So how did it all happen for a kid from Checotah, Okla., who once thought she’d spend her entire life in that small town? And more to the point, how does she keep the sudden fame, fortune and full-on fantasy existence from going straight to her head?

According to Carrie Underwood, it may well come down to the company she keeps. “I’ve just been really lucky and I’ve had really, really great people working around me and making everything happen,” says the singer.

Despite the fact that Carrie was reared in a family without an ounce of showbiz in its blood (her dad was a paper mill worker and her mom an elementary school teacher), her amazing voice proceeded to wow America and American Idol’s team of judges — even surly Simon Cowell. “Simon was pretty good to me,” she insists. “He is notorious for speaking his mind. I think that’s just what he does, and fortunately for me, he didn’t have too many bad things to say!” But even though she might be understating the role that talent and hard work have played in her success, Carrie will concede that it wasn’t all about luck.

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Delta Burke describes herself as a “world-class shopper.” Best known for her role as former beauty queen Suzanne Sugarbaker on the long-running sitcom Designing Women, Delta admits that acquiring things, all kinds of things, is one of her guiltiest pleasures. “I have collections of antique quilts, vintage lockets, stiletto-heeled shoes, wide-brimmed hats, old fabrics, Victorian jewelry — even antique clothing patterns,” she wrote in her 1998 memoir, Delta Style. “It’s a habit I’m working to curtail.”

But while “curtailing” didn’t prove easy, few knew how dangerous Delta’s habit had become before this past February, when news broke that the 51-year-old star had checked herself into a psychiatric clinic for help with severe depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and hoarding. “Have you seen those shows where they don’t find the body for days? And they go in to clean up, and it’s stacks of newspapers up to the ceiling?” Delta said in a candid interview with TMZ. “That’s hoarding, and I hate it.”

The Emmy-nominated actress also admitted that her weakness for shopping sprees on eBay and QVC had led her to fill 27 storage units in her adopted hometown of New Orleans. “It rules my life,” Delta confessed. “I don’t understand why I do it and I hate living like that, and all it does is make [my] depression worse.”

Read the full story.

Everyone commits kitchen crimes. They will be forgiven as long as you stay in a sunny mood — and capitalize on learning a lesson from your mistakes, assures Paula Deen, the owner of two restaurants, author of seven books and host of two cooking shows on the Food Network. “Everyone who’s ever been hired in my kitchen has had something to teach me,” says Paula. For instance: “My staff taught me years ago how good sour cream can be in macaroni and cheese.”

For years, Paula used to fuss if family members didn’t cube potatoes to the exact size she wanted or slice vegetables as she thought best. Eventually, it dawned on her that persnickety perfectionism was a turnoff: Family dinners should be a source of positive feelings that cement the bonds of love, not referendums on each member’s ability to anticipate the chef’s exacting specifications.

“You gotta keep it fun in the kitchen!” exclaims Paula. The more fun the kitchen, the more likely it is that you will be able to inveigle someone else into chopping onions. (Michael and Paula share dishes, but also have a housekeeper.) “People don’t mind being in a place that’s fun! I can be so particular about the way I want things, but I’m really tryin’ to do better on that,” Paula confesses. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat and my way is not the only way.”

Read the full story.

At the age of 47, after surviving numerous depressions and a scandal-plagued divorce, the singer has found the love she yearned for all her life

As a top-selling Christian music artist, Amy Grant has spent a lot of time basking in the spotlight’s glow — but life offstage hasn’t always been quite so rosy. In her recent memoir, Mosaic, she reflects on the joys that faith, family and career have brought her. But the star also talks candidly about tougher stuff, including her battles with depression, her guilt over the dissolution of her first marriage and the challenges she and second husband Vince Gill, 50, faced when attempting to blend their families.

Amy’s career was launched at age 15 when a Nashville, Tenn., studio owner heard one of her demo tapes. Before she was 16, she was offered her first record deal, and from there, she quickly became a leading force in contemporary Christian music. She married singer/songwriter Gary Chapman in 1982, and for the next 17 years, she continued to write music, record albums, win Grammys and raise the three children she and Gary had together — Matt, now 20, Millie, 17, and Sarah, 14.

Happily Ever After Fails

Amy appeared to live a charmed life right up until the moment in 1999 when she and Gary announced they were divorcing. But for the singer, a devout Christian, it was hardly a quick or easy decision. “When I chose to end my marriage to the father of my three older children, there was a time when I was too wrecked and too ashamed to pray with them at night,” she admits.

During the divorce proceedings, many Christian radio stations refused to play Amy’s music, and disappointed fans deserted her. What they didn’t know was that she and Gary had been seeing marriage counselors for 14 years, and even went through pre-divorce counseling when they finally realized the marriage was over.

Amy says she only discovered in hindsight that she had spent 10 years in transition, going from being “fully engaged as a wife, all systems go, to being fully engaged in a different direction.” However slow the process, the effects were still devastating.

“I invested in my own family and the family I married into for 17 years — on a daily basis. So to then say, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’ is not just the end of a marriage. That was my biggest life investment up to that point.”

Read the full story at Quick & Simple.

