Every time a special event pops up, I'm stumped about what to wear. Come to think of it, just about every time I leave the house for a meet-and-greet, I'm stumped about what to wear. I can get it almost right quite often, but the wrong shoes with the right outfit are just wrong and can mess up the whole thing. I can be really good at wrong belts, wrong shoes, wrong hair....

I'm not obsessed - too many folks can testify to seeing me in my flannel jammies, granny robe with no make-up and hag hai...
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Every Thanksgiving I buy at least 2 turkeys. Why? You can get them CHEAP, everyone loves them, they feed a crowd, and after we're all burned out on turkey around mid-December, I let a month or so pass, recreate the Pilgrim's feast, and it's like ambrosia for the body and soul once again...

One of my New Year's resolutions as I've mentioned, is to spend less money on groceries this year. That's not easy for me. I love to make lots of good food and feed lots of people lots. :) But I'm being quit...
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Today I received a card in the mail. It was actually a card thanking me for the card I had sent them a couple of weeks ago when they'd suffered a loss and were on my heart.

When I read her appreciation for the words I'd written to her, my eyes welled up with tears. I had been affirmed and it brightened my whole day - my Whole Wide World.

I was reminded of how many people walk about, right next to us, feeling lost in the crowd, needing affirmation, encouragement, praise, appreciation, whatever y...
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A few short weeks ago we saw our neighbor outside, hacking away at the beautiful tree situated on the corner where our lots meet. (In this pic it's the tree sitting directly behind the potted patio tree) He and his friend just kept on clipping, sawing, trimming, until we began to wonder if they were taking it allll the way down...

I was a little nervous because it's a tree that makes a statement in the spring and summer, so full and lush with a carpet of leaves colored a deep maroon. It would ...
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Well, we signed up for snow, but then came the ICE! We didn't actually sign up for ice :o but today, we awoke to an absolute sheet of ice coating everything. Icicles line the roof lines just like back in the Midwest, windows are so coated with ice we only see a blur through them. The tree branches look as if they've been dipped in vats of liquid ice. Very much like Little House on the Prairie stories, indeed! (see yesterday's post...) Schools and businesses have been closed for 2 days now,...
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...on these snow days! What is it with me? Maybe it's all those Little House on the Prairie books hubby read to us back in the day. I have such fond memories of the Ingall's family, hunkered down in their airy cabin in the dead of winter - buried under 6 feet of snow on a lonely prairie. That poor little Ingall's woman would prepare shoe laces if she had to - sometimes it was the most meager of resources she had to work with, and yet, she made it a feast! But the real foodie stories took plac...
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It's been threatening to snow here in the Seattle area for the past week and funny thing, just as I had finished taping my video blog on Saturday afternoon for The Old Schoolhouse magazine, telling the viewers I was looking for snow - voila! - the flakes began to flutter down. It proved to be a tease, however, and it was yesterday morning - about 16 hours later, when we woke up to a blanket of white.


I get a little giddy when it snows. Snow brings back happy memories for me. I think of my Dad ...
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Here is Jared, so many years ago – and now today at age 24. I want to tell you a fun little story that began two decades ago…

In early January of 1992, we lived in Independence, Missouri, in a lovely blue house (yep, it was cool to paint your house blue in those days!) in a cul-de-sac with a giant, fenced-in backyard my hubby had helped to enclose for our busy little boys to have a safe place to play. We had three young sons at the time, aged 7 1/2, 5 1/2 and 4 and I was a good 3-months...

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