What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

The best advice I ever received was on parenting from a father of seven children. He said, “Children when they deserve your love the least is when they need your love the most.” He shared this with me when I was a young mother of a toddler. It wasn’t until many years later when I could appreciate his wisdom in these words.

What would your life be like without music?

Our home is filled with music as we love most types and lean toward classic rock and roll and both old and new country music.

My husband is a true rock and roll guy with music by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Tom Petty and more.

I was raised on Johnny Cash and grew up to be a huge fan of Country Music Artist Gary Allan. We have probably attended more than 20 of his fan club parties and more than 50 of Gary Allan’s live concerts.

Recently we have become huge fans of Anderson East and have attended several of his concerts.

We stream music still play our CD’s and how a large vinyl record collection.

Music is for all reasons and seasons and all emotions. I can’t imagine living in a world without music! While sitting at home, driving in the car, or on the beach and more, music fill our hearts and warms our souls.

How do you celebrate holidays?

We love the holidays, all of them! From Thanksgiving through to New Years there are some “traditions” for how we celebrate. Every season we make time to view these three movies; The Holiday, The Family Stone and A White Christmas.

We love visiting New York City during the holiday season where we take in The Radio City Christmas Show, Mass at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and some shopping that always includes Macy’s. And some dining too. It’s a trip where we take the train into the city and walk and walk and walk. We using exceed 20,000 steps on that one day in NYC!

Another great holiday trip is the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville. The hotel is decorated so beautifully and there are white lights on most exterior trees with horse drawn carriages.

At home we decorate and dine on traditional turkey dinners for Thanksgiving and Christmas is usually surf and turf.

Now that the kids are grown and gone we do celebrate more with our friends and neighbors. Our home is decorated and we play Christmas tunes while baking homemade cookies, cakes and pies.

Whether traveling or staying home we love the holidays and do raise a glass or two in celebration.

Happy Holidays all !

Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail.

In an early morning attempt to bake a birthday cake for a co-worker before work, I forgot the eggs! As a pretty accomplished baker I couldn’t understand why the cake I had just baked was as flat as a pancake.

After some deduction and detective work I soon realized I forgot to include the three eggs the recipe called for, I was just moving fast and in the desire to get much accomplished, really accomplished very little.

Baking unlike cooking is more science based and those eggs were necessary for success.

Oh well a quick trip to the grocery store to purchase a birthday cake ended up being plan “B” and the takeaway for me; enjoy baking cakes more when you actually have the time to bake them.