Thankful

2:04 PM
We had another awesome Thanksgiving over here and hope you all did as well!  We're still recovering from a pumpkin pie and whipped cream food coma... I know, so very whole 30 of us, right?!  Every year we kick off the morning with the Thanksgiving day parade plus cinnamon rolls and bacon by the fire.  We also get the oven preheated for the turkey and all the fixins'.  Last year we deep fried our turkey, but this year I tried my hand at roasting it in the oven.  Our menu is pretty similar every year, the turkey, sweet potatoes, corn casserole, the best green beans ever, stuffing/dressing, and homemade rolls with cinnamon butter.  You can find a couple of these recipes at the end of this post.


I can remember being in school and getting off a whole week for Thanksgiving, but as of late- or maybe it's just Charlotte- we only get 3 days.  Which means you only have 1 day to prep for all things Thanksgiving and that's just not enough.  However, we took advantage of our one day for the more important things like cooking dinner for friends,  making a huge batch of my cinnamon butter, and drawing + decorating 538 hand-turkeys.



I cooked dinner Wednesday night for a Friendsgiving at our house and then helped with a few sides Thursday, for Thanksgiving at my sis-in-law's.  We went the whole day and never managed to get a picture of all three of us together.   Ehhh well.  Just means we were too busy getting "seconds", talking over each other, and bouncing off the walls with the cousins.




Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! 
 Enjoy all those yummy turkey sandwiches this week!  

Sincerely, 

The Lishias


Juliet's Sarah & Duck 3rd Birthday

9:05 PM
We celebrated our sweet girl last month with a little party at home with her cousins, donuts at school with her friends, and going to see Elsa and Anna in the Disney on Ice's Frozen production. 

We invited family over the Saturday before her birthday for a laid-back dinner, just to relax and enjoy being together. We bought lasagnas from an italian market in our neighborhood and some garlic bread and called it done.  If you're in the Charlotte area and do not know about this little gem, here is the website and address!  Juliet had mini cupcakes, her favorite popcorn chex mix, and I made her birthday cake again this year... Nutella Dream Cake.  When I asked her what kind of birthday she wanted she said, bah-wooons.  So we did our dead level best to make that happen.  Besides bah-wooons, she loves the epi-show on Netflix, Sarah & Duck.  She will find someway to incorporate every little jingle into her daily life and we'll hear her pretending to be Sarah when she's in her room playing.  Plus, if you're trying to make her laugh, she'll probably cut those baby blues at you and with the cutest little side grin say, "Silly Duck".  So making the decision of the theme was an easy one.  She LOVED it!



I found the shallots at Anthropologie.  They're actually salt and pepper shakers and I bought two sets, added some eyes and they were an instant hit.  The kids were seriously disappointed when they found out that they weren't chocolates wrapped in gold foil, though.  Wap. Wap.  If you're familiar with the show you will understand her cake having a face.  He's actually Sarah's birthday cake in the show and Jules started singing the birthday song when she saw it. A-dorable.




She's recently discovered a love for dress-up clothes and I'd rather catch my pinky toe on a bedframe than to tell her she has to change into regular clothes, especially on her birthday.  So... she was Elsa at her Sarah and Duck birthday party.  Ehhh... if she's happy, I'm happy. 




We're definitely realizing that she's growing up so fast.  She's developing her own little personality and loosing that baby look with each passing day.  She has the sweetest disposition and loves being silly. We love you Julie baby and hope you made some sweet birthday memories.    

Hello, November

8:53 AM
We are so glad slow November is finally here!  Our lives have been a blur the past couple of months and I've done a horrible job of keeping up with the blog in the meanwhile.  We've had birthdays, vacations, first days of school, house projects, and lots of fun weekends since I last posted.   In light of the new year just around the corner, I decided to give the blog a much-needed makeover and hope that maybe that would inspire me to start posting regularly again.

In the meantime, here are the highlights of August and September in an attempt to get caught up, starting with a few snapshots from our vacation to the mountains back in August.  We limited our time with our phones and cameras so there weren't too many pictures to chose from... just a couple to help us remember the fun little moments.  There's also pictures of little Juliet's first day of school as well as photos from our town's annual Labor Day festival. 

AUGUST. 


SEPTEMBER.  


It's good to be back in the swing of things.  Thanks to all our readers that have checked in with us and asked questions about life lately.  Things were unsettled for a while with Joey working out of town two days a week and with the prospects of us selling our home and moving away from Charlotte, but in the end, things have worked out so perfectly and we couldn't be more shocked and blessed. Thanks again for your support and for reading along.  

Now for some Friendsgiving and lots of Christmas movies.   


Sincerely, 

The Lishias