signed, sealed, delivered: valentine's gifts...

I always manage to find the cutest things in the Target dollar center. A few weeks ago I saw these darling mini-mailboxes and knew they'd be perfect for Valentine's Day. 

I got one for my hubby, mom, dad and sister, and packed them with chocolates and a personal Valentine's note. 

You could fill it with all kinds of things:

• A bunch of love notes to be opened each day for the month
• Mementos from past dates
• Pictures through the years
• Jewelry, etc.  

They are cute little gifts that don't cost a lot but can be packed with meaning. 

Happy Valentine's Day to you and the ones you love! 

Big Ed's white chicken chili....

It's no secret that I love a good slow cooker recipe, especially in the winter. Sundays are usually our crockpot days. This past weekend, when my husband requested white chicken chili, I knew just who to call... my dad. He has a "world famous" recipe that's quite a hit around the neighborhood. And now I'm sharing it with you. 

BIG ED'S WHITE CHICKEN CHILI
1 1/2 lb boneless chicken breasts
1 cup dried Great Northern beans, rinsed
1/2 medium onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic
2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp of salt
2 cans cream of chicken soup
4 cups of chicken stock or water
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp hot sauce
1 can diced green chiles

Combine all of the ingredients except cumin, hot sauce and chiles in a crock pot. Cook on low for 6 hours or high for 3-4 hours, until chicken is cooked thoroughly. One hour before serving, shred the chicken in the crockpot with two forks and then add in the cumin, hot sauce and can of chiles. Continue cooking. Serve with cheese, sour cream and oyster crackers.

It was met with rave reviews and will now become a strong player in the slow cooker recipe rotation.

Hope you enjoy it too!

the sound of silence: sorry for the absence...

things have been a little nutty around here lately, sorry for the silence. After my whirlwind trip to Chicago for work, it was my birthday!! The 10th anniversary of my 27th birthday. Good times. But I did receive some super cool gifts. I'm always getting on my husband about "thoughtful" gifts (he prefers me making a list so he doesn't mess it up.) Well, after this year, I know that he is a superior gift giver, so he just threw a big bucket of water on his "list-making" requests.

He ventured out to my favorite antique mall and picked up some gems: 

A vintage Coca-Cola crate. My mind is spinning with possibilities. 

Look at the metal edge detailing. 

Next I got baby blue vintage fan. It matches perfectly with my office wall color (which you can't tell from this photo). 

And a bonus, it's a GE fan (where my husband works).

And the wild card...

Mr. Chicken. 

Ryan wasn't sure if I'd like him but he adds the perfect quirky touch to our kitchen. He might get spray painted down the road but for right now, he's holding court front and center in all of his maroon glory. 

I couldn't believe these gifts when I opened them. A+ effort from the hubby!

That night we went to my parents for dinner and they surprised me with something I've been wanting for a while now...

a Keurig! It's a single serve machine which is perfect because I am the only coffee drinker in the house. Now I'm not wasting coffee making a pot every morning. I am obsessed and want to try every flavor I can get my hands on. Dunkin Donuts, I'm talking to you. I better see Pumpkin K-Cups in the fall! 

It was a fabulous birthday. My husband even took me to dinner at the same restaurant where we had our rehearsal dinner. They even printed up a special menu for me: 

After being gone for almost a week, it was nice to relax, spend time together and enjoy the beautiful riverfront view. Gifts or no gifts, I feel so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends in my life as a embark on another fabulous year!  

easy roasted potatoes: building blocks of a side dish...

If you're working on building your recipe repertoire, the best way is to start with the basics and build upon them. My dad has been making this roasted potatoes recipe for years. The first time he made it for us was the first time my now-husband (last name: O'Brien) came to visit my parents, thus O'Brien Potatoes were born. They have only a few ingredients, take no time to make and can be easily modified for more jazzed up side dishes. 

The basic recipe includes:

• Potatoes (1 for each person you're serving)
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Butter
• Salt 
• Pepper
• Garlic salt
• Onion powder

Next cut up the potatoes into small cubes. O'Brien Potatoes are made with the skin on, but you can certainly make them without the skin.

Put them in a bowl and cover with a couple tablespoons of EVOO, salt and pepper to your taste, 2 shakes of garlic salt and 3 shakes of onion power. Toss a with a spoon, put the lid on and....

shake, shake, shake until the potatoes are completely coated. 

Then put them in the fridge and let them rest for about 30 minutes to an hour. 

Remove from the fridge and pour them on a baking sheet and put them in a 375 degree preheated oven for 30-40 minutes. Flip after 15 minutes so they cook evenly. The cooking time will depend on the size of your potatoes and how crispy you want them. Just keep an eye on them. 

And that, my friends, is how you make basic roasted "O'Brien Potatoes"– a surefire hit for any meal.  But why stop there? The beauty of this recipe is that it can be adapted a number of ways based on the flavors you like best. 

The night I made this recipe, I actually added paprika for a little kick. 

A few other options you might enjoy are:

Rosemary and thyme 

Parmesan

Oregano and lemon

Roasted red pepper flakes

A couple Tablespoons of your favorite BBQ sauce

Sweet potatoes with nutmeg, cumin, cinnamon and brown sugar

All you do is add your chosen flavor in when you're "shake, shake, shaking" your ingredients together. If you feel it needs some more, just add a few shakes over the top before you put them in the oven. 

