• Proud Moments,  Writing

    That’s A Wrap!

    Another November NaBloPoMo is in the bag. Yaaaaay me! I feel like I did really well this time: I didn’t have any trouble coming up with things to write about, which was refreshing because I’m usually hitting up my draft folder like a boss. Not this time. I think that I had more fun with NaBloPoMo this month than I probably ever had because I didn’t stress out about “how good” each post had to be, which is a strange admission to make but completely true. After all, if you were to ask me why I started blogging in the first place I would have a couple of answers for…

  • Spreading the Bloggie Love,  Uncategorized

    Sunday Reading

    After getting through my personal crisis yesterday (thanks, Internet!), Jim and I took the evening off and then spent much of today tying up the rest of the pre-Thanksgiving loose ends that needed attention. Roxie spent today doing the same thing she did yesterday, which was pretty much this: Sigh, what a life. Anyway, here’s some Sunday Reading for you. Enjoy! I absolutely adored Angela’s beautiful tribute to her youngest child (Number Four!) over on Jumping With My Fingers Crossed. The post was chock-full of love and positivity and sweetness, and you should go read it right now. While there’s technically no reading to be done in this case, my…

  • Roxie,  Spreading the Bloggie Love

    Sunday Reading

    I’m super happy it’s Sunday for many reasons, not the least of which is that today being Sunday means that tomorrow is Monday, and Monday is the day Roxie finally gets her stitches removed so we can put the Cone of Shame away. It’s been a long week and a half. As much as I wanted to give her breaks from her post-surgical collar, she couldn’t last longer than thirty seconds before making attempts to lick where her stitches are. So annoying (for BOTH of us, I get it!). On Friday night I took the collar off and distracted her for a good twenty minutes by giving her a much-needed…

  • Confessions

    Ring Ring

    You know how you wake up on a Saturday morning and although you have a busy day of baking planned, you’re excited to write your NaBloPoMo Day fifteen blog post but you decide to get some of your other necessary tasks out of the way first, like working out and some of that baking? And you know how you end up being in the kitchen for five hours in the afternoon because you forgot that the very worst part of participating in the Chicago Food Swap (something you haven’t done for a year because it wasn’t meshing well with your schedule) is that you simply lack the ability to ignore…

  • My Friends Have Mad Skillz,  Spreading the Bloggie Love

    Catching Up.

    What I love about NaBloPoMo is that many of my friends are writing way more often than they usually do. What’s difficult about NaBloPoMo is keeping up with it all. My Bloglovin’ feed is in a constant state of growth and although I try to read from it daily, I don’t have the time to get through everything during the week, especially when I’m trying to leave comments. I use the weekends for catching up. Sitting here all comfy on the couch with a cup of my favorite tea, I zip through a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty (I KNOW!) posts, enjoying every second of this ritual. And the…

  • Childhood Memories

    Five Random Things About Me: The Childhood Edition

    About a week ago, Deb Rox tagged me to do the “Five Random Things About Me” meme that’s making its way around the blogosphere. Sort of. Okay, I think she tagged everybody. ANYWAY… I’m putting my own spin on it by sticking to stuff from my childhood. I imagine these five things probably wouldn’t make very interesting posts separately and in fact now that I think about it, clustering them might not be very interesting either. Oh well, it’s NaBloPoMo Day 2 and I’m going for it. 1. One of my biggest, proudest accomplishments in third grade was the time I became a Lemon Twist Champion by doing one thousand…

  • My Friends Have Mad Skillz,  Something That Could Change Your Life,  Spreading the Bloggie Love

    NaBloPoMo: Here We Are Again.

    Hello November first. This is the day on which there are two kinds of bloggers: 1. I’m doin’ it!! and 2. No. Way. You are all insane. It seems like there’s no gray area when it comes to National Blog Posting Month, and I’m fine with that. Really, no matter where you stand on the issue of blogging every single day during the month of November, you can’t deny that the event is a great unifier. I THINK I have done November’s NaBloPoMo every year (all the way through) since I started blogging in 2007, but I’m not sure and I don’t want to go back and look. It doesn’t…

  • Food,  I've Got Mad Skillz

    Liveblogging the Latke-palooza

    Wow, November 30th already?? I can’t believe NaBloPoMo is over today: I’ve blogged every single stinkin’ day (sometimes twice!) for the entire month of November. This has been the best NaBloPoMo/NaBloPoMoFo for me personally and I’m not sure why. I’m ending the month with almost all of my “just in case” drafts still snug in the draft folder, and I never once felt like I was struggling with finding something to write about. (Most of the time, LACK OF TIME was the problem!) Of course, it helped that I did a little traveling this month: it’s always easier to write about things when you’re not living the normal routine. Anyway,…

  • Food,  I've Got Mad Skillz

    Easiest Muffin Recipe Ever (You’re Welcome!)

    In my never-ending quest to confuse my readers about my niche as a “Life Blogger” by tossing in a Food Blogger-ish recipe every now and then, today I present you with another family favorite around here: the muffin recipe I use ALL THE TIME. My Mom calls them “Sweeter Muffins” but the title I copied into my recipe book is “Twin Mountain Muffins” and I don’t know if that has a double meaning or not (Get your mind out of the gutter, OMG! And take mine with you!) so I’m just calling this recipe “The Easiest Muffin Recipe Ever” because I’m at a loss and that title describes it very…

  • Amazing People,  Confessions,  I've Got Mad Skillz,  My Kid Has Mad Skillz,  Reflections on Parenting

    Something Wonderful

    Something wonderful is happening around here. (Indulge me while I brag for a moment. Thank you.) Although it seems like yesterday that we were in the midst of his college search, D is finishing his coursework a semester early. He’ll be done with classes in less than a month! It’s a pretty spectacular accomplishment: he achieved it via a combination of some AP testing for college credit, testing into (and then passing) an advanced German course which earned him the credit for that class plus the year he skipped, and mostly due to his staying the course with his major and getting awesome grades (Dean’s List all the way!). Did…