thankful hearts.

My heart is overwhelmed with thankfulness...
so many things to be thankful for, so many of which I take for granted every day.

More than in years before, I am especially grateful for the wonderful people in my life...
my family,
my friends,
my church family,
my co-workers,
my neighbors...

I pray that I never take the people in my life for granted.

Happy Thanksgiving friends!

meatless meal update.

I have been neglecting to update you all on our meatless meal venture.

Lately we've kept it very simple with vegetable soup and baked sweet potatoes with some combination of vegetables.

Several weeks ago we did try Kraft Food's recipe for Roasted Vegetable Enchiladas.
We, especially Chris, were a little afraid of how they might turn out but they were absolutely delicious!

Here's the recipe:

2 red bell peppers
2 small zuchinni, coarsely chopped

1 eggplant, coarsely chopped

1 onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves, chopped

1/4 cup of Zesty Italian dressing

1 1/2 cups of shredded mozzarella cheese

1/2 cup of water

12 corn tortillas

chopped cilantro

Heat the oven to 425.

Cover a baking sheet with foil sprayed lightly with cooking spray. Toss vegetables and garlic in dressing. Spread into one layer on baking sheet. Bake for 30 minutes, turning after 10 minutes. Remove from oven & cool.

Combine 2 cups of the chopped vegetables and 1/2 cup of cheese and set aside.

Remove skin and seeds from peppers and coarsely chop. Add peppers to blender with water, garlic, cilantro, and remaining roasted vegetables. Blend until smooth.

Reduce oven temperature to 350. Pour 1 cup of vegetable puree onto bottom of greased 9x13 baking dish. Top each tortillas with 3 tablespoons of roasted vegetables and roll up. Place seam-side down in baking dish and top with remaining vegetable puree and cheese.

Cover and bake about 25 minutes until heated through and cheese is melted. Garnish with cilantro.

*I halved the recipe and it worked well too.

Hope you enjoy as much as we did!

ribbon wreath

I have seen ribbon wreaths all over the blog world lately.

A friend at work is expecting a sweet baby girl, Autum in January and we are throwing a shower at work=perfect time to try making a ribbon wreath.

I used this tutorial but opted to use straight pins to secure the ribbons rather than hot glue because I hate dealing with hot glue strings.

I'm so happy with how it turned out!
I'll definitely be linking it up to some weekend parties...

coffee table

We bought a new coffee table at the market last month when my parents were visiting.

Chris actually spotted it and asked me if I like it.

I definitely loved it but was afraid it might be a bit too big.

We walked around & thought about it before deciding to buy it.

My dad came along & negotiated the price down for us so we got a super deal.

I absolutely love how it looks in our living room (so much better than what we had)!

The size is absolutely perfect...like it was made for our space!

cupcakes!

I recently had fun making these cute cupcakes (strawberry with cream cheese frosting)!

Chris' boss has 3 precious children. Unfortunately, his youngest daughter, Paige was diagnosed in September with a malignant form of neuroblastoma. She is only 18 months old. Her prognosis is very good and she has so far tolerated chemotherapy very well.

In addition to praying and supporting their family emotionally, the lab and family friends have really rallied around their family providing them with meals every day of the week for the past few months.

We had the opportunity to make dinner for their family a few weeks ago.

We tried to create a kid-friendly meal so we made meatball sub casserole, a salad (with adult & kid toppings & dressings), and the cupcakes.

I stamped each of their names on one cupcake topper and stamped "Go Paige" on all the other toppers. I was happy with how they turned out & as we were catching up on their CaringBridge journal last night, we saw that they had posted a picture of our "inspiring" cupcakes.

So happy we could do some that seems so small to help others.

Go Paige!!!

food fairies.

Recently we were incredibly spoiled by the food fairies.

You see, when my parents came to visit they made the trip with a cooler packed full of delicious food from home...
potato soup, chicken tortilla soup, pork chops, macaroni & cheese, lima beans, homemade beans & franks, sweet potato pie, pecan bars.

It was such a wonderful treat as we didn't have to cook all week and we got to enjoy yummy food from home.

Thanks again to the food fairies!

catching up...

The past few weeks have been very busy for both of us with work and visits from family.

First, Abbey came for a visit over her Fall Break.

We had a great time shopping, eating, hanging out, doing a little line dancing & enjoying some great music at the Wildhorse, and playing a little Sunday afternoon football on a gorgeous fall day in the park.

The following weekend, my parents came for their first visit to Nashville.

Since they had never been to Nashville before, we felt obliged to show them the 'classic' sights.
We enjoyed eating at the Loveless Cafe on Friday night, spending much of the day Saturday at the antique market at the fairgrounds. (where we bought a coffee table that I fell in love with...pics to come!) Saturday night we saw Blake Shelton be inducted into the Grand Ol Opry hall of fame by Trace Adkins. Lots of good music and fun!

Here are few pictures of our time together...

Thankful for the time we had to enjoy family...