I’ve never been good with plants.  Ask my mom, she’ll tell you.  The only times I’ve ever been successful with plants and gardens and grass and all that green stuff has been when I had something to prove. Mom and I re-did our entire front yard on Maui many years ago.  We’d moved into a house that was surrounded by Hawaiian Hibiscus...

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Chef: Mike Ingredients: smoked sausage, peppers, tomatoes, celery, broth, white rice, lotsa spices Verdict: oh. my. god. This is the yummiest of all yummies.  I could have eaten the entire pot myself. ...

  Ellie just finished reading The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau.  For Easter, the big bunny brought her the second novel in the series, The People of Sparks, which she started devouring immediately.  She loved the first book, and read all 260-some pages in about five days flat.  She could have read it in half that time if we didn’t keep her so busy...

Chef: Mike Ingredients: 100% from scratch Verdict:...

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Ellie and I took a mid-morning trip over to Greenfield Lake with the cameras. The idea was to get some current photos of Miss Bean in all her seven-year-old glory, but she insisted that there are plenty of pictures of her, but none of me – so she took a camera out of my hands and posed me She let me take a couple of her, too. Just a couple. She promised if I take...

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It snowed around 5″ in Wilmington NC last week! After Ellie built her very first snowman, she asked me to take some video of her. I can’t help it, I think this is the cutest thing in the entire world. ...