A very sporty Thanksgiving

Well...you can officially call us crazy.  My family has rented a lake house near our very dear Alma Mater for Thanksgiving so that we may attend our school's biggest football game of the year.  That's right.  We're giving up the coziness of Thanksgiving around the dining room table for the Iron Bowl.

 
Due to this change in location we've mixed the menu up a bit as well as our regularly scheduled activities.  This year we will be descending upon this poor, unassuming home with  "The Bag Of Unlimited Fun" (a family gathering staple) that is sure to be filled to the brim with puzzles, decks of cards and board games.  The ladies have been planning the menu and I'm ready to start cooking!

For my part I am making the Barefoot Contessa's French Green Beans and these amazing-looking Buttered Rosemary Dinner Rolls rolls from the Pioneer Woman.  I'm hoping to find whole wheat dinner rolls instead of regular white.  That way they'll be healthier...since I'll be using all that butter :)

Hope you're holiday is filled with lots of thankfulness, joy and a big War Eagle!

Listen Up!

I've never been a huge Michael Buble' fan, but this song has converted me. 

Please go to iTunes and buy "Haven't Met You Yet.'' 

Then go to You Tube and watch the video.  

I am not ashamed to say that for the past three days this songs has consistently been playing on an iPhone, iPod or computer around our house.  

And it's fun to dance to.  

 And sometimes you need to dance around the kitchen.  

The Smell of Fall

November.   

Halloween is over, Thanksgiving is coming up and Christmas is drawing closer.  We have pine cones in bowls all around the house to encourage the "Fall" feeling and bit more (which is needed since the weather is still in the 70's).  We've been burning the pumpkin spice candles a lot too.  However, the best thing we've done was an ingenious (yet, seemingly obvious) act of my roommate.  

I awoke Saturday morning to a smell that I was  sure was some fabulous baked good.  I stumbled into the kitchen (literally) and and saw of pot of brown liquid simmering on the stove.  

Smart girl had filled a sauce pan with water and a good amount of cinnamon and the whole house smelled wonderful.  I don't know why I've never done this before!  Forget having to buy a package of mulling spices, an expensive candle or a crock pot full of apple cider - water, cinnamon and  a few cloves do the trick.  

You could probably add a few tsp. of pumpkin pie spice too.  

The key is to make sure you don't let the water get too low.  Simmer on low for a few hours and add water when needed.  Believe me - burned cinnamon is not an aroma you want filling your house this holiday season. 

Another Fine Read

Variety may be a spice of life, but why fix it if it isn't broken?  That turned out to be a motto in gift giving among my siblings and I last year.  While my brothers gave me a subscription to Fine Cooking for Christmas, we gave one brother a subscription to this magazine for his birthday one month later.  

(The perfect gift for a landscape deisgner who hunts)

If you haven't read Garden & Gun yet, you are missing out - recipes, fabulous homes and gardens, restaurant reviews and other goings on of the South.  Based in Charleston, SC the magazine is a fresh take on the South, it's culture and people.  

Pick up a copy and check it out.  You can even be their Fan on Facebook, which has been quite nice since they post articles and interesting links a few times a week!

Oh So Fine!

...Fine Cooking, that is.

Christmas 2008 was a great holiday.  For a gift I received a subscription to Fine Cooking from my dear brothers. 

A great gift for a cook!  However, the fine folks at Fine Cooking somehow managed to mess up the order and when did I receive my first issue?  Yesterday.  No joke.  Eleven months into it I got issue #1. 

Thankfully it is a great issue and thankfully I am essentially getting two Christmas presents from the boys this year.  If you've already picked up a copy I'm dying to try the Bourbon Sweet Potato and Apple Casserole recipe on page 54!

Already?

Yes. I am already listening to Christmas music.

It started Saturday. Last Friday night I went to the state fair with a bunch of friends. It was pretty cold outside when we left at 1:00am and we all headed back to our house for hot chocolate and apple cider. When the roommates and I woke up on Saturday (all in our flannel pajamas) we made breakfast, decided to put in a Christmas flick and there you have it.


This is my favorite Christmas hymn. Few things in this world make me tear up, but the third stanza of this song does it almost every time. I haven't stopped listening to it and doubt I will until January.

Now on to decorating...unfortunately I will have to wait a bit longer on that.

*If you want some great Christmas albums check here and here.

Re-upholstery attempt #2

...was a success!

About 3 1/2 years ago, when I found out I was moving to Mississippi, I ran to a garage sale with my mom. We weren't expecting to find anything, but thought it might be worth the trip. When we arrived I saw a set of 4 chairs that looked like they might have potential. I talked the home-owner down from $40 to $30 for the set of four (the leg on one chair needed a slight repair) and walked away a happy camper.
*note: I was moving into a big house that needed furniture, so it wasn't a completely random purchase.

Once the chairs were purchased I had to figure out what to do with them. The more I looked at them the uglier they were. The wood had a horrible finish on it, hideously tarnished brass tacks and a mauve-ish Naugahyde covering...but the bones were good!


I have ALWAYS love this picture from a cover of House & Garden. It was actually the first issue I ever bought because I loved it so much.



I have always wanted a dining room similar to this one - old farm table with white Louis XVI style chairs (hopefully with a crewel or needlepoint upholstery). In my mind I was sure I could do something similar with these 4 chairs.

The first few months I was in Mississippi I searched and searched and searched and finally found some fabric I liked in an issue of the now axed Blueprint magazine. I tracked it down in a shop in Soho and had them ship me last 4 yards. Once I decided on my print I had to find a solid to cover the seat and back with. Thanks to a trip to The Linen Shop in Canton, MS I found P. Kaufman's Slubby basket in Caribe for $8 a yard.

I then removed the former covering of the chair and white-washed the frame. I covered the seat and very back of the chair in the green and the back with the floral. The hardest part was making the cording out of such thick fabric! I ended up cheating and attached it with hot glue.


Those two chairs now float between my living and dining rooms.



Three years later I still had two chairs in the storage room, but realized I needed a chair for my new office. What to do? Re-cover another one, of course!

I was much more prepared with this one. I went the paint store and played with paint colors for a while. With the help of the guys behind the counter I settled on Benjamin Moore's Bavarian Cream. I am really pleased with the color. It's just a bit warmer than bright white.

I covered the seat and very back of this chair with a great neutral linen I found at Premier Fabrics ($10/yard). I covered the back of the chair with a fabulous fabric that I found at Sir's for about $4/yard. I later found that fabric in a shop for $50/yard. Go me!

For this chair I used bronze upholstery tacks instead of trim. That. was. difficult. OMG. It's amazing I didn't chip off more paint than I did (thanks to my dad, who was in town a few weekends ago, the tacks ended up much straighter than in the picture above). But the finished product was worth it. Don't you think so?

Crafty Guests!

My parents came in town last weekend and in typical fashion of my family we crafted!

What do you get when you combine this


and this fabric?


You get an adorably cute trash can!

Yes, a trash can. After dinner my mother busted out the tools to make me one!

Perhaps you remember the super-cute beverage bucket I made a few months earlier this year.



It was inspired by an idea my mother got in a local shop back home. She made herself a trash can using the same technique and last weekend she made me one! It took all of 24 hours start to finish (and that includes a lot of drying time).

Here is the finished product!


Follow the directions here to make your own!