Live Simply

Lately I’ve been craving change, change for the simple. I’m too spread out, too chaotic, too unfocused. I need to pick and choose things, people, projects, parts of life to seriously focus on. I’m tired of the un-needed drama and chaos of just going through the days – getting by without much progress towards anything. I love blogging – but I hardly ever carve out time to do it. I love my friends and get-togethers, but I pretty much have only been keeping up with them via newsfeed and tweets. I love photography, but I have a broken camera and haven’t set a goal towards getting a new one. I enjoy cultivating new and creative ideas, but I’m settling for an environment that isn’t allowing me  time or energy to indulge.

There are always a million things that need doing, but I’m pretty much just getting the basics done (on the good days!) and not much else. Now that my eyes are opened to this fact, it is very frustrating and disappointing. I need discipline. I need a plan. I need schedules and lists. So, I am beginning on a massive overhaul of how I ‘do’ life. I want to be intentional. I want to be driven, focused, and disciplined. Change is scary – and I’m terrified. Being lazy is much easier. Settling because of fear isn’t worth it, or healthy. My life is going to get simple, focused, and disciplined. I’ll participate in the things I feel are valuable, the things that really matter. I won’t waste time on meaningless wandering – rather invest in the life that has a lasting affect. I will do my best to get into situations where the things I do matter.

I’d rather do few things really well than lots of things half-hearted and wearily.

What better time to have this realization come settling in? Its the close of a year, and, for me, a close on this style of living. Now for researching, creating goals, making the lists and planning out how to be better at being intentional. How to get my lazy self un-lazy. I’ve got a to-do list,  Prayers and well wishes welcome… I’ll appreciate the encouragement!

Prayer for My Friends

I’ve added some logos/links to my sidebar, and they are people {and lives} that I am thankful for. I’d love for you to join with me and specifically praying for these people. Their situations are all extremely difficult, but they are not alone in their fight.

Team Chin is in support of one of my best middle school friends, Leanne, who is fighting breast cancer and expecting her first baby (Grover) in the spring. I’m so proud of her strength and faith. I’m excited for her to become a mom. I’m also so lucky to call her ‘friend’. And I’m praying that her cancer fight is swift and effective!

Karis Almy is the first baby of one of my high school friends who has a fatal disease called Krabbe. Katie is an amazing mother with an amazing faith. You can follow Karis’ story via the Almy blog.

Seanstrong is the son of one of my Dad’s good friends. (to access Sean’s story you do have to give your email for CaringBridge, but they don’t spam you or anything) He’s been down the cancer road before and is battling again, but not without the support of an awesome family, and community behind him!

With each of these stories, I become more and more thankful for Jesus, my savior, who provides hope for a future where sin and sadness are left behind – but until then, I’ll be praying for healing and comfort for each of these precious lives!

Triplets!!!

For those of you still keeping me in your blogroll or stopping in every now and then, THANKS! We’ve been super busy with several out of town trips since Labor Day. I think things are finally slowing down a bit — or I may be too busy decorating my house for the holidays and starting some ridiculous project which we won’t have enough time to finish before said holidays!

I’m actually posting today because this cuteness must be shared.

TRIPLETS!

I realize it’s past halloween… but are they not the sweetest little candycorns you have ever seen?! These are my newest nephews and niece. Lilly is in the middle, Carter is on the left (I think), and Mailon is on the right — C&M are identical. They’re 2 weeks now, at home and doing wonderfully!

Delish Crock Pot Grilled Ribs… and a massive dinner bust

Let’s start with the bad and end with the oh-so-delish. Ever since Kim sent me the recommendation ages ago, I’ve been a pinning fool. It is SO great for the more visual and less apt to remember. You can follow my boards by clicking here.

Crescent Sandwich Bust!

Anyway, I pinned this awesome hot sandwich idea. Looks yummy. I used roast beef and provelone cheese. I even made some au jus for dipping. They looked like the picture above when I pulled them out of the oven. I cut into it to make sure it was done and all I cut into was a big blob of warm dough. UGH! Cut them open, put them back in the oven for 10 minutes – the outside burned and the inside still wasn’t done. Ew. Major disappointment.

