It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment I decided our first grand-scale birthday party would be our last. It may have been when my four-year-old daughter, standing in front of a mountain of largesse taller than she was, opened her…

  Does your body make you groan? I chuckle every time I read this phrase, artfully written in blue marker across the top of a little piece of paper still on my night table. It’s a coupon from my youngest…

From the growing up file, I have two vivid memories of corporal punishment on the home front. Not to bore you with details, but there was a smack! from my mother and a swat! from my dad. Both were delivered…

There was a stretch a while back when my husband and I had grown so incredibly busy – me with small children mostly, him with trying to grow a small business – that the idea of couple time seemed ludicrous…

Several years back, I caught The Story of Stuff online and vowed to make some changes. Have you seen it? It’s a twenty-minute film that basically reams out the “materials economy” of which we’re all a living, breathing, hyper-consuming part.…

“You can do one all by yourself, Mommy.” It was our first trip to All Fired Up, the paint-your-own ceramic shop in Carytown. Mistake number one was assuming I could get away with purchasing a single item to paint that…

I married a breakfast guy. He also has a very genuine appreciation of dinner, a healthy respect for lunch, and a love of the culinary arts in general, both process and product. Conversely, I am not a foodie. This is…

I have friends who can while away hours at a mall and come home perfectly content, having bought nothing other than lunch. These people have kids and jobs and grimy bathrooms, just like me. They are shoppers; I am not.…

Almost two hours into our road trip, the girls were quiet in the backseat. From behind the wheel, I marveled at how smoothly this journey was going as we made our way north to visit family and give away graduation…

The little figure on the conference room table squirmed. His tiny nose snuffled at the stale office building air, or perhaps it was the burnt coffee wafting from the break room. Huge malted-milk-ball eyes darted about the room, wide open…