Peppermint Tea & Christmas Movies

Good morning bloggy ladies :) Have a good weekend? I started getting a little bit sick half-way through my weekend, but that didn't stop me from enjoying a little bit of my two days away from work anyways...

FRIDAY
I know I made buffalo Bleu cheese turkey burgers for dinner, but other than that, I seem to have forgotten the rest of the evening. I assume it involved a Christmas movie and a bit more decorating of the house, but I'm just not too certain. My, what a short-term memory I seem to have...

SATURDAY
Woke up and made myself an egg sandwich for breakfast, and then waited on my Mama and sister to come pick me up. Then we went down the road to the fair grounds, for a big giant craft show, called Market Days. It's huge and awesome, and there are lots and lots of different vendors, from all over Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. My mom and sister both bought quite a few things. My mom got us both a cute little gingerbread house (that smells like cinnamon!), and Meg got lots of random things. I got a present for my family's Secret Santa exchange, and a Christmas ornament to celebrate mine and Jeff's first married Christmas together!

After we ate lunch there and walked around a little more, they dropped me back off at home with my bag full of goodies. Jeff and I then spent quite a few hours cleaning up around the house, and working on our second bedroom. That room has kind of been the "dump zone" as we moved both of us in over the last few months, and it was quite a disaster. However, the twins are coming here for 9 days, and that's "their" bedroom, so we need to get it cleaned up and ready for them! It's nowhere near done yet, but we got a lot done.

I had woken up feeling a little strep-throaty, so by 4 pm, I was exhausted and just needed to sit down and rest. Primrose came and cuddled up with me on the couch, and I ended up taking quite a nice little nap. While I was asleep though, Jeff ran out and picked up some Chinese food, so when I woke up it was dinner time, which was great and so yummy. We spent the rest of the night just laying on the couch, cuddling our doggie, and watching Christmas movies on Netflix. One of which, I would recommend if you're into Christmas music - "The Mistletones." It's an ABC Family movie, and it's really cute :)

Oh and then of course we watched my amazing Seminoles woop that Blue Devil bootay! National Champs here we come!!!!

SUNDAY
I woke up feeling even worse than the day before, and even though it was only 8 am, I couldn't go back to sleep. So instead I  watched another ABC Family Christmas movie :) This one was also cute, so check it out if you're into that kind of movie - "A Christmas Kiss." I got a little stir-crazy, so I did very minor cleaning around the house, and put away some clean dishes. I quickly ran to the grocery store for just a few items, and then spent the rest of the day back at home again. After a very late lunch, I threw together some soup really quickly, and let it simmer in the crock pot all afternoon for dinner. I was thankful for this super yummy recipe of mine, because it's so stinking easy to put together, it was even a cinch while not feeling so great.

This recipe actually debuted on my blog an entire year ago, so if you're interested in the recipe for Crock Pot Chicken Enchilada Soup (and you should be interested because it's delicious), then you can check out that post here.

The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing and staying hydrated with lots of water, hot peppermint tea and some cran-apple juice. While Jeff blew off the leaves in our entire yard, I worked on some wedding recap posts and rounded up some pictures from our honeymoon in Cancun. (Those will all be coming soon, finally!) We watched "Robin Hood," Jeff fell asleep on the couch at 7:30, and then I watched the newest episode of "Once Upon A Time," while writing this very blog post. I went to sleep not much longer after that to try to get some rest and get better before beginning another work day.

So even though I was feeling kinda sick and yucky all weekend, there were still some bright spots that managed to peek their way through :) Now if I can just get rid of this icky-ness and get better, things will be all good! Happy Monday again ladies!

Much Love,
Halie

*Update* I was too sick to go to work today, so I'm at home still. I'll be going in to my doctor later, to make sure it isn't strep throat. Ugh, gross...

Pilgrims, Paula Deen Rolls & Potatoes

Good morning ladies, and Happy Monday. Are y'all back at work now after a four-day weekend like me too? It's kind of rough, but instead I'll just focus on being thankful for the time off that I did have, rather than whining about being back today. And so today, I'd of course like to recap my special Thanksgiving holiday with my family!