On to the much-much-much better and more successful attempt in the kitchen. This was a cooperative effort between me and hubs. I mixed up the rib seasoning and got everything ready to crock pot. He flipped it on when he went to work and finished ‘em off on the grill that night. Y’all they were AWESOME! Some of the better ribs I’ve had. And finishing them on the grill – um, why hadn’t that ever happened before? I served it up with some of Chucks Fav Mac’n'cheese. If only I could share the smell. Or the taste. Oh, just call me up and come on over – I’ve finally found a drool worthy dinner I can make Which is really unfair because the crock pot and grill master do all the work – but points to me for execution, right?

My iPhone doesn’t do these justice.

Crock Pot Ribs  {adapted from here}

• 3 – 3.5lbs Beef Ribs
• 1/4 c Ketchup
• 1 Tbsp worcestershire sauce (or a little extra if you live in our house)
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• 3 Tbsp of your favorite BBQ dry rub – We’re fans of Misty’s (or make your own)
• Dash of Black Pepper
• Pinch of Red Pepper Flakes

Mix all of the spices, sauces, and ketchup together in a bowl. Place the ribs in a slow cooker bag and baste them liberally on both sides. Cover and cook low for 8 hours (high 3.5 hours, but the ribs won’t be as tender). Discard all liquid after cooking.

Finishing Ribs on the Grill

Now for the really important, tedious, and TOTALLY worth it steps {I pulled this from somewhere on the web and emailed it to myself – totally forgetting to save the reference!}

1. Spray the grill with non-stick cooking spray and heat to medium-high
2. While the grill is heating, throw together a quick sauce mix or just use BBQ sauce from the fridge. For the make your own mix 1/4c Ketchup, 2 Tbsp Brown Sugar, 1 Tbsp Worcestershire, and 1Tbsp Soy Sauce — I know it won’t taste good on it’s own, but the ribs already have all the BBQ flavor, you just want something that will caramelize on the grill
3. Place ribs meat-side-down onto grill
4. Close lid, cook 2 minutes
5. Flip and baste top (meat side) with BBQ sauce
6. Close lid, cook 2 minutes
7. Flip and baste top (rib side)
8. Close lid, cook 2 more minutes
9. Flip again, baste top (meat side)
10. Close lid, cook 2 more minutes
11. For the last time, flip (rib side up)
12. Close lid, cook 2 minutes
13. Pull off grill and try to catch the drool before you embarass yourself!

Twice Baked Pepper Jack Potatoes

We went up to my Dad’s house and he grilled out for us, so we made Twice Baked potatoes.

Ingredients

• 4 large russet potatoes
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1/3 cup sour cream
• 3/4 cup pepper jack cheese (the Kraft Mexican PJ mix is awesome!)
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Real Bacon Bits/Pieces

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Place the potatoes on an upside down muffin pan for 30 minutes. Pierce each potato in a couple spots with a fork and continue to bake until tender, about 30 minutes more. Remove potatoes from the oven, and turn the heat down to 375 degrees F.

Hold the potato with an oven-mitt or towel (important, they are HOT), trim off the top of the potatoes to make a canoe-like shape. Reserve the tops. Carefully scoop out most of the potato into a bowl. I used a grapefruit spoon to do this.  Take care to leave enough potato in the skin so the shells stay together. Mash the potato lightly with fork along with the butter and sour cream. Stir in some of the cheese (1/2 c), bacon, and season with salt and pepper. Refill the shells with the potato mixture mounding it slightly. Sprinkle the cheese on top of the potato filling.

Use the reserved tops to make little potato skins (similar to TGIFridays) with cheese and bacon on top. 

Set the potatoes and tops back on the upside down muffin pan, and bake until heated through, about 20 minutes. Serve immediately.

