It’s Bake Sale season! That most wonderful time of the year when you justify trying out new recipes in the name of a good cause, while said good cause gets to raise money to help them get closer to an awesome goal. At our son’s school, there’s a giant effort to raise money for a…
Shrimp Tacos (or: How to Spice Up a Mild Palate)
In this house, we like to joke that ketchup is a spice. Until no one’s laughing, and the children are gulping their glasses of milk like they’re going out of style. There’s a dominant palate in this house. One that firmly advocates a walk on the mild side. Seasoning is acceptable. Spice is not. So…
Damage Report
From the first moments of racing through the house to make the water stop overflowing, to the heart-dropping-to-the-pit-of-your-stomach call with the insurance company, to the search for a remediation company that could come over right away to start drying things out, to updating a husband on his way home from an appointment, the discovery and…
Prologue
“Mommy, it’s raining in the house!” Six words, delivered with a mixture of “that’s not normal around here,” and “is this really cool or really scary? I can’t tell just yet,” perfectly framed what would become the next months of home life. Swinging the door open that summery Monday afternoon first revealed a wet floor…
My Love Affair with Salads in a Jar
It’s been a couple of years now that I’ve been loving salads in a jar. The premise is pretty simple: take a jar big enough to hold the size of salad you like to eat, and layer in all the ingredients, starting with the wettest ingredients at the bottom and ending with the lettuce as…
Super Simple Summer Dessert: No-Bake Key Lime Pie
Tonight’s dessert is brought to you by a healthy dose of nostalgic impulse. It was one of those mornings where it felt like nothing was going according to plan…from a toddler waking up more than an hour before she was expected to, to unbridled resistance to the order of getting dressed, the act of meal…
Kindness starts
Every now and then I’m struck by the immense power of kindness. It doesn’t cost a thing to be kind. And the benefits of kindness are far reaching and do more good than charging after the unattainable. Just as it’s important to remember to be kind to others, it’s also easy to lose sight of…
Mama Wren
There was no sweeter sight than when we were outside this morning, enjoying a little fresh air before going off to daycare and work, and the kiddos caught sight of a mother wren flying to the little wren house hanging off the porch. We talked about the babies inside the house who wanted their breakfast;…
Tiny steps of progress
One of the hardest parenting lessons for me — hands down — is slowing down and being okay with not charging ahead at the breakneck pace I’d really, really like to do. Progress is progress, though. And I’ll take any measure of it I can get. Especially when it’s taking way longer to complete than…
An uncluttered sofa.
The perfect place to settle in and enjoy a new book. Uninterrupted. (Sound like an ordinary evening to you? Try having kids who love to explore and have learned well how to share their discoveries.)
Little Martha on the Prairie 