This year we went to my Aunt Suzanne and Uncle Keith's house, and it was the first year that I brought my very own contribution. The last couple of years we've hosted at my parents house, and so of course I've helped out with all of that. But this year I chose and made my own dish to bring over, and it was a hit! I made this Loaded Mashed Potato Bake, and it was delicious.

The rest of my family all made amazingly yummy things, and we had probably one of our best Thanksgiving meals ever. Seriously - it was sooo good. We had all the usual's - turkey (two ways: roasted and deep fried) dressing, sweet potato casserole, green beans, broccoli casserole, the yummiest Paula Deen's Cloverleaf rolls, and a couple other sides too. And as a special southern treat, my uncle made up some venison as well, which was also yummy.

Sliced and deep-fried turkey. Definitely one of my favorites of the day!

My sister was unfortunately not with us, because she was with her husband and in-laws in Alabama. We definitely missed them, and it was so weird not having them around for the holiday. However, this was actually the first year that Jeff and I have celebrated Thanksgiving together (actually with each other - we've he's gone out of town the last couple of years to see family), so it was so great to have him there with my whole family as well!

I have so much to be thankful for, and special meal with my family was of course a great way to celebrate that. We had so much fun eating all together, and then going through all of the Black Friday ads as well. We told lots of stories, and had lots of laughs, and we just generally enjoyed being with each other on this special day. I'm thankful for a lot of things, but my amazing family is definitely up at the top of that list!!

My cousin and I got to do the wishbone - sadly he won.

Parents :)

Me and my pretty Mama

There were of course lots of other happenings from the last four days, but it's entirely too much for just one post. So the rest of the weekend recap will follow tomorrow (or the next day, depending on my blog-motivation), and then later I'll share some pictures of our first Christmas and tree together, in our own little house! Hope y'all had a great weekend as well. Looking forward to reading y'all's Thanksgiving recaps as well!

Much Love,
Halie

P.S. - Happy 23rd Birthday to my "baby" sister! Doesn't quite seem possible for you to be this "old" yet, but apparently you are! Hope you have the bestest day, Little! I love you!!

Pinstagram Summer

I took the last couple of days off from blogging, but I'm still alive and kickin'. It was weird not coming here and writing a post, and still weird throughout the day with no comments to read and emails to respond to, or check on my stats too many times....but it was also good to just breathe a little bit. I'm not here with any sort of writing that would win any prizes, I just want to share a few of my Pinstagram Summer moments from my life recently. It just seems like so many more things Instagram-worth happen during the lovely summer months, and I've certainly been sharing my share of photos lately....

1 / Beautiful sunrise on an early morning run

2 / Super cute trinkets and sweet note from my friend Megan in Tennessee

3 / Big Easy Snowballs with my family

4 / Wedding invitations ready to be taken to the post office!

5 / Gorgeous, random hibiscus flower in the middle of our azalea bushes at home

6 / Finally got to play Cards Against Humanity, and had a blast

7 / Free chocolate ice cream cones at Bullritos, somewhere in Georgia

8 / My wedding shoes are in that box!!

9 / Chipotle salads are really freaking delicious, and don't even need the dressing

1 / Putt-putt night with Jeff and the twins

2 / Beautiful blue skies and corn fields in the middle-of-nowhere-Georgia 

3 / Movie night with my man 

4 / Love my amazing photo guest book I made using Shutterfly!

5 / Drink break during a long day of running errands and shopping

6 / Sweet Bath & Body Works haul from their semi-annual sale

7 / Pretty flower/plant-thing from my coworkers, before moving to my new job

8 / Love summer days spent at the pool

9 / Matchy-matchy family for the twins' Superman-themed 7th birthday party!

And for you bloggers who stopped using Vine the minute Instagram got video, you've been missing out on (barely any) videos made by yours truly. But when I do remember to make a video on Vine, they're kinda cute :) Or at least I think they are...



So that's all I've got to share with y'all today. I may not be back to every-day-blogging status again for a while as wedding planning gets crazier and crazier, but I will still be here when I can be. And then hopefully I'll be able to resume my regular blogging schedule again in just a couple more months! Thanks for sticking around here with me though! Bloggy friends are such good friends :)
Much Love, Halie

Planes, Grains & Automobiles

Monday morning - we meet again.... and this is a seriously exhausted Monday morning at that. This weekend was so crazy busy, I got very little sleep, and I could have definitely used an extra day just to recover from it. So let's just head straight into our normal recap, shall we?

