Food Pics… What's New?

Sometimes I feel like all I post is food photos. But, hey, what's new?

Jackson has had a bunch of great new restaurants open lately, so it's been really exciting to try them out. One of them is The Manship, which is inside the new Belhaven building. Our friend is the pastry chef there, so we were invited to try out the entire menu on a soft opening night. The restaurant specializes in wood fired cuisine from Italy to Lebanon. 

 We tried hummus (our favorite), wood fired pizza, salmon, brussel sprouts with pancetta, parmesan frittes, pancetta mac & cheese, tiramisu, and chocolate mousse cake. 

 Incredible menu. We also have to try a new Italian place downtown and Iron Horse Grill is about to open.

While we love eating out, we've been trying to be intentional about eating in and controlling our portions. We've made some really good recipes lately:

 Mexican Black Bean Pizza. Recipe: here. (We did everything minus any meat)

 Slow Cooker Quinoa Chicken Chili. Recipe: here. I was telling this to Ashley the other day, but I have in my mind if I can make just one slow cooker meal a week, it's a lot of pressure off me. It's done when I get home and usually makes a lot. We loved this recipe.

 Pioneer Woman's BBQ Comfort Meatballs. Recipe: here. (We did it with ground turkey.)

Yesterday I went over to MG's house and it's always fun to see her dogs. I love that Dupree always takes over the big dog bed. Daphne doesn't know what's going on.

 This week our coffee table we ordered finally came in. I'm really digging it. Now we only lack our headboard we ordered!

One thing I haven't been so happy about design wise is the colors of Christmas ornaments. Why does everything have to be royal blue, purple, pink, or glittery? So, I saw this DIY article and thought, "I can do this." I grabbed all I needed at the craft store (for only $14 - paint included) and went to town. I'm really happy with these and the colors are just what I wanted.

Hope you are having a great weekend! We head to Memphis Monday for Justin Timberlake. Too excited!

Where Does the Time Go?

Sometimes I don't feel like I get a break. We're so busy all the time!

But, I'm so excited that it's fall. I love the cooler weather and all the changing leaves.

 A few weeks ago I finished up a pottery class I've been taking through Millsaps' community enrichment series. At the last class, we fired our pottery and sat around and had a party until the items were ready.

 The type of firing we did was raku firing, which means once the pottery comes out of the kiln (like below), the glaze still has no color. You throw the pottery into something that will smoke (a trash can with wood chips, pine straw, or newspaper) and the smoke is what gives it its color. Very cool! I'm going to photograph my pieces and I'll post soon!

 We've had a lot of construction going on at our house. Our landlords are taking care of some deferred maintenance (mostly fixing some areas of rotting wood and repainting the whole exterior of the house) and we agreed to fix some old boards on the deck that had seen better days. Thanks to MG and Ryan, we got it done in no time! They were a huge help.

 We also got a new door leading on to the kitchen from the deck, which doesn't seem that exciting, but it makes such an impact on the room. If you can't tell, this is a door that has blind built into the window. We have been wanting this since the day we moved into the house. We had investigated inserts and all kinds of things, but never pulled the trigger. The guys had to replace the door frame because of rotting wood outside and when the new frame went in, the old door didn't fit. We told them that if they had one with this type of window in stock, we'd pay the difference. Luckily, they did. 

 This brings in so much light, but we can close the blinds off when we go to bed. The cat has been enjoying it too.

Of course, I couldn't have a post without posting a photo of her. She's decided the recliner is her chair...

Hope you have a great rest of the week!