Dana Burland

Beautiful. I cry. Somewhere between college graduation and this past Saturday, my emotions evolved to those of a 70-year-old lady. Listening to the lyrics of a country song? Tears. A semi-moving movie trailer? Sniffy nose. A quiet moment reflecting on the good in my life? Watery eyes. It’s a new irritating reality. What’s non-irritating, of course, are the many happy events that launch the waterworks—like Kendal’s wedding this past weekend. I was crazy honored to not only be able to make it to her big day, but to have been asked to help out before and during the ceremony with some small but valuable specifics. Kendal looked stunning (p.s. just tearing up typing this, oy). The details for her wedding were so very her and Rob; from her classic yet glam veil, Kendal-crafted center pieces at the reception, to the Rob inspired Lego chocolates. It made the entire day a well-rounded celebration of them, and it was so great to be a part of. The 'personal assistants' and ...

One of my biggest work concerns last Tuesday was about Sharpies—where they were and why there weren’t enough of them. I was, while frantically digging in a box of unused name tag holders for said Sharpies, in the midst of hosting my first event for my new company (i.e. executing my first event ever). I’ve helped out scooped ice cream at apple festivals until my blisters had blisters at plenty of functions before, but never had to deal with ALL the details like best placement of a potted plant (answer: blocking the uneven floor), determine when to close what bar (answer: the one in the reception room, during the award ceremony to discourage additional noise) or address a crowd of 280 and announce honorees (with two names easily mispronounceable as unflattering synonyms for ‘butt’ and one wickedly authentic Latin name). This event was mine*—missing Sharpies, quickly disappearing mini meatballs, 12 minutes of speaking and all. (*Minus a little awesomely helpful prep work from my pr...

The old grbj.com I don’t want to talk about the speed of sliding images, discuss location of social media icons or spend hours fighting with a WYSIWYG editor for a long, long time. This past Monday my company relaunched the Grand Rapids Business Journal website. When I joined the Gemini Publications team in September, the relaunch was already underway, but there were plenty of placement and populating projects within the last six weeks of the project. My role was limited to lending my eye and web building experience  to final placement suggestions, and lending my fingers to tweaking lines of text and populating photo galleries. This meant I could turn work off at a reasonable hour and go to sleep at my normal time, unlike our super hero web development team who worked til all hours of the night for many, many nights. From our marketing goals, most of my work on the new site starts now—post launch. The new site has new registration features to get readers accustom to, and...

Work has been bananas lately in a high stress, learning and doing new things, juggling 3,000 to-do tasks kinda way. Secretly, I couldn’t be happier; a little month in to my new gig, it feels good to feel so needed. Today after a particular eight hours that felt more like 20, I needed comfort food in a bad way. Enter the quickest warm and cozy meal I know—my whatever goes lightened up Alfredo. I don’t know where the bones of this recipe came from; I’ve made it so many times I can cook it up from memory. It’s always a little different depending on what I have on hand, but always the coziness I need to chill out or warm up. Dana’s Whatever Goes Lightened Up Alfredo Ingredients Short cut pasta 2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour 1 1/2 -2 cups milk (I use skim) 1 handful Parmesan or Italian mix cheese Basil/Oregano/salt/pepper Directions 1. Cook the pasta up ‘til al dente. Set aside. 2. Melt the butter over medium heat in a large sauce pan. 3. Once melted, add the flo...

It’s a good thing B and I popped for a two bedroom place instead of one. The last two weekends our office has been converted into a cozy makeshift guest room for varying out-of-towners to crash. I could never just snooze ‘til noon and leave hungry guests to their own breakfast devices. For starters, I don’t think I could sleep ‘til noon unless someone spiked my bedside water bottle with children’s Benadryl. So this morning, well before any other sign of life in the apartment, I pulled out a bag of extra muffin batter from the fridge and got baking. If I were elsewhere than my cozy bed, I’d certainly love to wake up to warm muffins straight out of the oven—specifically Barefoot Contessa’s blueberry coffee cake muffins, please. This recipe has been a hit of the last three brunches I’ve hosted. Blueberries are out of season, so I bake ‘em plain, with chocolate chips or doctor up the dough with cinnamon, nutmeg and diced apples. The recipe claims it makes 16, but I can always squeeze...

Elaine's mom on the far left, next to her mom; and my grandma on the far right next to her's.  I’ve been to one family reunion many, many years ago. Here’s what I remember: a LOT of older people, extreme boredom, and my long-lost Canadian ‘cousins’ in near-tears over the lack of Tim Horton’s in Michigan. My immediate family on both my parent’s sides is small—most holidays don’t even require an extra leaf in the dining room table—and after that reunion experience, I appreciated the size. I figured when I took my family tree project last winter, I’d be able to add a little color to what I already knew, not gain additional family—but I did. While emailing back and forth with my aunt to collect information, she got back in touch with her childhood pal and my half first cousin twice removed—Elaine, and put me in touch with her too. Soon after moving back to Michigan, I was in Elaine’s house in southeast Michigan eating chocolate chip cookies and listening to her and my mom ...

Part of my high school shower routine was a quick scrub with that season’s new Bath and Body Works scent and three sneezes. Every shower. Without fail. Why? Orange Neutrogena Oil Free Acne Wash. Thirty seconds into every washing I’d sneeze, sneeze and sneeze. At some point I quit using it, and moved on to other random products that either stung, dried or smelled funny. Why should it take such a miracle cocktail of chemicals to produce smooth, clean skin? Well, it doesn’t. I found that out one day over lunch with my former boss—a spunky 50-year-old lady with flawless, wrinkleless, smooth skin. And even though she once told me about a wickedly expensive facial in Europe all done with rare, collected nightingale poop, her normal skin care routine was simple and inexpensive. More often than not she used warm water—no soap; but sometimes she used olive oil. And she’s not the first person with baby’s butt skin I’ve heard jump on the olive oil bandwagon, either. Last year on a mad chemi...