My best friend of 7 years and avid blogger at onescrappymom.com was recently in a car accident. My husband and I are so close to her we ended up tracking her down and got the report on her injuries. She has seriousl injuries to her leg and face and right now is sleeping and has had surgeries. Thank heavens her kids were not hurt. Her husband has minor injuries. Many MANY bloggers and friends have shown an immediate outpouring of love and donations for her for flowers and gift cards for meals and things. She has a rough recovery ahead of her.

I am holding it together for her because I know she would do the same for me. She is the sweetest person you will ever meet. Every blogger that has met her has said the same thing. She asked me about a year ago or so to help her start blogging like I do and she has taken off like a lightning bolt. She is invited on brand trips even more than me. She works hard and she is the same with her friends she works hard to make sure you feel loved.

Please keep my dear friend Bobbie in your prayers, I know she would appreciate all the prayers of healing that she can get!

My oldest son is a normal 14 year old. Ok that isn’t true either. Most kids his age have a cell phone with calling abilities, he does not, because I am not supporting his iPhone habit when cell service sucks out here and, well, the poor kid never goes anywhere. The sad part is now that I have money occasionally he could ask for extra allowance but he doesn’t. What is worse is we live in a town where there is NOTHING to do, no theaters, no shopping, NOTHING but farms. Sadly the coolest hangout just happens to be the pizza place that I am currently interning at.

I try so hard to connect with this kid as a friend. Its not often that I have to discipline him he minds us very well and does his chores without fuss. He is extremely helpful with Aiden who is very high energy and demands attention a lot. He knows that when we really need a break that we love him forever because he will take Aiden and play in his room on guitar or something. I don’t have to be his best friend but being his mom I want to make sure I am connecting with him. I don’t want him to ever feel sad. I want to make sure he is doing well.

Its a hard thing to know that I have no idea what I am doing I am just parenting with my heart. Our kids have a bit harder life than most because we aren’t rich. Colton never complains but deep down I feel bad that we can’t offer him the same things that his friends have. Within reason of course, there is no reason for him to have a $250 jacket for a stupid logo. I count myself as lucky because we haven’t yet dealt with any big major problems (knock on wood) . I feel bad this kid had to have rookie parents and honestly I am shocked that he is such a good kid at this point. I will say I am glad he is around because parenting him has made it so much easier to parent his sister and brother. That is of course until said sister hits puberty. Why can’t kids just stay young and innocent?

Well, another year has come and gone. it was a pretty spectacular year both online and off. Was it perfect? No way. Drama at college, drama at home sometimes from us all trying to adjust to new roles and things, but I couldn’t have asked for a better year. For some reason, I was confident that the year meant I was still young. Now I am closer to 35. I know, I know to many that is still young. I guess it is, LOL. I am loving my thirties. I found out who I really am and what my calling is (um, hello? FOOD) and I became comfortable in my skin. No that doesn’t mean I am not working on getting healthy it just means that I am not locked away in my mind.

What am I hoping for this year? My biggest birthday wish is to have the best learning experience in my last cooking classes this semester. Its one thing for me to Ace everything I do at college, its another to actually go out there and work. This is the time where I need to make those connections with people that want to hire me. I will have an associates degree in business that will help me get to a management position faster than just starting on the line at a restaurant. I will GRADUATE. Feels great to say that and know its going to happen this year! I also will SAVOR this year with my youngest because he will turn 4 this year and that is dangerously close to being old enough for school! Its been hard for me to be away from him at college since he was one so I am trying to soak up what I can!

I also wish that this blog hits the big time. I am on the verge of it I can feel it. I am still going to blog about the behind the scenes when I am a chef. OMG I said chef. I can’t wait to get certified and be called a chef! Anyway I want to keep blogging about the behind the scenes of the food world, its unique and not just recipes. And I want to meet a TON of food bloggers this year.

For my birthday I am going to have some sushi, shop a little with my hubs, and make some carrot cake cupcakes. Maybe I will buy a cake. I can use a day off of cooking, it’s my birthday after all LOL.

This year on my blog I set goals but knew it would be hard going from a mommy/review blog to a food blog. Still it was my goal to work with the dream companies and they were Calphalon and KitchenAid. And as luck would have it I began working with them both in the same week actually! I have worked with some other food and cookware companies but do so much hope for more in 2012. I want to be invited go to restaurant shows and home shows to visit the brands in person.

Other things that happened to me this year:

May: Finished the semester with a 3.5 making the Dean’s list, best GPA yet.

June: Took the train to Chicago with the culinary club from college to visit the Taste of Chicago festival, it was amazing.

