The Season Has Begun!

Hello all!

I hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving! Ours was nice. The family came to our house and we ate, watched football, ate, watched some more football, ate, played XBox...well you get the picture. It was a relaxing day and I had a great time hanging out. I remembered to have an empty dishwasher so clean up was a breeze with the help of my awesome SIL, S.

Now that it's December, I am ready for Christmas! I've already started our decorating around the house and will be putting our tree and the last of the outside lights up this weekend.

We have two Christmas, ummm, I mean Holiday, parties tonight. One for my work and one for M's. It will be a bit nutty trying to get to both, but I know it will be a super fun night!

I'd love to hear what you're up to! Have you started your decorating yet??

TTFN!

Happy (almost) Thanksgiving!

Hi peeps!

I wanted to get on here again and wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all have a fabulous day with your family and friends.

M and I are hosting again this year. I love Turkey Day and it is such a nice way to kick off the holiday season. There is no pressure, just time with family, football and a feast! I'll be in charge of the munchies, sides and a dessert. Mum is bringing the turkey and gravy since I have a wierd phobia about cooking a turkey. (It's totally unfounded since I am quite capable of roasting a chicken so I don't know what my problem is, it's not like it's that different, LOL.) My SIL, S, is bringing her yummy green bean casserole and some pies. It's all going to be delicious! Yum!

Now that my niece and nephews are older, we are embracing the kids table. :) My dining room table isn't quite big enough for all of us and the last time we hosted, I put a card table in the corner for the kiddies. That was kind of a bust since the room isn't that big. We all felt kind of cramped. This year, the kids will have the kitchen table all to themselves, complete with a kiddie centerpiece, and won't be squished into a corner at a dinky table.

Things are pretty well ready for the big day. The menu is set. I have all of the groceries. The serving pieces are all pulled out and my table cloth is pressed. I'm going to set the table tonight. Tomorrow I'm going to make the pecan pie bars, cranberry sauce and prep the veggies that I can for my recipes. Then on Thursday morning I'll do the blitz to get things cooked/prepped, cleaned up and put away before our guests come. I can't wait!

Enjoy your day!

This Week's Dinner Plans and Golf

Hello out there!

I don't even know if anyone still checks this blog out. I just haven't had much to write about recently.

I thought I'd start back easy with this week's meal plan for our dinners. Here goes:

Tonight: Mexican Cornbread Casserole and a garden salad
Tuesday: Garlic Lime Chicken with a Guacamole Salad and Spicy Black Beans
Wednesday: Fish Stick Tacos and a fruit salad
Thursday: Sticky Chicky with rice pilaf and a Caesar salad.
Friday: Dinner out

In other news, M and I have started to take up golf. So far, we've just hit up the driving range a few times, but we soon hope to get out on the course for a real game. We both got our first sets of clubs in the last couple of weeks. Of course, I had to go with the pink Wilson set. It's awesome! ;) I suspect we'll go to the range a couple more times this week after work and then try for a 9 hole game next weekend. *FX*

That's all for now!

Talk to you again soon, my Blogosphere peeps!

I'm here!

Hello all!

I'm here! Nothing too exciting has been happening the past few months so I really haven't had anything to post about, hence the absence.

Well, now that summer has unofficially started, we've been spending more time outside and working in the gardens.

My hydrangeas are budding up quite nicely and I expect that we'll have a beautiful show starting in the next couple of weeks. The day lillies are nice an full as well, though I have only seen the beginnings of one bud. It's still early for them.

The foundation planting we did last year looks pretty good, however the gumpo white azaleas we planted do not seem to be doing well at all. I spoke to the nursery that we got them from and they said we could dig them up and exchange them so I think that's what we'll do this weekend.

My herbs are doing well in a pot on our deck. The mint has really taken over, as I suspected it would, but I will be using it in fruit salads and such so it's not a problem. My tomato plant is looking a little sad. I'm not sure if I planted it too early, or it was drowned in some of these crazy rain storms we've been having. I'll give it a while longer before I reclaim that planter for something else.

