The Gift Exchange

Memorial Day this year falls on Monday May 27.  We honor those who have died while serving our country now and in years gone by. We visit gravestones, hold vigils, and eagerly await the homecoming of our friends and family members still overseas. We also celebrate and enjoy this date as the conventional oncoming of [...]

  Maybe it’s just me, but one of my favorite ways to celebrate any holiday is to turn it into an excuse to bake something delicious and fun. St. Patrick’s Day is no exception! What a great excuse to break out the green food coloring and shamrock cookie cutters! Here is a fun recipe for [...]

When I think of the perfect food, there is only one that comes to mind… cheese! It can be used for breakfast, lunch, dinner AND dessert. It can be paired with wines, added to sauces, melted into fondue, topped with fruit, put in sandwiches, mixed with pasta and put in desserts.  Not only that, but [...]

Oregon and Washington have an established reputation for some of the best wine in the world.  If you are fortunate enough to live or visit the Pacific Northwest, you have a unique opportunity to make a trip out to wine country and explore the  dazzling array of  top-notch wineries each region has to offer. Oregon’s Willamette [...]

Guest Blogger Tracey Graham Growing up in the wilds of Alaska, I grew up with a love for books. Since there was no television station that transmitted to our home, my family would sit around the living room each night to read out loud.The stories would range from adventure, to sci-fi, to teen romance books (this [...]

For me, the single most enjoyable thing about being a parent is getting to play Santa Claus. I think every kid loves Christmas. Presents, cookies, family…what’s not to love? Nobody ever tells you, though, just how much you’ll love Christmas when you become an adult, and for entirely different reasons. The feeling of carefully selecting gifts for [...]

Let’s face it, men have it pretty easy in the Christmas shopping department. Women love flowers, spa products or jewelry almost without exception. Women also have to decide every year what on earth to buy for the men in their lives. Men aren’t quite as simple to shop for; it isn’t always golf weather or [...]

The holiday season is upon us and around each day presents a new temptation for the taste buds. From the smells of pumpkin pie and gingerbread that seem to be wafting out of every oven to the beautifully photographed entrees that grace the cover of every magazine in the checkout line, this season is heaven [...]

Blog by Linda Wallace Every year. EVERY YEAR. I find myself in the middle of December, thinking about all the Christmas shopping I have left to do, dreading the stores, dreading the expense, dreading the stress! We all know the way to avoid this, so why don’t we make an effort to try to get our holiday [...]

Blog by Kirian McClure As much as the winter holidays make us want to hunker down and outlast the harsh weather with all the seasons usual tasty (and fattening) trappings, for some they can also trigger an almost obsessive need to travel to the brighter, warmer parts of the world.  Usually my family goes the traditional [...]