This is a sponsored post by Good Food Made Simple. Which is just as deliciously awesome as it sounds. *** You guys, I try so hard. I want to make good, healthy food every single morning, noon, and night. But sometimes, a crazy number of things conspire against me: conflicting schedules, a house turned upside down, reviews and posts being turned in during key mealtime prep (and still slightly past deadline), children randomly deciding not to eat stuff they normally {Read More}

I know for a fact that a few of you have heard this story. Like, literally heard the involved cries within the greater Chicagoland area on the actual day of occurrence. Well, I’ve brought it back because I was inspired by NickMom’s fabulous 2.6 Seconds Before The Family Holiday Picture cartoon. (Have you played around on the NickMom.com site? You really oughta.) So here’s my story of holiday awesomesauceitude: They were playing so nicely together. Well, “playing” is a relative term, {Read More}

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Asurion. Em, my youngest sister, is many things: intelligent, compassionate, adventurous… …But she’s also absolute hell on her gadgets. This is not hyperbole. She’s practically an X-Men (Man?) with her ability to destroy a smartphone. There was the time she was interning at the New England Aquarium and discovered that- while pretty- the sight of a pink flip phone drifting to the bottom of a tank doesn’t interest the {Read More}

It’s a poorly kept secret that I’m kind of a shoe expert. Now, I’m no Imelda Marcos, but I’ve been known to horde my lovely pairs of shoes (and line them up by color, give them cute li’l nicknames, check on them in the middle of the night…) Anyhow. Recently, an extremely helpful guide was published on the always-funny (some might even say #MotherFunny) NickMom.com: And while this is a pretty darned accurate list, I feel like I can throw in {Read More}

You guys, I had no idea. I thought all grocery store experiences were the same: but jiminy cricket was I wrong! The girls and I recently attended the opening of Chicago’s newest Mariano’s store in the South Loop. And man, was it simply amazing. From the second we walked in (and had our pick of kid-friendly grocery carts; we chose a police car), I realized that this place was gonna make my normal grocery routine pale in comparison. There was the Squeez’d {Read More}

Thanks to Beau-coup for sponsoring this post- and for giving me a crazy amount of festive eye candy. *** When my Mom turned 60, we surprised her with a beachy-themed party on Cape Cod that worked for so many reasons; among them the fact that we had all planned on being there that week anyhow, and the other fact that she’d been talking about/threatening floating out to sea on a beach chair for the previous fifty of those years. And it was {Read More}