Dana Burland

Happy holidays from our resident cook and cleaner! Last year’s holiday card focused on Ben going wild for a then successful Michigan State football team. This year I wanted to reverse the roles. It’s not hard to come up with a wild setting that it would be natural to find me in—but given our ying and yang roles in the kitchen, I thought that would be a good bet. I’m a passionate, furious, adventurous and filthy cook. Ben is a non-complaining whirlwind of a semi-professional cleaner who follows behind me and makes the kitchen usable again. It’s a routine in our house, and I thought it would be fun to capitalize on the look I’ve seen on his face multiple times as he enters the war zone. I figured while the creative theme of the photo this year would be more advanced, the prep work didn’t have to be. I planned on buying a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, setting up some lights and having our card done quick. But of course the day I wanted to do the photosho...

(A tad delayed, but better than never!) Shopping in Breckenridge Last weekend Ben and I were in the mountains west of Denver for a few days with my family. We squeezed the last of available vacation days for the year to spend a few days snowboarding, snowshoeing, shopping and max relaxin’. Photo taken by my brother-in-law Martin of Regan snowshoeing on our last morning in town. A week out from our trip we were worried there would be no snow. The first night we were all in town it snowed 15 inches. Photo taken by Regan out the car window after shopping in Breckenridge I pretty much took no pictures, but my siblings took a bunch. It was so great to be together with everyone, and even greater to have a beautiful back drop and a cozy mountain house (belonging to my dad’s cousin) to stay at. Photo by Martin at Copper Mountain where the boys skied and snowboarded Flying out to Denver. Staying at a mountain house. Enjoying lots of fresh snow. Relaxing with my family and...

Wait, Thanksgiving is over? That’s good news for my stomach because I definitely can NOT take another enormous meal, but now that it’s over it feels fast. Per usual we partook in lots of activities. We got in lots of family time, friend time and not nearly enough nap time. Early on Thursday morning I drove my family—and my high school friend Tori—downtown for the Turkey Trot. My brother and I ran the 10K together at a comfortable clip, chatting the whole way. That night we had Thanksgiving dinner at my parent’s condo. My mom and I spent the afternoon cooking together and we had a mega delicious dinner that night—including my apple crisp that was a big hit. Friday night Ben and I ran a pasta making class teaching his family how to mix the dough, roll it out and cut it to linguini. Pasta making, and pasta eating, were a big hit. Saturday night was my grandpa’s 90th birthday party. It was a blast to celebrate him among 24 family members and friends. He seemed like he w...

What amazing November day to be spoiled with. Instead of raking the leaves, doing grad school homework or rotating loads of laundry we skipped out on all our Saturday chores and scooted out of town for a day trip. Forty-five minutes away Holland State Park is lumped in to the “West Michigan” area we live in, but the beach feels like its own world. The sky was so blue, sun was so bright and temps so warming you could almost convince yourself this was just a chilly summer day. We walked through the cool packed sand along Lake Michigan with a few other families but largely on stretches of the beach by ourselves. The waves were crashing in and the trees ahead were glowing in reds and golds. Off season is the best season.

Our house sits on a corner just so. If you come up the right street all you see ahead is our home. A big old lawn with a modest ranch perched on a small hill. I love to finish my runs by coming up that street. Normally I walk up toward the house and see a project in progress or the next one coming up. Today I just stopped to take it in. Our house today The front trees, always late to the party, are just starting to turn yellow. The transplanted burning bushes are ablaze. The grass is freshly mowed. The house is painted, clean and decorated with a few fall mums and a pumpkin I sat near the front door. It’s so beautiful. I overlook all the hours of effort we’ve put into this home of ours. I usually have *something* on my to-do list—a garage to sweep out, a hose to store for the season, bushes to trim. I’m a chronic look-ahead-er while Ben does the stopping and flower smelling. Our house when we bought it - January 2015 But coming up that street from my run I was force...

Our yard! Our yard!! Quit reading this instant and come see our front yard!!! Thanks to my family’s free labor, all the big yard projects we wanted to accomplish this year are done. And our yard looks SO good. The biggest task we needed extra hands for was the relocating of 14 burning bushes. They once lined our property along the street, killing our curb appeal and driving Ben crazy every time he had to mow around them individually. The idea of moving them seemed so overwhelming—until my mom offered to help. Between my parents, my brother, Ben and I we moved 10 burning bushes, cut down four, trimmed five trees, cut back two other bushes and edged/removed the sod around a big tree to lay a circular bed of mulch. ALL hands were on deck all day Saturday and for a little extra time Sunday morning. I had a feeling my team would show up and work like mad so I baked a big apple crisp Friday night in anticipation. Nothing was sweeter on a cozy, cold fall night than ...

This was a real good weekend to be home for. We had an early celebration for my dad’s birthday. We toured a local Frank Lloyd Wright house—which has really become a favorite hobby . We watched my brother finish his first half marathon. We had a lunch I hosted at my grandparent’s house. It was just a really full, fun weekend. Sunday morning we all woke up at 4am to make it to the Detroit Half Marathon race start by 7am. Parking, and Detroit with the 26K some runners and all their cheerers was crazy, but we made it happen. I saw an online ad earlier in the week for big, cut-out heads and decided to make my own as cheer sticks for my brother. I spent a really creative night covered in Elmer’s glue jazzing up four cut-outs of his face for my parents, Ben and I. My dad might have frightened a little girl cheering on the side lines with the female Evan face. The cut-outs were big hits most importantly with my brother but also for whoever saw them. We waved them ferocio...

