Winter Sangria

This is our twist on the Classic Sangria drink.  This is great for your next Holiday Party!  We made it for Thanksgiving and it was a huge hit!!
Here is what you need...

1 bottle of sweet red wine, 1 cup triple sec, 1 cup apple juice, 3 oranges, 1 pear, 1 lemon, a big squeeze of agave nectar, a few shakes of allspice, cinnamon and cloves.  **If you don't have agave nectar you can add 1/4 cup sugar to sweeten.
Now pour the wine, triple sec, apple juice and agave nectar into a pitcher or punch bowl.  Juice two of the oranges.

Cut the 3rd orange, pear and lemon.

Now add all the fruit to the wine mixture and finally add all the spices (I did not measure, but I would guess about 1/2 tsp of each).

 After mixing everything together, put it in the refrigerator for 2-4 hours.  Now drink up!!

You can also double or triple this recipe for a crowd!  Happy Holidays:)

Thanksgiving Part 2

We spent Thankgiving with Ryan's family in Charlotte this year.   We started the day off early at a 5k Turkey Trot.  This is my first 5k and I almost ran the whole race:) 

We ran into almost everyone we knew in Charlotte at the race and saw lots of costumes and hats.

Ryan and his dad were sweet trying to running the race at the girls pace, but how frustrating that they can run the race backwards as easily as we can forwards.

 The best part of the race....the end!

By the end we had worked up an appetite so let the cooking begin!!  Ryan's grandmother showed me her secret to great deviled eggs.

I love this time of day on Thanksgiving.  Everyone in the kitchen, tasting their food, bumping into each other and laughing. I tried to get an action shot...

The table was set....

We were ready to eat!  Some of the highlights...turkey(duh!)  we had a baked and a fried turkey, gluten free gravy(we used cornstarch, not flour to thicken), collard greens, sweet potato casserole, pumpkin fluff dip and lots of pies!!

After we stuffed our faces we gathered together outside for our 2nd annual Londry Turkey Shoot...yes there is an actual trophy for the winner...it's serious folks!

Ryan won!!!  Guess it is those steady dentist hands:)  We traveled home Friday after several days full of fun family time.  On Saturday morning Ryan went hunting and killed his first dear...Guess the Turkey Shoot was just a warm up:)  He took several pictures of him with the deer, but I didn't know if one of my millions tens of readers would be offended.  His good luck did not carry over to NC States game that night though....we are starting to have a love/hate relationship with that team!!

Thanksgiving Part 1

We spent the day with my side of the family.   Although we did not eat Turkey or watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade...we spent time together and I am thankful for that!  We have a growing "modern family" and we cherish the times when we are all under one roof.  We took advantage of everyone being together and got in a photo shoot before dinner.  These pictures turned out great!  My bonus mom is quite the photographer:)

Me and Matthew...the two oldest.

Zach and Jake...the two youngest.

Me and Jake.

Mark, Me, Zach, Jake and Matthew.

We took several breaks to entertain the younger two, which ended up making great photos!

After the photo shoot we went back to the house and stuffed our faces!  Dad was in charge of the main meal and Michelle made appetizers and desserts.  I guess you could say this was a warm up for Thursday:)  Michelle recently took an Italian cooking class and made Bruschetta.

She also made this amazing Banana Pudding Cheesecake...it was awesome!  I got the recipe from her and will be making this soon!  Here is a pic before the whipped cream topping went on.

We spent the rest of the night playing, wrestling and chasing each of the boys around the house.  I forgot how loud the house gets with all those boys!  By the end of the night it got quiet and I found them in the room watching a movie...so sweet!  Guess by then everyone was full and tired.

We will miss yall on Thursday, but glad we had a great night all together.  Happy Thanksgiving:)

Swept Away

Ryan has been a Student at UNC Dental School for 4 years now....and all 4 years NCSU has beaten UNC in football.  He pointed out to me that, along with some of the Senior Football players, they have "swept" UNC since they won all four years!!  We have been to all four games and the final one really did "sweep" us away!!
Here is a hilarious video of Jarvis Williams using an actual broom to sweep the UNC field after the win:)  (The entire video is fun to watch, but the part with Jarvis is around 1:40).
Here we are after a long eventful game:)

Here are some of the guys celebrating 4 years in a row after our win!