 

*This recipe is vaguely based on this one from FoodNetwork.com

Chuck’s Fav Mac N’ Cheese

I saw this on Emily’s blog awhile ago and emailed the recipe to myself.

Chuck's Favorite Mac & Cheese

Here is the original recipe, with my adjustments in green:

Ingredients

• 1 (8 ounce) package elbow macaroni – I used closer to 12 oz or 3/4 box
• 1 (8 ounce) package shredded sharp Cheddar cheese – I used white sharp cheddar
• 1 (12 ounce) container small curd cottage cheese
• 1 (8 ounce) container sour cream – I used low fat
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese – probably used closer to 1/3 or 1/2 c
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup dry bread crumbs
• 1/4 cup butter, melted

 Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil, add pasta, and cook until done; drain.
2. In 9×13 inch baking dish, stir together macaroni, shredded Cheddar cheese, cottage cheese, sour cream, Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. I found it easiest to combine all the ingredients together and then stir in the macaroni, that way everything was more evenly distributed. Also, I forgot about the salt and pepper until time to serve. I think it was plenty salty, but next time I will add pepper. In a small bowl, mix together bread crumbs and melted butter. Sprinkle topping over macaroni mixture.
3. Bake 30 to 35 minutes, or until top is golden. The top never really got golden, but it was bubbling around the edges so I went ahead and took it out.

Overall we really liked it. I added more macaroni than called for because the cheesy mixture looked like way too much for how many noodles there were. However, next time I will use the recommended amount of macaroni since it seems to steam off a whole bunch of liquid in the oven and ours turned out a bit dry, but still SO delish! I don’t normally like cottage cheese, but this was really yummy. 

Original recipe is from allrecipes.com

Catching Up

Summer’s almost over, and I’ve been longing to get back to blogging for awhile – sometimes you just need a break (or in my case a 4 month hiatus), ya know? Anyway, to whoever is still out there subscribed or reading, THANKS! And I’m happy to be back.

I’m not really sure why I’ve been gone so long, I’ve kept up with my blog reader – but just not been writing lately. I guess one major thing that  has been making me hesitant to blog is that my camera (and purse!) was left somewhere a few months back and I still haven’t replaced it. I guess I didn’t want to come back to blogging sans pictures and I’m trying to decide if I should go with a DSLR or a higher end P&S. I love DSLRs but they do cost a pretty penny and are rather large to tote around. Hmmm… I’ve got an older P&S that’ll do the trick for now – I just need to go buy a card reader since that was ALSO in said purse that got left somewhere. UGH! Still annoyed about that whole incident. New (expensive) purse from my papa, camera, camera card (which means photos!), card reader, and who knows what else… Now if anything is missing, I automatically assume it was in the purse and is gone forever – dramatic, no?

Jeffrey and I haven’t done anything too major around the house, but some smaller projects that I’ll get around to sharing. We’ve also hosted some parties over the past few months and I’ll share some recipes and decor from those. No big vacations to spill about – we’d thought about an Alaskan cruise, then our AC unit had to be replaced so thankfully we were able to plop down cash for that and stay cool this summer – Alaska isn’t going anywhere (hopefully!).  And if it wasn’t obvious from the last statement, we are still attempting the cash budget system so I’ll share about how that’s going now that we’ve been ‘doing it’ for over year.

Speaking of budgeting – despite my love for fast food and eating out – I recently decided it’s high time I get my tush in the kitchen and start learning how to make food that is actually enjoyable, rather than just edible. Some things have been a big fat fail (like a few nights ago when I lost track of time and about had a fire start in my kitchen the meal was burnt so bad!), but others have been delish – last night we had a homemade mac n’ cheese (I’ll post the recipe in a separate post).

Oh, we also redecorated my younger (12) brother’s room and spruced up our in-law’s hallways with a gallery of family photos, so I’ll share those details soon, too! I’ve been up to a lot and not at the same time. Gotta get myself over to Target to pick up that camera cord, apparently I do have lots to share!

What’s been keeping you busy?

