Avocado Toast has become all the rage lately, hasn’t it? For good reason! A thick slice of hearty bread toasted and topped with California Avocados and a myriad of other favorite toppings is about as good as it gets when it comes to really great food. Plus, Avocado Toast is so easy to customize to anyones liking. It’s no wonder people are turning to it during mealtime.

I’ve been visiting a local coffee shop lately known for serving incredible Avocado Toast. The problem is, I’m always hungry for it at lunch time, but they only serve the toast at breakfast. I think that’s a shame. In my opinion, Avocado Toast should be an anytime of day meal! …

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“Mom, how did whoever developed the English language come up with the word “crunchy”?”, my 13 year old asked.

We had just sat down to dinner as a family and this question launched a whole series of other questions from my kids. As we crunched on our tacos, we all began to guess how the word crunchy came about. Was it from the sound crunching on something makes in your mouth? Did someone just think crunchy was a fun word and it happened to be the next word in queue to use?

It was random and silly and exactly the kind of family dinner I love most! I feel like so often we get caught up in talking about the hum-drum of the day, that it’s nice to laugh and be silly instead. …

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This summer, I tried really really hard to eliminate my biggest weakness from my diet…carbs. I’m a huge bread fan, but let me tell you young friends… once you turn 40, you just can’t do all that carb eating and expect things not to change. Every slice of delicious bread goes right to your hips, belly, face, etc.

Laying off carbs hasn’t been easy, because I LOVE carbs, but it hasn’t been as hard as I anticipated either. I’ve gone without carbs for long enough now that I’ve been able to reintroduce them without feeling like I need to pig out on them. It’s safe to say that my current relationship with carbs is a healthy love affair, not an obsession.

Throughout this carbless adventure, I’ve discovered some really tasty way to eat things I love, like pizza, without adding the carbs. Nothing, and I repeat nothing, will ever really take the place of my beloved pizza crust, but I’ve discovered something that certainly comes close. …

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Happy Thanksgiving week, friends! How are you holding up? Are you ready for the onslaught of guests and food? We are heading up to my oldest brother’s house near Chicago for a few days and I can’t wait!

I love Thanksgiving…every year we seem to do something different with either my husbands family or our family…or even just friends who are home for the holiday. We never have real set plans each year but we do have a few things that the day is always full of. Fellowship with others (family family or friends family), awesome food, football AND the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade! No matter where we are on Thanksgiving day, we all watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade! …

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Before we get to this BBQ Roasted Chickpeas recipe, can we take a moment to talk about Jessica from How Sweet Eats and her fabulous new cookbook, Seriously Delish?

I have always told people that Jessica is one of the hardest working bloggers I know. Since the moment she typed her first word on her blog, that girl has been working tirelessly to bring her faithful followers the most creative recipes around. She has always been someone I really admire for her work ethic and her commitment to stay true to who she is no matter what the rest of the blogosphere is doing. She does her own thing, beats her own drum, and does it so well. I’m really proud to be able to call Jessica a friend and someone I can get real with when I’m overwhelmed by the industry we’re in. …

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The season turned to fall this week, which means it’s officially time to break out the pumpkin pie spice! The blogosphere is usually a little like Michael’s and Hobby Lobby… it seems we are often several months ahead of appropriate when it comes to bringing things out for the season. Michaels has even had their Christmas decorations out for a month or two now. Are there really people out there already preparing for Christmas? (Please don’t answer that… I don’t think I really want to know). I love the holidays, and I absolutely LOVE Christmas, but I’m a “take things one day at a time” kind of gal and also usually a few steps behind. This is why it is only now that I’m sharing my first pumpkin pie spice recipe of the season, after fall has already begun.

Don’t get me wrong… I’ve enjoyed my fair share of Pumpkin Spiced Lattes at Starbucks since they came back in August and have maybe even worn my brown fall boots once or twice already, even though it has been in the 80’s still here. I love Fall and am so excited for it to be pumpkin season! I hope you are too!…

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We are almost a week into summer break and my kids are already expecting me to feed them 3 meals a day, plus snacks. What’s up with kids thinking they need to be fed all the time? 🙂

Seriously though, my biggest challenges during the summer revolve around keeping the children well fed. It seems like between the pool, sports activities and getting things checked off our Summer Bucket List, we are either on the go during meal time or popping in the house for a short bit before we head onto our next thing. My kids like to call the way I feed them during the summer “snackie summer meals”. I’ll admit it…feeding my kids great lunches during the summer isn’t my forte. When they aren’t home with me, I’m used to just grabbing an avocado, sandwich or bowl of cereal and calling it good! For some reason, that doesn’t always fly with them! …

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So, our house went on the market this past weekend and I’m already kind of over the whole process! In the last week I spent 2 days ticked off and not speaking to my husband (because I’m mature that way), 24 hours completely digging through every nook and cranny in our house de-junking, de-cluttering and cleaning, enlisting my best friend to clean out my pantry, and drinking lots of wine. We haven’t even had our house on the market for 2 days yet and the whole process is already stressing me out!

We are absolutely in one of those no-lose situations as we love where we are, our neighbors and our home, and we love the house that we’ve been looking at. If we did move it would only be a few miles down the road, if we don’t, we are totally happy. The house we have our eyes on has 2 acres of land (and a sunroom) which is something we’ve wanted for quite sometime. However, again, we have survived this long without land, and can survive even longer if things don’t happen with that other house. So needless to say, we are in one of those chaotic states of flux right now!

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