This hearty and filling meal won’t leave you missing the standard pasta and pork at half the calories.
For the Spaghetti squash:
Preheat oven to 400. Cut the ends off a medium spaghetti squash, set it upright and carefully cut down the middle. Remove seeds and strings from middle, rub with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Grease a foil covered cookie sheet with nonstick spray and place squash cut side down. Bake for 50mins or until fork tender. Remove from oven, set aside to cool. When cooled, use tines of a fork to scrape “spaghetti strands” into bowl.
For the marinara sauce:
Heat large deep saucepan over medium heat. Add 1-2 Tbsp of olive oil. Dice 1 green bell pepper (after removing ribs and seeds) and 1 small onion. Add to pan. Next, mince 2 cloves of garlic and add to pan, stirring to combine veggies. Add 3/4 container of fresh sliced baby Bella mushrooms and season salt/pepper/garlic powder/Italian seasoning to taste. Stir all and cook until onion and peppers are softened. Next add one jar of marinara sauce. (I used my go-to jarred marinara, Kroger’s Simple Truth Organic brand.) Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer 15 mins or so, until mushrooms are tender and all flavors have married. Set aside to cool.
For the meatballs:
Preheat oven to 400. In a large bowl, add 1 lb of 93/7 lean ground turkey and 1 large egg. In a small baggie, mix 1/4C breadcrumbs, 1/4C grated Parmesan cheese, 1 Tbsp Italian seasoning, 3/4tsp salt, 3/4tsp pepper and 1/2 tsp garlic powder. Shake to combine then add to bowl with meat and egg. Using hands, thoroughly mix. Grease a foil covered cookie sheet, and begin rolling out 1″ diameter balls. Bake for 12 mins, then flip meatballs and bake for another 10 mins.
After all ingredients are prepared, layer squash, marinara sauce and meatballs in a bowl and ENJOY!! 🍝
This weekend I put together a surprise birthday party in honor of my mom’s 60th birthday. My goal was to gather all her brothers and sisters and get some professional photos taken, as her sister is in poor health and they’ve never had a professional photo taken all together. I knew I wanted the party to be intimate and simple, but at the same time elegant and feminine. With natural rock formations, lush vegetation and a bubbling brook, the garden of the Historic Eureka Inn provided the perfect setting for an evening celebration, and the innkeepers Kat and Blake went above and beyond to pull the event off. As luck would have it, we caught the tail end of the nastiness from Hurricane Harvey and were served a chilly 55 degree day, complete with nonstop rain and high winds, however the weather proved to be no match for the natural beauty of the gardens and thankfully we were tented from the elements.
My partner in crime, Robbie, put his talents to work and designed a stunningly romantic tablescape using a variety of flowers including roses, astros, carnations and lots of baby’s breath. Candles and mason jars wrapped in twine, and hand wrapped corsages at each place setting completed the scene.
I catered the event myself to try and cut costs. The menu consisted of barbecue pulled pork served on kaiser rolls, marinated chicken skewers, macaroni and cheese bites, mini loaded baked potatoes and assorted fruits and veggies. My mother-in-law contributed her delicious slaw and Robbie’s mother made the deviled eggs. The signature cocktail was a strawberry lemon sangria and I ordered the cake from my favorite bakery, Petite Sweets. Rachel, the owner, has now created cakes for my past 2 birthdays and my wedding and she absolutely did not disappoint this go-round. Strawberry cake covered in a delicate cream cheese icing and topped with a glittery gold topper and fresh flowers was the center of attention at the buffet.
Finally, my photographer April, was able to capture so many beautiful moments exactly how I wanted. As you will see, she really managed to encapsulate everyone in their natural element.
By the time the party started I had spent the majority of the day in the rain or sweating over the stove so I did not look my best. But all the hard work and stress was worth it to see the tears of joy and surprise from Mom when she walked out the back door and saw all her closest friends and family. It truly was an unforgettable night that couldn’t have happened without all these helping hands. I am extremely proud of the event Robbie and I were able to put together. Maybe we should do this for a living!!
The work week is drawing to a close and I am SO looking forward to a productive and enjoyable weekend……at home! While everyone else I know will be goin hard at BRISTOL BABY , I’m booking my time with spring cleaning, open fires, delicious refreshments and fresh seafood. Last weekend was so jam packed with engagements that it was over before it even started, and every weekend after this one is booked solid until JUNE with charity events and special occasions, so I just want to really soak in the downtime in my happy home.
So what’s on the agenda so far?