The wildflower bed we planted it sprouting nicely. I just hope we get some flowers soon! We planted a gazillion seeds so something should flower for us. :)

I've also been planning a summer surprise party and was quite happy to get the catering squared away this past weekend and for a fabulous price that includes delivery. Score!

What have you been up to?

We have a range!

Hello all!

Our new range was installed on Friday and it is beautiful! I was cooking up a storm! I made Shepard's Pie for dinner and cupcakes for dessert Saturday night. I made this breakfast casserole (and added sliced scallions) for breakfast on Sunday. For the big game, I made some Touchdown Taco Dip and spicy wing dings. OMG, I'm still stuffed but it was all so good!

It was so nice to be able to be back in the kitchen again. I've got to get back to my meal planning and stick to it since we leaned a little much on dinners out and delivery for the past couple of weeks. The problem is now that I can make whatever I want, I can't think of what to make. Ugh!

What's on your menu this week?

Cars

Is it summer yet? I'm so ready for winter to be over. I need my car show fix!

These are some pictures from the car show in Marshfield last year.

*Drool* I want one.

Wednesday

Hello out there!

I'm on day 8 of this no smoking thing and it's going pretty well. I have had a couple of minor slip ups, but have otherwise I've been doing really well.

We didn't really get anything done on the kitchen this past weekend since we couldn't get the plumber out to disconnect anything. I don't really know that I was thinking. It wasn't an emergency so why would they come out on a Saturday? Duh. Anyway, they came yesterday and took out the ovens and capped the pipes. We'll be cutting the counter to make room for the new range tonight. Our electrician is coming tomorrow night to put in the new plug and the plumber is coming back on Friday to hook the range up. I can hardly wait!

Since I'll be able to cook, I'm trying to decide what to make for Superbowl Sunday. I usually do a chili for football games, but I really want to do something in the oven since I'll have it back after all these months. Maybe I'll try some type of wings and a baked dip. Since I'm not a buffalo wing girl, maybe I'll make these. I've made them before for dinner and they were yummy. I think I'll try them with the little wings and drums that you can buy in the freezer section. Hmmm, I must check out Recipezaar for some other goodies.

That's all I have for today. What are you making this weekend?

Happy Friday!

Hello all!

I hope you are staying warm. The wind is howling here and with the wind chill it's -7 F. Brrr!

Today is Day 3 of not smoking! Go me! I really hope I can stick with it and kick this habit. My head is in the game this time so I'm feeling confident. I want to give a big shout out to all my FB peeps! You guys rock! I truly appreciate your encouragement. Thank you. (((Big Hugs)))

We picked out our new range last weekend and it was delivered this week. We're getting there. Right now it is sitting in our sun room taunting me, but it's real purdy. =) We had a carpenter out to give us an estimate and his "off the top of my head" estimate was outrageous! He basically was quoting a week's worth of pay for a barely one day job. I don't think so! I think we're going to work on this ourselves with a friend's help to make the new cabinet door. That's the plan anyway. We'll be starting on that tomorrow.

Assuming our work on the kitchen is successful this weekend, I will be back with several cooking posts. Oh, how I miss having an oven that isn't possessed. I can't wait to bake some bread and sweet treats. A lasagna or some homemade mac and cheese wouldn't go amiss either. I've been scouring the interwebs for some new recipes and have a few lined up. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. Yum!

On a completely different topic, I think I'd like to start some digital scrapbooking. Now that I have my nice camera, I'd like to do something with the pictures I've been taking. I heard about a software package on another blog, but when I checked it out it was a subscription type thing. They would send me a new disk every two months with new templates and charge me X amount each time. I don't really want to get into that sort of thing. I was looking for more of a one time purchase deal. If anyone has any recommendations that won't break the bank, I'm all ears.

What have you been up to?

Yikes! 2 Months??

Sorry! I've been neglecting you! Things got busy with the holidays and such that I'm just now getting back into the swing of things.

