A walk down memory lane to our Italian trip

I was recently looking for a video on Youtube and I came across these old videos from my 2009 trip to Italy with Katie and my friend, Carolyn, which were published on the old Hybrid Mom blog. 

What a trip this was! Carolyn invited me to join her for this cooking class in Tuscany, and I brought Katie along. Katie was in college and was taking Italian and art history, so she was able to help us communicate and understand so much of the amazing art we were seeing. 

It was absolutely a case of planes, trains and automobiles, but we saw so much in Rome and Florence and I’m so grateful we did it!

I showed Katie the videos I found and we agreed that this was a trip of a lifetime … one we’ll never forget. So, I thought I’d share these these “vintage” videos.

It was sort of a spontaneous trip … but it was amazing! So it reminds me how important it is to sometimes throw caution to the wind and just say YES! I’m so glad we did this trip!

The Case of the Disappearing Eyebrows

This may seem like a silly topic to some, but some of you may be able to relate. Like so many things, my eyebrows were something I never really even thought about … until they were nearly gone.

When I was younger, I remember seeing women spend so much time lining their lips or shaping their eybrows with powder or brow pencil, and it all seemed so ridiculous. I couldn’t even comprehend the need.  I always had full, rosy lips and nice shaped dark eyebrows. 

Q&A with Mary Beth & Stephen

I am so lucky to have a friend and acting partner like Stephen Nichols … and we’re both so lucky to have the most amazing fanbase! We love to sit down together and answer questions, but we’re so bad at coming up with them. So this past weekend, we asked you all to submit questions to us … and you did not disappoint! There were so many great questions, and of course we couldn’t get to them all, but we tackled as many as we could. In fact, so many that we had to divide this up into two videos. 

Here’s this first part … and be sure to tune in next week for part 2. And don’t worry … we’re saving the questions we didn’t get to and we’ll come back to those sometime too!!

More Play with My Instant Pot

I’ve seen the recent news about some Instant Pot recalls, but thankfully the news doesn’t apply to mine! Whew, because I am loving my Instant Pot and have been having a great time exploring new recipes. Last week I was excited to discover a delicious Turkey Bean Chili that is super easy and extra healthy!

But my best discovery to date is vegetable broth! For years I’ve tried to make a good vegetable broth, but have never been able to make one that really tasted like anything … until now! I found a few recipes online, added a few modifications of my own, and with the help of the Instant Pot, was finally able to create a rich, dark and flavorful vegetable broth (I just wish i yielded more actually broth!).

Technology Lesson 101

At the risk of repeating myself, when it comes to technology, I’m … well, I’m bad. From hunting and pecking at the keyboard and not knowing how to use many of the programs on my computer, to barely getting by on Instagram. But for the most part, it hasn’t really mattered for me, because luckily my profession doesn’t require me to type regularly, or use Excel and PowerPoint.

Over the years, however, with email, the Internet and then proliferation of social media, it’s become harder and harder to not have any tech skills at all, so I’ve had to learn a bit. I’m much faster with my hunting and pecking these days; and a few years ago, as I finally decided to take the plunge into social media, my daughter and other family members helped give me some basic lessons.