This week started right on track, and I love it. I was able to sit down on Sunday afternoon and create a simple menu plan for our family meals. I made a list and went shopping and have truly appreciated how much time and money has been saved simply because I planned. I know that to keep my focus word for 2013 forefront, planning is going to be essential. Hopefully I can hold on to this feeling of “having my stuff together” so I can stay motivated to continue on the right track.

Over the weekend I read Amy Allen Clark’s new book “The Good Life for Less: Giving Your Family Great Meals, Good Times, and a Happy Home on a Budget“. Amy is one of those people I have always truly admired and I’m happy to call her a friend. Her book has some serious “ah-ha” moments for me… like the feature recipe for this post. Amy suggested buying a turkey breast and roasting it for lunch meat and meals instead of buying packaged lunch meat. It usually tastes better and it’s oh so easy! Why didn’t I think of this before? (more…)

Taking a picture a day in 2012 hasn’t been hard for me. In fact, I take so many pictures each day sometimes the hardest part is choosing which picture gets to be the picture of the day. Getting them uploaded to my blog in a timely manner has also been difficult, but so worth it. In my 2012 Project 365 wrap up post next, I’ll reflect some on what finishing this Project 365 has meant to me. Until then, here is my second to last Project 365 2012 post.

November 1st: I find it interesting that one thing that hasn’t evolved much is the halloween candy bucket. This is the same type of cheap bucket I used to trick-or-treat with!

November 2nd: A baking day = a happy day!

November 3rd: Kelly’s last day of being 8!

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Marketers love me. They really do.

I’m their target for commercials because it takes very, very little for me to get an idea stuck in my head and then I need that idea to come to fruition right that very minute. I’m the perfect case study for the power of suggestion.

My husband knows better than to even mention possibly picking up Chipotle for dinner because I can’t hear that word without needing to run there right then for my favorite burrito bowl. (See…guess what I’m going to have to have for lunch today, now?)

So it’s no surprise that when a few food blogger friends and I were chatting the other day and the topic of fried cheese curds came up, I had to investigate right away. Little, bite size cheese curds, lightly breaded, then fried to perfection? What’s not to love? (more…)

July 1st: Crabby girl

I know I know… I’m horrible at keeping up with Project 365. Normally it’s this time of year that I stop uploading and sharing and give up. I never quit taking photos every day but if you’ll look at my past few years attempts, this is the time when I usually get so behind at uploading that I just quit The pictures stay on my computer and no one ever sees them.

Not this year. Nope… This year I’m going to bore you all to tears while I get caught up on my photos from July and most of August. Then, I have no vacations or out of town trips planned that should throw me off from uploading for awhile! Thanks for hanging in there! Here we go… (more…)

As many of you are aware, the opening ceremonies for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games airs tonight. We are a big Olympic family and always look forward to gathering around the TV each day to watch our favorite Olympians compete for the gold.

The issue with the 2012 Olympics is it falls right, smack dab in the middle of our summer  family vacation. We’ll be either on the road or in the mountains without television access most of the time. We’ve all been wondering how we were going to keep up with the Olympics without television coverage?

Luckily, I did some exploring on my new Nokia Lumina 900 Windows Phone and quickly found several apps that will keep us up to date, even without TV coverage. And thanks to the genius design of the Windows Phone I was able to pin my favorite 2012 Olympic apps right to the front for easy access. (more…)

Kristen Doyle

Freelance Writer, Food & Lifestyle Photographer, Mom

Kristen Doyle is the creator of the award winning website, Dine & Dish. Since early 2006, Kristen has been sharing her favorite recipes, photographs and life stories with an ever growing audience of engaged readers.

Kristen has expanded her reach to include working with major brands (Bush’s Beans, Green Mountain Coffee, Hallmark, Zatarain’s…just to name a few) as well as providing editorial content and direction for nationwide print publications and websites. Her freelance writing career spans working with magazines on a local and national level as well as creating valuable web content for a variety of sites across the web.

Kristen is a busy mom of 4 young kids, loves to entertain, has a passion for photography, and believes in keeping things simple. An avid reader, a kind of runner, a horrible gardener, and the wife of an outstanding man, Kristen’s ultimate life goal is to connect and create meaningful relationships with others.