Let's see, where to I start?

Well, Thanksgiving was very nice, despite the fact that the blasted Brady Bunch oven kicked it on me just before dinner. Thankfully, everything was already cooked and I was just using the oven to keep things warm. We had a lovely meal and great company! I highly recommend that menu plan I mentioned since the food is yummy and it kept me on track (and got all the food cooked before the oven fiasco).

My high school had an informal part 2 to our reunion that weekend. It was great to catch up with those that didn't make it to part 1 over the summer.

The next weekend was Michael's work Christmas party. It was a blast. It was so good to meet so many of the guys that I've heard about forever but hadn't yet met in person. They are a great bunch and load of fun.

We hosted Christmas Eve with Mum and Dad and C and S and the kids. It was hectic getting the food ready since we still don't have our oven, but I made a great chicken, broccoli and ziti on the cooktop, with salad and garlic bread (in the toaster oven.) Christmas Day we went over to Michael's family and had a yummy Irish breakfast and played Wii. I have some funny pics of the boxing matches. LOL. Any why is it that the little people you fight all wear glasses? Later that day, I went over to C and S's for dinner with them, Mum and Dad and Uncle J. All in all, it was a great Christmas!

For New Year's we went to see Michael's cousin M and his girlfriend W in NYC. We stayed with them for a few days and went to see Gaelic Storm on NYE. That show rocked! I can't wait to see them again. W made the yummiest Guinness Beef Stew on New Year's Day. It was perfect! I can't wait to see them again later in the spring at our house. =)

The following weekend, we finally got those windows installed that I spoke of in my last post. It had been a scheduling nightmare with the original installer, but the person that actually came out in his place was awesome. His did a great job and is going to help us with a few other projects.

One of those projects is replacing our cooktop/wall oven set up with a stand alone range. That's going to require me to put on my GC hat at coordinate the carpenter, plumber and electrician but I think I'll be able to handle it. They're all good guys and have worked at our house before so I don't see it as being a problem. I just can't wait! I've been dying to make cookies and bread. Soon enough. I expect that we'll have this project done in the next 2-3 weeks.

Sheesh, that turned out to be a longer post than I expected. I hope you are all doing well!

What have you been up to?

Easy come, Easy go

I like having money in the bank, but I hate when we to have to spend it on not so fun stuff.

Saturday, I went to Lowes to pay for our two replacement windows and associated repairs due to rotten window frames. We knew we would have to do these windows and planned on doing it in the spring. However, once we could see daylight through the top of the frame, we knew we had to do it now before the snow flies. Then on Sunday our water heater died (after our showers, thankfully). It's being replaced today. Ugh, almost $2k out the door for these repairs.

Don't the house gods know that Christmas is coming and we have a vacation we want to plan so that we can escape the snow this winter?

Thank God for Dave Ramsey and our emergency fund.

Thanksgiving

I'm excited to host Thanksgiving again this year. We'll have a few more people this year, so that will be fun. I love to have a house full of people. I follow the Dinner Diva's and Flylady's holiday menu plan with just few tweaks. I trade the green beans for peas and skip the cranberry sauce since we like my Mum's and the old stand by of the canned jellied stuff. This plan serves 12 people so it will be just right for us and will leave us with a few leftovers. Mum will do the turkey and gravy since I am challenged in that area (and the fact that I have the world's smallest oven) so that is a relief. She's also bringing her homemade cranberry relish. S is bringing yummy spinach balls and her pearl onions. Mmmmm!

Since I followed this plan last year, I know how long it will take for the set up and food prep and more importantly the cleanup. I can't have the sink full of pots and pans before we even sit down to dinner. ;) The plan is also great because it puts you on autopilot to get all the tasks done without being a frazzled mess.

I'll add these pecan pie bars to the dessert table. My coworker makes them for our annual cookie swap in December and they are soooo good. I can't wait make some. I just hope there will be some left for Turkey Day, LOL.