FRIDAY
Jeff's parents took us and the boys to see the new Disney movie, "Planes," and it was really, really cute. Good job Disney for making another heartwarming movie that brings a tear or two to my eyes... But really, it's a great little movie and we all enjoyed it :) After the movie, we got the rest of the boys' stuff packed in the car and ready to go for the next morning.

SATURDAY
Got up bright and early for our drive up to north Georgia to meet their mom. We grabbed breakfast from Chick-fil-A, and then hit the road. A couple potty stops and five hours later, we ate lunch, and said our goodbyes to those super sweet little boys. We are so thankful we got to spend six full weeks with them this summer, and we just had so much fun with them!

We then made our way over to Atlanta, to visit Jeff's best friend/best man. We went to a cookout at one of his friends' house, and had lots of fun. All of his friends were really nice and welcoming, and didn't make it awkward for us even though we knew no one! After a delicious dinner (grilled chicken and sausage made by an awesome guy from Australia) and some homemade ice cream, we all played Cards Against Humanity. It was my first time playing, and I loved it! I want it for myself now of course. There were 12 or 13 of us playing, and I actually won with five black cards! Holla!

SUNDAY
Woke up bright and early again to head home from Atlanta. We splurged again and got Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, and it was oh so yummy. We took a different route home from ATL than we normally do, and we loved it! It was so gorgeous. We saw so many fields of crops and things, and it was actually really interesting. (We ended up Googling how corn and peanuts are harvested, and we learned something new while we drove...)

A couple of potty stops, some gorgeous back roads of Georgia and about four and a half hours later, we made it to my Grandparents house for a big family lunch! We celebrated my Aunt and my Papa who both have August birthdays. I later worked on addressing the envelopes for our wedding invitations, then we had our first pre-marital counseling session. We stopped by Publix to grab a bit of groceries and pick up a Redbox (since we had a code for a free night!), and then spent some time just resting at Jeff's house...while I addressed some more envelopes.

Super busy, and super fun. We had a great weekend, but we are definitely both exhausted. I skipped my run this morning so that I could sleep until 7 am, rather than 6 am, and just that one hour wasn't quite enough. I'll run tomorrow morning though, so I can start week 6 of 5K training! Tonight and tomorrow we will be busy working to get our invitations stuffed and ready to go, so that we can get them sent out by no later than Friday! Ahhh, so exciting! They turned out great, and I can't wait to show them to you in a couple of weeks, once they've been sent and seen :)

Hope you lovely ladies are having a good Monday so far. I'm looking forward to working on wedding stuff tonight, and making what Jeff has named "Adult Bagel Bites" for dinner! I'll try to make them kind of healthy-ish, and count the calories, but they're just gonna be so yummy!

Much Love,
Halie

Party, Pool, Pictionary, Pizza & Putt-Putt

Whoa that's a lot of things in one weekend that start with a "P!" Makes naming this post pretty easy :) So, I'm feeling a bit tired today, but (as weird as this sounds) it's a good kind of tired, because I started off my day and my week with a 2.5-mile run this morning! My legs are now tired and sore, but I'm feeling good about it, and definitely glad I got up and did it! Week 5 of 5K training is underway. And now of course, let's rewind the past few days and do a bit of weekend recapping. Well, the weekend plus a Thursday recap as well...

THURSDAY
Pizza and putt-putt with the fiance, the twins, Lacey, Josh and Danielle at Fun Station! Their awesome Thursday-night deal is: buy a large pizza for $3.99, and get four games of putt-putt for free! Holy crap that's just too good to pass up, am I right?

FRIDAY
Tried out a new pizza place here in town, Uncle Maddio's Pizza Joint, and it was so freaking delicious! I had a Portobello Pesto Pizza, and I loved it. Sooo yummy. And there were so many other options I wanted to try, so I can't wait to go back and get something different. Then we did some shopping at Walmart to get ready for the twins' birthday party the next day, and even found us all matching shirts to go with the party theme - get ready for pictures of those from Saturday :)

SATURDAY
Birthday party day for the twins! It was actually about a week and a half ago, but we waited until we could work it out the best, and it ended up being a great day for a party at the park! We had a Superman theme, so there was red and blue everywhere, and the four of us all wore matching Superman tshirts we found at Walmart!

