Basic Background

• Name: Kelly Devine Age: 26
• Hometown: Hillsboro, Ohio – But I currently live in Gulfport, Mississippi
• College Major(s): Bachelor of Arts in Voice Performance, Master of Business Administration
• Family: I have to wonderful parents, Karl and Heidi, and two brothers, Ben and Daniel. Both parents have 4 siblings, many of which had multiple children, so I also have quite a few cousins. Luckily, I get along with almost every single family member (with the exception of a few, because really, what family is perfect?) My brother Ben has a little girl who just turned two!
• Relationship Status: I was for the longest time a hopeless romantic with high hopes for Jane Austen worthy romances. However, right around the time COVID started I met a wonderful man named Andrew and we have been dating ever since. While he doesn’t quite provide Mr. Darcy level proposals, he is just nerdy and intelligent enough to constantly surprise me and keep me on my toes. So far, it is going very well. 🙂
• Hobbies: Eat, Travel, Serve. These three things have become my tag line. Of course recently, the traveling has been rather limited, but the food has expanded! So I am hoping to add more posts about different meals I cook or baking adventures I go on. As this blog continues, you will learn more about each area, how it pertains to me as an individual, and also my life as a whole.
• Favorite thing about yourself that may find weird: My comfort food is plain pasta with LaChoy brand Soy Sauce. It’s simple, quick, and satisfying. Basically like a poor girls Lo Mein.
• Fun fact: I inherited equipment from a pottery studio that I hope to incorporate into my life in the coming months as well, mostly for stress relief through artistic exploration. I’m not sure how yet, but I have a few ideas. When I am not at work, I am doing work on my home (recently purchased during COVID, and a work in progress), sitting in the sun at the beach, or spending time relaxing and having fun with my friends.
• Now that the background is set, who am I today? In 2018, I left Tiffin and moved to beautiful Biloxi, Mississippi for a year-long internship working with the low income and homeless population along the Gulf Coast. Last summer, at the end of that internship, I decided to put my Master of Business degree to work and joined Merrill Lynch Wealth Management as a Client Associate, which I am still doing today. I also still volunteer at the non-profit where I did my internship as well as serving in our local community through my church, where I also serve on our worship team.

Eat

I am by no means a professional when it comes to the world of food (although I have worked in a restaurant for the last two years) but God, I love to eat. Like most normal people, I have my favorite foods, which I will happily tell you all about as we go, but half the fun is also trying to new things, or a different take on a classic dish. Food is one of those items essential to continue living day-to-day, so I have decided to embrace that fact wholeheartedly and eat as much food as possible (without being unhealthy and grossly overweight). This pairs with my views on exercise and body image, but that is a longer discussion that I will save for another post.

• Comfort foods: Anything cheese or pasta/noodle, or cookie dough. These are my main food groups (sorry to all my healthy eaters out there) and they make my heart and soul so happy, especially when I’m able to combine any of them.
• Places to eat: Oddly enough, I’ve been blessed to have dined in a variety of restaurants: from the shabbier of fast food places all the way to 5 star restaurants. Subway and Firehouse rock my world when is comes to cheap, easy, and fast. But I worked in a little high end restaurant called The Empire at 138 in Tiffin, Ohio for the better part of two years and while I may be biased, I have loved pretty much every meal they ever let me try. (And trust me, after two years, I tried a many, many delectable dishes).
• NO NO NO’s: Sadly, I have never been a fan of mushrooms, onions, or peppers. That being said, I am always trying to incorporate them into whatever I’m cooking in an attempt to like them, so feel free to share favorite recipes with them as ingredients and I will happily try them out. (But I may hate it, fair warning). Onions and peppers have grown on me more over the past few months thanks to some of the new recipes I have tried out, and I have found that in stir-fry with soy sauce and other vegetables, they are almost adorable.
• Food I want to try: I would really like to try the little dry ice treats that make it look like you’re breathing smoke when you eat them. I just think it looks so cool. I also would like to try some of the exotic fruits I have seen online, but those tend to be expensive or unavailable around where I live. I also have been trying to learn more about things to make at home, so over the COVID season I have been working on breads, pastas and other items made by hand with other items i have around the house.

Travel

The world is wide and filled with fantastic sights, wonderful people, and unimaginable experiences. I grew up exploring with my family. We ever went too far, but we went all over the surrounding states and all over our beloved Ohio. When I went to college, my horizons were broadened by yearly volunteer trips, choir tour, and vacations. I’ve now been able to visit multiple foreign countries as well as about half the states in America. While I love to explore internationally, it is also so easy to find beautiful and exciting locations to travel to close to home.

Favorite places I’ve been: I spent my third summer of college studying abroad in Heidelberg, Germany. Over the course of seven weeks, I was able to touch 6 different countries, meet dozens of new people, learn, practice, and speak three languages, built friendship that are more like family, and made countless wonderful memories. By far, one of the best traveling experiences so far, perhaps because it was my first time traveling internationally, and traveling mostly on my own. Since then, I have also been to Ireland on tour with a celtic music group which was thrilling, and I went to Italy last year for my birthday as a last minute week long trip.

• Travel tip: Always pack light. You never know when you flight might change, your bus will be late, or your luggage will get lost. Traveling light allows you to keep all your essentials with you, and it also allows for the addition of new items you may collect as you go. Most airlines allow you one suitcase and one carryon. I always try to pack mostly clothes and non-essentials in the suitcase, and keep all my documents, electronics and an extra change of clothes or two. This way those are always available to you under the seat in front of you or in the overhead storage.
• Next Destination: Since COVID has put a hold on many of the travel plans I’ve hoped for this year, I am not quite sure where I want to go next. I do really want to go to Scotland, and back to Germany at some point. I have a feeling that the traveling for me will be on hold for a bit longer with work and house projects taking priority at the moment.

Serve

Service is a side of myself that has always existed, but it has gone from a part of my upbringing to being a passion of mine. Being involved in service trips and programs has always brought me joy, be it helping with a local food drive, doing construction through a housing renovation program with school, handing out meals at a food kitchen, participating in a “Letters to Soldiers” event at some local churches, or other similar events. Many people think of service as going to a desolate foreign country on a mission trip, or working with the homeless. But while those are types of service, there are so many other ways to get involved and lend a helping hand, and often times without even leaving the town where you live. I’ve been lucky to help out in every town I’ve lived in, but I’ve also traveled to different states for mission or service trips, and each has impacted my life and led me to the career path I am on today.

• Ways to get Involved: Check out your local churches. You can often attend trips, or help at local events without being a member. You do not have to believe in God to want to help people, but I often find that people in churches have some of the best knowledge about how to give back to the community.
• Don’t Be Picky: If you open your mind to the possibilities of helping others, you with slowly come to realize just how easy it is. You will also realize that what others need, well it isn’t always something easy for you to understand. Just do it anyway to the best of your ability. The smallest gestures can make the greatest impact on someone’s life.

That’s all for now.

This is just a little info to help you get to know me. I’m a fairly complex individual, so as this journey continues, more and more of my quirks, humor, ideas, frustrations, etc. will come out, but for now I’ll leave it as is. Stay tuned for more posts about my crazy life. Thanks for reading!

~Kelly