Christmas In The House

I have finally gotten the house the way I want it and it is already almost time to take it all down. Oh well, at least I get to enjoy it for a little bit. I thought I would give you a little Christmas tour today. I won't talk your ear off today since there are so many pictures. We will start in the dining room.

Dining Room

This is the entrance to the dining room. Since we don't have a fireplace or mantel this is where I like to display our stockings.

When my dad was little he had a nanny named Claire. She was from England and was the sweetest lady you ever met. When my cousins and I were little she used to knit us all kinds of sweaters and things and one year she made us all stockings. I used it every year when I was little and my mom finally decided to give them to us last year. It is probably my favorite Christmas item of all.

Living Room

I made this pillow cover out of drop cloth material. It was a no sew project made with sewing glue and then I free handed the words with craft paint. I stuck the bow on with some sticky tape.


Last years' Santa pic. She did much better than she did this year.

I borrowed this snow village from my mom. It is the one she used to put up every year when we were little.

We gave her this house one year for her birthday and she painted it all by herself.

The bakery was also a gift her from my uncle (her brother), and he painted his as well. He is very artistic.


Sweet pea's Room

Last years Christmas picture.

The big bear was purchased at PB Kids this year and half of the proceeds from his purchase goes towards St. Jude's Hospital. I also bought one for my new nephew. I urge everyone to support this organization if you can.


The ornaments on her tree are actually a Nativity seen that my mom gave her last year. She bought it at church and it was hand crafted somewhere overseas. An organization was selling them as some sort of an exchange project. I can't remember the name of the organization right now.


I purchased this advent calendar in the dollar spot at Target this year. Every morning sweet pea and I move the candy cane to that days pouch. She loves it!

Master Bedroom

Didn't do much in here, just added a tree from Hob Lob and a few pine cones from the tree out front.

Kitchen



Tied some cookie cutters and candy canes to my trusty grapevine and made a baking themed wreath. Thought it seemed fitting for the kitchen.

Attached a teaspoon to the bow.

Hope you enjoyed this Christmas tour. I better go try and get some presents wrapped while sweet pea is napping. Until next time, BYE!

Mmm Mmm Mondays #4 (On Tuesday)

I know that I am a day late in getting this post up, but to be honest yesterday was a pretty hectic day and I really didn't have a recipe to share until today. Since hubby was out of town for 3 days last week I didn't do much cooking, so I just now got back on the bandwagon. I apologize to those that were waiting to see what I was going to post, so I won't waste anymore of your time and will get straight to the point.

Once again this is another recipe found off the wonderful website that is Pinterest. It is supposed to be a copy of the baked potato soup from Outback Steakhouse, but I have never actually had theirs so I can't tell you whether it taste like it or not. So if you have had their soup before, you'll have to let me know what ya think. Here you go.

Crockpot Baked Potato Soup

You will need:

1 30 oz bag of frozen hash browns (recipe called for shredded but I used southern style because I like chunks of potato)

3 14 oz cans of chicken broth

1 can cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup onion chopped
1/4 tsp ground pepper (or to taste)
1 pkg. cream cheese (not the light because it won't melt)

In a crockpot combine everything except for the cream cheese. Cook on low 6-8 hours. About 1 hour before serving, add the cream cheese and heat until thoroughly melted.

I actually didn't remember to put this meal together this morning so I ended up making my soup in a pot tonight. It ended up taking about an hour from start to finish. Either way you do it, it should turn out the same. Here is how I made mine.

Add everything to your pot except for the cream cheese. Turn your heat to medium-high and let your soup come to a boil. Simmer for about 20 mins.

Add the cream cheese to your soup mixture. Stir frequently until cheese is melted thoroughly.

Simmer the soup on medium to medium-low for about 30 mins. Soup should be quite a bit thicker by now. We added a bit more pepper to our soup than what the recipe calls for to add a little more flavor.

