Purple Peas

With our new CSA goodies, we've had to be a little more creative with recipes so we don't get really bored eating similar things every night. We got a bunch of dried purple hull peas in our first delivery and I was a little stumped on how to use them because they're kinda like beans and Keith hates beans. I decided to bite the bullet and make a yummy veggie soup, and thankfully Keith really enjoyed it (at least he said he did haha). 

I used this recipe as a pretty loose reference, even though we didn't have a bunch of the things it called for. It still had lots of peas, onions, turnips, tomatoes, and kale and its been delicious enough to eat for lunch everyday this week. I'm kinda liking the challenge of cooking with limited ingredients, it makes you feel a lot more accomplished when you get something really really delicious! Now my next mission is to use the rest of the peas to make this hummus...

Twice

Two years ago from yesterday, my husband gave me that ring and I haven't taken it off since. Is it weird that when I remembered the date I thought, "oh that was only 2 years ago?" It already feels like we've been together for a lifetime, in the best of ways. It is so crazy to think about all the things that have changed in such a short amount of time. Thank you for loving me so well through these years Keith, I can't wait to celebrate this day and so many more for the rest of our lives!

So if you're feeling as nostalgic as I am, feel free to re-read our engagement story and laugh about how incredibly awkward I am.

Sneak

Hey friends! I have a little preview of our Christmas card photo for you today. Our awesome friend Brittney kindly came over to our house on Sunday afternoon to snap these photos and she even put up with our ridiculous request of having Theo in the shot. Thankfully she loves cats and did her best to wrangle him into a respectable photo. We LOVE the pictures that Brittney got, and we've already warned her that we'll probably be pestering her for more photos in the future haha.

Oh, and here is the humorous one: we tried REALLY hard to get Theo to wear his adorable Santa hat, but he just wasn't having it. It was honestly hard enough just to get him to hold still, so Brittney had the genius idea of photoshopping the hat on. I hope you're laughing as hard as I am :)

Films

December is one of my favorite months... not because of the weather, but because it's the time of year where you can watch all your favorite Christmas movies with no shame at all. I think it's pretty interesting that Christmas gets its own genre of films, yet there are hardly ever movies made about other equally as publicized holidays. And! there are SO many Christmas movies! Thankfully ABC Family shows them daily, all month long so that I can get my fill. Keith and I have a pretty regular rotation that we enjoy watching, none of which are very serious at all. Here is our list of absolute favorites, from childhood til today:

Not necessarily a "Christmas" movie, but it takes place during the holiday, and who can resist a little Macaulay Culkin

I can honestly say that I watch this movie year round, but it feels even more special at this time of year.

Classic story, but with Muppets :)

One of Keith's childhood favorites.

One of my childhood favorites

Undeniable

This is kind of a joke, but Keith legitimately loves it haha we watched it last night.

One of my absolute FAVORITES growing up. Can't go a year without watching it!

How about you? Have any Christmas classics that you look forward to watching every year?

Weekend Update

This past weekend was such a weird combination of relaxing and busy. Thankfully it included most all of our favorite things though: great meals, time with friends, naps and babies. Other peoples babies, that is haha. Friday night we started off the weekend right with a dinner of free tacos at our favorite local spot and then to a Christmas party at our friend Elizabeth's house. 

After most of the guests had left, Keith and Elizabeth entertained us with a little jam session. 

Saturday we. were. SOoooo. lazy. And it was AWESOME! We woke up at 10, hung out in bed and watched movies, ate breakfast and then took a nap. Even Theo joined us! It was so nice to not have anything at all to do. When we finally picked ourselves up we cleaned the house and then lounged on the couch some more.

Saturday's main event though, was getting to hang out with sweet baby Sage all night! Last time we saw Carolyn and Isaac, Keith asked if we could get added to the babysitting rotation and we were thrilled when they called us about Saturday night. We got to eat dinner with Carolyn and Isaac before they headed out, and then we got to play with their beautiful girl while they were away. It was pretty great not to have to share her with anyone else because we usually only see Sage when a group of friends get together haha. Love that precious girl :)

She LOVED tugging on Keith's beard haha

Sunday is when all the craziness happened. Keith had to work at church, ran out of time to grab our next CSA pick up and had to call in help from friends, we had lunch with some other friends, got our Christmas card photos taken, and then ran 6 miles together. Phewwww. We were ready for dinner and bed after all that!

