In fast-food society we long for quick fixes and easy answers. But no worthwhile goal is easily reached, and a deep spiritual life is not created in a week or two. It takes perseverance over the long haul to finish well. The Finishing Touch encourages you to keep on keeping on to reach your goals and reap the harvest of a life worth living. Charles Swindoll challenges today's I'm-getting-tired-so-let's-just-quit mentality. He says, "Dieting is a discipline, so we stay fat. Finishing school is a hassle, so we bail out. Cultivating a close relationship is painful, so we back off. Working through conflicts in a marriage is a tiring struggle, so we walk away. Sticking with an occupation is tough, so we change jobs. . . . what we don't hear about is finishing well. About sticking with something until it is done. "God wants to touch us and be our strength in the struggle. He wants us to finish what we started and complete the course. The Finishing Touch takes you through every day of a year, introducing you to God's touches of grace, joy, and love. As a sculptor applies himself to the marble, and keeps chipping and cutting away to reveal the masterpiece within, so the Master Artist wants to use our trials, hard times, and day-to-day struggles to chip away at our faults and to help us discover the potential treasures within us. Daily devotionals for fifty-two weeks help you discover gut-level authenticity, hope in the midst of despair, courage in the face of fear, the light of faith in the shadows of doubt, and peace in the midst of stress. Learn how God's touch on your life enables you to run the race to the finish; to the honor and glory of the Master who has called you to be more than you think you can be.

Learn how to make every room special by accentuating details. This book has examples showing how small personal touches can bring charm to a setting and explains why the decor works.

Melissa Craig is a successful crime novelist who has left London to pursue her career in the more relaxed atmosphere of the Cotswolds. It doesn't take her long to discover that fact and fiction are sometimes frighteningly similar, and the gentle country existence she planned for herself is, instead, providing grist for her creative mill. Finishing Touch finds Melissa becoming more involved with the local community, and teaching creative writing at the local Tech. But murder stalks the college art department, reminding both Melissa and Iris, her artist neighbour, of a bizarre event they had witnessed some time before. 'A gently old-fashioned whodunit, riddled with lurking anguish' The Times

If you're primarily interested in finishing touches--the million creative ways you can use your favorite software to improve, polish, and add pizzazz to your images--this is the book for you! The first book devoted exclusively to the topic, Finishing Touches for Photoshop CS2 offers a treasure chest of creative finishing techniques. With chapters on frames and border effects, color and artistic effects, presentation, sharpening, and printing, this full-color guide covers everything from creative cropping to dramatic lighting, stock photos, collage ideas, combining black-and-white and color, selective blurring, storybook layouts, PDF presentation, and more. Each technique is a stand-alone tutorial, so you can jump in at any point without weeding through a lot of info that's not relevant to the task at hand. Even better, author Dave Cross' two-column format--with simple instructions in one column and lavish, full-color photos and artwork running alongside--makes the techniques instantly accessible. You'll also find several variations for most techniques as well as instructions for creating reusable templates.

A fading English finishing school gets a twenty-first-century makeover in this "modern-day fairy tale" (Romantic Times Book Reviews) from New York Times bestselling author Hester Browne, whose sparkling novels are "charming and feel-good" (Cosmopolitan). Twenty-seven years ago, an infant turned up on the doorstep of London’s esteemed Phillimore Academy for Young Ladies. Now, Betsy Phillimore returns to the place where she was lovingly raised by Lord and Lady Phillimore, only to find the Academy in disrepair and Lord P. desperate to save his legacy. Enter Betsy with a savvy business plan to replace dusty protocol with the essentials girls need today: cell phone etiquette, eating sushi properly, handling credit cards, choosing the perfect little black dress, negotiating a pre-nup, and other lessons in independent living. But returning to London also means crossing paths with her sexy girlhood crush . . . and stirring up the mystery of who her parents are and why they abandoned her. Will the puzzle pieces of her past fall into place while Betsy races to save the only home she’s ever known?

In this charming offering from internationally bestselling author Patricia Scanlan, the ties of family are tested when siblings reunite to celebrate their sister’s new interior design business. Will family and friends help Cassie Jordan follow her dreams—or hinder her? Meet Cassie Jordan as she launches the dream venture she has fought so hard to create: her own interior design business, named Finishing Touches. The party promises to be a night to remember; will Cassie’s long-estranged sister, Barbara, bury her resentment and toast Cassie’s success? Will their younger sister, Irene, travel all the way from the States for the big night? And will brother Mark ignore his wife’s pettiness and support his sister when she needs him? What Cassie does know for certain is that her two oldest and best friends, Laura and Aileen, will be there by her side, supporting each other as they have done since their school days. Finishing Touches is an engrossing novel of schoolmates and soulmates, shared secrets, and desires—and how one woman dares to make her dreams come true.