Kristen is available for editorial and photography projects, speaking engagements and ambassador partnerships with your brand. If you are local to Kansas City, give me a ring & let’s meet for coffee! I hope we get the chance to connect!

You can connect with Kristen by email at kristen <at> dineanddish.net or through Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

I alluded to my Summer Bucket List in my last post. My Summer Bucket List is the list of things I hope to accomplish with the kids by the time school resumes in August. 99.9% of the time, I don’t accomplish most that’s on the list and then I feel really bad about it when they go back to school. (Well we do try to cram as much as possible into that week before school starts to ease a bit of my guilt .)

This year, I decided to take things a bit more seriously and follow the lead of amazing blogger and mama, Amy Clark. Amy created a “100 Days of Summer” Pinterest board last year and I watched, enviously, as she checked the items off, one by one. She’s doing it again this year and I can’t wait to see all the fun she has with her kids.

I decided to make my own Summer of 2012 Pinterest board, thinking something more concrete might be exactly what we need to make the most of our time this year. My list is fairly large, and I can guarantee we won’t get everything done on the list, but I’m hoping we can cross a lot of the things off! So, without further ado, here is our Summer of Fun Bucket List for 2012.

• Go on a Nature Scavenger Hunt
• Go on a Family Moon Walk
• Make homemade Waffle Cones for Ice Cream
• Have a water balloon fight
• Watch the 4th of July Fireworks
• Make inexpensive chalkboard message boards for each kids room
• Have a neighborhood squirt bottle water fight
• Paint Rocks
• Teach the kids how to play tennis
• Go to a Kansas City T-Bones Game

• Make homemade pretzels
• Have a watermelon eating contest
• Have at least one date night with each kid individually
• Build an awesome indoor fort and live in it for the day
• Make artwork placemats
• Find a good book to read a chapter out loud of every day
• Make homemade Coke Icees
• Have an overnight staycation in our town
• Make homemade bagels using the bread machine

• Make funnel cakes
• Teach the kids to follow the FlyLady Daily Kids Challenges
• Decorate water bottles and drink lots of water all summer long
• Watch the sunset, preferably near the water
• Make and eat sno cones
• Make treats and take to the fire station
• Have an outdoor movie night
• Go to a production at Theater in the Park
• Make a PVC pipe sprinkler car wash
• Plan and do several Acts of Kindness for others

• Have a pajama day (at least one!)
• Take the kids to the Independence, KS park and zoo
• Make homemade musical instruments 
• Play flashlight tag
• Go on a road trip / day trip with no destination in mind
• Go to a small town festival in Kansas
• Visit the Omaha Zoo
• Go to the Tonganoxie Rodeo
• Go on a picnic in the park

• Go fishing in Iowa with the cousins
• Have a Shrimp Boil
• Go to Happy Valley Farm to pick berries
• Take the kids on an ABC Photo Walk
• Make a Cookie Cutter Bird Feeder
• Participate in the Great American Backyard Campout
• Play miniature golf in Parkville
• Make Flubber
• Make Glow Stick Lanterns

• Make Old Fashioned Egg Cream Floats
• Go to the Missouri State Fair
• Send handwritten notes to friends and loved ones
• Have the kids write in journals each day
• Create a summer music playlist and listen to songs from it each day
• Go hiking at Shawnee Mission Park
• Fly a kite
• Sharpie Dye T-Shirts

• Make and eat homemade ice cream for breakfast
• Ride in a canoe or pedal boat
• Make a jar and catch lightening bugs (then release)
• Have a summer solstice party
• Take a family vacation to Rocky Mountain National Park / Estes Park
• Visit my niece and Aunt and Uncle in Branson, MO… go to Silver Dollar City
• Have an old fashioned, outdoor play party – play Red Rover, Red Light Green Light
• Go on a photo scavenger hunt

• Make homemade, glazed yeast doughnuts
• Jump in puddles
• Make regular trips to the library and load up on great books for summer reading
• Play back yard frisbee golf
• Make word cloud about me portraits
• Find pictures in the clouds
• Paint with water
• Make Sidewalk Chalk Paint

• Make homemade bubbles
• Make water bottle bubble blowers
• Make and play Balloon Ping Pong
• Do glow stick lawn bowling, at night
• Make an outdoor Twister game
• Make homemade root beer
• Go bowling

• Make homemade popsicles
• Make Summer Sponge Bombs & play splash tag
• Do giant canvas finger painting
• Play hide and seek with glow sticks outside at night
• Go swimming at the pool as much as possible
• Go see a double feature at the Drive-In movie theater

and one final thing…

• Make an Instagram Photo Album at the end of the summer that captures all the fun we had, no matter what we end up doing!

