Soup Night

We hosted a "Soup Night" at our house on Thursday night and invited some friends over to help eat a big pot of soup. You know how it goes...you want soup, but don't want to be eating it for the next two weeks. We had Black Bean Chicken Chili - very yummy! Thanks, Mrs. F., for the recipe. I also made some of my mom's famous sugar cookies to decorate which was kind of fun. The kids had a lot fun decorating and then eating. And it worked out well to send cookies home with them also so that I was tempted to eat them all myself. Enjoy the pictures!

I sort of feel like I've been out of the blogosphere lately so I figured I would do a little catch up. So follow me back, if you will, to two weeks ago. I celebrated my 30th birthday on the 13th. It was a week of ups and downs, but I'm thankful for another year of life. I decided to celebrate my birthday by getting some much-needed alone time. I haven't been away from Jackson for more than probably 10 hours since he's been born, so Todd let me escape to St. Louis for three whole days to shop and spend time with my friends and sis. I wish I had taken more pictures, but I didn't. Sorry. But you'll get some later. Anyway, after my three days by myself Todd and Jackson flew up to meet me and then Todd and I got some much needed alone time too. Lindsay and John watched Jacko for us and we went out to dinner and then Todd suprised me by booking our suite at The Seven Gables Inn. I call it "our" suite because it was where we stayed on our wedding night. It's a super-cute little boutique hotel in Clayton and the Master Suite is big and quaint and has a HUGE bathtub that even Todd can fit in. So that was a nice surprise. I finally managed to get the camera out and was getting a few pics of the room and then the battery died, so this was all I got, but you get the idea. This is the big four poster bed in the bedroom.And out the door of the bedroom is the living room/dining room. Seriously, a dining room! I couldn't get a picture of the fun bathroom due to the battery issues, but trust me, it really is nice.When we got back home to the OC, we had to start getting ready for Thanksgiving. We were hosting Todd's mom and brother and family at our house this year. It was my first go at making a Turkey. I called my mom the day before and asked her all of the important questions. The first thing she asked me is, "Have you bought the turkey yet?" Of course I hadn't so her suggestion: "Buy a ham, because unless it's a fresh turkey you won't get it defrosted in time." Crap. But I did a little research and we did the "quick thaw" method of defrosting it for about 12 hours in cold water, changing the water every 30 minutes and it was ready to go by the time I needed it. One crisis averted. So the turkey and stuffing went off without a hitch after that, but I did make one mistake. I put the giblets on to boil to make broth and totally forgot about it and went downstairs for a while. When I came back up, all the water had boiled down and the pot was smoking like crazy and it STUNK! So we had to do some major airing out of the house before company arrived. Here is the finished project and Todd carving his first Turkey.I get really excited about having opportunities to use all of my entertaining things so I tried to make the table look all pretty. We don't usually get to entertain too much because we don't really have a dining room, so for this occasion we actually moved the table to the living room so we'd all have room to eat. Gotta love those small houses!
So that's about all the news from here really. Hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving!

Progressive Dinner

I had some of the yummiest food I've had in a LONG time on Saturday. We were part of a progressive dinner that we did with our friends, the Rosenbooms and the Raines. Shanelle, Michele, and I were all talking one night about how we never get to use all of our fun entertaining things so we decided we'd go all out and have one fun big night at all of our houses, sans kids (which, despite all of the really good food, might have been my favorite part of the evening!).
We started out the evening at our house with appetizers. I made a rosemary goat cheese dip and three types of hummus-plain, black bean, and roasted red pepper. After appetizers and cocktails, we headed to Darin and Michele's for the main course, which I will not even attempt to pronounce or spell because I wouldn't do it justice because it was all Italian-y. But it was SO GOOD! Darin made steak rolls that were stuffed with pine nuts and raisins and were cooked in a wine sauce for a long time so they were nice and tender, then there was spaghetti noodles with cheese and pepper served in cheese bowls that he made himself also and roasted asparagus. I was so sad that I couldn't finish all of my food. But I was getting really full and I knew what was waiting for dessert so I had to pace myself! After a wonderful leisurely dinner, we went to Ryan and Shanelle's for dessert. Shanelle made a pumpkin maple cheesecake that was perfect, no cracks or anything! I'm quite impressed with my friends cooking abilities and am looking forward to enjoying it more often!! I took some pictures, but I'm sort of disappointed with how crappy they were and how few I took. I tried to post them but something was wrong with blogger so it wouldn't do it. I'll try again later, but don't get your hopes up- they're not that impressive. Sad.