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Friday, November 27, 2015

Thanksgiving Dinner

We were so thankful to share Thanksgiving dinner with my brother and family! It was relaxing and stress free even with so much food to prepare. Here are a few pictures of the food and fun -with recipes!

Holiday Cocktails. Recipe here.



We love Heron Hill Winery, and their Unoaked Chardonnay is great with pretty much everything!


Amanda set such a pretty table for us! She loves a DIY project and took some pinecones from a neighbors yard and then spray painted them. The table is so festive without being overly fall.


The pinot noir was recommended as a red that goes well with turkey. I didn't try it because of my love of the chardonnay we picked, but I'm sure it was great.



The kids had their own fun table with plates from World Market and another DIY project from Amanda. Their little turkeys with veggie sticks are so cute!


Josh captured all the yummy food pictures. I successfully made delicious gravy!!!


Classic Thanksgiving day fail: We didn't get a picture of the beautiful bird!!! However, our turkey was local from Autumn Harvest Farm via The Good Food Collective. This is the second time we've used Good Food Collective to get a turkey, and it's always so delicious!!!


These sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts are fantastic!!! I want to eat them again already! You can find the recipe here.


Amanda made these wonderful Oatmeal Molasses Rolls!


I have been making this apple pie for many years now thanks to a good friend sharing it with me! You must go make it now. Recipe below...


Crumb Topping Apple Pie

Pie Filling:
6 c. sliced and peeled apples, such as Golden Delicious (about 5 lg. apples)
1 (9-inch) unbaked deep-dish pie shell
1 1/4/ c. granulated sugar
2/ tbsp. cornstarch
4 tbsp. (1/2 stick) butter, melted and cooled
3 lg. eggs yolks, beaten
1/4 c. whipping cream
1/4 c. milk
Juice of 1/2 lg. lemon

Crumb Topping:
1/2 c. packed brown sugar
1 1/4 c. all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 stick melted butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Make pie: place the apples in the pie shell. In a large bowl or in a food processor, combine the granulated sugar, cornstarch, butter, and egg yolks. Mix until the sugar has dissolved.

Add the cream, milk and lemon juice and blend until smooth. Pour the filling over the apples and set aside.

Make the crumb topping: in a food processor in a bowl, cream together the butter (about 1/2 a stick) and brown sugar. Add the flour and cinnamon and process or stir until the mixture forms medium-size crumbs. Evenly sprinkle the top of the pie with the crumbs.

Place the pie on a baking sheet. Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes or until the crumbs are lightly browned.

Coll to room temperature and to allow the custard to set. Cut into wedges and serve, accompanied by vanilla ice cream.

Serves 6-8.

NOTE: Be sure to use a DEEP 9-inch pie place or an ordinary 10-inch pie plate.

We love these boys so much! Their "Happy Fall Y'all" shirts are from the Twinkle Hearts Etsy shop with an awesome owner, Kristen, that was able to customize these for me!


These three babes make everything more fun and are teaching my boys to be wild and crazy. We love it!


Happy Thanksgiving from the Pickney and Bills Families!


Stephanie
Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Lincoln: 2 Months

Month number 2 had it's ups and downs in our little Lincoln's life!

Here are your stats for the month:






Here's what you've been up to this month:

-You've been eating like a champ every 2-3 hours and going 8-9 hours overnight. Mommy and Daddy are so excited for the long night stretches!
-You are still passing out as soon as I take off in the car! This makes life easier for everyone!
-You are so smiley and grinning when Mommy and Daddy see you.
-Mommy started wearing you in the Tula and you love it. There's so much sleepy dust in that thing.
-We had a lot of outings for the fall: We went to the Garden Factory for the fall festival with cousins, went to the market for breakfast and picked apples and pumpkins!
-On October 28th, you had a very high fever. We rushed you to the ER at the request of Dr. Davis. All of the doctors and nurses at RGH took wonderful care of you and we were so thankful it was just a virus and about 48 hours we were headed home! We are so thankful the Lord protected your little body!
-You're still sleeping in mommy and daddy's room, but we're all sleeping so well we just haven't moved you over yet.
-We love that we can lay you down to go to sleep awake and you just fall asleep! Your big brother NEVER did this! It's so wonderful.
-Mommy has watched the entire series of Gilmore Girls while on maternity leave. I really hope this doesn't affect you as you grow up! Ha!
-You attended your first birthday party for your cousin Avery's 1st birthday and slept right through it!

Here are pictures from this month:

 You were really happy to be wearing a hat!

All snuggly in mommy's favorite ring sling from Sakura Bloom!

This heartbreaking view, but worth chronicling! We are so happy to be on the other side!

Happy Halloween from these two skeletons!

Those cheeks.

All of the grand kids together!

We just can't help matching them!!!

We are loving our busy little life with you and your big brother!

Stephanie
Monday, November 9, 2015

Fall Fun - Apples, Pumpkins and Halloween

Fall activities are so much fun and Dayton is now at an age where he is beginning to enjoy them. Here's what we've been up to this fall!


We headed to the Garden Factory for some indoor fall fun with cousins, but before we left this guy was not too thrilled!








After breakfast at the Rochester Public Market, Josh and I took the kids to Green Acres Farm to pick apples and pumpkins.







Dayton wanted to carry his pumpkin to be weighed. Cutie!





After picking our tiny little pumpkin (I had already bought pumpkins to decorate with at the house -this was more for the "experience."), we picked Jonagolds and Golden Delicious apples. We've since made lots of yummy apples recipes!












Halloween was slightly dampened by Lincoln's 2 day stay in the hospital (more about that to come in another post...), but Dax still wanted to go out as a lion. We kept Linc tucked away in the stroller, so he didn't get to rock his scarecrow. We still had fun seeing all our sweet neighbors as Dax went trick-or-treating for the first time!





D's first how to trick-or-treat!




His sweet buddy, Sophia, answered the door!





We love our little house in fall weather.



Annual neighbor photo -one day I won't need to be in the picture.




Such a fun fall! We cannot wait for Thanksgiving and Christmas just around the corner. Celebrating life with friends and family is one of the greatest blessings!

Stephanie