Author Archives: Ann Kirsten

Winters in the Pacific Northwest are a bit different from other places. In some places, winter weather is hardly noticeable from any other time of year. In other areas winters bring lots of snow. In o...

We talk a lot about the winter blues. There are uncountable articles on the subject and even those of us who like to be inside get the winter blues at times. After all, the days are shorter and darker...

I did Christmas a little differently this year and I learned a lot. I hope I can carry these lessons into the future and put them into use. Usually, Christmas causes me so much stress. People with a b...

Whether you like cheesy rom-coms or animated stories from your childhood, it just wouldn't be the holiday season without watching a few Christmas movies. No matter where your tastes lie, you can find ...

We have a joke in our family. One of those things that didn't start out as being funny, but as the years have passed, I can finally see the humor in it. I became the family matriarch at quite a young ...

This happened many decades ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I was a teen and I had a friend over. Around 11:00 pm we decided to make Spritz Cookies. We doubled the recipe (a huge mistake)...

Three generations of women were all laughing and gabbing in the car. We were headed to a Holiday Open House. Christmas music was on the radio, old family jokes were flying freely, and tons of love fil...

Did you know that the only female Pilgrims left alive after those first awful years of sickness and starvation were four women and two teen girls? It is said that those six women cooked the food for t...

Don't you wish you knew when certain life events were over, like the last time you would visit a place or the last time you would see someone? Maybe we would pay special attention if we knew we were e...

Fall has arrived and that means the days of open windows and doors have ended. It also means that the thermostat wars have begun! I've never known a family where everyone has the same temperature need...