I spent all day Friday and Saturday at The BlogHerFood conference. This year it was in Austin and I had to take advantage of that. Once upon a time I was a food blogger, you know. Here’s the real reason I don’t do more food and recipe tutorials: I’m the worst photographer. You probably know […]

I am not a believer in luck. I mean, lucky things happen. But I don’t believe in it as a “force” exactly. But I do believe in the Magic Circle.  I have a Magic Circle. I was having lunch with some friends today and we started discussing what exactly the… Read More

I can already see your raised eyebrow and hear you muttering, “There isn’t one magic thing that we can do to make our children happy.” But there is! And, surprisingly, it doesn’t involve sports, music lessons or going to church. It’s eating dinner together as a family at least four nights… Read More As if weren’t enough […]

One of the most irritating things about having lots of children is that I start to hear the same comments over and over. Many of them are incredibly stupid and inane. Mostly they’re just things that people say because they don’t want you to know what they’re really thinking.  Here is a handy translation guide […]

Ada’s favorite movie is American Legends, the Disney collection of shorts about Johnny Appleseed, Casey Jones, Paul Bunyan and my favorite, John Henry.  I’ve seen this DVD about 100 times at least, but each time I cry when I watch it.  When the workers are wondering how they can build their railroad and John Henry […]

I have barely posted anything over the past two weeks. As I mentioned earlier, it’s been a bit busy around here. This is the last week of school and I am both excited (no more early mornings!) and dreading it (Ada and Arabella were driving me insane this morning and I almost chucked them out […]

You might not believe this since I’m the mother of six, but it’s is my first year being a soccer mom. I’ve avoided the stigma of soccer mom-dom for many years, for the same reasons that many mothers refuse to drive minivans: you feel like you have lost every bit… Read More

The other day I stopped at World Market to pick up hagelslag*, otherwise known as chocolate sprinkles. They’re not crappy chocolate sprinkles like you get at the grocery store, they’re real European chocolate sprinkles and that’s what my kids like to put on their toast and bagels. While we were… Read More I grew up surrounded […]

You may have noticed that there is a rather large gap between my last two posts. I can’t believe I haven’t written in so long. So what’s been going on in the last three years? Not writing. Literally none! Except maybe post-its reminding my kids to do their chores. It’s time to fire up that […]

Posting at Segullah about charity.  Then actually doing some charity by helping a friend pack her house to move out of town (sad!!!).  But is it still charity if I get to have fun hanging out with someone I like at the same time?

Number one news story: It’s hot in most of America. Good thing air conditioning was invented. I realize that a lot of people are without power and that it’s really sweltering. But up until about fifty years ago, that would have been the norm. Not only would it have been 90+ degrees, you would have […]

Just got home from Florida. Realized that I forgot to fill up the tank of the rental car. That’s an expensive whoops. Woke the kids up at 4:30 this morning to get to the airport. They haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since before we left. Smelly and tired.  Maybe I’m not smelly but I […]

Hey everyone! How did it go with the peanut butter? (If you don’t know what I’m talking about you can read my original post here.) Here we go with this week’s assignment! Fat is your friend. At least in cooking it is. It’s pretty hard to cook without using oil, butter or shortening. Those are […]

This is one of my most popular posts and I like to repost it every year in case you’ve got a houseful of bored (hence, annoying) kids and need to know how to keep them occupied without relying on TVs/vieogames/ipads to babysit them. This is a great way to keep everyone in the house quiet […]