Chops

A few months back some friends had us over for dinner.  We never turn down dinner with these friends, Brooke is an amazing cook!  Check out her blog Plum Pie Cooks.  She made pork tenderloin, mac and cheese, asparagus and amazing pear and pomegranate salad.  I'm usually not a huge fan of pork but the marinade she used was so delicious!  It was so yummy that I copied her and made this meal for Christmas Eve dinner, and wow was it a hit!!

Since then I use this marinade any time I make pork chops.  This is not my recipe at all, but I had to share it with you.  A couple of the times I've used it, I didn't one or two of the ingredients on hand.  The chops were just as good without them though!  Check out the full recipe here.

Pork Marinade

1/3 c   dried cherries
1/3 c   dry red wine
1/4 c   balsamic vinegar
3/4 c   cranberry juice
4  garlic cloves, minced
6  shallots, sliced
3 tbl   rosemary, chopped

The original recipe says to marinade anywhere from 2 hrs to overnight.  When I use this on pork chops I grill them in a skillet.  The tenderloin I sear on the stove top, then finish it off in the over.

Mustache Fiesta

This past weekend my lovely friends threw my bestie quite the fiesta of a wedding shower!  We divided up all the tasks and food to bring, and I was given the job of "mustaches."  Cue creativity!  The sticky mustaches have been done, so I wanted to do something a little different.  After a trip to Michaels, Party City, and Target I came up empty handed.  No inspiration at all.  After seeing a picture somewhere of a mustache straw (not sure where) I knew that's what I wanted to do.  Back to Michaels...

I bought plain and glittery black foam board and got to work.  I only used 2 different shapes, but should have done a few more.  To make your 'staches symmetrical, draw one side then folded it in half and cut.  Use poster board or another thicker paper as your template and trace onto your foam board.  You will need to make 2 overlapping holes in order for the straw to fit through them.

I was so surprised how easy the foam board was to cut out, honestly the foam cut faster than the poster board.  Also I bought a heavy duty hole punch -- don't waste your money!  Your plain old hole punch works much better, and the hole is bigger.

Hola amigos!

Holiday Card Display

Over the last few years I've been brainstorming a way to display our friends' holiday cards.  We all spend so much time searching for the perfect holiday card -- or at least I do -- and most of the time our cards are thrown in a bowl or set on a ledge where they can't stand properly.  This year I experimented with a few different displays.  I really love how the final one turned out.  I used ribbon and paper clips I had laying around the house.  It wasn't green or red, but looked cute with all the different colors on the cards.  This will definitely be going up next year!

I had to add a pic of our sweet little girl.