Alright – that’s about it! There are some fun new ideas I’m excited to try and some tried and true fun summer favorites that we do each year. I hope you’ll stop by Pinterest and create a summer fun board of your own! Let me know what your plans are for the summer. Whatever you do, I hope it is a safe, happy and fun one!

The other day I received a big package of goodies from my friends at Zatarain’s. At the very top of the box was a bottle of their Root Beer Extract, including a recipe for making homemade root beer.

The box couldn’t have come at a better time as I was in the middle of making my “things we want to do this summer to make the summer fun” list for the kids. You know that list, with all the great expectations on it, that no matter how hard you try to achieve everything on it you fail? Then, at the end of the summer you look back at the list of things you didn’t get done then feel like a failure of a mom for not making summer the absolute best it can be? Yeah, that’s the list. And yes, I know how it turns out each and every year, but every summer I still make the darn list in hopes of a better turn out “this time around”.

Anyway, I immediately added “make homemade root beer” to our summer bucket list. That should be an easy one to cross off, right? There’s nothing incredibly grand involved… just some Zatarain’s root beer extract and a few simple instructions and voila…. root beer! I’ll let you know as soon as we’ve checked this one off. I may make it be first on the list, just so we can start off summer with a bang!

So, since it isn’t quite summer break yet (1 more week!) I have to wait to make homemade root beer, but I still wanted to do something with the root beer extract now. I decided to give Root Beer Float Cupcakes a try!

I knew I wanted an extra creamy frosting for the cupcakes because everyone knows the very best part of a root beer float is the melted ice cream / root beer mixture at the very end of the glass. I then went on a search for a Swiss Meringue Buttercream recipe. Swiss Meringue is a delicious, silky, creamy frosting made with an egg white and granulated sugar base and lots and lots of butter! It’s a little bit of extra work, but oh my… so very worth it in the end. I combined the recipe over at Martha Stewart’s website (replacing vanilla extract with root beer extract) with the awesome instructions from my friend Rosie over at the Sweetapolita blog. Thanks to them, I had incredible success with my Swiss Meringue Buttercream.

These Root Beer Float Cupcakes with Swiss Meringue Buttercream are the bomb, if I do say so myself. Any root beer float fan will be as big of a fan of cupcakes made to their liking.

Do you have a summer bucket list? If so, add these cupcakes to your list… in the number one spot. Even if you fail at everything else this summer, you’ll have started your summer off on the right foot! Enjoy!

These other friends have tempting (and all unique) Root Beer Cupcake recipes too!

• Root Beer Float Cupcakes from How Sweet Eats
• Root Beer Float Cupcakes from Smitten Kitchen
• Root Beer Float Cupcakes from Coconut & Lime

Disclosure: I am a 2012 brand ambassador for Zatarain’s. All opinions expressed are my own.

For us, Easter Sunday did not go as planned. Eager to start the morning off on the right foot, the family woke up early and headed up to church for 7:30am Mass. Ready to participate in and enjoy the early morning Easter service, we settled into our pew and began the day. Half way through the service, Leah decided she was apparently not in the mood for church and started misbehaving. And, if you know Leah, when she decides she doesn’t want to do something or be somewhere she let’s the whole world know.

I quickly tried to hush her and took her out into the lobby. Stares from old grouchy women and judgmental people who forgot what it is like to have a 2 year old in church were plenty. Towards the end of mass when Leah and I were still in the lobby of church, I saw Nick peek back at me through the glass doors and I signaled that Leah and I were heading home… hopefully to wear her out on the walk so she would at least behave the rest of the day.

