Best strawberry picking that can’t be beat! Go to SoTex Farms in Poteet! Y’all, I have Seasonal Affective Disorder. Big time. Not exactly the SAD diagnosis you may be familiar with that implies having the blues from wintertime grays and rainy days. It’s more of a “Parenting Season” Affective Disorder. This parent SAD. The cure? Strawberry picking. But I’ll get to that in a minute. To skip straight to the juicy goodness, you can read the in-depth review of our experience at SoTex Farms here. Or jump straight to Pros and Cons. More about my SADness. This whole effing “season”. Potty-training li ..read more

RUM, don’t walk, to make this Rum-soaked Caramel Bundt Cake! Looking for the perfect treat to transport your taste buds to a tropical island getaway? Mamasaur has you covered! This Caramel Rum Bundt Cake recipe is your ticket to delicious departure. It will have you singing about how much you love getting caught in the rain with Pina Coladas… Our neighbor, Ed, had his 83rd birthday quickly approaching. This guy loves his rum, so once a year, I bake him a Caramel Rum Bundt Cake. Homemade with love… And booze. Baking up one of these bad boys for the special birthday boy is always a hit. And not ..read more

Failure is acceptable, as long as you try again… There’s really no better title than “Try Again” for this post. Especially given the fact that “Write some” has popped up everyday in my Bullet Journal this week. The task keeps migrating to the day ahead. Yeah, I’ll try to write again tomorrow. In all fairness, it’s Spring Break (at least, at the time I’ve started writing this). We’re hosting Nathan’s brother right now who’s on a business trip. The teenager is out of the house, so I’m coming up for air. And, oh yeah, I have decided to try potty-training…again. Only, this time, as much as I trie ..read more

Doesn’t get much better than these Caramel Brown Butter Rice Krispie Treats… Rich & flavorful, cheap & easy. Such a sweet staple. A quintessential comfort food. Effortless to whip up. Who doesn’t LOVE a good, old-fashioned, homemade Rice Krispie Treat? Apparently, my husband Nathan. He couldn’t have cared less about Rice Krispie Treats, but when I added Caramel Marshmallow and Brown Butter to the mix… He’s a believer now. And, honestly, HOW could he NOT be? These Caramel Brown Butter Rice Krispie Treats blow any competitor out of the way. In fact, it’s really not even a competition at ..read more

No better way to let granulated caramel shine than in homemade marshmallow! ICYMI, and in case you’re wondering what granulated caramel is, I have a great post documenting my disastrous introduction to toasted sugar. Highly recommend reading that before plunging into this Caramel Marshmallow recipe. If for no other reason than it discusses the KEY star ingredient in this recipe. An ingredient I had no knowledge of until the aforementioned blog entry experience. I’m delighted to announce that it’s gotten easier since then. Borderline effortless to toast some sugar. It’s just a (relatively hand ..read more

Is The Gruene Door a door worth opening? With Valentine’s Day on the horizon, Nathan and I were excited for the excuse to try The Gruene Door. Having heard so many recommendations, so many rave reviews about this restaurant… Our curiosity was piqued. Especially after perusing the pictures on the online menu. We certainly expected the place to be packed on the 2nd busiest restaurant day of the year. So we made a reservation about a month in advance and anxiously anticipated the arrival of February 14th. At last, it was here! We made sure to skip lunch so that we’d be oh-so-ready to dive into a ..read more

It’s hard to grasp what a precious and limited resource that time with our kids is. On a hard day with a toddler, it feels like this will never end. But the reality is that this precious time is constantly passing us by, and by your child’s 18th birthday, you will have spent the vast majority of all the time you’ll ever get with them. I’ve seen it quoted (though without source) that by the time your kids are 12 years old, you’ve already spent 75% of the precious time you’ll get with them. By the time they’re 18 years old, you’ve spent 90%. Even if the math isn’t exact on these, there is defin ..read more

More coffee LOUNGE than coffee SHOP, 2 Rivers Coffee has this Mamasaur feeling at home… Thank you, 2 Rivers Coffee, for filling the void Nathan and I have felt for 3 years now. (In a hurry? You can take your joe to go by clicking this quick-review link!) Since moving to New Braunfels back in 2021, Nathan and I have missed virtually nothing about the Tulsa, OK we left behind. Well, I mean, we miss the friends we made there, obviously. But the place that immediately springs to mind as a loss: DoubleShot Coffee. It’s hard to summarize what a marvel DoubleShot Coffee was to us. Definitely a place ..read more

Oh, how our Irish twins fill our days with the most sensational drama… We’ve got plenty of wild chaos around here to spare, trying to wrangle our turbulent Irish twins. What we find ourselves in limited supply of lately: energy. Mental energy. Physical energy. Creative energy. Pft. Nada. You’re lucky I’m even writing this right now. Past couple evenings, right after Orson and Nova’s bedtime, it feels like it’s Mamasaur’s bedtime. I lie down for a few minutes and feel myself drift. Surrendering myself to my utter exhaustion… But I’ve still go stuff to do! I need to write. Exercise. Maybe get s ..read more

Choosing to live in the moment does not come naturally…But it’s worth it! For an article about choosing to live in the moment, the title seems like it’s living in the past. Don’t worry, dear reader. It’ll make sense soon enough… But, first, a preface… Therapy certainly hasn’t solved, or even unearthed yet, all of my issues. What it has done, however, has incrementally taught me more about myself as a mother, a wife, and a person. I’ve gained new perspective over the past few months and notice more readily when I’m in the midst of learning a new lesson. Especially about how I just generally fu ..read more