There are a lot of things about Facebook that I don't like. One thing that I do like, though, is that it reminds me every day of who has a birthday. I spend about one minute every morning posting happy birthday messages. It takes just a minute to send well wishes to people I may not have seen or spoken to in a long time. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about birthdays lately. Partly because many of the jobs I do are part of a birthda...

My birthday was this past weekend. If you have to know, I turned 42. Am I 42-years-young or old as dirt? I guess that all depends on your perspective. Personally, I lean towards the former. 

Last year at this time I was wrapping up my time at a job where I really stuggled. I just wasn’t going to be successful there no matter how hard I tried or wanted it to be different. It didn’t take me too long to realize this fact – from da...

You should know, I’m not such a great cook. 

Sure, I can turn out meals for my family most nights of the week that are just fine. And I can host friends for dinner and everyone walks away happy and full (I think). 

But I’m much, much better at baking. 

I used to think that this is because cooking takes a lot more interpretation and “to taste” direction, while baking has pretty clear measurements and instructions that need to be f...

One of my favorite recipe websites, theKitchn.com, recently posted this article about the most popular holiday cookies in every state, according to Google. 

There’s a little bit of an analytics nerd left over in me from my time spent in advertising, so the title caught my attention right away. But what I really love about this list is that, no matter how scary or sad or infuriating the day to day news has become, we can all con...

I’ve had a few people in the past week or so ask me to make caramel brownies. I love these brownies but I don’t make them very often.  They’re not difficult to make, they just have the extra step of making caramel. 

If you look online, most recipes will tell you there’s no need to make your own caramel. You can use packaged caramels and melt them down either by themselves or with some evaporated milk. But there’s just...

A few weeks ago my daughter and I decided to treat ourselves to some frozen yogurt. We both wanted vanilla-chocolate swirl but there was no chocolate that day. So, we shared a giant cup of plain old vanilla. 

And it was delicious. 

This got us talking about the virtues of vanilla. Sure, we love having some chocolate mixed in with every bite, but eventually the chocolate takes over and drowns out any real hint of the vanilla. By...

This past summer seemed particularly rainy. It felt like I was up most nights listening to the sound of thunderstorms. 

When I was a kid I loved listening to rain, watching a burst of lightening and hearing the boom of thunder that always follows. At camp I’d learned that if you counted the seconds between the time you saw lightening and heard the thunder, you could tell whether the storm was moving closer or further away. I wo...