Happy 2012!

The Playfriends hope everyone has a happy, healthy and prosperous new year!

Cooking

Anyone who's been around the Playground for long knows that I'm not much of a cook. It's not that I don't enjoy it...it's more that I don't get the chance to experiment. Because Zilla is home before the rest of us, he cooks every night. The girls and I walk in the door to dinner already made. Until recently, this schedule worked really well for us.

Unfortunately, we're finding that our nightly routine is being preempted more and more often. Cheer practice. Karate lessons. Evenings with grandparents. We've found ourselves eating out quite a bit lately simply because we're all eating at different times.

That's going to change. Not only has this habit become hard on the wallet, but my waistline. It isn't good for any of us, and I miss sitting down as a family to enjoy dinner. So I've come up with a solution. Crock pot cooking. This way we can all eat whenever we need to...and hopefully prevent gobbling a hamburger and fries from the drivethru on the way to wherever we're headed.

The problem? Yeah, did I mention I don't cook very often? I have a few crock pot recipes in my repertoire but not enough to sustain us. The three or four I do have will get old very quickly. So, today I'm going to ask for your help. Do you have any good crock pot recipes? I'd love to hear them! I need all the help I can get.

And as a thank you, I'll give away a copy of my latest release, Caught Off Guard (on shelves right now!), to one lucky poster.

Instigator

Guest blogger -- Christie Ridgway

New Year…New Beginnings

It’s a toss-up as to which month makes me more optimistic…September or January. There’s that whole new-school-year thing going for September, a feeling I still can’t get away from even though I’m out of school. But I have two kids and my husband is a teacher, so we live life to the rhythms of that world.

However…January! It’s the official beginning. Even if your New Year’s Eve was a dud, the first day of January is the clean slate, the swathe of shining snow, the fresh air that blows away the cobwebs and the last of the dribbled pine needles from your dried-up Christmas tree.

I have energy in January. Plans! A couple of girlfriends and I walk early in the mornings and while we missed a few due to weather and colds over the holidays, we met up enough to renew our weight loss and exercise goals. I’m also excited about getting back to my desk and working on my next project(s). Way too easy to get distracted by cookie-baking or gift-wrapping over the holidays.

The heroine in my most recent book, Then He Kissed Me (it came out yesterday!), is eager to have a new start in the new year too. She owns a limousine service in the Napa Valley wine country, and on New Year’s Eve is contracted to take a couple of clients on a winery crawl…her ex-boyfriend and his new fiancée. Argh! But Stephania (Stevie) certainly can’t let on that she’s affected in any way…the guy did not even dent her heart, she swears, and so will do her duty and then be done with the couple forever!

Except then she learns that she has to play wedding planner for her ex and his princess bride (yes, she’s also a princess) as they’re marrying at her family’s winery. And the wedding party includes the bride’s very, very, very attractive older brother, who isn’t the least bit worried about starting something new—starting something up—with Stevie. Oh, this year looks like it’s going to be as much trouble as the last one…

I hope you’ll put Then He Kissed Me on your 2011 To Read list. It’s the second in my Three Kisses trilogy and I love the dynamic between my tomboy Stevie and sophisticated guy who will steal her heart.

Do you have a new plan for the new year? Share! I’ll send a free book to a lucky commenter!

P.S. If you've ever visited the Writing Playground website, you may be familiar with our Hall of Feet. To rekindle interest in our cute shoe fetish, we've asked our guest bloggers to send in photos of their cute shoes. Here are Christie's! I love the floral design and how they dress up a pair of jeans.