signed up for a 60 day FREE trial.
3) Followed the steps to import the specific mailing list I needed for the group of women I need to communicate to in this area. There were only 29 on the list.
4) Picked a template and continued to followed the steps to the edit mode.
5) Edited my template, filled in my information and sent the e-mail – all within a span of about 4 hours.

I was shocked how easy it was. Advantages include: coding to display the e-mail both with pictures & links and without in case some web browsers don't support it and a web version if someone's e-mail can't see the images, tons of pre-made templates with editable blocks that are easy to use, great customer service, and reports to let you see who read it and what links they followed.

The main disadvantage is a small fee per month which can add up if you are only communicating with a small crowd. You should also know some idea of your content and how to link to other sites to make it worth all CC has to offer. I wanted to provide links to ministry tools in our denomination: websites of all the local churches in our presbytery, links to mission organizations, and to the PCA (Presbyterian Church of America) bookstore. Because I had so much to share and point people to, I felt that the time had come to master this program and indeed, it went fast after I started.

Earlier last year, I helped a woman start a website in WordPress. We downloaded a one-time fee newsletter program. The problem with that program was that it did not have near the functionality of Constant Contact, who has put their money to good use in user friendly steps, pre-made templates and customer service who calls you within hours of signing up –too bad I was already done the project when the woman called. She was helpful though since I had a few lingering questions

To start, the cost is about $15/month. If you go over 100 readers, the price goes up to maintain the list and more as your readership goes up. I don't see going over 100 with our list, so I am hoping the price stays low even though I will be submitting it to our presbytery since it is a tool used to communicate with all the women's ministries in our area.

If you have a need to communicate and a group that needs it, I would definitely endorse Constant Contact as quick and easy way to go — especially if you don't have computer help figuring out free plug-ins and website stuff!

Now head over to Jo-Lynne's to join the What I Learned This Week party! She's been working hard on her new design and it is looking good.

What I learned this week (well, actually about two weeks ago) is that kids LOVE tissue paper crafts at any age. With three craft classes to teach on Wednesdays at the Y, I am always in search of new and fun crafts. When I saw tissue paper crafts on the news during a frugal living segment, I thought "Let's try this out!"

I worked with my girls and a friend to cut tissue into squares, water down glue, and "paint" the tissue squares onto a plastic ziplock bag. After letting the collages dry, the artwork peeled right off the bags. With our raw see-through material, we were able to create a number of fun crafts from cards to bookmarks covered in self-sticking laminate. My youngest daughter used hers to create signs for a cardboard playhouse. 

Using the same idea at the Y, we used white, blue and green squares to make our material. When that was dry, we cut out dragonfly wings to attach to a green center body. The crafty insects turned out beautifully and made great window hangings.

The woman on the TV used the material to cut out flowers and other shapes drawn from cookie cutters. They would string the shapes and hang them around the house for special occasions. What a great idea!

Can't beat frugal fun!! Now head over to Jo-Lynne's for more What I Learned This Week.

(This week I am gone to a wonderful women's leadership conference put on annually by our presbyterian denomination. I would appreciate your prayers for safety in travel, enrichment through learning and the ability to retain and bring back inspirational tidbits to share with our local churches! I am editing this post from the laptop in the bathroom so I don't wake the other women in my hotel room. Oh, what we bloggers do!)

I have come to LOVE cooking pork BBQ for our family because it is just so easy. I have tried a couple of successful and unsuccessful methods:

1) Buy BBQ from the local Redners – okay but not as fresh as homemade.

2) Using a bone-in pork. Meat chops up not shreds and so the BBQ sauce doesn't mix in as well. Not so good.

3) BEST: Buy center-cut boneless pork loin, place in crock pot and cover in water. Cook in crock pot for about 8 hours on low or a couple hours on high. About 1/2 before serving, remove water, shred meat and add BBQ sauce. My new favorite is Sweet Baby Ray's which is cheap and easy to use but there are tons of great homemade recipes too. (I did not like the cider vinegar based mix). You can also add red pepper for some extra tang!

See my attempt to VLOG about homemade BBQ. It is quick clip, I promise! Lindsey was my videographer. Oh, what we put our kids through. (Oh, and though I say the BBQ is simple and healthy – it can be healthier with BBQ sauce that has less sugar than the one we used. We also eliminated the bread to save on carb calories.) I also realized that my vlog doesn't talk about removing the water before shredding the meat and adding the BBQ sauce. I wish I knew Window MovieMaker so I could just add in text. I thought I had it figured out and tonight it is not working for me. Oh well.

