• Mad for Plaid

    mad for plaid

    Maybe it’s because I was a teenager in the 90s, but I’ve always been a sucker for plaid. So when I was looking for matching family outfits for our Christmas card photos, I gravitated toward all the tartans. I meant to share these sooner, but the cards themselves didn’t even show up in my mailbox […]

  • Christmas tea at home

    Christmas tea menu

    How long do you leave your Christmas decorations up? I always like to leave mine up past New Year’s anyway, but this year in particular I think we need as much cheer as we can get, so we may not take everything down until mid-January. If you’re still in a celebratory mood, but don’t want […]

  • Festive Christmas clothes

    festive Christmas clothes for women

    Christmas this year is going to look a lot different for many of us, and as someone who has spent a lot of holidays away from my family (even before I became a military spouse), I know that can be hard. It’s especially challenging if you can’t get together with friends who feel like family. […]

  • Holiday tea at the Townsend Hotel

    townsend hotel

    I hope you all had a fantastic New Year’s Eve and are having a fabulous 2015 so far! I am going to start a series of resolution-themed posts tomorrow, but first I wanted to share some photos and thoughts from one more holiday tea! The Townsend Hotel is a crazy-beautiful, opulent hotel in Birmingham, Michigan. […]

  • Airplane travel tips and tales of woe

    tiny plane

    The day after my 16th birthday, I got on a plane by myself, headed from Baltimore to Phoenix. At the time, there weren’t any direct flights from BWI to PHX, so we were flying through Philadelphia or Columbus or somewhere. There were at least 20 passengers and three flight attendants on the flight who were […]

  • Best-ever Thanksgiving sweet potatoes (with marshmallows)

    best thanksgiving sweet potatoes

    My mom makes the best Thanksgiving sweet potatoes ever. How do I know? Besides the fact that I have eaten them since (probably) infancy, every person I have ever served them to loves them — and usually asks for the recipe. Obviously this don’t have to only be made for Thanksgiving, but I’m not sure […]

  • Pumpkin-gingerbread trifle

    pumpkin trifle

    Despite the unseasonably warm temperatures in southern California, it’s October and therefore pumpkin season. I do like a pumpkin spice latte on occasion, but I prefer pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread and other things that actually contain pumpkin. So when Toby suggested I make a trifle, my mind immediately went to pumpkin. I thought about doing […]

  • Cranberry-apple fluff

    You can have your raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. My favorite things run more along the lines of cranberries, green apples, marshmallows and glitter. And this side dish has the first three. Plus sugar and Cool Whip. It’s basically perfect. If you read my old blog, you’ve seen this recipe before, and you […]

  • Gingerbread men and pumpkin dip

    I know the holidays are technically over… but since most of the U.S. is buried under a thick blanket of snow and we’re not even a full week into January, I think it’s still perfectly acceptable to eat some gingerbread men with pumpkin dip. These gingerbread men are pretty easy to make — though you […]

  • Short rib lasagna with celery root béchamel

    A few months ago, my mother-in-law took a cooking class at the Cincinnati Women’s Club taught by a chef from a fancy Italian restaurant in town. She learned how to make a delicious, very gourmet lasagna. Then she made it for us when we stayed with her on our way to Toby’s college homecoming. You […]