First things first, a much needed mani/pedi in the morning. These nails are so grown out and my feet haven’t been done since my wedding. In October. They’re so gross I can’t even con my husband into rubbing them when we’re on the couch watching TV.
Following the salon, I’ll have to make my weekly grocery run and I am SO excited. Today Earth Fare has $5/lb Key West Shrimp so I’m gonna have to get in on that deal and buy some stuff tomorrow to go along with it. I’m thinking shrimp kabobs on the grill are sounding pretty darn good right about now.
Then I am flinging open my garage door and cleaning the devil out of that thing. It is a NIGHTMARE in there. I’m making 3 piles in the driveway– “Keep” “Charity” “Garbage” and hopefully the “Keep” pile will be the smallest. Everything else must go! I also need to get my usual weekend cleaning done–floors, laundry, dusting, etc. I may be weird for this, it’s not like I’m looking forward to cleaning per se, but I feel so much more relaxed when my house is clean and all my clutter is gone.
After all the tasks are done, THEN the fun can really start. Last Sunday I built this super easy, cheap and fun fire pit, using an old crappy $20 fire pit I already had and 45 flagstones that were $2 each at lowes and we haven’t even got to fire it up yet!! Well this weekend is looking like the perfect time for campfire cocktails and s’mores! And I came across the perfect blackberry tequila punch to compliment my dinner today on Facebook.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/robertbroadfoot/get-the-tequila#.ihXoazjXp 45 flagstones, arranged in a circular pattern to the size of a cheapo fire bowl. Ta-da!
Hopefully my Sunday will be filled with brunch and relaxing with my husband before next week starts up. I hope you guys have a fabulous weekend whatever your plans may be!
So following the hustle and bustle excitement of planning and executing a wedding, then barreling through the holidays, I began experiencing a gnawing “Let’s find a project” tick in my head. Normal people would want to use that time to relax and unwind from such a stressful year. But not me. I’m a glutton for punishment. And what better way to test the strength of your marriage than to take on a MAJOR home renovation just 2 1/2 months in??
I blame the whole situation on my momma.
For Christmas, she bought me all kinds of new bathroom accessories, just to switch things up. Well once I got all this nice, new stuff in there, it didn’t quite match up with all the old fixtures, outdated walls and ugly tile and it quickly started eating me up, until Tuesday, January 12, I decided it was time to change it. All of it. So I put a little bait out on social media. “Hi friends! Needing some small handy man things done around the house. Nothing major. If you’re professional and do good work hit me up!” That sort of thing. I quickly got several nibbles, one being a friend of mine who had recently fallen on some crap luck and lost his job. He had a background in real estate and had flipped a few houses. Perfect! By that evening he had come by the house so we could discuss. “I just need a few simple things done,” I said flippantly. “All this old, laminate tile stuff taken down, tiling the shower and floor, painting the walls and changing the fixtures.”
“No problemo,” he assured me. “This is a 3-4 day project at most.”
We agreed on an hourly amount to be paid, shook hands and I lulled myself to sleep that night with visions of paint samples dancing in my head.
Day 1: Demo day. And the day my life spiraled into hell.
It is at this point in the story that I should tell you 2 VERY VERY valuable lessons I learned during this process. Num.1-whatever your budget and time frame estimate, go ahead and double that. Hell, go ahead and triple it. Things will go wrong. And Num.2-If you decide to gut a bathroom in your home…MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BACKUP CRAPPER!! I live in a 1948 bungalow that my grandparents bought in 1972. There is but one bathroom in this house and from what I can tell, a lot of the modern conveniences were never factored in, i.e. The windows in the bathtub, no plumbing for an actual shower head, and outside of the shower it’s a measly 5′ x 6′, so it’s tiny. So if this thing is out of commission for an extended period of time, you are S.O.L. In every sense of the term.
The bathroom before
Once we began ripping out all the water works and the fake laminate tile from the walls, a monster was slowly being revealed. A big, ugly monster, untouched for over 40 years, covered in 4 layers of lead based paint and black mold, wrapped nicely under 2″ of liquid nails adhesive.
Behold, my bathroom. All that orange you see on the walls? That’s liquid nails. And the black you see poking through? That’s black mold. And the hints of sea foam green is just one of the yummy pastels that had previously been painted on the walls.
Alright, well this is the part of the story where we should have just taken the bathroom to the studs and replaced the existing plaster and lathe walls with new drywall. But we needed the black mold gone anyway and I wanted to try and save the original walls. Because I am a dumbass. So for 3 days after work, my husband and I, using razor edge scrapers and gallons of Goof Off and Citristrip, chipped away at the disastrous, disgusting walls.
