trace's

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Brown rice & quinoa pesto fusilli

This is one of those dishes I throw together every week or two. It allows me to use up the veggies in the fridge, there are always leftovers for my lunch the next day and it is fresh and delicious at the end of a busy work/school/weekend day. I don't really use a recipe for this dish, what I do use is a whole 6.7oz (190g) jar of basil pesto sauce. My favorite is from Trader Joes. I can keep…

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essential oil love

You can probably tell by the title of this post that I am not as big a lover of fragrant candles as I am of pure essential oils. Candles are very hit and miss for me and my husband can find them overwhelming and headache inducing. That never happens with my favorite flower oils: lavender, bergamot, and ylang ylang. Whether you like essential oils for their therapeutic benefits or the delicious way they make your home smell like an expensive…

slow cooker chicken tacos

I love taco night, and now that I've discovered this slow cooker chicken taco recipe I really love it. I always thought preparing meals in a slow cooker needed to be heavy beef stew-type deals but this chicken dish is light yet satisfying and as easy on the cook as it is on everyone who gets to eat it. You simply place chicken breasts or boneless thighs straight into the slow cooker, sprinkle them with various yummy spices, tip some…

use what you have – restyle at home

What do you do when you get tired of seeing the same old decorative bits and pieces on your shelves, your coffee table, and your dining table? Do you shop online at www.onekingslane.com? Drive to your nearest Home Goods store? Both are good options but lately I've been trying to look at what I already have and move it around the house to different positions. Apart from not bringing in extra clutter, repositioning and restyling your existing stuff gives it…

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taking inspiration

The last few weeks have been filled with inspiring messages for me. A girlfriend called with tickets to hear astronaut Captain Mark Kelly and his beautiful wife Congresswoman Gabby Giffords speak. This extraordinary couple, who have each achieved so much and suffered through a horrifying assassination attempt on Gabby's life in 2011, candidly shared their stories, making us laugh, cry and feel incredibly inspired. Mark did most of the talking simply because his wife can't. Gabby Giffords was shot in…

chocolate dipped coconut macaroons

I adore coconut macaroons. So when I was asked to bring cookies to a party recently, I tried this recipe which had them dipped in chocolate (my other favorite thing). Making the macaroons was pretty easy and doesn't take long; 20 minutes to mix together the ingredients and spoon onto a cookie sheet, and another 25 minutes to bake them in the oven. Dipping these little treats in chocolate was a bit more tricky, and because I had a deadline…

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dramatic driveway make-over

The driveway leading to my house was tired. Very tired. But there were a few hurdles I had to clear before I could figure out how to bring it into line with the rest of the house. It was an old stamped concrete sloping driveway with pink (yes pink) textured strips running across it at ten foot intervals. The city had ruled out allowing us to do anything at all with the retaining walls on either side and because of…

buckeyes

With all of the pre-Christmas craziness, I seem to want to bake after Santa has visited more than in the lead up to the big day. Especially when the weather turns cold and cozy like it finally has in L.A. I've been lucky enough to have buckeyes given to me by a friend for the last three Christmases, but this year they were gone way too quickly. So I took a deep breath and found a recipe that worked out…

the newest U.S. citizens

Today, along with around 4900 other excited foreign-born green card holders, I became an American citizen at an enormous ceremony watched by another 5000 people inside L.A.'s Convention Center. I made some new friends along the way, Elva from Mexico (pictured above, left) and Tatyana from Russia (pictured above, middle), as we took the final steps to citizenship. It's a great privilege to be welcomed by another country and I know I am very lucky to still be allowed to…

aaron sorkin on writing

 I love The Newsroom and every Aaron Sorkin TV show and movie I've ever seen: The West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, The Social Network, to name a few. He is a writer's screen-writer, never relying on special effects to add excitement to what he puts on the page. I went with some of my writers' group to watch a preview of Sorkin's The Newsroom finale last week. We were hustled into a sold-out Arclight cinema in Hollywood…