Love for Rainy Days

I am in love. True love. Love at first sight.

      I am head over-heels in love with my newly designed blog.  Not Just Vanilla has been blessed with creativity and genius.

It has been my pleasure to work with Ellie from Rainy Day Templates + Blog Design. We have spent the last 8 weeks,  28 emails and a crazy 5 am phone call  with Ellie.  She is an awesome gem!  I am truly grateful for all the help she has given me. I know you read this blog and think maybe I know what I am talking about and... that is true about baking and cooking. However, as far as custom content and tech and templates, it is all babble to me!

     I don't know if I mentioned this before, but my roommate in collage and a few of my very best friends are compute geniuses. My roommate, Lou, works as a computer engineer at IBM. So reasonably you would think some of the computer knowledge would have rubbed off on me, no such luck.

I  am so very excited to share this with all of you! I am so proud and pleased of this blog and I am so proud of myself for sticking it out.  I am so appreciative  and grateful of all of you, family, old friends and new friends. You have all stuck with me through the many crazies of this past year. I hope to keep you intrigued and drooling over some of the new recipes I will be sharing with you this holiday season.

Thank you to Ellie, my family, my friends, and you my awesome readers.

After all this is the spice of my life, thanks for riding along!

Crazy Days

OK, these last 2+ weeks have been so crazy, I know I have not kept you all up to date. Starting with Passover, my favorite Jewish holiday. We had an amazing dinner and so much fun!  Cooking with my mom was great and not as stressful as I had thought it would be.  I still have more Passover and Easter Recipes to post.  After Passover on Wednesday, we had Easter with our friends, the Reeds on Sunday.  Easter is another of my favorite holidays. My family and the Reeds, celebrate Passover and Easter together. We have been using the term East-Over to describe my families Jewish holiday and  and Easter. We have been getting together for more years than even I can remember. I always love the big family dinners and holidays, Easter, Passover, and Thanksgiving. As stressful as they can be, they are my favorite holidays to cook for and to be with everyone, together. 
Shannon and Phil at 9 irish brothers Saint Patricks Day Me, Phil, and Tiffany 2 on Halloween, I am a cat!My birthday cake at work, with a measuring cup. LOL

Along with both Easter and Passover, another event happened this week... my birthday. One of the most hated days of the year. I like the birthday thing, but just for everyone else. I have always made a big deal of holidays and birthdays, I am always the one planning for everyone else's birthdays and I seem to be the idea person in my family for gifts and holiday, birthday, anniversary parties and dinners. Don't get me wrong, most of the time I enjoy it, this job that somehow I don't remember signing up for. But I am good at it, but I am not good at my birthday.  I have never really enjoyed having my birthday, until this year. I have never felt accepted or as totally loved. I have never really had such a joyous surprise as I got this year. My friends made me cry, I do not remember feeling that loved my friends in a very long time. I was truly surprised and I guess birthdays are a present your friends and family give you each year.