After the party, we spent quite a few hours enjoying the beautiful sunshine at the pool, then cooked dinner at Josh & Lacey's house. Then while the kids all watched a movie, we played a couple rounds of our favorite game - Pictionary! One round of couple vs couple, and one round of boys vs girls. Always lots and lots of fun when we play Pictionary!

Picture of ALL the kids at the pool ;)

SUNDAY
The usual morning of hurch and lunch with my parents, then my Mama and I went wedding shoe shopping for me at DSW. Unfortunately, we didn't find anything, so I'm still on the hunt for shoes. Turning my search online now to see what I can find! Then Jeff and the boys and I enjoyed movie rest time for a bit, before the boys finally got restless and forced us back into action. We made a trip to Target (I bought a new dress, in a smaller size!!), then grabbed food from a new-ish place called Zacadoo's - where thanks to a coupon and kids meals being cheaper past 4 pm, all four of us ate dinner for a mere $8.94, and it was really good too! Score!

I then went to Kohl's while Jeff bathed the boys and got them ready for bed. I found a new dress for one of my upcoming wedding showers, and a potential leaving-the-wedding-dress. I just want to try it one with the proper undergarments (*ahem* my Spanks slip....) and see how it looks. I also got two cute, soft v-neck t-shirts, and since I had a coupon, and a couple gift cards, I only paid $4 for two dresses and two shirts. I love when stuff like that happens!

Now it's Monday morning, and I've got two full days ahead of me at work. I've been in training for the last three weeks, just sitting in my supervisor's office learning and watching. Today and tomorrow however, she's out of the office so I finally get to do some work on my own! It's a big responsibility, but I'm ready for it, and I'm ready to just do some hands-on training of my own. So wish me luck as I work on my own the next two days! Happy Monday morning, and happy start to a new week!

Oh, and here's my current mani, which I kinda love! This is the first time I've tried the free-hand painted clouds, but I think I did a decent job, and I will definitely be trying again sometime. Jeff also likes them, and says they remind him of the clouds from Mario (the video game), and I think he's right!

A bit chipped, because this is four days after I first painted them last Thursday...

Much Love,
Halie

*P.S. - This week I'm linking up with Glitter & Gloss, Sami's Shenanigans and Synfully Delicious.*

Plants, Lotions, Chipotle & Letters

Dear Friday: It's so, so, so good to see you again this week. I've been waiting for you since Monday. (So what if I stole that off a someEcard?) And just for good measure, here's another one. Sadly, I couldn't find the one I was actually talking about, but this one is good too...

Dear Wedding Dress: I'm coming to pick you up TOMORROW!!!! And obviously I'm beyond excited about that. I mean, we just ordered it June 6, and it came in on Monday already. Super speedy. I can't wait to try it on (in my actual size) and see just how much I love it! Holy crap I'm so excited I might burst...

Dear Co-Workers: I still love the plant you gave me as a going-away-present last week. I had to do a bit of Google research on how to take care of it, but I think I can handle it. Luckily for me, a Guzmania doesn't seem to be a super fickle kind of plant, so hopefully I don't kill this little lady. (I'm pretty positive it's a girl...)

Dear Chipotle: Thanks for making salads be so delicious. Yesterday I visited your store here in Tally for lunch, and loved my salad. Lettuce, the fajita stuff, black beans, mild salsa, tiny bit of corn salsa, and a bit of cheese - no dressing was even necessary because it was just so good on it's own. I need to look up the calorie count, but I'm pretty sure it's not too bad. And now I'm craving it again just thinking about it!

Dear Outlook & Yahoo mail: why are you making this so dadgum difficult for us to just email our save-the-dates?! Apparently Yahoo is blocking them? Or putting them straight into spam folders? Not cool. We have tons of people who haven't gotten them yet, and it's going to be such a hassle to go through and re-send only the ones to Yahoo. (It took us a while to even figure out that's what was going on...) But I guess we'll have to, but I'm so not looking forward to doing that over the weekend.

