A Letter to my Oldest Daughter for her 6th Birthday

Perhaps the greatest thing to bring me joy in life is becoming a mom to three magical humans. One of my favorite traditions is writing them open letters for their birthdays as one of the ways we celebrate them. So I’ll have two posts this month- an open letter for each kid. Today it is for my middle kid- my oldest daughter who turned 6 earlier this year. Continue reading

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A Favorite Christmas Tradition…

There are so many things I love about the Christmas and Advent season. The marvel of lights, the gorgeous music, the specifically Catholic traditions (I’ve been slowly adding to our nativity scene each Sunday, and when we have a little more space one of my first wish list items is an advent wreath!) Then there are the family traditions which are some of my favorites Continue reading

Fall In LOVE: with BOOKS

So… aside from this first paragraph, I wrote this post on Thursday… but then the news of yet another mass shooting happened and I was distracted and then too depressed to post. It grieves me that we would rather enact new routines for students to prepare for shooters, to make this the norm, than to try and regulate guns in any way. I have enough worries about sending my child to school one day and wondering if he will get an adequate education. I shouldn’t have to worry about his safety being compromised because any crazy can go get a gun. Please, PLEASE research and add your voice to the changes that need to happen on this issue. It has certainly been weighing heavy on my heart and I feel like I would be remiss to post this without addressing this crossroads our nation is at (and honestly should have been at years ago. I remember when Sandy Hook happened I called my husband crying telling him I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to have kids anymore… we didn’t let fear keep us from doing that but we also hope that you won’t let fear of swinging to the other extreme on firearms keep you from working towards reasonable gun control and licensing laws.) Continue reading

Baking #20: Happy Birthday Son, You’re 1!

So, of course I knew that this week’s baking project was going to have to be a cake of some sort for my sweet son’s birthday. But before we get to that, I want to talk about some of the other ways we celebrated, some of which were pretty standard, and some of which might be a little different. Continue reading

Baking #14: Hot Cross Buns

I learned this Lent, from someone in my church group, that hot cross buns are a Catholic tradition for Good Friday. I had no idea! In fact, I had never even tried hot cross buns until a dear friend baked some for my bridal shower several years ago. Before that, I thought they were just nonsense words in a nursery rhyme song you learn to play on the recorder in elementary school music. (one a penny two a penny….) Regardless, I remember them being delicious (which made me a little confused because usually Lent means giving up all the delicious) so I decided to go do a little research.  Continue reading