Hey! I’m Michaela, welcome to my kitchen! While you’re here with me, I hope that you will find all sorts of simple and yummy recipes to share with your family. I pride myself on sharing tried and true recipes of all kinds that use simple ingredients, nothing crazy you can’t pronounce, that you might happen to have right in your own kitchen.
I truly feel that memories are made in the heart of the home, the kitchen. Ours is loud and crowded, and I wouldn’t have it any other way!
My goal is making meals that get my family gathered together around the table, sharing stories, laughing and connecting. Is that your dream, too? I mean, wouldn’t you rather have your family gathered around your kitchen table than eating out of a paper bag leaving the drive-thru?
It’s doable. With a well-stocked pantry of basic ingredients, a bit of planning and a good sense of humor, it can be done. I promise.
When I was a kid, and was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up I always said “A Mom.” I loved having a stay at home mom, and I always wanted that for my kids.
When I got married in 1991, my husband and I had the same ideals of what we wanted our family life to be like. Even though I grew up in the city, in Omaha, Nebraska, and he grew up on a farm in rural Iowa, we were raised very much the same.
We appreciated that our family sat down at night to eat dinner together, and those big family get-togethers with our grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, didn’t just happen on the holidays. We wanted this for our kids, too.
Before I had kids, my background was mainly retail sales and management, visual merchandising and marketing. Of all of the jobs I held, the ones with the creative outlets were where I thrived. So, when I had my first child in 1994, and we began to figure out how to financially make my dream of being a stay at home mom a reality, I knew that my “side hustle” would need to be something where I could let those creative juices flow.
I worked part-time doing marketing for a local real estate agent and started my own business with a multi-level marketing scrapbook company, we had our second child in 1997, and I started an online scrapbook art website, where I produced handmade scrapbook art. I sold that website when I found out that we were expecting twins in 2002.
I had my hands full with 4 kids, so the part-time work went out the window, and I spent much of my time volunteering at school and church. My favorite was the afternoons I spent working in the art room at school. It got my creative heart pounding once again.
About that same time, I was asked to be the decorating chair for our parish annual auction. Family and friends asked to see photos of it, and I was busy sending emails with attachments when a good friend of mine said “hey, you should start a blog.” A what? She suggested that it would be a fun place to share those sorts of larger events, as well as the themed parties I enjoyed doing for friends and family.
So I did. In March of 2011, I started my blog and shared parties here and there. But one girl can only throw so many parties, (at least without her husband looking at her sideways) and then it happened.
Someone asked me for a dip recipe that I had made for one of the parties, and I shared it on the blog. The blog quickly morphed from an entertaining blog with a few recipes to a food blog with entertaining ideas sprinkled in here and there.
I have always enjoyed entertaining, cooking and baking. I love the creative outlet that blogging gives me, to experiment and develop recipes, photograph them and share them with my readers all over the world. Bonus? I get to spend my days with my two furry office assistants, our boxers, Theo and Libby. They are professional taste testers in my kitchen, the best under the desk foot warmers in all the land, and of course, they run a stellar security system for all visitors and deliveries that grace the porch.
These days, our littles that kept me busy day in and day out aren’t so little anymore. Our oldest son married in August of 2021, our oldest daughter married her high school sweetheart in July of 2020. We were excited to welcome our first grandchild in February of 2022. Our twins are in their second year of college about an hour away. I feel so incredibly blessed, though, as all of them visit often and are never far away from my kitchen.
On Sundays, everyone comes for our big family dinner of the week. Whoever is here, or whoever may stop by, there is always plenty; but nothing makes me happier than when EVERYONE is home, and I can look around my table and there is a “seat in every seat.” Then my heart is full.
To read more on how I got the name, find it in my post, “Why An Affair from the Heart?“