The end of day 2Stripping away the black mold and layers of painttop was before and bottom is after over 10 hours of scraping
I fell asleep the second night of construction crying my eyes out, in an apocalyptic fight with my husband. And the worst thing about all of it, is that the mess wasn’t just confined to my bathroom. It was spilling out all over the house. There were tools, and shelves and saws everywhere, a toilet in my dining room and all the dust from drilling and cutting and sanding was being blown into every room in the house due to the vents.
And then it got worse. On what should have been the last day of the project, day 3, we took the toilet out to do the walls and had to leave it out. For 3 whole days. Thank Christ for the creepy shower in my basement, or we really would have been screwed! I literally had to hover over a drain in my basement to pee, and let’s just say nothing will make an already tense situation worse than not being able to take a bowel movement. By the time we had reached the 1 week mark I realized the only thing that had been completed was the shower tile and this project was nowhere close to being finished. And after spending all that time scrubbing and scraping walls, we began to spackle and sadly realized all our hard work was in vain. The walls were too far gone. We were gonna have to hang drywall over it. At this point, I thought about killing our contractor.
Day 5
The end of Day 7. At least we finally got our toilet back
So now we have to spend even more time hanging dry wall. After another full day of measuring, cutting and hanging, we had all that up and after hours of scrubbing, there was light at the end of the tunnel. After cleaning up all the scum I was finally able to see it coming together
But it was like everything else was going wrong. We spent over 3 hours trying to hang the overhead light fixture. Then we couldn’t find screws long enough for the new tub handles. And the toilet sprung a leak. Add to that all the sanding of the drywall mud that was coating everything in my house and I had a full blown meltdown. At day 10 we at least had sealed the grout, gotten the overhead fixture up and painted the walls.
Sigh. By Day 11 we were drawing near the end and we had problems putting the window trim back up. We hadn’t allowed for the 1/4″ trim when we measured for the tile, so all that had to be re-worked. But the other fixture were up and I finally had a sink again so that was good news.
After attempting to put something as simple as the light switch cover back on and being unsuccessful I had meltdown number 3 and I’m fairly certain Mitch was considering an annulment. When we put the drywall up, it added 1/4″ depth to everything on the walls, meaning all my wood trim had to be filed down, and drywall had to be added under the light switch so the screws would reach.
Finally, exactly 2 weeks to the day of beginning this journey, I was able to take my first shower in my new bathroom. Short of the shelves and some hardware, we were finally finished.
Well, except the floors. Due to the unexpected length of time and money, we are going to have to wait to get those done for about another month. After all was said and done, I think my contractor bit off a little more than he could chew, but that’s the thing with these old houses. You never know what you’re getting yourself into until you’re already past the point of no return. He was very reasonable with the cost of labor and after buying all my materials, this bathroom remodel cost me around $1500. I’m probably looking at another $400 for the floors. I love it now that it’s done. But I can never forget the horror we endured those 2 weeks. I’m happy to say I am still married, somehow. And I will hopefully have an updated and final “After” pic within a month.
White subway tile with charcoal grout
All porcelain tipped and chrome hardware
Bombay mahogany min wax stain on woodwork
Behr pure premium paint+primer in “cathedral gray” on the walls
A thought occurred to me as I was sitting at breakfast this sunny Sunday morning, lazily sipping coffee, my eyes grazing over the local paper between bites of eggs and oats. It really struck me just how much I love this little ritual of meal and newspaper, the calm of morning, when the sun is bright and streaming through the windows and the day is new and young and full of promise. And the house is quiet and the warm scent of coffee dances in and out of each room. As I was basking in the comfort of this familiar daily task, it also occurred to me how many times this scene has played out inside the walls of this old house. The thought warmed me as much as my cup of java and I was suddenly overwhelmed with a wave of memories and nostalgia.
I am blessed enough to live in the house my grandparents lived in for over 40 years. I am able to carry on the traditions and holidays and celebrations within a home I was half raised in, that my father and his siblings and their children were all raised in. Growing up as an only child, it was always a treat to “go to Granny’s.” There was always a house full of people, be it family, friends or neighbors who came to sit a spell, and there was always home cookin’ to eat. My grandmother was one of 7 sets of twins within her immediate family and she and her twin brother Gordon, who for whatever reason we all called “Bud,” lived right beside one another. In the summer they planted a huge garden that stretched across the backyards of both houses and my Papaw and great uncle tended to it. My granny was a phenomenal cook and my favorite meal she cooked was her breakfast. Cat head biscuits with sausage gravy with sausage patties on the side, homemade strawberry jam made with freshly picked strawberries from Scott Farms in Unicoi, brown sugar syrup and peanut butter, and always sliced tomatoes and cucumbers with salt straight from that very garden in the backyard. Every summer my momma still makes that strawberry jam, and soon so will I.