And there you have it. You can add any toppings of your choice to the soup such as green onion, sour cream, cheese, bacon, etc.. We decided to just stick to cheese and bacon. I also toasted us each a piece of Texas toast that went perfect with the soup. I am definitely one of those people that eats all the bread before their meal comes and by that time I am not hungry anymore. Whoops!

This dish was super easy and fun to make. Hubby even helped me out a little this time.

When he wasn't helping me this is what he was doing. We had Christmas music playing while we were cooking, and so he and sweet pea did a little dancing. Makes me smile so big when I catch moments like this!! :)

Hubby's rating for this dish: 4 1/2

This recipe made A LOT of soup. so if you have a big family to feed this dish would be perfect for you. It would also be great for a Holiday party or any kind of get together. There is definitely nothing better than a hot bowl of delicious soup when its nice and frosty outside. (Although is wasn't too frosty here today, I think it almost got up to 60 degrees)

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we did, and I hope that you will come back next week and visit me for Mmm Mmm Mondays. I just might have a holiday recipe for ya. Until next time, BYE!

Linking to:

Savvy Southern Style

Weekly Wrap Up

Whew, this has been one busy week! Since so much happened this week I thought I would just wrap it all into one post instead of trying to write a bunch of individual posts. Bare with me this could get long, but I will try my hardest to keep it short and simple. Sweet pea had the awfulest (yes I made that a word) virus last weekend so she was just starting to feel a little better when Monday rolled around. My sister in law called Monday and asked if we would like to go to Lights under Louisville with her family that night, so we decided since you get to stay in the car it would be alright for sweet pea to go.

Here in Louisville we have the only underground lights display in the country, so it was pretty neat to be able to go see it. Sweet pea loves looking at lights, and always go "oooo" whenever she sees them. All 7 of us piled in one car together so it made it a lot of fun. Here she is all ready to go with her "nack' (snack).

They had different Christmas songs playing throughout the cavern, so you could just roll down your window and enjoy! My camera takes horrible pictures in the dark, so most of them turned out pretty blurry, but I did get a few decent ones.

It took about 20 minutes to drive through the whole thing, so it wasn't too bad. My favorite part of the night was when I asked my nephews how they liked it, and the 4 yr old replied "It was kinda boring and kinda fun at the same time". So silly!

Tuesday through Thursday hubby was out of town for work, so sweet pea and I got to spend a lot of quality time together. We spent the night with my parents on Wednesday night and at 12:30 am got a call from my sister saying that she was in labor (she wasn't due until the 23rd). My poor parents drug themselves out of bed to get to the hospital while I stayed with sweet pea. She didn't end up having the baby until 10:52 am on Thursday morning, so needless to say everyone was really tired that day! His name is Cooper Thomas and he weighed 6lbs 11 oz and was 19 inches long. Here I am snuggling with him.

My sister was really glad that he came early so she didn't have to be in the hospital on Christmas. We are really glad he came early too so we get to spend his 1st Christmas with him. Isn't he cute!!

Friday night we finally got our Christmas tree put up. Hubby took sweet pea with him to get the tree and she picked it out all by herself, isn't that cute!! Here we are starting to decorate it. She didn't get to help me finish it because it was WAY past her bedtime, but I enjoyed the "help" she gave me.

This morning we woke up to the tree on the floor. It feel over sometime during the night and got water everywhere! We think that the trunk is too skinny for the tree stand that we have, so we are going to have to get a new stand tomorrow. For now we have it leaning towards the wall in case it decides to go down again.

Tonight my Mom and I took sweet pea to church to see Santa. I wasn't sure how she was going to react, but I had a feeling that there were going to be some tears involved, and sure enough I was right. She HATED him, but it makes for a cute memory to have.

The church is kinda set up like a little town and the have what they call "Main Street" so they had snow machines blowing snow on Main street and it was so cute. The kids were having so much fun playing in the fake snow. Mom and I managed to get a few shots with sweet pea.

I LOVE this one of sweet pea and her Nana!

