Menu Monday // Comfort Foods for Winter

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Hello friends! Another start to a new week! And I am seriously shocked that we’ve entered December. With Thanksgiving so early this year, I feel like I’m just not prepared for Christmas to begin.

To intentionally slow myself down, I’m planning a month of warm, satisfying comfort foods that will nourish our hearts AND tummies. 

Menu Monday

I’ll confess, I have MISSED my Menu Monday posts. I missed the routine it created. It forced me to plan our weeks. Our home runs better when I sat, planned out a menu, ordered the groceries ahead of time, and wrote this post to connect with you. And for whatever reason, this Monday just felt like a good time to resurrect it.

If you haven’t read my Menu Monday posts before, there’s no special formula here. I just share what I’ve got planned to cook for dinners this week. Occasionally, I like to share tips for effective, efficient, simple meal planning… it’s a topic I LOVE to experiment with. But we’re keeping the routine simple today, to get back into the groove.

What are your go-to meals when you’re craving comfort foods? I tend to include meals that have cheese. And a grain. Maybe a little spice. Our typical weekly menu always includes Mexican, Italian, or Asian-inspired meals. But when we’re wanting comfort foods, I kick it up a notch.

This week I grabbed some old flavor favorites, and then threw in a new dish that helps to use up some produce from last week. A Win!

This week we’re eating:

Kale Pesto with gnocchi, served with simple roasted carrots

A simple Thai green curry with store-bought green curry paste

Black Bean and Sweet Potato Enchiladas, a house favorite!

Lentil Mushroom Stew with mashed potatoes

We’ve also got our church’s Christmas party this weekend, and I’m planning on making a batch of my favorite vegetarian meatballs. I also apparently made awesome green beans last year and I’m supposed to bring that too! Just need to remember what I did HAHA! I may also whip up a batch of my Buckeyes (recipe similar here)… they freeze well!

What are you craving this week?? What’s your favorite comfort food? Share it with me in the comments! 

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High Five for Friday #200 | Taking a Little Break

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Welcome to High Five for Friday – hosted by me, Becky, Tif, and Della! Come, read up on what we’ve been up to this week and get to know some amazing bloggers.

Remember, you can link up any 3 posts you want – regardless of content! Link up your favorite posts from the week that you want more people to read. Share away! And, of course, if you have a weekly recap post, link that up too! But we want to give you a chance to share your other content from the week.

Happy Friday, friends! Hope you’ve had a great week.

So, #200 for High Five for Friday post-hosting around here! Hard to believe we’ve whipped through 200 here already! What a hoot!

But, as the blog post title suggests, I’m going to be stepping back and taking a break from hosting for a while. I love popping on to the blog once a week to catch up with you all and see who’s linked up, but I feel like I’m not doing this whole blogging thing well right now…. so my other three co-hosts will be carrying on and I’ll pop back for hosting at some point.

That doesn’t mean I’ll stop blogging 100%. I may do an occasional post… or even an occasional High Five for Friday! But if you come to the Cup of Tea blog to post your own H54F post, then be sure to swing over to one of the other ladies for the link up!

Ok, that’s out of the way… let’s recap this week.

Friends, we are STILL sick!!!!!!!!!!! This has been the LONGEST cold ever. Elizabeth is 100% better and has been for at least a week, but William, hubby and I are all still sniffly and coughing like crazy. Will it ever end? I’m on week 3 of not being at the gym… obnoxious!

Now that the weather is a little cooler, we can start back up our favorite tradition of a Sabbath hike after church on Saturday. We went to the woods right by our house and walked and explored and picked up leaves and through rocks and shook trees. Delightful time!!

On Sunday we walked the 2.5 mile Triangle Kidney Walk with the National Kidney Foundation. My husband is a nephrologist (kidney doc!) so naturally, we were there with quite a few co-workers. We were also walking with some church friends, celebrating a friend’s 1 year anniversary with a new kidney! Amazing! We were smart to bring the stroller. Both kids rode for most of the walk. And then they wanted to pop out right towards the end! Win! We were also “Official Stuff Carrier” for our buds. HA!