Man, ArtPrize this year… it felt really meh . I’m definitely spoiled from so many great ArtPrize years, but it really seemed like the quantity of art was lower than usual ( especially outside, there was almost nothing outside!) and the amount of wow-did-you-SEE-this?! pieces were lower than usual, too. All that said, I also think some really great art was overlooked (maybe due to venue placement off the beaten path?) in the top 20 rankings. We’ll always go downtown to see ArtPrize—likely twice playing tour guide to both of our visiting families—but I’m after two lackluster years I’m beginning to wonder if we’ve seen ArtPrize’s peak. Here are some of my favorites from this year: Father Time This life-size wood carving of an old man was incredible. It doubled as a clock—with his eyes ticking left and right, clock hands doubling as his mustache and his tie wagging rhythmically in place. (Pardon the glass glare on his head) Two people embrace This looked so incredibly li...

We’re back from what seems like the fastest trip ever. Thursday morning we woke up at 3:45am for two flights and a long car ride out to the Massachusetts countryside. Our friends in Kalamazoo—Ben’s buddy from high school/college—got married. Despite lots of chilly and rainy weather, we had fun spending time with friends that live out of Grand Rapids or out of Michigan all together. Ben was best man and totally rocked at it. I’m not sure saying that as his wife either—he got lots of well deserved praise for a really great speech. Also, we had a blast with our buddies in the photobooth and on the dance floor. If you’ve never danced in imaginary double dutch jump ropes you’ve never lived. Nice photo bomb by Allan's uncle! We ended up cutting our original New England travel plans short since we’ve spent lots of vacation time elsewhere this year, but still managed to check out Salem, Massachusetts briefly on our way out of town. Judge Jonat...

Should this just become a grass growing blog ? I think we’re almost there… With all our yard projects this summer, I’ve got new spots that need grassing over. I’ll gladly rip out bushes twice my height, but I loathe planting and caring for high maintenance grass seed. But it was work that needed to get done, so right when September hit and lower temps were ahead, I put down tons of seed in the front yard. Amazingly, happily, I have sprouts! I’ve become consumed checking on them each morning, watering wildly at night and praying for rain but not so much that it swamps out my efforts. Perhaps it was all that time spent watching the grass grow that prevented me from regularly checking our neighborhood app. This app allows people in several connecting neighborhoods to chat with each other, share recommendations for handy men, inquire about babysitters, or post for the one millionth time about a lost cat found when our neighborhood obviously has a stray cat infestation. Anyway. I...

The Internet is littered with 30-second recipe videos. You see hands flailing around mixing this and that covering everything with cheese and before our goldfish-like attention spans are up they pull out a cheesy chicken chipotle ranch tater tot cream casserole. I swear 90% of them have at least four of those ingredients in them. They’re all so involved, gluttonous, anti-pantry-staples. I don’t know. I can’t stop watching them, but I don’t make any of them. Yesterday I was mindlessly Internet wandering and saw one of those videos. The recipe legitimately looked good, but it was filmed at such a hyper speed I could barely make out the ingredients or amounts. Also it was sponsored by American Express or something? So interesting how everyone, no matter how unrelated, gloms on to trending things. I played the video back about seven times to catch everything. Almond butter, maple syrup, dark chocolate, sea salt. All the ingredients sounded good and the no-cook, mini-cupcake tin ...

Last night I had some girlfriends over for a weeknight dinner party. I made a meat-free version of my favorite tomato sauce and homemade pasta ; between the other four girls we also had salad, hand-made cannoli and lots of wine. Dinner was good but the night itself was really great. My neighbor, a local friend and two coworkers had all met before , but it was fun to see everyone from different circles mingle together again—and with ease. We sat around my little dining room table and laughed and laughed and piled more pasta on our plates and opened another, then another bottle of wine. I got to bust out some serving/kitchen wedding gifts that don't get much daily use--and made excellent use of my 9,000 wooden spoons as pasta drying racks. I still feel full--both from our Italian feast and from good time spent with great girls.

I went for a run the other day and woke up the next morning with a twinge in my leg. What?! It wasn’t a long, fast or rough terrain run! I rested, iced, stretched but still felt it. When I finally ran again I felt residual tightness creeping up my hip. This isn’t my first rodeo with aches and pains like this. My core is weak. I know it, and know it’s all connected. And the past gazillion months of saying yeah, I’m DEFINITELY going to do core work tonight and not doing it? Obviously not doing me any favors. So I’m employing self punishment discipline with a core workout I’m going to do daily. Yep, evvvvery day. For a while at least. And since I want to make this a daily commitment I need the hurdles to be reasonably low—quick, minimal equipment, no extreme residual soreness. I put together these exercises because they really target all over—mid core, sides, lower back, upper back, glutes. It takes me no more than 5 minutes but I still felt a little sore after the first and sec...