-
How to Host a Friendsgiving Your BFFs Won’t Forget
When it comes to entertaining for Thanksgiving, I’m either one extreme or the other – it’s either Chinet paper plates and plastic tablecloths, or a full-on beautiful fall tablescape with formal place settings. When I’m helping my grandma host, we typically go for the former (because we’re usually feeding 30+!) But when I’m able to host a smaller gathering of family or friends, I am all about gorgeous table settings and beautiful centerpieces. Fall is such a fun time to doll-up your home decorations and truly wow your guests! This holiday season, Friendsgiving is great opportunity to try out new styles and make entertaining more fun and personal. One decor…
You May Also Like
Meal Planning through Thanksgiving
My Appliqued Stockings
A Family Day of Kindness
-
Chili – The Official Meal of Fall
For me, chili is the official meal of the fall. It’s hearty and warm and the smell of it cooking on the stove just makes me happy. I make almost the same chili recipe that I had growing up, except the main differences are now I add some celery (because I love the flavor it brings) and beef stock (instead of not draining my beans). It still brings me back to the fall and winter in Florida and one of my favorite meals my mom would make for our family. Chili 1 1/3 lbs ground beef 1 large sweet onion, diced 2 stalks celery, diced 1 tbsp minced garlic 2…
-
Pumpkin Bread with Tangerine Streusel
It’s been a couple of weeks and I’ve been itching for more pumpkin – it was time for another pumpkin bread. The boys and I love having yummy breads for breakfast, but it can take so long to make in the morning. So I made this bread tonight and we will enjoy it tomorrow without the wait! I looked to a couple recipes for the inspiration for this bread, but thought I’d jazz it up a little with some tangerine zest. Let me tell you – I had never had pumpkin with tangerine before, but oh. my. gosh. it is awesome! (Okay, so I know this is supposed to be…
-
Little Pumpkin Baby Shower
So I must point out that my blog tagline is “A blog about cooking, kids and trying to find the time to be crafty.” Well, it’s been 4 months of blogging, and I have yet to find the time to be crafty… until this baby shower. Hopefully more to come in the crafty department. This past weekend I had the honor of co-hosting a baby shower for my dear friend and neighbor, Chantelle. We decided to throw her a Little Pumpkin themed shower, but took it in a sophisticated direction. We focused on a fall color palette: gold, burnt orange, bronze, robin’s egg blue and burgundy. We used really fun…
-
Beef Vegetable Soup with Garlic Cheddar Biscuits
Another beautiful fall weekend means more soup cooking in my kitchen. Vegetable soup is one of my all-time favorites… my mom used to make it for me when I was growing up. And by the way, vegetable soup to me means beef vegetable soup because that’s just how I roll. I used my fav organic ground beef from Costco, lots and lots of fresh veggies, a box of tomatoes and only used cans for the beans. Depending on what I have on hand sometimes I vary the vegetables (zucchini is good in this too), but the one thing that I must have is the cabbage. It adds such an awesome flavor…
-
Love this chili weather
To me there are two staples of fall – pumpkin and chili. And so I’m a little ashamed to admit that we are 30 days into autumn and I just made my first pot of chili. But better late than never, I suppose. It got down into the 40’s last night and so we awoke to a cold house (we hadn’t turned on the heater yet this season) and it just got me thinking that I needed to make some chili. So I did. My (old) go-to chili recipe is really good, but really basic, and so I decided I’d take today’s chili to another level. A couple of years…
-
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
Pumpkin and chocolate – the perfect combination. I made these muffins for breakfast this morning and between the smell of these fabulous things baking in the oven and fresh brewed coffee, my house smelled like a pumpkin spice latte. Yum. This is the perfect muffin to kick off the fall with – moist and sweet with the perfect amount of both pumpkin and chocolate, a totally decadent treat. Happy fall y’all! Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins 3 cups all-purpose flour 2 tsp baking powder 4 eggs 2 1/2 cups sugar 1 14.5-oz can pumpkin 3/4 cup oil 1 tsp salt 1 tsp baking soda 2 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp nutmeg 1/2…
-
Lentil Soup
It’s a rainy Saturday in Georgia – a perfect day for soup. I found this recipe on a blog I follow, Aly GarlicHands, and it looked so great I had to try it. Plus I have lentils in my pantry that have been begging to be cooked – so all the conditions were right to make a big pot of soup, and boy was that a great idea! I had to make a couple of modifications based on what I had on hand. You see, the only thing worse than attempting the grocery store with two little ones by yourself is doing so in the rain. As I like to…
-
Pumpkin Raisin Bread
It was time to check off my next milestone of the almost-fall: making something with pumpkin. After a near meltdown at Publix over my inability to locate pumpkin on the shelf and the associate’s misinformation about the availability of said pumpkin, all was resolved and I left satisfied with my two cans of Libby’s. I was craving some pumpkin bread and luckily I was able to make it happen this morning. I decided to look for a recipe with raisins because my boys love them (especially Beckett)! I found a recipe on Pinterest that was mostly what I was looking for but I made a couple of modification. It appeared…