Dear Sunrise: It may not always be fun getting up super early in the morning just to run, but when you look as beautiful as you did this morning, it definitely makes me appreciate that time of the day. Thanks for being so gorgeous today to start my day off in a good mood. (And now I've completed week 2 of my 5K training!)

Dear Fiance: I know you're super excited to see the boys, but I need you to focus and drive safe tonight and tomorrow on your trip to pick up the twins again. Stay safe and alert, and get yourselves back home as soon as you can tomorrow, so we can all play together tomorrow night! Love you :)

Dear Bath & Body Works: I love it when you put your yummy smells on sale! I'm kinda obsessed with lotion and not having my skin feel dry and scaly, so when it's $5 for a big bottle instead of $11, I'm totally down with that. Love stocking up on a couple of bottles for less than half price!

Dear Bloggers: Lately I've been really super busy at work, and so I haven't had any time to actually read many blogs. Like hardly at all really, and if I do, I don't have time to comment much. And I feel so disconnected from y'all! I really appreciate that y'all are still reading my blog, and I promise to catch up with y'all eventually.

Dear Weekend: Let's have a great time, shall we? The sun is supposed to be shining a bit, so I'd love to spend some time enjoying that. And maybe doing a tiny bit of wedding planning would be good too. But most importantly - I hope my wedding dress fits me good! I can't wait!!!!

Happy Friday, my dears :) Hope everyone has a great, sunny, quick day today, and a fun weekend as well!

Much love,
Halie

Pitaria Weekend Happenings

Good morning Monday, and blog, and bloggy friends. Have a good weekend? I did. Although, let's talk about how going from a four-day weekend, back to just a two-day weekend, is a little rough and I wasn't a huge fan of that. When can we work out another super long holiday weekend? Anyone with me on that?

Well anyways, despite it's seemingly short length, it was still pretty great, and it of course deserves the usual weekend recap, I mean am I right?! So let's back it up...

FRIDAY
Well, first of all (before it was officially the weekend), I spent the entire day in training with my new supervisor (who is extremely nice and I like her a lot), and started learning my new position. And it was a loooooot to learn, and we barely even scratched the surface. Still so much more to learn before I get it all down, but I'm on my way at least. I also got to spend just a few quick minutes in my new office, and I can't wait to set up and decorate in here! It's so bare right now and just begging for cutesy little things to brighten up the drab space.

Friday right after work, I went on a short 1.16-mile run for my second run of the day - go me! Then Friday night was the last night of leading games and rec at VBS for Jeff's church, so we took the kids outside and played water games. The kids loved getting soaked just as much as we loved spraying them with squirt guns and water hoses! :) Afterwards, we got cleaned up a bit and went to hang out with a couple friends for a while before finally calling it a night.

SATURDAY
Went with my parents to pick up some furniture that my mom's boss was giving away to her for free. We got a big comfy chair with an ottoman, and a huge coffee table. Mom wants to keep the chair (even though I tried to convince her to let me have it), but she said Jeff and I could have the coffee table. It's not exactly our style though, so we'll definitely want to try to DIY something for ourselves. Anyone know what we could do to get that marble out? We're thinking about maybe using some mosaic-type tile, or some Spanish-style stuff, but first, that marble stuff needs to go!

Then we had lunch and ran a few more errands around town, and eventually Jeff came and met us at Marshall's. I bought some cute new things for my office, some cards to use as shower/gift 'Thank-You's', and my Mama bought me a few office things too! Then Jeff and I just hung out at his house for a bit searching on Craigslist for random things, and found a nice comfy chair to buy, almost identical to the one my mom claimed earlier in the day, for only $30! Score. Then we went with his family to see "The Lone Ranger," and we all thought it was a pretty great movie. Definitely entertaining, and I enjoyed it.