Do you have any special recipes or traditions that you do for Thanksgiving?

Next Week's Menu Plan

Here is next week's menu plan. Originally we were supposed to have house guests next weekend, but plans changed. I'll still keep with my plan, but just buy a smaller roast for Friday.

Sunday - Steak and Potatoes. I'm not sure what kind of steak, but I'll see what looks good (and is on sale) at the market when I go.

Monday - Tacos
Tuesday - Homemade Mac n Cheese with ham and broccoli recipe
Wednesday - Fish and Chips
Thursday - Chicken Bake recipe
Friday - Bella's Italian Beef recipe We'll have subs Friday with peppers and onions.
Saturday - Pizza
Sunday - Left over Bella's beef with taters and veggies

What are you planning?

Thursday

Hello out there!


I went to the dentist last week and it turns out I had a gum infection. Nice, huh? Well, the dentist gave me some ammoxicillin and a mouth rinse and it is clearing up nicely. I have to go back next week for a followup. Hopefully I will be all healed.

Anyway....

Last week's menu plan went pretty well despite Michael's crazy shifts and my sickly gum.

This week's plan is working out too. Here's what we've had/are having:

Sunday - Chicken and Dumplings - recipe
Monday- Mexican Mac and Cheese
Tuesday - Meatball Stoup recipe
Wednesday - Leftovers (was supposed to be a chicken casserole, but I was too tired)
Thursday - Fish and Chips
Friday - Red Beans and Rice recipe
Saturday - Not Your Mama's Tuna Casserole recipe

I'm working on next week's menu and will post that later on.

So what are you having?

Tooth Update

I'm sure you are all dying to know about my tooth, lol.

Well, I now suspect that the pain is not from my zillion dollar tooth, but my apparently no longer impacted wisdom tooth pushing down on it. I was feeling my gum last night and I can feel the tooth right under the gum and it's not even lined up right. It seems like it will come out on the cheek side. What the heck? I'm 33 years old, I'm not supposed to be teething!

I suppose it's time to call the dentist. =(

Ugh

I have a toothache, but I shouldn't. Grr! One of my back teeth which has had a full root canal and crown placed hurts and throbs. If there is not supposed to be a nerve there, why does it hurt?

I hope the Advil I just took kicks in soon.

OK, pity party over. ;)

Pizza Night

I had to change up the menu plan a bit for the week since there was a ground beef recall. I decided to throw out the beef we had just to be on the safe side even though I don't think it was part of the recall. So, last night we had the Sunday dinner left overs and tonight I made our pizza.

I used a store bought refrigerated dough, sauce, cheese, mushrooms, red pepper rings, black olives, minced garlic and a few pepperoni. This came out so tasty!

Sunday Dinner

As promised, here is our Sunday dinner. We had teriyaki pork tenderloin based on this recipe. I omitted the sweet potatoes.

I roasted some separate sweet potatoes with red onions from the Thanksgiving menu at SavingDinner.com. (Somehow my red onions look blue in this picture, but I assure you they were normal color in real life, LOL)

And we also had some fresh baked bread, yum!

It was a yummy meal and really nice since we actually sat in the dining room, not just at the kitchen table. I hope we can do this more often.

So what did you have?

Menu Plan for this week

Hi folks,

Last night I made a yummy Sunday dinner for us. We had teriyaki pork tenderlion with roasted sweet potatoes and onions and fresh baked bread. I'll post more on this later.

Tonight I'm making meatloaf with roasted red potatoes and broccoli.

Tuesday, we'll have the pork leftovers.

Wednesday, we'll have Cheeseburger Chicken with mashed taters.

Thursday, a veggie pizza with some store bought dough for the crust.

Friday will be fish and chips.

I hope that by putting this out there I will actually stick to my menu plan this week. I have all of the ingredients so there are not excuses. ;)

So, what are you making this week?

Oh, P.S. I just realized that menu planning is the monthly focus for Flybabies for November. It looks like I'm off to the right start!

