Best Buys
I've crash-landed into the post-holiday wasteland. The parties and planning are over. Where needed, gifts have been returned or exchanged. The Christmas tree has kept its date with the wood chipper, and the holiday decorations …
Margaritas are the signature cocktail of the Kelly household. As hot days turn to warm evenings from April until Halloween or so, we often sit with friends on the deck, slurping down the slushy, limey …
My family likes to get into its cups at holiday time. Some of them have deeper cups than others. A few of them stay in them all year round. For those soggy few, the holidays …
I'm a lefty. Among other things, that means I'm not too deft with a standard pair of scissors. In grammar school, I was never the one picked to help the teacher cut stuff out for …
Every year at Christmas my kids are bombarded with store advertisements and commercials. Though I can't do much about the marketing machine, I can counterbalance the marketing monster by encouraging my children to do charitable …
It's the most wonderful time of the year...," sings hubby Patrick. He has been belting that holiday tune out since before Halloween, his way of poking fun at his Christmas-loving wife. "Halloween is right around …
My mother was a crack ironer. My mother-in-law could have a man's dress shirt pressed in four minutes. She ironed sheets, undershirts, even underwear, watching cooking shows as she pressed away. My friend Shawn, always …
Call me strange, but the holidays make me think of germs. Every year, we have our Thanksgiving feast with husband Patrick's side of the family. The patriarch's home, where the dinner is usually held, crawls …
've been thinking about buying time. Between the kids, the house, the bills, the cooking, the cleaning, and all the rest of it, I seem to arrive at bedtime well short of checking off everything …
Presidents and sports. It's a strange topic in the sense that anything having to do with presidents is strange, so you start from a place that has little resemblance to ordinary life. Figure there's 300,000,000 …
Baby Peter has made his appearance into the family. He's my niece Maria's first baby, and the family is in a baby blue twitter. For a baby gift, I want to put together a basket …
In my house, growing up, if the kiddies weren’t feeling well it was either the weather or they needed to go No. 2, or, as mom put it, “hmm- hmm’s.” Raisin bran has always had …
A college friend of mine who hailed from England harbored both disgust and distrust toward burritos. He thought of them as seeping, seething sacks of food, secretive and primitive in an unappetizing way. I, however, …