I asked this on my FB and IG pages, but what would you do???? Since I only have 30 minutes, I’d head straight to a furniture store to buy Master Bedroom furniture. Our bedroom still looks like a dorm room – always the last room to be decorated, right? What would you do?

Alright friends!!! Keep on linking up, and I’ll hope to catch up with you all again sooner rather than later 🙂

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High Five for Friday #199 | Trick or Treat Fun!

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Welcome to High Five for Friday – hosted by me, Becky, Tif, and Della! Come, read up on what we’ve been up to this week and get to know some amazing bloggers.

Remember, you can link up any 3 posts you want – regardless of content! Link up your favorite posts from the week that you want more people to read. Share away! And, of course, if you have a weekly recap post, link that up too! But we want to give you a chance to share your other content from the week.

Happy Friday, friends! Hope you’ve had a great week.

This week we all were still battling our colds. Last week, Elizabeth was the lone soldier, so sick. This week, we all joined in on the fun! As of today, we’ve still all got stuffy noses and coughs… but at least our energy is back.

But despite the colds, we had fun!

One of the biggest things this week was that Elizabeth and I read and finished The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe! I’m not sure what possessed me to pick up my copy and start reading it to her, but she loved it. It took us 4 days to finish it. She even paid attention and caught most of the detail. I’m so proud of her! As a treat, we’re going to watch the animated version from the 70s this afternoon. Anybody else watch that version??

On Tuesday, Elizabeth and I headed out to pick up a few extra pumpkins for decoration. Thankfully our local nursery around the corner had some GREAT ornamental ones for good prices. We also picked up a pumpkin for carving!

She gave the whole scooping thing a try for about 1 minute, and then I got the task of scooping and scraping the insides. To be honest, it’s my favorite! So I was happy to do it!

She also drew her own face with a marker, and then I cut it out. She gave her pumpkin a little hair bow on the side! HA!

So fun! Memories – check!

On Wednesday, the kids’ preschool had a little fall festival with some games. I cheerfully manned a post, with a box of tissues hiding with me.

On Wednesday evening we had a ton of fun! We had friends over for dinner, and then we all headed out to trick or treat in our neighborhood. It’s so fun watching how the kids change and grow each year. Last year we took out a wagon with us for William and his little buddy to ride in since they were a bit too small to do all that walking.

Ah…. costume pictures. I struggle to get good pictures of both kids. One is always cheesy, the other is looking away.

When we went out to take pictures, our neighbor’s grandkids showed up right at that time, so William for most of the pictures was FAR MORE interested in what they were up to! HA! So hard!!

Candy sorting… is there anything more kid-like?? Such memories of my sister and I sorting and swapping our candy the next day.

  And now, it’s time to link up your posts! Can’t wait to cruise around and see what you all have been blogging about!

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High Five for Friday #198 | My Favs of IG

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Welcome to High Five for Friday – hosted by me, Becky, Tif, and Della! Come, read up on what we’ve been up to this week and get to know some amazing bloggers.

Remember, you can link up any 3 posts you want – regardless of content! Link up your favorite posts from the week that you want more people to read. Share away! And, of course, if you have a weekly recap post, link that up too! But we want to give you a chance to share your other content from the week.

Happy Friday, friends! Hope you’ve had a great week.

We need a new week haha! Elizabeth has been sick all week long…. and now, alas, my husband and I woke up with similar colds. Stay away from Durham!

My sermon went well last weekend! Thankfully, I didn’t fall over, and I think everyone was paying attention. Alas, it wasn’t recorded. I would have definitely shared if it was. But I’m shocked it went so well! Praise God!

Since not a lot happened with us other than swimming in a sea of tissues, let’s discuss fun IG accounts! Any that you follow that just make you chuckle? Or inspire you? I’ll share some of my favs!

First up, John Crist. I mean…. he’s just hilarious!!

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Sincerest apologies

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If you follow the royals, then you HAVE to follow Gary Janetti on IG. He does the snarkiest pics and comments, mostly all from Prince George. It just CRACKS me up!

And then, on to someone more practical. I LOVE Lauren from @an_organized_life. We share a love of organizing, British dramas and mysteries, and hot drinks. Want inspiration for an organized home, finances and life? Lauren’s your girl.