Spider Cookies

Halloween is approaching and so I made some of my Aunt H's spider cookies for Michael and his work buddies. They were having a topping off day so I put some green peanut M&Ms on the top to be the (co. name) hardhats, LOL.

These are so easy to make.

Ingredients:
1 12oz bag of semisweet chocolate chips
1 can of crunchy chow mein noodles
Small candies or nonpareils (I used the green M&Ms this time) - totally optional


Directions:
1. Melt your chocolate chips in the microwave according to the directions on the package.
2. Once the chips are melted, stir in the chow mein noodles to coat them in the chocolate.
3. Using 2 spoons, scoop out some of the noodles and place the "spiders" on wax paper to cool and set.
4. If putting decorations on, do this before the chocolate sets so that the candies stick.

These cookies also look like nests so you could make them at Easter and use jelly beans for eggs.

Beef Roast Recipe

With the chilly weather coming, the crockpot is back in action. Here's a yummy beef recipe that I made last week. I hope you like it!

Bella's Crock Pot Italian Beef

Ingredients
3-4 lbs beef roast
8 ounces tomato sauce
2 1/2 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon basil
1 teaspoon parsley flakes
1 teaspoon oregano
1 ounce Good Seasonings Italian salad dressing mix

Directions
1. Place beef roast in crock pot.
2. Combine other ingredients in a saucepan, and cook over medium-high heat until it comes to a full boil. Pour over roast.
3. Cover and cook on high 6-8 hours.
4. Shred beef with a fork, and cook 30 more minutes.

This made a ton of meat for just the two of us so we got several meals out of it.

The first night, T was over for dinner and we made beef subs. I sauteed some onions, green pepper and garlic in olive oil and we had the meat, veggies and some cheese on sub rolls. Yummy!

Another night, I heated up some of the shredded meat with a little more tomato sauce and we had it tossed with some bowtie pasta.

This would also be great with some mashed potatoes and salad.

Try it out and let me know what you think and how you served it.

Monday

This past weekend was a nice fall weekend here. The air was crisp and the leaves are changing and then we got SNOW yesterday. I know I live the New England, but really, snow on October 18th? I think it's gonna be a long winter.

I just took it easy Friday night after work. Michael was out with B for a boys night, so I figured I'd take advantage and watch my girlie shows curled up on the couch.

Saturday I went out to get my hair done. I was in desperate need!!! Soo many white hairs were taking up residence on the top of my head. I guess that is the curse of being a redhead. Luckily, I have Donna to work her magic and make my hair beautiful again. =)

Saturday night was my brother's 40th birthday shindig. S did a wonderful job and the food was all delicious. I know that C had a great time! Happy Birthday to you again!!

Yesterday was a quiet day at our house. Just relaxing and watching TV. I didn't feel too much like doing my usual grocery run and it was snowing so we just ordered dinner in.

I'm working on my menu plan for this week. Any ideas?

Plants

So over the Labor Day weekend, we finally redid our foundation planting. I was finally able to make up my mind on what to get, thank goodness! As I mentioned before, we tore out all of the old bushes and have replaced them with dwarf varieties. We got a Dwarf Alberta Spruce, 2 Gumpo White Azaleas, 2 China Girl Holly, 1 China Boy Holly and we planted the 2 boxwood that S gave us. I think it turned out really well.



This is the before shot from around Easter this spring.







This is how it looks now. I really think it makes our house look "younger" and I'm so happy to have those big gnarly bushes gone.






We planted the China Boy Holly off to the side of the yard. We'll have to keep up with the pruning of these shrubs so since the boy holly dosesn't have any berries we figured it would be fine over in another part of the yard and we wouldn't have to worry about trimming it as often.

I'm really happy to finally have this project completed.

Now I just need to get my spring bulbs ordered and planted!

Have you done any garden projects lately?

A recipe for you

Hello all!

I've been slacking as usual with this blog. Now that summer is just about over, I think I'll be posting on here more.