SUNDAY
Went to church and Sunday school with my parents, and then a group of us did a pot-luck style lunch all together, and that was a great time. Mom and I then spent about an hour going over the guest list and doing a few wedding planning things, and then I went to meet Jeff for more wedding planning. We went and hung out at a local coffee shop down close to FSU's campus, Atomic Coffee, and we sat there for about two-ish hours with laptops and sketch pads and to-do list's, and I think we got a good couple of things accomplished, and at least got the ball rolling on some other things. Then we walked to the Greek restaurant that was right next door, Pitaria, and had a yummy gyro for dinner. It was probably the best one I've ever had. So yummy, and so huge and filling! I was real full from just the gyro, and brought the whole salad home for another day. Definitely going to visit there again.

After dinner, we drove around for a bit checking out a few places we found online to rent, but none of them ended up being good. They were either kinda crappy looking (not like their online picture of course), or one was in an extreeeeemeeeelyyy ghetto part of town. Like whoa. So they all got ruled out tonight. But then we went back to his house, and both pulled out our laptops to continue more wedding planning and research! And guess what, we have even more wedding planning stuff on the schedule for tomorrow, and Tuesday, and Wednesday, and well...you get the picture.

So see? Pretty great weekend, if I do say so myself! Good food, time with lots of family and friends, and Jeff too of course, some shopping and lots of wedding planning. Sadly, the only thing I would have wished to add is some good ole' Florida sunshine! It only barely peeked it's head out for a couple minutes at a time, for a total of like 15 minutes the whole weekend, so it was still practically non-existent here in "The Sunshine State." Psh! Yeah right. Here's what I have to say to that though, "Rain, rain go away! We can't take another day!"

But ending on a happy-ish note - I'm back in training again today, and looking forward to learning more. And maybe I'll get a few minutes to start setting up the cute new things in my office! Tonight after work we're going to pick up that chair we found online, check out some potential groomsmen wear, and then get some save-the-dates sent out! Hooray! Hope y'all had a good weekend as well, and that of course your Monday is off to a good start also :)

Much Love,
Halie

Promotions, Peaches & Things That Make Me Happy

Sooo, it's Friday! Duh. Us bloggers always like to point that out though don't we? Now, for those of you that have seen this appear in the form of a guest post lately, so sorry about that...my brain needed a little break, and that break came in the form of just editing a saved draft post I already had :)

But anyways.... I love trying to take the time to recognize and appreciate some of the small things that make me happy. Of course it changes all the time, sometimes almost daily it feels like, but today I just want to share with you five quick things that are currently making me super happy!

1. Summer time. I love the sunshine and the beach and swimming and working on my tan. Seriously - it's one of my favorite things about living in Florida. (Well, Florida's kinda sucking it up in the sunshine department these last two weeks, but still...) I'd permanently set up my beach chair in the waves right there in the picture below and read endless books and get a gorgeous golden tan, if that was an acceptable life choice.

2. Wedding planning! We're at a pretty fun part of the process, and I definitely have what a fellow blogger-friend of mine described as "bride brain." It's all I can think about sometimes!

3. That my co-workers bought me a pretty plant to take with me to my new office. They also all signed a really cute card and we all ate cake together yesterday. I definitely felt the love and support from my old section for my promotion, as they bid me farewell and into my new section!

4. Watching the whole series of FRIENDS again. I've seen the whole thing multiple times (probably three or four, and then of course random episodes all the time), but my fiance hasn't ever watched them all the way through. We just started season one last week, and I'm loving it. It's definitely my favorite show!

5. Fresh fruits! Mangoes, peaches, strawberries, cherries (the fresh kind, not those nasty jar ones), green apples, bananas and watermelon - seriously y'all, summer time is great for fresh, yummy fruit, and I'm definitely trying to take advantage of that! And and even more than just the fruit, is putting fresh fruit on my fro-yo, because I'm definitely loving some fro-yo lately!

Simple list, but each of these things brings me so much enjoyment and happiness. I think y'all should also try to list at just five little things that make you happy. I think it makes us stop and appreciate those things so much more when we take time to actually recognize them! So think about it, and then make sure you take advantage of those things.

If it's a person - tell them.
If it's a place - go for a quick visit.
If it's an activity - get out and do it!
If it's food - definitely eat it.

Whatever it is, just make sure you take time to enjoy whatever it is that makes YOU happy!