When everyone got home, we did our best to try and recover from the scene at church. Putting back on our happy faces, we went outside and let the kids find the eggs in the yard the Easter Bunny had left for them. Things were looking up and all was well for the rest of the morning! A small blip in the morning at church, but we recovered. I was feeling confident… yay us!

“Yay, us!” lasted until about 1pm that afternoon. Nick and I spent most of the day cooking, getting ready to welcome our good friends and neighbors over for a late Easter lunch / early dinner. It was at about 1pm…one hour before our guests were to arrive… that Nick put the pork loin into the oven for me. He then said, as he was checking the recipe to see what the timer should be set at, “You realize this has to cook for 2 hours?” Uh oh… I had hungry guests coming over in just a short while and I had completely misread the cooking time on the recipe! There was no away around it… our guests were going to be here and dinner would not be ready. Not a stellar move for this seasoned hostess!

Everyone got here and you know what? We made due. We sliced up one of the two loaves of homemade bread and shared it with Kerry Gold Butter. We munched on fruit and the deviled eggs my friend contributed. The kids played together, we chatted and all was well. Of course, would you believe that 2 hours later when the timer went off Nick went to check the pork loin and it was overdone! Ah well… it all still worked out and we had a delicious meal with our neighborhood family / friends.

The moral of my entire post is… best laid plans often don’t turn out the way they were meant to, however, there is absolutely nothing about yesterday I would have changed in the end. We enjoyed hanging out with some of my favorite people, were treated to a gorgeous day, a delicious meal, and our many blessings.

Yesterday was all about savoring the moments… the pork loin mishap and the walk home from church required me to slow down and take things in. Just like Limoncello… a drink that is not meant to be guzzled but slowly sipped and enjoyed as you savor what is going on around you.

Recipe: Creamy Limoncello (the non-creamy Limoncello was originally blogged on this post)

This recipe is my husband’s handiwork (the Limoncello) combined with a recipe I learned about when traveling to New Orleans with Zatarain’s earlier this year. The head chef of the John Besh restaurant, Domenica, let us enjoy creamy Limoncello, then went on to share what to do to turn regular Limoncello into creamy Limoncello.

• 10 lemons
• 1 (750-ml) bottle vodka
• 3 1/2 cups water
• 2 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 can sweetened condensed milk

1. Using a vegetable peeler remove the peel from the lemons in long strips (reserve the lemons for another use). Using a small sharp knife, trim away the white pith from the lemon peels; discard the pith.
2. Place the lemon peels in a 2-quart pitcher. Pour the vodka over the peels and cover with plastic wrap. Steep the lemon peels in the vodka for 4 days at room temperature.
3. Stir the water and sugar in a large saucepan over medium heat until the sugar dissolves, about 5 minutes. Cool completely. Pour the simple syrup over the vodka mixture. Cover and let stand at room temperature overnight.
4. Strain the limoncello through a mesh strainer. Discard the peels. Transfer the limoncello to bottles. Seal the bottles and refrigerate until cold, at least 4 hours and up to 1 month.
5. Before serving, pour prepared Limoncello and Sweetend Condensed Milk into a large pitcher. Whisk together until well combined. Serve very cold. Refrigerate remaining Creamy Limoncello.

This giveaway is now closed. The winner, chosen by Random.org was Lacey Hemphill (Twitter @Laceylouwho02). Thanks to all who participated and to Kelly Moore for offering such a great giveaway!

Since I began Project 365 (where I challenge myself to take a photo each day for 365 days) last year, you will most often find me with my Nikon DSLR close by. I love photography and enjoy having my camera along with me, as you never know what might pop up that you want to capture through a photo.

Although I have always enjoyed photography, I became more of an avid enthusiast with the purchase of my first DSLR in 2007. Since then, photography – of food, life moments, travel, people…basically everything – has become a definite passion. As much as I enjoy having my camera with me when I’m out and about, over time I found it very frustrating that there weren’t a lot of options aside from manly looking backpacks for camera bags. I wanted something beautiful and stylish with room to hold my big camera and a lens or two, accessories plus the things I need on an everyday basis – car keys, phone, wallet, lipstick, etc. (more…)