A Sunnier Version of Sweden

Oh man, I have been looking forward to this one - homemade cinnamon rolls! After Andy made them for us a couple of years ago, I realized that there is absolutely no substitute for made-from-scratch breakfast delights like these. Given my reluctance to work with yeast, though, I had mostly held out hope that he would make them again, and I would just be the recipient of his generosity. Then, of course, came this year's resolution and the breakthrough discovery that yeast is not, in fact, all that complicated. When I came across the recipe on the NY Times websit e, I saved it and knew I just needed to find the time to put these into the rotation! Time is the key piece - this was a two day endeavor, so I was determined to make it worth it! I had hoped to make them over a weekend, but had struggled with finding one with the right cadence of events that would allow the time to get through all of the steps. Being snowed in made it a pretty easy answer, so last weekend I got to work!

One of Caroline's loves is definitely the theater. We were blessed with the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville, and saw so many shows there with the traveling Broadway season. Her love of drama, acting and singing has translated to middle school drama, too. Participating in the school musicals at Holt the last two years were definitely some of her favorite things in middle school, so when she learned that Shattuck would have a spring musical, she was all in to try out and be a part of the show! Despite an excellent choice of the monologue "there's no crying in baseball!" from A League of Their Own, Caroline missed out on a lead part in Annie, Jr. She did, however, get to be a part of one of the ensembles, and after many weeks of practices and rehearsals, it was time for the show to go on! After seeing The Lion King, Jr., and Mulan in Arkansas, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect for production value from a middle school musical. I was impressed, though, wit

In an effort to provide myself the most latitude in hitting the goal of one new recipe per week in 2018, I included drinks in the universe of what counted! With Girl Scout cookie season upon us, Caroline's troop leader had printed out recipes for a cookie booth for ideas on how to use a bunch of cookies, and I took the Thin Mint Shake idea home with me to try it out on boxes of Thin Mints left from last year! I'm not sure it gets much easier than this one: Add all of the things to the blender, blend, and enjoy!

Given the nature of my job covering the entire U.S. sales force and customer base, I have been doing a good bit of traveling since joining Kimberly-Clark. That can be tough sometimes, as the Appleton airport is very small, with very few flight options. Unless I'm going to Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis or Atlanta, every trip requires a layover, which inevitably means it takes almost an entire day to arrive at any given destination. Lucky for me, the company still has a corporate jet, and it makes regular trips to Arkansas and Seattle, two of my most frequent itineraries. With Walmart, Costco and Amazon being some of our largest customers, this perk makes it so much easier to manage the "there and back" for meetings. did I hear a Niner? Given that I've flown in and out of NW Arkansas for years now, the landscape upon approach is very familiar. The chicken coops, the wide open spaces, Beaver Lake in the distance and I-49 running north and south still beckon me

Let's see... butter, breakfast, and casserole. YES, PLEASE!! Once again, NY Times Cooking website led me to the recipe . With an overnight refrigeration required, this two-day recipe fell squarely into week 11 by virtue of that's when I baked it, and that's when we ate it. My resolution, my rules - still on track. Let's go! Whoa - look at all of those savories! This one sounded excellent on paper, and included some ingredients that were new to me. First, the Gruyere cheese. With grocery stores other than Walmart here, I am increasingly confident that I can find the unique things some of the NYT recipes call for, even if I don't have a bodega or ethnic store on the corner! Second, the Italian sausage with casings removed. I asked the very helpful gentlemen at the deli counter and got the good advice to simply use the ground Italian sausage. Simplify! With everything gathered, I whirled into motion, toasting the croissants (okay, maybe way OVER toasting them,

As I mentioned, the crazy April weather and last weekend's blizzard have pushed Little League baseball season start off by a couple of weeks. John was supposed to have his first practices last week, but that can be hard to do when there isn't a patch of grass to be seen. We're hopeful that things will melt and dry out enough to make the May 5th opening day - as they say even with the Major Leagues, hope springs eternal! In anticipation of the season, though, John asked to get a head start and to have a chance to hit some balls before the tryout that was scheduled for mid-March. If my kid is willing to do the work, then I'm going to spring into action to try and make it happen! I googled batting cages, found a couple of options, and on Sunday, March 11th, we grabbed his bat, gloves and helmet and were off! First stop was at Play It Again Sports up in Appleton. They have indoor batting cages with different speed pitching machines, and I was hopeful this would be just

It's official - we're all done with the Wisconsin winter. The problem is that winter is just about all we know of our new home, since we moved in right as the season began, so it has translated pretty much into my family being done with Wisconsin. This is problematic, for all of the obvious reasons. The kids and Justin have been teetering on the edge of being done for several weeks now, as the lingering sub-freezing temperatures stubbornly refused to give way to sunny days with a hint of spring in the warming of the breeze. It probably didn't help that our spring break locale didn't provide seven straight days of tropical delights; we'll have to think harder about that one next year! The frustrations, though, with the weather and lingering cold, were tempered by the belief that it would get better soon. Then the record setting April snow storm hit. Sunday, after an hour and a half of shoveling... and it was still coming down Sunday - trying to keep up as

It's hard for me to believe we're almost a third of the way through the year. Despite the endless cold that almost makes one day indistinguishable from the next, the calendar has continued to turn and here we are already into the second quarter at work for 2018. Taking stock of how well I've stuck to my resolutions , I would say I'm doing a pretty good job! The recipes have been a ton of fun; I've been much more mindful in my tone of voice and speaking with kindness to my children and husband; and my first endurance event of the year is just a couple of weeks away when I'll run the Illinois marathon ! Most recently, I hit the 20% mark of my goal to read ten classic novels that somehow escaped my high school curriculum. While I had intended to read The Great Gatsby as my first endeavor, it was weirdly hard to get my hands on a copy at the library. Instead, I turned to a book on my shelf, choosing A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens as the first step to

I'm still on track - one new recipe each week so far this year! I went for somewhat simple but fully satisfying this week, choosing the All Purpose Biscuits recipe from (once again) the NY Times cooking website. Don't you just love that name? All Purpose. Because really, biscuits are just that. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert. You choose - all purpose. You know, it just hit me - this would've been the year to combine my bucket list task of cooking every recipe from a cookbook... guess I could still take a look at that, but I need the right cookbook! I'll have to think on that one... Back to the cooking. After a trip to the store after work last night, I was prepared for both this week and next week's recipe. To get started, as usual, I gathered all ingredients to start: I really need to get some more finely ground kosher salt. That's the salt Justin uses to brine the turkey, and since it's been on hand it's what I've used for my cooking up