Sunday Funday, Chili Day

Hello Everyone! It's Sunday Funday, Football Day! Today I am spending the day with my boyfriend, his brother and his brother's wife, Autumn. Autumn and I love to cook and bake together and do housewife things, even though she's a wife and I'm not (yet).

It's a beautiful sunny Sunday in the mid-50's and a perfect day for chili. The recipe we are using is Autumn's mom's recipe and let me tell you, it is GOOD. It's so good that I asked if I could blog about her recipe and she said yes.

Ingredients:
2 packages (32 oz) of your meat of choice (we used turkey)
32 oz kidney beans
32 oz pulled tomatoes
1 large onion
2 tbsp minced garlic (add more to taste)
4 tbsp chili powder
4 tbsp sugar
6 tbsp apple cider or white vinegar
1/2 tsp black pepper
We also got a package of McCormick Chili Hot seasoning mix to add in an extra punch

1. Chop onion and add to skillet with meat, 1 tbsp minced garlic and 2 tbsp chili powder. Cook on medium-high heat while stirring occasionally.
2. While meat is cooking, bring out a large pot. Add into pot: drained kidney beans, tomatoes, rest of ingredients except the McCormick Chili Hot seasoning.
3. Once the meat is finished, add them to the large pot and bring it to a boil.
4. Once it is at a boil and the tomatoes are softened, break them apart. At this point you can add (to taste) the McCormick seasoning to the pot to add spicy taste.
5. Simmer for about 40 minutes or until most of the liquid is gone and voila, you'll be done.

Another addition to her recipe is that you can add hot dogs to the top of the chili about halfway into the boil for them to cook and take in the chili flavor. You can either eat the hotdog with a bun or just cut it up into your chili.

On the side we made a box of Kentucky Kernel Sweet Cornbread. Of course you can cook cornbread from scratch but the whole purpose of this meal was to make it quick and easy to enjoy while watching some football.

We had never had this before and we figured we would give it a go. It turned out being pretty good for a box that was all of $1.50!

Other items we had were Keebler Club mini crackers for the side, and shredded cheese and sour cream to top the chili. We were all so hungry that we seriously just forgot about the cheese and sour cream. 

MmMm, thanks to Autumn and her mom Vikkie for sharing this recipe! It is PERFECT for a day like today. Quick, easy and delicious. I hope you all enjoy the rest of your weekend! Talk to you soon.

Pumpkin Picks

In honor of October and Fall, I am going to start something I like to call Pinterest Picks. I may or may not have made that up, but it came in my head and I like how it sounded. So for October, here are some of my favorite Pumpkin Picks from Pinterest. Therefore, none of these pictures are my own, just ones that I found on Pinterest and loved. :)

I'm hoping to talk my boyfriend into recreating the photo of the couple at the pumpkin patch. He'll probably think I'm silly but hopefully he'll cave.

I seriously can not wait until I have a place of my own that I can decorate. I love holidays and decorating for them. I want an excuse to put soup inside a mini pumpkin, use pumpkins as plate holders, make pumpkin families and do whatever else I can possibly find on Pinterest. One of these days, it'll happen. But for now, I'll keep admiring!

I'm All Dolled Up!

I would like to say a big thank you to Chelsea from Bella Lulu Ink for helping me make my blog beautiful. She has been amazing putting this blog design together for me, making so many changes and putting up with me all while she and her husband were moving and house hunting!

Chelsea, I can't even begin to tell you how thankful I am for all your help!

For anyone looking for a new design or just a few spruce ups, please check out Chelsea's work.

Etsy: Bella Lulu Ink Blogs
Blog: Bella Lulu Ink
Facebook: Bella Lulu Ink on Facebook

Feel free to check her out and tell her how amazing she is!

I would also like to say, since I'm becoming all official and what not, I have begun the hunt for a fancy camera to take better looking photos and potential videos. If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear.

BabyQ - Bun in the Oven & Burgers on the Grill

This past weekend I was lucky enough to make it down to Charlotte for my cousin's baby shower. I was in her wedding in 2011 and now I'm so happy that her and her awesome husband are expecting a little girl!

The baby shower took place at my other cousins house and was co-ed. This was the totally adorable invite.

Usually my cousin makes her own invites (she even made her sister's wedding invitations) but she was just too busy. She purchased this invite off of Etsy from Silver Line Design Team after seeing it on Pinterest.

My flight to Charlotte was at 5:30 am and immediately got to running errands with my cousin and setting up for the shower on Saturday. It was also my first time seeing my cousin's new house and I fell in love with it. Everything matched so perfectly and the theme of the baby shower fit in so well. I made sure to take pictures before all the guests came in and destroyed everything. 

My cousin made the bench, which you can't even see, and the mantel herself. We actually put up the mantel on Friday night.

We really wanted to keep things super simple and not have everything scream "BABY!"

My cousin also made her dining room table herself. Awesome, right?

Besides the cake, ALL the food was baby sized. My aunt did all the cooking and I have no idea how she had the patience to make everything so miniature. But it was all soo good!

We made homemade Sparkling Pink Lemonade as our choice drink. We obviously also had sodas, beer and wine. We took mason jars and tied pink ribbon around them with a blank tag for guests to put their names on.

The homemade Pink Lemonade was so good. The Pink Lemonade was so easy to make. Water, sugar, lemon, strawberries and seltzer. It was all made to taste so there were no real measurements.

And aren't those straws just so cute?

We had a little candy bar as part of the favors for coming to the baby shower. We even had custom M&Ms! 

Our main favor was homemade "Strawberry Honey Jam" My cousin was up LATE on Friday making the jam. Unfortunately, we had a mishap where some of it overflowed while cooking and got all over. But that's okay, the rest of it ended up great.

"Thank you 'berry' much for celebrating with us! Please take a Strawberry Honey Jam to go."

The whole weekend was a blast getting to see my family. I don't get to see my family that often, so I was very happy!

Nothing is better than seeing family. I am totally okay with being overly exhausted because every minute of the weekend was worth it!