Before I get too carried away rambling on about memories from my childhood, my point of this entry is to discuss how I still wish things were like the “good ol’ days.” I yearn for a time long gone, some from even long before I was born, when life was more simple and wholesome and clear cut. When most people had gardens because that’s what they had to eat from, not because it was the hipster thing to do. And men like my papaw got up on Sunday mornings just like this one and read the local paper while women just like my grandmother served them coffee. And ladies got up and dressed for the day EVERYDAY, even if they were only planning on working around the house and running errands. I guess you could call me a chauvinist. (Before everyone gets their panties in a wad, please remember this is MY blog and MY opinions and in the grand scheme of things my opinion means nothing and if you disagree or don’t like it then I guess you can always hit that red X in the top right corner of your screen.) But I believe men should still get up and go to work and be the main providers for their family, while women fix their hair and dab on a bit of makeup and maintain the functions within the home and family. I long for a time when women just like my grandmother and her sisters would sit on the “carport” and gossip and sneak cigarettes, because back then everyone smoked. I remember thinking, even in their 60’s and 70’s, how chic and classy these women looked with their curled bouffants and extra long Virginia Slim cigarettes. They would gather at dusk, after all the meals had been cooked and served and all the dishes and laundry had been put away and the floors had been mopped and the shelves had been dusted. They would sit in lawn chairs and bask in the last fleeting moments of summer sunshine, their conversations only murmured by the rise and fall of the hum of cicadas and the impending song of a lone owl. I wish that children today could walk down to Red’s, the gas station diner at the end of my road, and get a cheeseburger and a Popsicle for lunch on a hot summer day. Then walk around the corner to the baptist church in the evenin’ for bible school. I wish those kids could spend their nights chasing lightning bugs and picking honeysuckle until they collapsed in their beds from exhaustion instead of playing on their iPads inside all day. I wish I could have went down to Barnes Boring, the hardware store downtown, to pick up a screwdriver, before mega stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot undercut their business with lower prices and mass production. Strange as it sounds, sometimes I miss only having 3 fuzzy channels on the big box tv that set in the floor. It was comforting to be able to tell what time of day it was by the background noise on the television set. “Andy Griffith” was always whistling in the afternoons, “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy” always made for fun after-dinner entertainment for the whole family and if “Price is Right” was on and you were just waking up, you were definitely late for breakfast!
But these times have long passed. Red’s is closed, cigarettes are bad and technology is king. The world today is all about speed and convenience. Fast food and smart phones have replaced home-cooked breakfasts and sunset patio conversations. I can’t change the entire world on my own. But I will upkeep the little traditions, the daily tasks that may seem so insignificant to others. I’ll keep getting my paper delivered instead of reading it online. I’ll wear fancy hats when it’s appropriate. Even though my grandparents’ garden is long grown over, I will plant tomatoes in a little raised bed behind the garage and I will slice them and eat them with salt with my breakfast. I’ll still stop and smell honeysuckle and I’ll have my girlfriends over for gossip and a smoke. Because if you don’t honor your past you’ll have no blueprint for your future. Time is passing so fast. Maybe what we all need is to slow down and give ourselves a daily dose of nostalgia.
Hi y’all! It’s a beautiful East Tennessee Tuesday, and according to my Instagram feed, it’s also “Transformation Tuesday.” So keeping with that theme, I would like to reflect on a few personal transformations, starting with the weather this week!
I just have to say that I have got the WORST case of spring fever you ever saw! Thanks to this crazy, southern winter weather, in the past week we went from -1 temperatures and a snow storm last Tuesday, to a beautiful, sunny 70 degree day by Saturday. How in the world is a person supposed to keep up?!
The road in front of my house is under there somewhere….Beautiful 70 degree walk at the trail with my pups on Saturday
As much as this weather has changed, it has certainly got me ready for beautiful spring days, and got me in the mood to transform this house from winter to spring. Since fall I have kept the “leaves” scented Bath and Body Works wallflowers plugged in throughout the house, but I’m thinking as soon as they run out I’m going to have to switch over to something a little more fresh. I also reflected my mood with my flower choice this week. I threw out the beautiful blood red roses Mitch surprised me with last week and replaced them with big pink lilies. (Side note: I try to keep as many fresh flowers and live plants as possible in my house. The more life and beauty you surround yourself with the more beautiful your life will be. Also, live plants add multiple benefits to your living space which you can read more about here.)
