happy stuff.

i have been having the most wonderful five-day break from work.  after a long stretch of traveling weekends and hosting and working weekends, it’s been a little slice of heaven to not leave the house for two days.  i’ve chipped away at my big writing projects that come due in the next few weeks, i’ve [...]

i’m a few days late with my thanksgiving post, but i just wanted to share a few leftovers with you. (tee hee!)  we enjoyed thanksgiving day with friends.  we were in charge of bringing the sweet potatoes, so i used my all-time favorite streuseled sweet potato recipe from cooking light.  it is soooooo good and [...]

okay, i’m assuming that if you’re still reading this post that you are not my parents and you’re not my husband’s parents or you just don’t care about surprises.  i wanted to tell my readers (who are not our parents) about a project that i’ve been working on over at lulu.com.  i was inspired by [...]

i have a “mascot” puppet.  his name is pierre.  he is a very silly bird.  for instance, he doesn’t have arms or legs and one time when i did a storytime about shoes he insisted that if we were going to talk about shoes he at least needed feet!  so, i made him some out [...]

my parents came for a visit last weekend. they haven’t been to my house for about a year and a half, so i was very excited to have them here again. the first night that they arrived, i made black bean and sweet potato burritos and then we watched lars and the real girl. a [...]

are you sick of hearing about my favorite teahouse? well, i just have to tell you about this delicious cupcake that i ate the last time i was there. i just finished re-listening to the audiobook eat cake by jeanne ray. it’s one of my very favorite audiobooks. the descriptions of the cakes the woman [...]

so, a few weeks ago, i got an e-mail from leslie of good-ness telling me that a comment that i’d written on her blog was one of the 100th comments and so i had won a prize of a $10 credit in her etsy store!  of course, i had to buy a little extra because [...]

this post is dedicated to any children’s librarians who read my blog.  (for all of you non-librarians, here’s a sneak peek of next year’s program theme!)  here are photos from the most recent summer library program workshop that i made decorations for. note the slate tile (from a hardware store) and envelope moistener pens (from [...]

the other night, we finally decided to cook up the bunch of kale i’d picked up at the farmer’s market a week or so ago.  we have this one kale recipe that we’ve tried and liked from martha stewart’s everyday food magazine.  it involves whole wheat spaghetti, bacon and fontina cheese in addition to the [...]

i had tea with a lovely friend of mine about a month ago.  we hadn’t talked for a long time and this visit was such a great chance to catch up and deepen our friendship and we both had difficulty stopping chatting when it was time to leave.  she is a knitter and i am [...]