What happens when your hobby catapults you into an amazing and lucrative career? How would life change if you struck it rich, hit the big-time and found yourself transformed into a major star?

For Lori McKenna, 39, who writes and performs country anthems for penny-stretching women, the greatest dividend of unexpected fortune has simply been relief from worry. Sure, this mother of five, who dropped out of community college because she didn’t feel comfortable being a pregnant student, has traded up to a bigger house in her sleepy hometown of Stoughton, Mass. Plus, she swapped her Ford Windstar for a Toyota Sienna. But furs and Ferraris are not even in the mix.

Lori and her husband, Gene, “aren’t really motivated by money. Family is more important to them than anything else,” explains Lori’s father, Frank Giroux, 73, who lives nearby.

DIY Dollar Saving

With some edits, [her song “Unglamorous“] pretty much reflects the warmth and chaos of the McKenna household. Lori, who last year traded up to a 10-year-old, 2,800-square-foot colonial home in Stoughton, still does three loads of wash a day and scrubs the toilets of the four bathrooms. (”I’m not good at outsourcing,” she concedes.)

Her friends shiver under the refrigerator-like conditions of the new McKenna manse, but having lived in a modest house with a wood-burning stove, she says with a laugh, “I acclimated to the cold. We still keep the heat at 65 degrees!” The family is more likely to eat courtesy of Lori’s six-quart Crock-Pot than to indulge in filet mignon or other fancy food. “I can make a beef stew in that thing that will feed us for three nights,” she brags.

Lori is aided and abetted in thriftiness by her husband, Gene, who goes through the big new house unscrewing the recessed lights he deems superfluous. Lori, her father confides, is “pretty good” at saving and managing money, but Gene “is even better.”

Lori had hoped that the sudden income torrent her career triggered would lift the breadwinner weight off Gene’s shoulders, “but he still worked 75 hours of overtime last year” at the gas company where he is employed, says Lori. “That’s two weeks! He’s just a worker.”

For the complete article, check out the March 4 issue of Quick & Simple magazine or visit quickandsimple.com.

Your Place or Mine?
Surprise your loved ones with simple valentines wrapped around their dinner napkins. Cut out hearts from colored paper, then use rubber stamps and ink pads from Michaels to stamp on a few cute images with greetings to match. We paired a stamp of a cup of joe with “I like you a latte.” Punch a hole in the top of each heart, thread with ribbon and tie around napkins.

Nuts for You
Hit the grocery aisles for a festive, budget-friendly centerpiece! You’ll need two vases, one that’s clear and big enough to hold the smaller vase. Fill the smaller one with water and a bunch of light and dark pink carnations, and place inside the larger vase. Fill up the space between the vases with red pistachios!

For photos of these two craft projects, plus more fun ideas for Valentine’s Day, check out the Feb. 12 & 19 issue of Quick & Simple magazine or visit quickandsimple.com.

At 52, the country superstar is slimmer, prettier and perkier than ever. But though she certainly takes care of herself, the real secret to staying youthful, she tells Quick & Simple, comes from the inside. 

“I love being 50, and I will love being 60, too,” says Reba McEntire. “Age has never bothered me because I’m having a good time.” In fact, the entertainer admits, the key to her seemingly endless youth is probably just laughing — as often as possible. “It is so very important,” she insists. “It’s right up there with my love for my family and my relationship with God. I know God meant for us to laugh a lot.” And no one, Reba notes, deserves more credit for constantly keeping her in stitches than her manager/husband of 18 years, Narvel Blackstock, 50, their 17-year-old son, Shelby, and her stepkids Chassidy, Shawna and Brandon, all in their 20s.

“I pretty much surround myself with people who make me laugh,” Reba says. “That was the greatest thing about being on the Reba TV show. Those people were not only funny on television, they were even hysterical at the rehearsals. We had a lot of fun together, and that was important. Comedienne Melissa Peterman opens the show for me now during my concerts, and I look forward to her part of the show more than anything, because she makes me laugh.”

Not surprisingly, Reba’s health-and-fitness regimen has a “keep it light” quality as well. Revolving around daily vitamins, strict sun-avoidance, lots of water and brisk 30-minute walks three to four times weekly, it’s more about common sense than impossible-to-follow rules.

And with an admitted weakness for desserts and all things Mexican, she’s not putting herself through any tortuous dieting paces, either. “I love the chips and salsa and margaritas,” Reba says, noting that her favorite South of the Border combo is red beans, fried potatoes and cornbread. Though the singer is careful about what she consumes — with a family history of Type 2 diabetes, she believes in healthy eating, watching portion sizes and cutting back on sugar — she doesn’t consider any food off-limits: “I wake up in the morning thinking, ‘What can I have for breakfast? What will I have for supper?’”

And while makeup artist Brett Freedman even credits Reba’s lack of rigidity with keeping her complexion youthful, the star herself connects it to nightly makeup removal and an herbal facial cleanser from Noevir, the Japanese skin-care line, which she special-orders. “I’ve been using it for 16 years,” she says. “I’ve tried other products, but I like it the best.”

 Read the full story from Quick & Simple magazine.