This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias, but all opinions and photos are my own. You know, in case you thought McDonald’s had stock photos of my kids. #CBias

We obviously watch too much Fresh Beat Band in our house, because every time I told Evan we were going to get lunch and a smoothie he said “Kiki Shout smoothies?” Unfortunately for him, the only smoothie place I know of around here is McDonald’s and while it’s still pretty groovy, no one broke into song or choreographed a dance for us while we were there. Bummer. (more…)

This project has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Elmer’s #gluenglitter #collectivebias #CBias but I came up with the idea and did all the work, so you can direct all your adoration to me in the comments.

One of my absolute least favorite questions in the entire world is “What’s for dinner?” For the first 5 years of my marriage the answer was almost always “I don’t know, what do you WANT for dinner?” – and then we spent 30 minutes saying “No, YOU pick” and “No it’s YOUR turn”. Honestly, sometimes we still play that game all night. Most of the time we end up having popcorn and throwing Goldfish at the kids. (more…)

This post is sponsored by Tempur-Pedic, the brand millions of owners trust to deliver their best night’s sleep every night. Enjoy our Buy 2, get 1 free pillow offer now and give the gift of custom comfort to someone you love.

Tempur-Pedic and Clever Girls asked me if I would write about my holiday comforts, and since I can’t seem to STOP writing about the holidays it was easy to say yes.

For me, the holidays are all about the cookies. I have so many memories of my mom making Christmas cookies as a kid – papparkakor with piped white icing (recipe coming soon!), thumbprints, spritz in “S” and “C” shapes through the cookie press, toffee, tea cakes, raspberry bars, these amazing little meringue mushrooms (they look so much like real mushrooms people are scared to eat them) and most of all sugar cookies with colored frosting and sprinkles. (more…)

Thanks to Duncan Hines for sponsoring my writing. There’s no limit to the baking possibilities, so grab your favorite Duncan Hines mix and Comstock or Wilderness fruit fillings and Bake On! www.duncanhines.com.

Oh hi, who wants to talk about dessert? Or drinks? Or maybe holiday parties? How about a fancy sparkly dessert themed holiday party I’m throwing for my baby girl when she turns one this month? I’ve got myself on a pretty strict baking schedule to get as much as possible done in advance, so my house is FULL of sweets right now. After the cake near-disaster at Evan’s 2nd birthday, I decided maybe fancy frosting is little outside my skill set, in the same way running a marathon is outside my skill set. You think, come on, it’s just running. Anyone can run. Here, let me just run right into the kitchen and make a cake worthy of its own TLC special. (more…)

Thank you to LiveOn for this sponsored opportunity to blog about storing and sharing my most important memories with those closest to me. Although story ideas were provided, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

There are a lot of ways to share photos online. Email. Facebook. Shutterfly. Snapfish. Flickr. Blogs. I use all of them, in one way or another, on a weekly basis. It’s great that even though they’re far away (or far far away) (or really really far far away – Hi Carolyn!) my friends and family can see little parts of our lives.

I sometime worry about the impermanence of all those formats though. I realize once you put something on the internet you have to be prepared for it to be out there in the world forever (did you hear that, teenage cousins on Facebook? FOREVER), but what happens if my server crashes? What happens when I lose my password or my account gets hacked? What happens if the hard drive where I stored all the photos from Little Evan’s first year of life fails unexpectedly and they are lost forever (true – very sad – story)? (more…)