I’ve been baking cakes and cookies for a long time. But decorated sugar cookies? The kind that you roll out and use a fancy cookie cutter to create? And then use royal icing for fancy decorating? Those have always been my arch enemy. I could not get it. I burned them, they spread into unrecognizable…
One of the things that has made me so happy over the almost-year of me baking decorated sugar cookies is the community around cookies. These folks are some of the nicest most giving people ever! They are give advice, share tips, encourage your work, and offer constructive criticism. Not to mention amazing talent of those…
Oh, hi! Did you know I have a blog? Apparently I’ve forgotten. Anyway, I thought I’d stop by and dust it off. A lot of you follow me on social media and have noticed (and commented on, thanks!) my recent weight loss and workouts. It’s really sweet of you to notice (and comment, seriously). I…
Nicholas became a teenager today. It’s such an odd title to give to a newborn, but everyone assures me that time has really moved this quickly. There are so many details about Nicholas right now, at this particular moment. He watches a million YouTube videos about games, he video chats with his friends and they…
I only knew about the University of West Florida because my mom and them live in Pensacola, where the main campus of UWF is located. I didn’t intend to attend, in fact, I’d been accepted to all of the other universities to which I’d applied and fully intended to go to the University of Texas…
Tesla is still young enough that I can choose the theme of her birthday party (but I think this was the last time). I wanted to do something at our home, with her sweet friends from daycare. I also wanted to keep the party simple (as I am prone to go a little overboard on…
Hi. When you were a kid, hearing stories about genocides like the Holocaust, did you ever wonder what you would have done? Would you have been someone who stood up to the hate groups? Would you have be someone who didn’t worry about it because it wasn’t impacting your life? Or, would you have been…
I used to keep a lot of stuff. Boxes and boxes of stuff. Then I began culling, donating, sharing stuff with friends. I still have boxes of stuff, sentimental things from childhood, items from our wedding, special outfits from when the kids were babies. The usual stuff. But I also had boxes of stuff from…
There is a wonderful show called Listen To Your Mother that the fabulous Ann Imig created about a decade ago. The show is all about supporting motherhood in all its forms. I have been planning to submit an essay to participate in a show for years, and have put it off for years. Then Ann…
While Tobin loves his little sister, he’s pretty “meh” about her most of the time. Not hostile or anything, but generally he ignores her. This week, he had a project due where he had to create a timeline of his life. He had to choose 6 events from his life to talk about. He decided…
I just turned 42! Mostly I can’t believe the number is associated with me when I often don’t feel like an adult, much less a middle-aged adult. I’ve been reading a lot of books by smart people who talk about lessons they’ve learned, and thinking of my own lessons. Here are things I know or…
We were on our way home from after-school care and listening to NPR’s “All Things Considered.” The story was about President Trump’s proposed travel ban. Tobin asked me why the ban was being asked for, and we started talking about religion, race, and ethnicity. That’s when he asked me, my bright 7-year-old, “Mommy? Are you…