I hope y'all have a great Friday today, and of course the most bestest weekend too! Come back again on Monday, and I'll have some 'fresh content' for ya from my weekend happenings and hoopla's. Tootles ladies!

Much love,
Halie

Peppers & Tacos: 2-for-1 Recipe

Good morning lovely blog friends! Hopefully we've all recovered by now from our long weekends. I know yesterday was still kinda rough for me, being that it was a Monday, and the first day back from a long holiday. But I feel a little better today and I'm ready to get this thing going! Yesterday, I shared a picture of the stuffed peppers we made last week, and today I'm sharing the simple and yummy recipe! Well actually, this is a double-feature recipe post, so make sure you see the super simple twist for using the leftovers as well the next day :)

Ingredients
4 green or red bell peppers
1 pound lean ground turkey
2 tablespoons Olive Oil
2 cloves of garlic, diced pretty small (or minced if you want)
1/2 medium sized onion, diced
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 can whole kernel corn, rinsed and drained
diced tomatoes (quantity depends on how much you like them!)
generous shakes of taco seasoning (sorry folks, I didn't actually measure this, but maybe 1 or 2 tbsp.)
1 teaspoon cumin
salt and pepper
Cheese and sour cream for later...

Directions
Start by preheating your oven to 350 degrees. Heat olive oil in large skillet over medium high heat, add turkey, garlic, onion, cumin, taco seasoning and salt and pepper - cook until the meat is all brown with no pink. Turkey is usually not greasy, so you should not need to drain it. (It's OK if there is a little bit of liquid, because it will be absorbed later.) Once it's completely cooked, add in corn and black beans, and let simmer for about five minutes, then add diced tomatoes and simmer a few more minutes.

Since there were two of us cooking, I did this next part while Jeff was cooking the meat, but you can do it whenever you can fit it in, or before or after you've made the meat mixture. Cut the tops off of the peppers, and scrape out the stem and seeds. Then cut each pepper in half, to create two equal sides. Line them all in a baking dish, open sides facing up. Scoop as much of the mixture into each half pepper as you can fit. Put a tiny bit of water in the bottom of the dish, so that they're juuuust barely sitting in water. Cover the whole thing with aluminum foil, and bake for 30 minutes, or until peppers are soft.

Remove the foil, sprinkle cheese on top of each one, and bake for an additional 5 minutes uncovered to melt the cheese. We used the mixed shredded colby and jack cheese, and it was delish. Serve with a dollop of fat free sour cream on top, and some Spanish rice on the side, and you're all ready to go!

These were sooo super yummy, and we both liked them a lot. Jeff was actually a little skeptical of the idea of stuffed peppers at first, but even he loved them! This made a lot of the meat mixture, so we had tons leftover, even after us both eating a little scoop of just the mix as well. So the next day, we heated it back up in the skillet (add in a tiny bit of water and some more seasoning to re-flavor and keep from drying up too much), and then scooped the mixture onto lettuce leaves, to make Santa Fe Turkey Taco Lettuce Wraps. Soooo good as well. Again, add cheese and sour cream on top, and I added more fresh tomato on mine. Yum! Then just roll the lettuce up like a taco.

Both ways, this meat mixture is really good - in both the baked peppers, and wrapped up like healthy tacos. If you like spicy food, feel free to add in some jalapeno peppers or a little bit of red pepper flakes into the meat mixture while it's simmering, and that would be really good too. (Jeff can't handle super spicy stuff, or else I would have spiced ours up a bit because we both love the taste of spicy stuff - it's just too hard on his stomach sometimes.) I definitely recommend you try this out though, and let me know how it turns out for you!

Much Love,
Halie

Pleasant & Patriotic 4-Day Weekend

Well, I've been out of work and out of the blogging routine for the past four days, and it's been great. I mean seriously - super long holiday weekends are amazing, and definitely necessary for your sanity, and I enjoyed every single bit of it. What about y'all? And since I had such a long amazing weekend, there's a ton to catch up on, so today's post will once again be very picture heavy, and kinda light on the writing.

Let's back it up all the way to Thursday, for the 4th of July!

Actually first of all, let me just show off our dinner from Wednesday night that we made ourselves. Super yummy Turkey Santa Fe Stuffed Peppers. Sooo good. I'll be sharing the recipe tomorrow!