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{Coffee} Good afternoon friends! Today’s #naptimehustle finds me in bed with a coffee and an old Agatha Christie favorite, “Halloween Party” ?☕️? . Lately my downtime has involved coffee, a tv show (most definitely “Only Fools and Horses”) and my laptop planning out our November budget! I’m trying to intentionally get back into reading during this time slot and I’m trying to figure out what the next subject will be to pique my interest! So while I wait for inspiration to strike I tend to go back to Agatha Christie ? . Do you find a subject that fascinates you and then devour every book you can find on it? ??‍♀️ Or do you have a wide variety of subjects you read consistently? What are you reading now? (This is definitely my favorite question to ask! I love seeing what people are reading!) . (Not Sponsored) ??‍♀️ Blanket: @colorwaysgallery . ?‍♂️ Tray: @target @magnolia . . #books #booksofinstagram #bookshelf #shelfie #agathachristie #agathachristiespoirot #poirot #thursday #thursdayvibes #sahm #parenting #motherhood #downtime #relax #selfcare #halloween #coffeeandbooks #organized #anorganizedlife #ceoofourhome #bookclub #coffeetable #coffeebreak #flatlay #flatlaystyle #flatlaynation

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Phylicia is one of my fav inspirational women on IG. She’s a combination of productivity, motherhood, encouragement, and Christ, all rolled into one. Her thoughts on faith are so well-researched and inspired. Really love hearing what she has to say.

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Follow me as I follow Christ. That quote from Paul is something I always want to be able to say in this corner of the internet. Yesterday I hit 10,000 “followers” on Instagram – something I didn’t strive for, something I didn’t buy, didn’t follow-unfollow to achieve. My commitment to social media integrity has been counterintuitive, hard, and – quite honestly – a dumb move in blogger world. But it has given me a community of people who WANT to be here. People whose names I begin to recognize, people who aren’t just numbers. I fought God in this at times; when everyone else was (and still may be) growing faster. But the person you see here is the person I really am (my sisters and friends will be sure to shout out in the comments if not! ?). In following me, I hope you know Christ more. And if that changes, you’re right to unfollow. My goal is for you to go deeper and live driven by God’s Spirit to do God’s will; if I stop doing that, I don’t deserve your loyalty. So… Here’s to growing slow. Maybe staying at 10,000 forever. Because life is never about how MANY; it’s about how WELL.

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And finally, Sophie from @Mrshinchhome. I don’t remember when I first heard of this lady and her love of slightly-obsessive cleaning. But her IG stories are a hoot. She gives each one of her fav cleaning products a name, and she just loves cleaning!

So there you go! Some of my favorite IG accounts that, when they post, I always watch/read! Never miss 🙂 Who do you love??? Give me a new account to follow!

  And now, it’s time to link up your posts! Can’t wait to cruise around and see what you all have been blogging about!

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High Five for Friday #197 | A Quick Hello!

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Welcome to High Five for Friday – hosted by me, Becky, Tif, and Della! Come, read up on what we’ve been up to this week and get to know some amazing bloggers.

Remember, you can link up any 3 posts you want – regardless of content! Link up your favorite posts from the week that you want more people to read. Share away! And, of course, if you have a weekly recap post, link that up too! But we want to give you a chance to share your other content from the week.

Happy Friday, friends! Hope you’ve had a great week.

I hate to do a quick hello post, but this week has been zoomy! I’ve been catching up on some household things that have been on the to do list for way too long. I’ve also been prepping for this weekend. I’m doing the sermon at our church and that’s something I’ve NEVER done before! I have talked in front of all sorts of people – corporate presentations, client presentations, plays, story telling, videos! But never a sermon. There is a bit of an intimidation factor here.

But it’s been my focus this week, making sure it all makes sense.

I hope you’ve had a fantastic week!!! And thank you all for your sweet comments about Elizabeth’s birthday! It was a fun day. Aren’t kid birthdays so much fun?

  And now, it’s time to link up your posts! Can’t wait to cruise around and see what you all have been blogging about!

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