{Absent}

So in the past 3 weeks I’ve barely remembered to breathe.

• We visited J’s brother and his family down in Griffin and spent some time shooting our nephews with nerf guns and coo-ing at our newest niece.

• We attended a wedding of one of our close college friends and caught up with his ah-mazing family!

• I flew out to Nebraska (well I had to go ATL-> Denver -> Omaha, as if that makes sense?) for a whopping 12 hours just to turn around and make the 18 hour drive back. At least I got my cousin to move to ATL And we saw stadiums galore (Royals, Chiefs, Cardinals, Titans) and a national landmark (STL Arch).

• My Dad had shoulder surgery

• And currently, our Toby is a very sick pup… We’re headed to the vet at 5.

SO I don’t know when I’ll be back to blogging. But hopefully soon. I’m ready for things to calm down a bit and be able to have a bit of relaxation and fun time! … Although next weekend we have a wedding {thank goodness its in town!} and the weekend after that I have a baby shower to attend, so the complete laziness may not overtake for a few more weeks — but I’ll do what I can to relax.

Italian Beef Sandwich Recipe

Abby from Life with B & A posted a recipe last week that spoke straight to my stomach. Crockpot Italian Beef recipe? Count me in!

Here’s the recipe, as seen in her post here (adapted from food.com):

Here’s what you will need:

4lbs. bottom round beef roast

8oz. Balsamic vinaigrette or 8oz. olive oil and vinegar dressing

1 package of dry onion soup mix

Italian seasoning

Place everything in the crock pot and cook on low for 8 hours.

My Adaptations:

I didn’t add the dry onion soup mix because I don’t love THAT much onion flavor. I just tossed in a bit of season-all that had onion, garlic, and pepper instead.

I cooked the meat on high for 4 hours and it was still tender enough to shred with a fork. After I shred the meat, I placed it back in the crockpot on keep warm so it could absorb more flavor before serving.

My advice:

Buy a dressing that has a lot of flavor. I purchased a store brand dressing (also noted as lite) to save some money, but the flavor was so weak I ended up dumping straight balsalmic vinegar onto the meat before serving.

Front Porch – Paint Project Plan

Geez there are a lot of Ps in that title…

I’m still working on that house tour – I def didn’t think it’d take so much time. However, I really really want it to look good so we’ll have a great record of where we’ve come. Check out the tab at the top of the blog for that in-progress project. I’ll do a whole post when I finish. I also added some pictures to our sidebar and a blogroll of my fav blogs to follow.

In the meantime here’s another project that’s been on my mind and hopefully we’ll get to soon:

I

Spring 2009 {from Real Estate listing}

If our home was a person, she’s been getting a face lift from day 1. She’s been waxed (trimmed back and plucked out the ridiculous overgrowth), dyed (new roof), accessorized (pretty new door), and now she needs some makeup.

March 2011

I’m DYING to paint the shutters and the front porch. Ya know… like as soon as the thought popped into my head it hasn’t left. Every.single.time I pull in our drive, I feel the urge to back out and go straight to HD for some paint. So far I haven’t, but I don’t know how long I’ll be able to hold out.

Currently the porch is white and the shutters are a hunter green, although they look black from the street. Ideally, I’d get brand new shutters that look like these:

Raised Shutters

Lovely. Easier to keep clean (aka bug free) and SO easy to paint. BUT since that is out of the budget, we’ll be repainting our slatted shutters the same color as the new front door:

 

Restless Sea by Behr

It looks a little more teal-ish in person and I love the way the door looks. And since we’ll be taking down the shutters, we might as well paint the front porch, right? Absolutely! (That is how projects roll around here… one turns into 5) And instead of painting it white – like most homes in our neighborhood – we’re contemplating going gray (shocking, right?!).

... still searching for the perfect gray...

We need something different from the roof color – still want contrast there. And we’ll leave the columns white so they’ll pop and add some interest as well. The window frames will stay white to match the rest of the house.  Now just to find that perfect shade of gray…

What project are you dying to do?