*kendraspondence*

Not that we’re keeping score, but today is the 10th anniversary of my first Valentine’s Day with Lovey Loverpants in which he was confused by my verbiage and thought that when I said, “We are going out to dinner,” I meant with him and not my roommates. This misunderstanding meant he drove 7 hours to my apartment in DC and was dressed in a BOWTIE awaiting my arrival so that we could go out to dinner.  Only, shoooooot!  I had just eaten!  With my roommates.  Don’t you remember?

So I ordered him a pizza and together we enjoyed it, he eating it, and me enjoying him in a bowtie.

To let the circle go unbroken, we celebrated tonight with a similar circular-shaped pie, only with Baby Girl (and, by extension, Wee En Utero Baby).  We all ate together this year, though, and that was sweet indeed.

***

Prior to that, though, there were CHOCOLATE BUFFETS to orchestrate, and this was perhaps one of my proudest feats in the kitchen to date.  I hosted a little Mary Kay showing of our new products (and still have a few gift bags and one of these gift boxes left if you are in the market, I’ll send it your way with free shipping). To sweeten the deal, I offered my guests a self-guided tour of chocolate.  Somehow we all managed to find our way….

***

Chocolate Pretzel Tart

Homemade strawberry marshmallows

Made with help from Baby Girl

The world’s largest shmallow

A glimpse of the buffet:

A few valentines made by Baby Girl and a gluestick:

A few of my sweethearts

I’d like to invite you to participate in a fun project to support the women residents of the Elizabeth Stone House this holiday season!

The House provides residential and off-site programs for survivors of domestic violence. I have supported this organization in the past and have a very dear friend who has worked for the agency for 10 years. I really believe in its mission and am motivated to do the following:

I am aiming to donate 30 stockings for the women residents of the House. The stockings will be filled with candy, a Mary Kay peppermint cream body set, and a “starry” lip gloss.

If you would like to sponsor a stocking, you could do so as a gift that is tax-deductible for both yourself or your business. The stockings can contain whatever message you like. The cost of the stockings are $20.* I can accept check, cash, or credit card. I will send you a receipt for your tax records and will deliver the stockings to the House on Dec. 17.

Here is what the stockings look like:

*Please note that I have deeply discounted the product and am not trying to turn some big Mary Kay profit off of this. I am donating a portion of the stockings but just wanted to allow others the opportunity to participate in something that was sort of “ready-made”.

Please e-mail me (kendratheadverb at gmail dot com) or leave a comment if you would like to participate or have any questions!!

Thanks so much and have a blessed holiday season!

I don’t think we should be proud when we work a lot of hours. Not that a good work ethic isn’t a point of pride, but I think we should be grateful for our opportunities, and take them as blessings from God.

Oh, but now I do so love to complain. And I have, often, about the hamster wheel work-a-day schedule my husband has maintained for the last couple of years while I was finishing grad school. I found myself rattling off his m.o. like a radio announcer, “Three jobs! 70 hours! Often overnight! With crazy people!” I was always proud of him and the way he never complained, working so many hours with such a difficult population. But it was always clear to me how tempting it was to become self-satisfied with this life. As if there was some award at the end of the year for Most Nights a Therapist Has Been Paged In a Row. Oooh, I hope it’s a cookie. That would make it all worth it.

This school year, I’m no longer a student, and Lovey Loverpants will no longer be working an insane number of hours with the insane (excluding the hours he has to coexist with me). He’ll take a day off each week to spend with Baby Girl while I am prepping my lesson plans and grading papers. Once again, it’s so easy to become prideful of this, to congratulate Loverpants for making such a sacrifice, for being such an honorable dad. But you know what? Daddy and Madi Day is a blessing. It’s given to us in grace. I’m so thrilled for my family, so excited for more daddy/daughter facetime, and taking it all as a gift and not a given.

***

They’re together so much, they’ve started to dress alike.

Cooking Class

::MELTS::

I am about to make a huge sacrifice for beauty…
I am laying down the sacrificial lamb of my pride to advertise this…
which should tell you how passionately I feel about this matter.

It is a matter of import, one of tremendous gravity.

It is, of course, the issue of non-shadowy-eye-shadow.

An oxymoron, you insist?

I thought the same for so long, dear friends. As a lover of my spectacles, I thought I might be destined to a life of LIVING IN MY OWN SHADOW! So shadowy were my eyes hid behind the imposing framewear.

But lo! Into my life came Mary Kay Eyesicles creme eyeshadow. And yes, though I am an independent beauty consultant with Mary Kay who will profit from your purchase of this product, I will not, however, benefit from having the following picture on the interwebz with my pointy little freckled nose and my oral hygiene practices made manifest for all the world wide web to see.

I do so love this product.  And yours, for ten moneys, and shipping’s on me!
You’re welcome.
xoxo,
Kendra

A couple of weeks ago, I was in the bathroom having an intervention appointment with Mary Kay who was working her magic on me with a little thing called showing free radicals who’s boss microdermabrasion, and busy though I was with the pink lady products [which you can purchase and have shipped to you for free through my website linked above under the "mary kay" tab, not that I am plugging shamelessly or anything, not that I want a Pink Cadillac today or anything], I suddenly heard a loud THUD and I was sure Baby Girl was taking her first Danger Mouse geronomooooo out of her crib. But I came out of the bathroom to near no crying, to see Lovey sitting on the exerball just casually thinking maybe the sound came from the stairwell that leads to the other units in our building. But further inspection suggested that perhaps it came from outside. Still, we had no leads.

When I was gone to the funeral last week, Lovey called me and said, “Hey, remember that loud THUD the other night? Well, I found scraps of a coconut in the wreath on the front door.”

I will not even begin to explore who purposefully carried a coconut in the mid-February freeze to play darts at my stoop.

So a word from the ‘hood. Beware of coconut cannonballs aiming for the target of the festive wreath on your front door. We just can’t be too careful about the hazards of tropical fruit.