They also had horse drawn carriages that took you around the campus so you could look at all of the lights and they rode you past the live Nativity where they also had a little petting zoo with a mini horse, donkey, sheep, cow, etc.. Sweet pea had no interest whatsoever petting the animals. Unfortunately we did not get to ride in the carriage because the line was WAY to long, but we still had fun walking around and looking at everything.

They were also giving away Free hot chocolate (which was prefect, because it was freezing tonight!) and had Dickens characters and Carolers walking around. I hope they do it again next year, because it was a lot of fun!!

After we left we stopped by to let sweet pea meet her cousin Cooper for the 1st time. I think she liked him because she kept rubbing and kissing his head. It was so cute!

Since tomorrow is Sunday and hubby and I are both off work, we hope to get the chance to get some lights on our house. I don't think we are going to put everything that we usually put out since it is so late, but I would like to have a least something up. I hope to post some pics of my Christmas decor soon.

What did you do fun this week?? Hope you have a happy Sunday!

Mmm Mmm Mondays #3

Hey ya'll, I can't believe it is Monday already! I feel like the weekend just flew by since we had so much going on. Saturday morning my mom and I went to a craft fair that is held every year at my old high school. I was able to pick up a few Christmas gifts, and it was fun to spend some one on one time with my mom without sweet pea. (My sweet cousin Caroline kept her for me) Saturday night we celebrated mom's birthday by having everyone over to our house for dinner. I made a chicken parmesan bake that I found on pinterest. I did not get any pics though since the evening was a little hectic, so I will just share the link with you all in another post and you can try it for yourself. You won't be disappointed!

Sunday hubby and I had our work Christmas party, and it was a blast! It is so nice to be able to relax and chat with our co-workers outside the working environment, and to see everyone in their "normal" clothes (Everyone wears the standard CFA uniforms). Sweet pea had been fighting a virus all weekend so she stayed with my mom while we went to the party. It was a nice break for hubby and I because she had not been sleeping or eating and was NOT a happy camper (that is putting it nicely!!)

It has been raining here all day so I am trying to catch up on laundry and thought I would share this new recipe with you while sweet pea is napping. This is another recipe found on pinterest. This again was a very easy recipe and required almost no prep work at all. It can easily be put in the crock pot before you go to work, and dinner will be ready by the time you get home. So without further ado here is Mmm Mmm Mondays post #3.

Crockpot Chicken Tortilla Soup

You will need:

2 chicken breasts

2 cans rotel (medium or with med w/ green chilies)

1 can black beans, rinsed and drained

1 can corn, drained

1 onion chopped

2 cans chicken broth

1-2 cups water

1 tbsp garlic powder

1 tbsp chili powder

1 tbsp ground cumin

1 tbsp dried cilantro

*instead of the spices you can opt to use a packet of taco seasoning

Put chopped onion, beans, rotel, corn, chicken broth, water and spices in crock pot and stir to mix.

Put thawed chicken breasts on top of mixture and make sure they are partly submerged in liquid. I ended up using 3 breasts instead of 2 since mine were kind of small.

Cook on high for 6-7 hrs or low 8-9 hrs. I cooked mine on low for about 6 hrs and it was done, but it will just depend on how big your chicken is and you want to make sure that it gets done. Once your chicken is done remove it from the soup and shred.

Return to the pot and stir.

Place a few tortilla chips in bottom of a bowl, pour soup over and then top with toppings of your choice. We used sour cream and cheese and I added a few jalapenos to hubby's. Serve and Enjoy!

This makes a wonderful cold winters night meal. If you didn't want the tortilla chips, you could probably just serve the soup with a side of jalapeno cheddar cornbread or something similar. Hubby and I loved this dish. His only comment would have been to add a little more spice to the soup. He LOVES him some spicy food!

Hubby's rating: 4 1/2

Well I am going to jump off here now. We are going to see the Christmas lights show in the cave underneath the Louisville Zoo tonight with my sister in law, her hubby and my 2 nephews. I will be sure to take some pics and share with you all another time. Until then, BYE!