July : Chosen to be a Whirlpool Mom for Mom Central and received Duet washer and dryer worth over $3k.

The very next day I was chosen to be a Verizon Midwest Mom Blogger, which was a 6 month program in which we were to test the Verizon network in 4G on 2 android devices and blog about it.

The very next week I was invited by Green Giant to fly to Minneapolis and vist LaSeuer Minnesota to see the Valley and learn more about the brand.

We were flown to Chicago the last week of June for Verizon and had dinner at the Signature Room at the 95th, where I asked to meet the chef and see the kitchen and they let me. I went to my first blogger conference the next day, the Bloggers and Brands Summit. I met up with my good friend Tanya and Jenna, it was a great time.

In early August I took the trip to Minnesota and it was great! Night two held a great dinner at Bar La Grassa in Minneapolis which is home to the James Beard award winning chef Issac Becker. food was delish and yep, got to meet Issac!

Myself and Kimberly from Peas On Moss, another culinary student, acted like giddy girls and everyone else laughed and enjoyed every second.

In late August I was invited to go to Benton Harbor (MI) to stay at the Real Whirled House by Whirlpool. The stay included tours of the facilities and we could ask tons of questions. I could only spend one night since I had to leave and be ready for my first day of the semester but I enjoyed my time there and we had an entire day of cooking and you know I was in my element. It was amazing.

It was the best summer blog wise, I earned the most amount of money ever, took trips, and just had a really great summer. I also had a good start to fall and college. Despite my cooking class not being good at all because we lost the chef as a teacher before we got even halfway through. There is a long story that I will spare you but we didn’t learn more than one or two things and they were on the days chef was there. Its sad, and I hope and pray that this last semester of that kitchen being open isn’t near as bad as last. I still earned a 3.88 GPA, it would have been 4 and it still might be as I am thinking about disputing the cooking class 3.5 because they legally can’t base our grades on attendance only and I missed one class the whole 16 weeks so its unfair. It doesn’t mean that much a 3.8 is very high GPA but still.  But despite one waste of time and money class the rest of the semester went great.

Friends also came to me in 2012 thanks to blogging and the chef actually. I have a kid around the same age as his and I set up playdates with him and his mom and we have become friends. Its been a very busy December for everyone and I miss her and her little man terribly! i miss chef too. Both are my friends but on two very different levels. Fascinating people they are.

Being with her made me want to get rid of negative people in my life and I adopted a policy to not be around negative people and people who have issues in their past. I had a pretty decent life compared to some and was never a victim to anyone. I just don’t have it in me anymore to live my life negatively or get sucked into other people’s depression. Carpe Diem. I’m all about sucking out every ounce of energy i can every single day for the rest of my life.

If something happened and I couldn’t blog at this pace and get paid the same or work with products etc. etc. I wouldn’t care that much because you know what, this was the BEST BLOG YEAR. I cannot express how much my blog affected me positively this year. I grew as a person, student, and mom even. I learned in college, at home, and traveling. I provided an income for my family to help out. It may not be 4 or 5 thousand dollars a month but its not too shabby. I would be thrilled if I made a few hundred a month!

I want to thank you readers for sticking with me this year. For not being scared away by my sarcasm and laughing at my humor. For complimenting my photography, and for begging for more and more recipes to get me going and practicing my craft. I’ll be having my birthday, starting classes, and having my 16th anniversary all within 2 weeks from today so its going to be crazy. You know I will be reporting about class. I regret not doing that all semester long this past semester but there wasn’t much to share really we didn’t cook anything new at all or even make pretty stuff. I have a class coming that should hopefully redeem, keep your fingers crossed!

To the PR and companies that are rooting for me, I thank you! I appreciate your Twitter and Facebook mentions of me and love that you come back after we’ve worked together to look at my food and photos and tell your coworkers about them. It does make my ego grow just a little but I love it and it does make me want to continue to work hard for you!

To my husband, thank you for surviving this semester working at home, I know it wasn’t easy, but spending the fun times with the kids made it worth it. I am looking forward to working on us and making time again to show our babies what two crazy lovebirds really look like.

My Goals for 2012

Blog a ton more. I found out through trial and error that when I work just a little bit harder, through various ways I am bringing in an income, its not the kind that supports a family of 5 comfortably but it doesn’t need to be, I just want to help my husband. Also if I can work part time in the food world it will leave me room to keep writing about food. I want to be a chef I never planned to be a blogger but I love sharing food pics, recipes and my passion so I am going to find a way to make it work. When I graduate I have to be able to start paying my college loans and I want to make sure that its possible without working in case its hard to find a job. Which leads me to my next goal..