BBQ from sarah peppel on Vimeo.

Head over to Jo-Lynne's for more What I Learned This Week.

  WARNING: SHORT POST ALERT. This one has got to be short. Yesterday was all about grading papers, reading student blogs, creating a mid-term for my college students, writing various things, etc. etc. and I am in brain fry mode. It doesn't help that my daughter is home sick and I think I have what she does.

I learned that Grace knows how to throw an awesome party! Lots of cool and fun friends to meet. She has really gathered a diverse group of creative people in her life. Lots of great minglers!

Head over to Jo-Lynne's for more What I Learned This Week! She has a great post on where ambition falls in the realm of blogging and her own struggles with bloggy comparison.

This one is going to be short. I learned that the more you assign your college students to do, the more you have to grade.

Can you say mental brain-fry?

Tonight we are going over subordinate clauses, compound predicates, dangling modifiers and nominative case and so much more. I keep praying for a love of grammar. I am not there yet. I need to be reminded of all this myself!

As a part of Jo-Lynne's new carnival What I Learned This Week, I am sharing the sequel to last week's post on Choosing Music for a Crowd.

Last week, I was still in the planning phases for our first-ever prayer retreat for the women of the Philadelphia Metro-West Presbytery. At the prompting of one of our committee members on our women's ministries team,  I thought this would be a nice idea around which to gather women at the beginning of the year. Last week, I was in that stress mode over music, food, speakers, folders, flowers, etc.

On Friday, I talked to two of our speakers. Both said, "Satan has been working this week. I have had all kinds of trouble. I know God is up to something good!"

I thought to myself — I haven't really had trouble this week. BUT, I did get a call, based on information I submitted in November, to be an extra in a movie filming downtown Philadelphia called "Law Abiding Citizen." I thought, if Satan was planning to distract me from this retreat, he picked the perfect thing.

Thinking back to the thirteen long hours on the set on Wednesday, I recalled a moment when I was able to speak with the main star, Gerard Butler, who is also producing the movie. He said, "Even if we mess up dramatically, it has to be good because it is a great story." He seemed excited about how the movie was going and after watching him for hours, I agreed. He's good at what he does. (I mean, really good. Okay, back to reality.)

Monday, I thought back to the retreat and realized that it was the same. No matter what I did in my human, sinful, failing attempts to be in charge, it was God's story and it was going to be great no matter what. And, indeed after hours of prayer and seeing God's hand at work in the lives of women throughout our community, I had to agree. God is good at what HE does. I mean REALLY good! He is the ultimate director!

The music turned out great, the testimonies were rich and inspiring and the time alone in private prayer went so fast, women wanted more time. Everyone seemed to appreciate the folders packed with spiritual material and journals. There was an incredible spirit of cooperation and participation throughout the day and I felt so blessed to see it all come to pass.

On Monday, I dropped off the checks with the presbytery treasurer, deposited my reimbursement for expenses and just started to cry tears of joy as the tension left my neck and my mind released the final worries. Driving home was a little difficult with tears streaming down my face . . . but I knew it was over and it was good and God was faithful. Praise the Lord.

We are already planning for next year.

Jo-Lynne over at Musings of a Housewife is holding a carnival about "What I learned this week" so here goes:

I am learning about music. I know what I like, I know what makes me feel peaceful in my heart, what fills me with joy and what touches the depths of my soul. I have no idea how to pick out music for the prayer retreat I am in charge of this coming weekend at which 8 of the 11 churches in our presbytery will be coming. No, I am not have anxiety pains. Okay, just a little.

I know I am out of my league. With the help of a delightful woman named Lisa who is in charge of music at her church, we looked over the following sites to come up with a worshipful, prayerful selection:

Getty Music: In Christ Alone

Reformed Praise: By Grace Alone

From these sites, she lead me through buying and printing music for the crowd (called a lead sheet) versus the pianist who gets different music – something else I didn't know.

When you are in charge, you also learn how little you know and how much you need to rely on others. As various bouts of anxiety have set in, I would pray and realize that on that point or another, I hadn't asked my team. Sending out a request, almost immediately I would receive the answer. God has blessed me so much through the preparation of this event, I just pray the attendees will come away feeling the same.

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

Head over to Jo-Lynne's to link your own learning moment. CLICK HERE for the conclusion after the retreat and how I got a little distracted before the retreat when I got to meet a movie star!