The Cluttered Pantry

One way to stretch the grocery dollar is with samples and freebies.
For starters, using the free item means you aren’t using something up that you paid for. And very often, those free samples come with coupons, so if you watch for a sale, you can get a great deal on it (this should go with [...]

The pantry has been pretty cluttered lately. Real life and work took over and has had us thinking of meals as a thing to grab between work and time with the girls. I miss cooking, and I miss family meals and honestly I miss being able to find something in my pantry without [...]

E started out tiny, then spent the first two years of her life getting the minimum of nutrition that a baby can have and still thrive. Her body did that miraculous thing that nature knows to do and it conserved those calories for the importing things like brain cells and heart muscle but kept [...]

The winter and spring rushed by us this year, other than managing to over-seed the herb garden with basil (the girls helped me place the seeds-but we got busy and started traveling again and I missed the stage where you are supposed to thin out the tiny plants-anybody want some homemade pesto?) we haven’t done [...]

March?!  How could my last post have been in March?  It’s June, 3 months have flown by and I haven’t had a moment to spare since March…  yoikes.   So, here we are, the first week of June – Mark is leaving for shoots in Dublin and Madrid for the first half of the month, [...]

Each week we pick a theme that we reinforce with the art projects, “field trips”, cooking and play we do with the girls. This week is transportation. I asked the girls to go through their toy boxes and bring me toys that help us get where we we want to go.
My favorite of [...]

Earlier this evening, after the girls were asleep, I went back downstairs to finish a painting project (yes, I underestimated the number of coats of paint it would take to make our dining room walls red.)
I’m not certain how long she was calling out for me, but I didn’t hear Elena until after she [...]

After a long day of the Wee Kahunas letting me know, in not so subtle little kid manner, that they don’t approve of this whole Daddy going away for 14 days thing. (By testing every limit and rule – including laws of nature like -gravity.) I gratefully climbed into bed early to try and catch [...]

It’s sure is winter all of the sudden!  I’m not complaining…I actually prefer the cold.  Even though our house was built in 1893, it’s actually way better built than any home I’ve lived in before.  Multiple courses of brick and limestone protect us from the elements, fabulous cherub and decorative scroll work radiators chug away [...]

We returned from our last trip to Siberia in late 2008. Making 2009 our first full year as a family at home with the Wee Kahunas. I haven’t really felt compelled to mark our court date  (the date we legally became the girls parents) nor the day in October that we flew home with the girls, [...]