Get a job at a food place. I HAVE to get an internship no matter what but I am hoping to get one at a semi-local place that will lead me to a paying position. I already have a lead on a place that told me to just go ahead and call them and set up something but in talking to locals, there is a bakery across the street from the original place that deals a lot more with the bakery aspects from pastries to cakes. As much as I think it will be cool to work at the first place, I know that I won’t be working n honing my pastry skills that much because its a coffee shop. However they make SUPER yummy coffee there. And the atmosphere is awesome too. With a little social media magic that place could be hopping by summer.

Get a video camera for hubby’s business. He needs a specialized camera for his videography business, something like a Sony HVR-V1U. I’m saying this guy needs the big guns. We have a DSLR that can do some things but he really needs to have a camera. His goal is to shoot commercials for local businesses and also weddings, but he would take care of the audio as well. My goal for him is that people will fly to him to work with him for his style, much like sought after wedding photographers, I want the same for him.

Go on more trips and most importantly, take my family on vacation. I have made so many connection by being a blogger that I am sure I can make it happen. I guess the fear of my class schedules are stopping me since I have to take friggin summer school this year, math of all things. I NEED to get my family out of the house. I also really would love to be invited on brand trips. I went on two last year. I love traveling and seeing places its a lot of fun.

Work on Myself. Not just the obvious, things like allowing myself to have pampering once in a while, but also work on my actual self. Step up my Yoga and Pilates. Get in better shape. But also emotionally/mentally work on keeping my cool. Be a better friend, online especially to those who love me and support me, and be the best friend to my husband that I used to be. To allow him to walk beside me instead of behind me. We are coming up on 16 years of marriage and most of it has been perfect but we have to work at it sometimes. Much of this is due to the economy and us both working from home so we see each other all.the.time. It’s not going to be like that in 2012, I have classes and he will have client appointments. It will be fine but I can tell you one thing, my college closing the program put undue stress on me that didn’t help ANYONE. Not only am I upset but other students assume that I am the person that they get to complain too because I was the president of the culinary club. Technically I still am but the club isn’t active and I don’t get to see or talk to Chef much lately so all this stress is riding on me. I think I am a pretty strong gal but I have weaknesses like everyone else and taking everyone’s stress is one of them. This is probably why I am such a sarcastic person which leads me to my last goal…

Be Myself. Not that I wasn’t before but this time I am going to spell it out. I’m no longer going to apologize for it. I do have class but the truth is I was raised by rednecks that I love and I have been learning in a kitchen at a college that has a lot of MEN in it. As a girl you HAVE to learn to be strong to keep up first and foremost, but you need to have a certain personality to work there and being quiet and shy is ok if you are alone in the pastry kitchen all day but working with others you have to be vocal. And to be a chef you need to have to be a little cocky. Bloggers who have met me in real life actually know that I am cocky and sarcastic. I can turn it off when needed such as interviews and things but people in my life, classmates especially love me because of who I am, I make them laugh and I don’t apologize for who I am. I like being funny too. I VOW to put more humor in my posts even the recipe ones!

There are companies out there that actually sell kits for emergencies. With the crazy weather the planet had this year you shouldn’t be surprised that planning for the worst is now becoming commonplace. Companies like the one at preparewise.com have a big selection of freeze dried food but also storage solutions to safely store the food and water. Prepare Wise also sells survival kits like first aid and personal care items, all packages up in a bag so there is no guessing.

I really do hope we don’t have to face a major disaster where I live. We deal with blizzards from time to time and an occasional bad thunderstorm but nothing major so far thankfully. It’s naive to think that it can’t happen, I mean people lose their homes to floods and fires daily. It can’t hurt to be prepared with some good sustainable food in your stockpile to get you through, because I’m positive that people can’t live in candy bars and sports drinks!

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This is very impressive.  He stacked these up like this himself!

I realized I haven’t really introduced myself, and Candy has been doing to talking for me. I have been trying to learn the WordPress format because the extent of my blogging has been to write something in text and paste it on my old Blogger account or send it to Candy an let her use it however is needed. I will probably mess something up, but don’t be afraid to let me know lol. I am not as smart as I appear to be sometimes! Lol You can like, count the lols and look out for sentences containing “like,” “I was like,” “you know? Like…” as my nervousness about actually having more than two viewers goes away. In the future I will reread my posts and make sure to check the meaning of words so as not to expose my memory loss and habit of throwing in a similar word when I can think of the one I need. I am hoping to work on all of this, and other aspects of my life including my health, marriage, fathering, professional, and spirituality (I guess those are all words, I don’t have a teacher to grade everything I do any more lol). I hope to bring a unique perspective to the blog, and although I try to fight it; it is never about one side or the other or two married people continuing to run parallel to each other (thanks MS Office Word auto correct for taking the extra “L” out). But…it’s about putting it all out there and Twizzling together (yes I know that one’s not a word, neither is WordPress appearantly; now appearantly is wrong too I guess but this will be a good example of what I’m trying to say). To make changes, it helps to figure out what else is effecting the relationship (effecting, affecting not sure what you’re trying to say MS Office but probably need the other because this isn’t about magic and I’m used to using effects for my music and video so that will come out).