There was a lot of red in the stadium!!

We did have to get to tailgate with all Carolina fans who were wonderful host and good sports after we won.  Thanks Modlin's for a fun day!

Hope we keep this streak going next year even though Ryan will no longer be a student at his rival school!

Last Home Game

We went to our last NCSU home game Saturday....it is also the last game where we can just drive 20 min up the road and that i will miss!  Next year we will be traveling from Charlotte and it will be a little less convenient for sure.  We had a large crowd this game and lots of little ones!
Here is me with the girls, baby Leighton, Walker and baby Clark in Jennifer's belly!  Also we got to see Leslie who just got engaged...congrats!!

The Robersons.

The guys made oysters....so good!

Not only did we have a great time at the tailgate....we also won!  Hope the Wolfpack continues to win out this season so we can go to a few more games:)

Pumpkin Lattes

I have had several emails, texts, phone calls about some recipes involving pumpkin that I have mentioned over the last several blog posts...so here you go.
First, I wanted to quickly share the recipe for Pumpkin Lattes with yall that Ryan made me several mornings during my Birthday week, yes that's right I celebrate my birthday for an entire week.
You will need strong coffee, pumpkin butter, frothed milk or whipped cream and cinnamon.

First he used the Pumpkin Butter that I made for Jennifers Shower.   (Several of you have asked for this recipe.  You can find the recipe I used here).
1.  Place a spoonful of the Pumpkin Butter in your coffee cup.  The more you add the more you taste the pumpkin flavor!

2.  Pour hot strong coffee over pumpkin butter.

Top with frothed milk or whipped cream.  Then sprinkle on the cinnamon.

This coffee tastes a lot like the Pumpkin Spice Latte at Starbucks....just a lot cheaper!

Last, the recipe for the Pumpkin Dump Birthday cake Miriam made me can be found here.  She said it was super easy...you literally just dump the ingredients into a pan and bake.  She did substitute the Betty Crocker Gluten Free box mix in the recipe so I could eat it:) It was really yummy...especially when you top it with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and pumpkin pie spice:)

If you like Pumpkin flavor, you will love any one of these recipes.  Happy Fall Yall!

My Birthday Week

We started my Birthday celebration last weekend in Charlotte with Ryan's family.  We usually pick a fun menu/theme and build the rest of the night around it.  After Ryan and I had a very yummy and successful Asian Night, I decided to choose Sushi for my meal.
We started off with Edemame and Spring Rolls.  The great thing about this meal is it gave everyone a chance to get involved.  We all made a couple spring rolls.

We made several sauces to use for both the spring rolls and the sushi: spicy mayo, soy sauce, spicy chile soy sauce and a sweet mango chutney.

We then preped the food for the sushi and made the rice.  We used special sushi rice to make sure we got the sticky consistancy we needed.

We went one at a time and made each roll different.  It took a few tries to get the hang of it, but we were professionals by the end!

Since we made the rolls one at a time, we got to try a lot of different combinations, but we were stuffed in the end.  Here are some of our creations.

For dessert..no we did not have a sushi theme dessert!  Miriam made a Pumpkin Dump Cake.

Ok so now fast forward to my actually birthday...Halloweve.  Ryan made me breakfast and the best coffee ever, a Pumpkin Latte.  We spent the day shopping and went to dinner at Mez....so good!  Our waitress happened to have a gluten allergy so she was great at helping recreate some of their dishes so I could eat them:)

We went to my parents house on Halloween to celebrate my birthday and to trick or treat with my little brothers.  We played outside, grilled out and Michelle bought my favorite Ice Cream, Mint Chocolate Chip.

After dessert we were ready for Halloween night.  My parents live in a large neighborhood that really gets into Halloween.  Last year they counted and had 187 trick-or-treaters!  I love Zach's costume, he was Mr. Potato Head and he decided that on his own...haha!

Zach made it through two streets and asked to go home, he must have worn himself out running and trying to keep up with Jake and his friend.

When we got home he helped me pass out candy.  I think he might have enjoyed this more than going from door to door.

When it got really busy, Zach just sat outside on the steps to pass out candy with me for almost an hour, which is necessary because the door rings every 20 sec.  What a fun night!
Thanks to everyone for my birthday wishes, messages, cards, and presents!