Well, I obviously love cooking and baking :oD I (sometimes) enjoy the challenge of coming up with fun and different recipies that my extremely picky son and husband will eat. I love early morning runs, spinning classes and Pi Yo (partly because it helps me get some energy out so I can focus better during the day, but mostly because then I can eat more cake!!) I love photography, my husband thinks I take way too many pictures, but we have so many saved memories! I am a stay at home mom of a funny, handsome and ACTIVE elementary schooler and a pretty, funny and stubborn preschooler. I have more hobbies than I can keep up with, someday I will finish all of the projects that I've started! I have an amazing husband who puts up with my cooking experiments, and sometimes even likes them :oD He's also pretty handy with a grill! I love to bake cakes and pies and I'm forever trying out new recipies. I am starting to get more adventurous with cake and cookie decorating when I find the time. Bread is my favorite thing to bake when I'm stressed out (as long as it involves kneading) scones work wonders for this too :oD I love to cook Italian dishes, and I'm also fond of Mexican dishes. My husband's family has always made red velvet cake for birthdays and their recipe was shared with me, so I am helping to carry on that tradition. I always make my mom's pumpkin bread recipe for Thanksgiving and for Christmas I make my grandmother's Cardamom Coffee Bread. We love to decorate cookies together, and my dad's side of the family tries to have a big Christmas cookie baking party every year. I am working on starting new traditions with my kids as well. Finally finding an amazing banana muffin recipe (on this website! The banana muffins with struesel topping are fabulous!!!) Getting my husband to realize that shallots and onions are, in fact, edible. Recently creating a new chicken marinade that is now my all time favorite! Ha, ha! Anyone who likes to experiment in the kitchen knows that 1000 characters is not enough to explain all of your cooking tragedies! I remember being about 6 and mixing butter, brown sugar, colored sprinkles, honey and vanilla together, spreading it on bread and not understanding why my mom didn't want to eat the whole batch right then and there :oD The first big thing I tried to cook for my husband was a beautiful looking stuffed-pinwheel flank steak recipe. They were horrible!! They were too thick so by the time the inside was grilled, the outside was charred, and the stuffing had this strange, funky taste to it. I think we ended up ordering pizza that night! Not long after that my new grandmother-in-law sent me a book of family recipes to help me learn to cook. I finally convinced my husband that I did know my way around the kitchen, although whenever one of my experiments doesn't quite work he's likely to say "at least it's not as bad as a pinwheel steak"!