THURSDAY
I was house/dog-sitting all last week for my friend Lacey, and for some strange reason I woke up before 8 a.m. without an alarm. What is wrong with that picture? So I took the dog out and fed her, then I was quite productive for a few hours. I did some dishes, loaded and started the dishwasher, started a load of laundry, swept the house, uploaded and edited some pictures, bought new music on iTunes, made a new running playlist, and finally made my new playlist for the summer (another check from my summer bucket list!). And I did all that before 10 a.m. Impressive right?

Jeff came over around lunch time, and we made turkey taco lettuce wraps with the leftovers from our stuffed peppers the night before, then just lounged around for a bit watching National Treasure 2 on TV. We then went out and attempted to find cute matching shirts to wear, but no such luck. So we came back to the house and made our mac and cheese to take to family dinner.

My Granddaddy - the Birthday Boy!

My Mama made these super cute eagles as her surprise dessert treat!

My sister made these patriotic themed cupcakes, which were delicious.

We played a giant game of 12-person Farkle, and my Granddaddy-the-birthday-boy won!

And of course my sister and I had to take an unnecessary amount of goofy pictures, just like we always do...

The problem was however, that Florida couldn't get it's crap together to stop raining long enough to do any fireworks. Thanks a lot. So I didn't get to see any this year. What a sad 4th of July with no fireworks, right?! Oh well, Jeff and I already decided that next year, we're definitely heading back to St. George Island beach for July 4th festivities, and that will be awesome.

FRIDAY
I am honestly having a hard time remembering what we did on Friday...I know it was still raining, so I think we ran errands and stuff around town. Oh yeah - we went to Hobby Lobby and priced some silk floral stems for wedding purposes, bought a few cute glass jars, raided an awesome new thrift store of all their vintage books and a giant empty wooden picture frame, and a couple of other random things. And I got a wonderful little package in the mail from one of my friends from college. She lives in Tennessee now, and it's been a looong time since I've seen her. But she sent me the cutest little things! Later, we got Tropical Smoothie for dinner, and then went to Jeff's church to help decorate for Vacation Bible School, which is this week.

Set of fold-out, vintage Florida postcards, a wrap bracelet, hand-painted (by her!) cards, & a super sweet note.

SATURDAY
It was still raining (for about the billionth day in a row now...), so we did some more running around and found another cool new thrift store, where we scored this really cool wicker-basket-trunk-thing for only $15. The top of it is messed up, so we are going to try to figure out a way to redo it to make it look nice. We also shopped around town for what we want Jeff and his groomsmen to wear for the wedding.  The rest of the afternoon was low-key and boring, but then we went out for date night on a budget. We used coupons at Black Bean (local Cuban place Jeff hadn't ever been to before), then finally saw 'Fast 6' at the cheap theater here in town. And that movie was awesome!

We needed a pick-me-up after so much shopping. He got a Mocha, I got a Peach Green Tea Lemonade. Yum.

SUNDAY
Church and lunch with my parents, then Jeff and I spent the afternoon driving around town looking for 'For Rent' signs for our future place! We drove around for like three hours, took down about 30 addresses and numbers, and then started calling almost all of them last night. We're so excited about finding a place to live now, and hopefully the process won't be too obnoxious and difficult.

OK, so I think that about wraps everything up now, finally! Hopefully I didn't bore you all to death, and you're still interested in reading my blog again after all this... But even more than that, I hope each one of y'all had a great weekend too! I wish we could have had less rain and more sunshine, but hey, not every day can be perfect, so we just live with it and move on. And in the meantime, we just hope for sunny days and better weather in the future! The weekend was still good, despite the crazy amount of rainfall, and I had a great four days off of work.

Oooh, and one more thing - this morning I officially started using Hal Higdon's novice 5K training plan, to get ready to run my first 5K race this coming September! So follow along with me as I get ready for that! I'll be sharing my usual collages on Instagram, and logging it all with RunKeeper.

Happy Monday, y'all! And I almost forgot - here's the nails I did for my 4th of July festivities! (I did them like 2 days before I took the picture though, so that's why they're a little chipped already...)

Much love,

Halie