Today I have a recipe to share that I made this weekend. It's based on a recipe I found in the Desperation Dinners cookbook by Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross. I tweaked it a bit and bulked up the veggies a bit more. Here's my version:

Quickie Turkey Chili
Serves 6

1 pound ground turkey
1 can black beans
1 can red kidney beans
1 small can sliced black olives
2 cans Mexican stewed tomatoes with green chiles
1 onion
4 stalks celery hearts
1 green pepper
1 carrot
1 clove garlic, minced
2T chili powder (I like it spicy so I did 3T)
1t cumin
1t garlic powder
Olive Oil

In a large soup pot, heat a couple turns of the pot of olive oil. Chop onion, carrot and celery and add to the pot as you chop. Saute those for a couple minutes then add the minced garlic. Then push the veggies to the side and add the turkey, breaking it up as you brown it. Meanwhile, chop the green pepper and add it to the pot. While the meat is starting to brown, drain and rinse the beans and olives. As the meat continues to brown add the beans, olives, chili powder, cumin and garlic powder. Mix that around and then add the two cans of tomatoes with juice.

Let that come up to a bubble and then simmer for 15 minutes or so. Serve with sour cream, cheese and tortilla chips.

We had this Saturday for supper and had the leftovers with some elbow pasta on Sunday. I had also made some ranch dip for the weekend snacking and it was quite tasty as a topper on this chili.

I hope you like it!

Monday

Hello all!

I can't believe I've neglected my blog for this long, Yikes!

We've been quite busy with our front landscaping project over the past month or so. There's still plenty to do, but I've come to like and actually be pretty good at gardening so I'm excited to keep puttering around.

Here are some pics from a few weeks ago:

These were my daffodils along our front fence. The came up quite nicely.







We also ripped out several old shrubs at the foundation, but it doesn't seem that I have a pic that actually shows that, doh! I'll get one tonight.

Now that the daffoldils are passing, my day lilies and hydrangeas are starting to green up and mask the dying foliage. It's almost like I planned it that way, ;).

We had a nice weekend. Our usual Thursday date night got moved to Friday last week, so Michael and I went out to Foley's for dinner. It was yummy. I strayed from my usual fish dish, since I made Garlic Talapia the night before, and got a pastrami sandwich. I was not disappointed.

Then Saturday, we did some yard saling. It was fun, but we really should have gotten out there earlier. Most of the ones we hit, mainly just had kids stuff left by the time we got there. Saturday afternoon we headed over to C and S's for some hot dogs and beer. S got C an early birthday present of a kegerator so we were all breaking it in. =)

Sunday, we just chilled. We had some of the pancakes I made Satuday for breakfast. (It was such a huge batch, I made them all up and put the leftovers in the freezer.) I used a recipe I found at The Pioneer Woman. They are to die for! Then I made meatloaf for Sunday dinner using a family friend's recipe that I had been meaning to try. It was also a winner! It too was a big one for just the two of us so I made up two loaves and froze one. It hope it will still be as good when I go to use it later on.

Grilled chicken, potato salad and corn on the cob for dinner tonight!

Well, I'm off to finish up some things before I head home. Have a great day!

Spring is gradually making it's way here, I hope

This past weekend was beautiful. Sunny and 60 degrees! Then it sleeted and snowed on Monday and is grey and drizzly today. Hurumph...

I took advantage of the nice weather while we had it. Though I had to shovel off the deck Saturday morning, it was well worth it. The sun was shining and Michael and I just sat and chilled in the great outdoors.

While enjoying our time on the deck, I got my seedlings started in their little seed condos. Now I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that they sprout and I can plant them outside come May.

It was nice to be able to get some of the windows opened to let the almost spring air come through the house.

The Cape weekend I mentioned in my previous post is this weekend! I am so excited! I've got my clothes pretty well organized so I just need to pop them in a bag and then I will be good to go Friday at lunchtime! The weather looks like it will be clear and in the 40s. Not too shabby.

I will report back and hopefully have some pictures to share with you next week.

Til next time!