Another way to jazz them up is to cut your potatoes into interesting shapes: crinkle cut, spheres, whatever strikes your fancy. Have fun with it! 

Now that you have the basics, try out different variations. They are potatoes, they taste good with everything, so you can mess them up. Let me know what interesting combinations you come up with! 

history in the holidays: decorating with family treasures...

For me, the most important part of the holidays is family. Admittedly, I am super sentimental. I save everything that I deem "meaningful." Cards, furniture, pillows, ticket subs, clothes... if it has a memory attached, I save it. So when it comes to the holidays, if I can decorate with things that have family meaning, I am all in.

One of my favorite memories of Christmas is my Grandma's Christmas Village. When we were little, every year we would drive to visit her in Cleveland and get in late at night. Even at that late hour, my sister and I would race to get into the house and start playing with the village. It was pretty elaborate. It had multiple levels, ice rinks, skiers, all kinds of shops and houses, fake snow... the works. So it was with great honor that I inherited the village -- well, parts of it. No one knows what happened to the houses but I got all the people.

Santa no longer has reindeer and the horse is missing a leg, but it makes me so happy to see this Village in our front room. It reminds me of that magical feeling you would get as a child during Christmas.

I added some new houses and trees, a blanket of snow, and I even gave the Village their own version of the Rockefeller Plaza Christmas tree. 

This year, my mom and dad found some old ornaments from my other grandma, and I jumped at the chance to decorate with them. 

The ornaments have a great patina to them that make the pearl and silver ornaments look like mercury glass. My mother-in-law gave me three faux mercury glass decorations this year for Christmas so I filled a vase with some of the ornaments to create a "vintage" vignette. 

Our tree is full of ornaments from our families and childhoods mixed with some new ones we've acquired since we've been together. 

I know that decorating with a theme is popular around the blogosphere but there is something about decorations that evoke fond memories that puts me in the holiday spirit. 

What are your holiday decorating traditions? 

thankful...

A trip to Iowa
A stay at a B&B in a sleepy little town
A visit to my hubby's alma mater
A wonderful dinner with great friends and their hilarious kids
A week with family
Drinking, eating and drinking and eating some more
Shopping with my mother-in-law
Visiting old friends
Hearing stories about my hubby in high school
Quality time with amazing in-laws
Driving 11 straight hours and having a blast
A fantastic Thanksgiving week
Lots of love
And one incredible man to share it with

So many things to be thankful for. How did I get so blessed?

Family calendar...

one of the challenges about getting married in your mid-30s is that you get used to your way of doing things. I kept a calendar at work, but for personal stuff I just tucked it away in my brain and I always remembered. When I tell my husband we have something this day, or something that day, I just figured he'd remember. Not the case. So to keep us on the same page, we needed a family calendar.

UPDATE: To be clear, it's not that my husband doesn't pay attention, it's just that I have a ridiculously good memory. It's like a steel trap. I can hear something once and it's locked in. 

As intriguing as a yoga cat calendar sounds, I wanted something bigger and more unique than a standard wall calendar. Something that looked more like decor. After some Pinteresting, I decided to create my own using a picture frame.

It's very simple to do. All you need is a frame ( I chose 16x20, but you can use whatever size best fills your space), a calendar template, fabric, tape and permanent marker. The fabric is a great way to customize your calendar to fit in with your decor. I chose a green that matches my family room accents.

After removing the back of the frame, I wrapped it in fabric and taped it securely in place.

Then it was time to create the calendar template. After cleaning the glass, I used a page of my desk calendar and cut it to the size I wanted. I then taped it to the outside of the frame. This is important to do because it will allow you trace the grid on the INSIDE of the frame. This will protect it from rubbing off when you are writing on or cleaning off your finished calendar.

Flip it over to reveal the calendar page. 

Then using a straightedge and a permanent marker, trace the calendar grid onto the inside of the glass.

This is what my finished grid looked like. 

I then reassembled the frame to reveal the the fabric. 

After it was assembled, I wrote the days on the front of the glass with the permanent marker. It was just easier than trying to write them backwards on the inside of the glass. 

Now that you have a finished permanent calendar template it's time to break out the dry erase markers. Each month write on the dates and month name with the dry erase marker. This way you can keep this calendar year after year and it can evolve with your decor. I recommend creating the grid in a neutral, dark color but then using fun colors for your dry erase markers. Use a different color for each family member so you can easily recognize important dates and events. 

If your colors and style change, simply switch out the fabric for a different one. Or blow up a family photo on the computer, ghost it back to about 25% brightness or make it black and white, and use that as your background. It's so easy to customize and change with the season! 

This is how it looks in the room. The background doesn't work as well as I thought it would with the other accents. But I'm going to live with it for a while and decide what I want to do with it. I have been wanting to change out the fabric on the chairs, so I might wait until I make a decision on that. 

Regardless of the fabric, this new calendar will keep us organized, connected and hopefully eliminate the words "but I told you the other day..." from our vocabulary. 

you complete me...

my parents just bought new chairs for their den, so they bequeathed their old leather chairs to us. yay! free furniture! 

My husband requested we put one in the family room. I thought the room was fine the way it was but, boy, I didn't know what I was missing. It looks great in the room. I was afraid there wouldn't be enough clearance to walk from the kitchen into the family room. 

There is definitely enough room and even though the couch and chair are overstuffed, it actually makes the room feel cozy – and complete. 

The husband loves it and it will be the perfect place to read a book by the fireplace come winter. 

Thanks mom and dad!