Now! all I can think about is that I have 2 days left of work, and we have 9 days until we fly to Florida for Christmas!!! Cannot wait!

Bikers

Since early this spring Sarah and I have been very faithful about taking walks on the Shelby Bottoms Greenway every week. We always talk about how we would love to ride bikes, but neither of us has one. Sarah called me very excitedly today to tell me about the bike share program she had just found out about and we hustled over to the park to check it out. All we had to do was show our IDs and they gave us a fancy new bike and let us know when we needed to be back by. I'm so happy about this! All I could think about was how I want to take everyone I know to the park to ride bikes with me haha I just wish it wasn't so cold out, this would be much more practical in the spring. Still, Sarah and I made it about 6 miles and I am so excited to get to explore more of the trail. Can't wait to take more bike rides in the future!

Ornaments

Sorry to overload you on kid art recently, but these were too adorable not to share. I've been collecting all my students art to show at an upcoming event for their families, but the students are always begging to make something they can take home right away. Since we're getting very close to Christmas I decided that we should make some fun ornaments for them to take home and they were SO thrilled! I love the way that they turned out (and I even got to make one of my own).

I put together the popsicle stick frames for them, but they drew their own self portraits, wrote their names, decorated the frames and glued their pictures to the frames. I set them on the ac to dry and they were all so excited about it that I couldn't even get them to stay in their seats while they dried haha. Here are some of my favorites:

creepy ghost face. no arms.

I posted this on instagram last night, but I'll share the story again: my favorite student, Alexander, is so quiet and happy and always following directions. He's like an angel in a class full of demons. I came over to his seat to see how his portrait was coming along and all he could do was giggle at me. I asked him what was so funny and he whispered, "Ms. Dana... I put a MUSTACHE! hehehe" It was too adorable. I have no idea why he wanted to give himself a mustache, but I thought it was just as funny as he did haha.

Oh, and here is my ornament. Keith wants me to hang it on the tree haha

Water lilies

This week my elementary students worked on recreating one of Claude Monet's most well known series' of art: his water lilies. This was a particularly fun project because it allowed the kids to paint (which they're OBSESSED with), practice their cutting and pasting skills and to work with some 3D elements. It also allowed me to do a little art history geeking out, which they didn't really care much about. My only hope is that one day when they're older they will see a picture of one of Monet's Water lilies and think "oh yeah, remember that time when I was in 3rd grade and we made water lilies? that was awesome!" It doesn't actually matter if they think it was awesome... just remembering it in general would be good for me haha.

Our inspiration:

Here are some photos of the finished product:

Much thanks to this blog for the idea.

Green

Since we got all kinds of awesome greens in our recent food delivery we've been doing our best to get creative with how we eat them. Thursday night we had our first ever turnip greens (delicious) and at the recommendation of everyone, we tried some kale chips this weekend.

All I did was remove the bitter stems, tossed my leaves in some olive oil and salt and then pop them in the oven for 20 minutes.

I wasn't really sure what to expect, but Keith and I were both pretty happy about how much we liked them. They are no substitute for potato chips, but are definitely a great salty snack that is super quick and easy to make. Since we liked them I decided to cut up the rest of the kale that we have so that if we wanted some more on the fly all I would have to do it toss them in the oven. I also really like this idea of crumbling the chips up and sprinkling over some pop corn.

All that aside, Keith did have a pretty great comment after his first bite: "oh hey, this kinda just tastes like I'm eating crunchy fall leaves!" Yep. Yep it does hahaha

Festive

After a long and busy weekend, Keith and I took some time to relax on Sunday afternoon, take a nap, watch some tv, cook a delicious dinner and then decorate our Christmas tree. One of my favorite parts of the holiday season is getting to decorate the tree; to take out all my favorite nostalgic ornaments, and add some new ones to our collection each year. Now our mission is to keep Theo away from his new favorite toy :)

My beautiful Nutcracker ornaments my mom got me last year!

LOVE the creepy cat. Keith always tries to hide it in the back haha

Our tree kind of looks like it's for a little kid because we both have mostly childhood ornaments. Love it though :)

Jungle cat.

::grumble grumble grumble:: he's already taken quite a few off...

Stockings.

tinsel!

Guarding the tree haha

Doesn't it look like the tree isn't even decorated?! I tried so hard to keep the bottom free of anything fun, but he's just a great jumper :(

Now the only thing left on our holiday list is getting a Christmas card photo!