The red roses my sweet man surprised me with after a particularly crummy day
Fresh pink lilies take center stage in my dining room this week
I also feel that right now is the best time to address the transformation I’ve noticed in my dogs over the past few weeks. I think they’re also being affected by the weather and are starting to act out from being stuck in the house so much! My little chihuahua babies don’t do especially well in really cold weather, so over the past few weeks with temperatures dropping down to single digits and snow covering the ground, they haven’t been as active as they would like and it’s driving them stir crazy! They have started acting out in ways I’ve not seen since they were puppies and they’re 9 now. This week alone, I have had to call the police and a locksmith because they locked themselves in my running car while I was putting wiper fluid under my hood. They got into a bag of deer jerky I left on the coffee table and ate the whole thing. Then drank their entire bowl of water and peed on the couch. Then I came home from work last night and they had gotten into a trash bag–something they haven’t done since they were babies! So every opportunity I’ve gotten at weather above 40, I’ve walked their butts off trying to unleash some of this pent up energy!
Finally, I cannot write a transformation post without addressing my own personal transformation. Over the past year I have changed my life drastically. I spent 5 years in a dead end relationship with a person who was not good or right for me, worked at a job that I dreaded walking into on a daily basis and was 30 lbs overweight. My self esteem was at rock bottom. I felt that this life was all there was and it would never get better. i was a severe pessimist. A lot of this had to do with my drinking habits. I was bored and surrounding myself with people who partied a lot so it just seemed normal to go out 6 nights a week. I got a DUI. I had no money. The person I was with had no concept of love and how to express it and I had some sick attachment only because I was fixated on fixing him. In March of 2011 I took the first steps by moving out on my own. I wish I could say that relationship ended completely then, but it did not. I started partying even more with my newfound freedom, and loosely seeing other people, but I continued to fall back on this person every time I was lonely or bored for the next 2 years. Strangely enough it always felt more lonely when I was with him than when I was on my own. After moving out, I lost the extra weight I had been carrying. I was depressed and just didn’t eat so it wasn’t a healthy weight loss, but at least it got rid of it. Finally, around March of 2013, I got some self esteem. I started working out and eating right. I had an awesome friend base. I quit the job I hated. I somehow had came to a point where I had weeded out all the exhausting relationships in my life but the one and it was now time to let that go too. Once I finally unchained myself from all that negativity and learned to love myself, it was like I had opened myself up to be loved in the kind of relationship I deserved. It was in May of 2013 that I became involved with Mitch. He is the great love I’ve always heard about but never thought was true. In all honestly, this man saved my life. He truly is my better half. I have major problems with self control and Mitch is the little angel on my shoulder that steers me in the right direction. I can’t give him all the credit however. If I hadn’t pulled myself from negativity and surrounded myself with light and positivity, I never would have been in a position to be loved. As cliche as it sounds, reading “the secret” really changed my life and I would recommend it to anyone who is feeling lost and hopeless. The things you put out really are the things you attract. You steer your own ship. As devastated as I would be if something happened and Mitch and I didn’t work out, I now know how to love myself enough to be a stable, happy individual with a purpose. The way you feel on the inside really is reflected on the outside and these photos prove that beyond a doubt. I hope this post will help someone who feels lost like I did. Don’t look for happiness in another person–like fireflies, find the light in yourself first, and that light will attract the person with the right light to match yours.
I hope everyone has a blessed day and I will see you guys soon with a Valentine’s post, as me and the honey are celebrating this weekend.
My friend Ashton and I, left, on NYE2012 and on the right, this past NYE2013. Same place, but man how things have changed!On the left was Mitch and myself the first time we ever really hung out. Right was 6 months into our relationship at a wedding.This was us at date night last Thursday.On the left was me in 2009 at the peak of fatness, in a miserable relationship and feeling hopeless. Right was this summer before a Billy Idol concert, healthy, happy and at peace.Looking at that person on the left is like looking at a stranger. I am proof that if you change your surroundings you better yourself. Surround yourself with happy people and things and you can’t help but be happy.A sad, bloated shell of a person. This was my 24th birthday I think.My 28th birthday this year with Mom and Dad. Happier than I ever thought possible.
Appalachian Barbie 