My husband has been home for over a week now, which is pretty much unheard of around here these last few months. And in this week or so he’s been here, the most common refrain I’ve heard in our house is “Daddy do it!” That, of course, would be coming from my sassy [...]

I have been fighting a war with my skin since I was a little kid. Twelve-years old, to be exact. That’s the age I was when I got my first pimple. I remember the day like it was yesterday. And over the years, I have had good skin, I’ve taken meticulous [...]

Our favorite nursery here in Fort Worth is moving locations this fall so we’ve been stopping by there periodically to buy things for our garden, whether it be Talavera pots or plants or flowers. Yesterday, we went over there with the girls, and Pea chose a beautiful blue pot that she wanted to plant [...]

So in my quest to be the world’s most organized mommy, my husband gave me this planner a couple of days ago, and I am totally obsessed with it. I’ve been spending all of my free time inputting all of my information into it from my beat up old Filofax, adding in birthdays and [...]

Saying “thank you” is one of the first polite terms that we taught Pea. She said, and says, thank you for everything. For her favorite snack, a diaper change, bubbles in the bath. Just about any and everything warrants a “thank you.” My mother taught me the same some 30-something [...]

After a kind of emotionally draining Tuesday, I woke up this morning and decided that I deserved a treat. A treat to me usually entails a trip to the beauty floor of my local Neiman Marcus. After a breakfast out with my husband, I dropped him off at home and headed over to [...]

Event: Lunch at my house to celebrate my mother-in-law’s birthday.
Guests: All of her kids, their spouses & grandchildren and of course her husband.
I served:
Hummus with whole wheat pita
Gazpacho
Arugula with Parmesan shavings
Fresh corn salad
Whole wheat French bread
Beehive cake
Overheard at the lunch:
“I don’t like corn.”
“Try it. It’s good.”
“It doesn’t even look like corn.”
Me: [...]

Sometimes being a mommy can make me feel like I am back in high school. There are just so many cliques at my daughter’s teeny-tiny school. There are what my husband refers to as the “Plastic Shorts Posse,” a group of moms who show up in their, well, their plastic shorts. I [...]

I’m feeling pretty defeated this afternoon. I met this woman who also has two children, and we thought it’d be a nifty idea to have a baby-sitting “co-op.” You know, she watches my kids at her house and then I watch her kids at my house. We agreed on trading 10 hours [...]

My husband and I haven’t been out on a real date – an evening date – in about two years. Sure, we’ve snuck out to a quick dinner here and there, but it usually involves first driving to Dallas to drop kids off at my in-laws and even then, we need to speed [...]

Pea is really rocking my world lately. She changes her outfits about 5 times a day, on average. She’ll run into her room and go through her drawers and then hand me an ensemble that she just has to wear. I can barely keep up with the laundry! This is the [...]

The humidity here in North Texas has me miserable. Down to my bones. I just want to cry. I’m always sweating, my hair is a mess, I can’t bare to put on clothing in the morning. Make-up? Forget about it. It’s just going to melt off of my face [...]

Some people knit, others decoupage. Some do Sudoku, and many garden. I myself used to do the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle. And then I had my babies and I contracted what my mother refers to as “baby brain.” And now, well now, I Shop Style. And what [...]

When I became pregnant with Pea, something happened and I morphed into a know-it-all-soon-to-be-mama. Or as I’m sure my husband called me on a number of occasions, a lunatic who was simply spending too much money. It was a momentary lapse in judgement, but it was quite a loooong moment. I bought [...]

Four summers ago, my husband spent two months in Athens, Greece, working on the Olympics. At the end of The Games, I flew to Athens for a week-long vacation. It was a belated honeymoon of sorts, and we came home with the best souvenir of all – our first pregnancy. During the [...]