Um…I wrote down what was supposed to be 15 things I wish I could change, how long it might take, what I can do to get there (had to stop and get a cup of milk for Aiden sorry)…um now I’m thinking about Candy saying I should wear boots more often and some other boots she found that might look good…then I started thinking about when she said not to post 10 pages of stuff because nobody will read it…now someone’s getting back with me on giving away some of the extra clothes we have around…some food show is on…I am about to take a Ginko, I think that’s why Candy put that bottle of Ginko on my desk. Anyway, I have a few reviews/giveaways for guys that I have tried to set up but since I started to prioritize them and overplan and try to just have two or three giveaways all at once and perhaps asked for things that would count on people recording themselves (maybe a podcast should just be a podcast not part 3 of what I need from them lol)…overplan isn’t a word? I used to be so much better at writing, I used to read and write a lot more to keep those skills up. At least I know how to tell the kids to learn from my mistakes.

I was thinking of a little name for my “section” or should I just blend in here? I looked up “Dad’s Rock” and it was hard to tell if it was taken or if people just use it for posts sometimes. But nothing came up with “DadzRok” so thought maybe that would make the guys feel better about posting and getting in on it or at least the gals will know to ask their hubbies if they want them to try and win lol. I know how this stuff goes. I’m highly interested in the blogs, but spend most of my time telling Candy “oh, that’s cool…yep, haha, really?” *Note to self Candy is “Candace.” My name is Greg, but I might use Gregory if I start to have more confidence. So that’s not like a law firm or anything just me overthinking again. Overthinking in’t a word? I quit, lol. Half of my friends on Facebook gave up during the “appearantly” fiasco so to them I say I will fix it next time but right now this serves a purpose. Like when you get home and realize your T-Shirt was on backwards all day and you think back to how nice everyone was about it or maybe how you can’t really trust anyone to watch your back lol. *Clears throat.

I don’t know if I should click publish or wait for Candy, but I think I will see what happens and then she can either get frustrated with what she told me that I forgot (was it like “don’t do that” or “just do that it’s not that complicated” ? I’m way too tired when we talk about these things lol)…or she will e like “I like that you did a post but don’t do that anymore with all the rambling, just get to the point. Just wait until I get out of the shower next time, you’re always in a hurry!”

It does a fantastic job– it reduced the amount of oil on my skin and left me with a feeling of freshness – not too dry, and without that gross feeling you get when there’s a nice layer of oil covering your face.  I would say this works best when not overused.  Small amounts per use will do the job (2 pumps should suffice).  Some peoples’ skin might build up a tolerance, if that happens, just take a break from it for a while – it’ll become effective again once you come back to it!

One point of note is this isn’t a sun-blocking product.  It doesn’t have an SPF and is meant for use at home, maybe during your evening or morning routine.  I haven’t heard many people complain about skin irritation, but even those who did are those with sensitive skin, and they had a better experience with this product than with many others.

Frankly, if you have oily skin or acne and you want a face cream that will go on light, keep your skin feeling good and looking good, this is definitely a good one to try – especially if you’re into French beauty products!

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I used to do a lot of crafting when I had a couple less kids and a lot more time. I think that is why I enjoy the playdate with Meg and Leaf because I can relax and chat and connect instead of just constantly having my head wrapped in classes and blog, its nice to just be a normal adult and mom, which is still a hard job to do but is admittedly less stressful than homework and editorial deadlines.

I do recall when my oldest, now 14, was a baby I had bought an entire 12 piece wooden ornament collection with Looney Tunes Characters that you could paint and it took me an entire day but I did it and I kept them for years! I love holiday crafts that are homemade. Especially from kids, when they are little in school, they make all kinds of homemade ornaments and bring them home and I keep them ALL, even if something is missing an eye or an an antler. There is so much sentiment behind hand crafted ornaments, I think that is why I love them so much.

I look forward to having an ornament making play date with my friend, I know in a couple years both of our boys will be in school but I bet they will remember that time they played together and got their hand prints and made an ornament for the Christmas tree

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