As an accomplished author, television personality, entrepreneur, actress, motivational speaker, blogger, wife, mother, and grandmother, Cristina Ferrare dishes out yet one more curtain call: hosting her own show for OWN: the Oprah Winfrey Network. Cristina Ferrare’s Big Bowl of Love features celebrity guests along with members of Cristina’s family and friends who serve up great ideas for all kinds of real-life situations. Cristina recently joined the “Oprah family” as a regular contributor, featuring Oprah’s favorite meals, and hosting a series of web cooking classes for Oprah.com—preparing delicious meals for families on tight budgets and little time.
Cristina is a New York Times bestselling author of Okay, So I Don’t Have a Headache, Cristina Ferrare’s Family Entertainment, and Cristina Ferrare Style. Her most recent book, Realistically Ever After, is a humorous view of finding happiness when he’s not Prince Charming, you’re not Snow White, and life is not a fairytale. The success of Cristina’s books attest to her expertise in the areas of women’s health and well being, culinary arts, and stylistic design. Her books also reflect her great zest for life and sense of humor. Cristina has just completed her fifth book, a cookbook due out in April, 2011 entitled A Big Bowl of Love.
In the early 80’s, Cristina co-hosted AM Los Angeles, which was the #1 rated morning television show during her five-year tenure. Among her many TV appearances, she has hosted her own shows: Cristina and Friends and a two-hour live show from Universal Studios called Home and Family. She has substituted as a co-host on Good Morning America and co-hosted numerous times with Regis Philbin on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee. (more…)
Holly Becker is the founder and editor of 
The mother-daughter design team of Debbie Murray and Shea Fragoso has been collaborating in creative ways for as long as both can remember. When Shea was growing up, Debbie taught stained glass classes in the community college system and owned a custom design business and fine art painting studio. When Shea finished school, they owned gift shops together in Southern California. Shea became a highly sought-after jewelry designer; her creations appeared in dozens of fashion magazines and graced the red carpet several times. Both women designed products for the gift industry and sold pieces to collectors around the world. In 2009, Debbie and Shea completed a major remodeling of a gothic church in Dallas, Texas. Here, they indulged in their love of crowns and European design and were constantly inspired by the architecture and the light.
Laurie Meseroll has lived as an artist her entire life. One of her first paintings, of an angel, was shown publicly in 1963 at the Columbus Museum of Art. She went on to train as a sculptor and an architect but realized that, above all else, she is painter and must follow her bliss. Laurie lived in the “amazingly intense” New York art scene of the 1980s, concentrated on architectural commissions in the 1990s, and entered the folk art world in 2000, finding inspiration in magical and romantic experiences. Laurie chooses the slow road to capture the scenery and enormous depth of feeling she sees in everyday activity. Her folk-outsider-art-ish paintings and portraits flow from the realm of characters and stories into unexplored areas of stillness and reflection.
The artists behind 
Genevieve P. Charet is the Chicago-based writer and homesteader behind MaryJanesFarm magazine’s “Urban Homesteading” column. Her articles and essays have appeared everywhere from national magazines to blogs to her mother’s refrigerator. Genevieve grows an organic orchard and vegetable garden on her city steps, and adopts projects with wild abandon. On a given day, you might find her bubbling up kefir, culturing cheese, brewing beer or mead, baking artisan sourdough loaves, sprouting sproutables, crafting craftables, wrapping charcuterie, decorating cakes, churning butter, fermenting produce, or pickling anything that isn’t nailed down (and some things that are). The only thing she loves more than getting her hands dirty with a project is getting your hands dirty with a project, so step lightly and … too late, she heard you. Genevieve’s free-range philosophy includes being a handful, trying everything once, writing what she feels, feeling what she writes, and not caring when she laughs so loudly that people look. If she had a dollar for every time someone called her “mild-mannered,” she’d have a quarter.
Janet Hurst enjoys country living. “I fondly remember my great-grandmother’s farm, collecting eggs, playing with kittens in the hay loft, and fetching jars from the old fruit cellar. I thought it was heaven on Earth! This is the type of life I knew I wanted for my own family. I had a dream of a few acres and a goat. That dream came true, and goats have been a part of things around my farm ever since! Because I had goats, I began to experiment with cheesemaking, and eventually I went on to study cheesemaking at the Vermont Institute of Artisan Cheese and the University of Guelph, Canada, as well as at small farms in Israel. I made cheese commercially for several years.”
Kelly is the author of 