Memorial Day & Chicken with Rice

Did you know that....

Memorial Day...

was formally known as Decoration Day.

was honored in the South when ladies organizations and schoolchildren would decorate graves in Richmond during the Civil War.

volunteers place an American flag on each grave to honor those who have died in military service.

serves as a marker to summer vacation.

is always held on the last Monday of May.

Thank you to all who have served and are serving our country!!

I hope that everyone has a wonderful Monday and takes some time to think about the meaning behind this special day.

 

I also want to share with you a recipe I made this weekend for some guests who were visiting us.

The ingredients you would need for this recipe include:

8 chicken thighs (boneless and skinless)

2 cups of chicken broth

A dash of salt and pepper to coat the chicken thighs

2 teaspoons of olive oil

1 small onion (chopped or sliced)

3 tablespoons of butter

3 tablespoons of tawny port wine

Sprinkled fresh parsley to taste

3-4 cups of cooked rice to serve with chicken and bread

I also made an olive oil spread with French bread.

To do this, just preheat your oven to 350 degrees and cut open your French bread in a way in which you can add your spread on top.

I placed butter, olive oil, and some spices on the bread and cooked it for about 7 minutes.

What you get is a delicious side to a delicious meal! It tastes soooo good!

Okay, now back to the chicken dish.

The first thing you want to do is coat your chicken thighs with a dash of salt and pepper and cook 4-5 minutes on each side on a skillet or until brown.

Next, chop your onion and add it to the skillet after your chicken has cooked and you remove each chicken thigh from the pan. What you want is for the onion to cook in the juices left-over from the chicken.

Add your butter, chicken broth, wine, and parsley to the onions in the pan and cook until the butter is melted and the onions are soft.

Then you can add all of the ingredients together at the end or separate the sauce from the chicken (which is what I did) and let cool until you are ready to eat.

I wanted my guests to be able to pick out how many chicken thighs they wanted and to decide how much sauce they wanted to put on top of their chicken, so the two dishes were separate.

Plate your chicken and sauce on top of your rice and serve with your olive oiled/buttered French bread and you have yourself a quick and delicious dinner for your family and friends!!

This recipe was made originally made by me after reading about a different way to cook chicken while using a cherry sauce instead of what I used. Please do try and make this sometime because it does not disappoint. Our guests and my family loved this meal and I would make it again for sure! (Which I actually am doing for another family next month).

How do you celebrate and remember Memorial Day?

Thanks for stopping by!



Summer Fruit Medley

Since summer is just around the corner, I decided to make a fruit medley for some guests coming over for dinner tonight.

This is such an easy recipe which I found from a Southern Living magazine, but I tweaked it a little.

Directions on how to make this delicious fruit medley- perfect for summer:

1. Whipped 1 cup of heavy whipping cream in a bowl until thick

2. Add 1 teaspoon of Vanilla Extract to cream and stir

3. Take 1/4 cup of brown sugar and whip into cream mixture

4. Cut up some fresh fruit of your choice (of use frozen fruit if you like) and place on a serving dish

5. Sprinkle cream on top of fruit and serve or refrigerate for later

For the fruit, I used a variety such as bananas, peaches, strawberries, and melons.

Let me know if you try it and what you think of this recipe!

I also want to leave you with a song we sing in church on Sundays and it happened to be stuck in my head today.

Here are the lyrics if you would like to read.

In Christ alone my hope is found
He is my light, my strength, my song
This Cornerstone, this solid ground
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm

What heights of love, what depths of peace
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease
My Comforter, my All in All
Here in the love of Christ I stand

In Christ alone, who took on flesh
Fullness of God in helpless Babe
This gift of love and righteousness
Scorned by the ones He came to save

Til on that cross as Jesus died
The wrath of God was satisfied
For every sin on Him was laid
Here in the death of Christ I live, I live

There in the ground His body lay
Light of the world by darkness slain
Then bursting forth in glorious Day
Up from the grave He rose again

And as He stands in victory
Sin's curse has lost its grip on me
For I am His and He is mine
Bought with the precious blood of Christ

No guilt in life, no fear in death
This is the power of Christ in me
From a life's first cry to final breath
Jesus commands my destiny

No power of hell, no scheme of man
Could ever pluck me from His hand
Til He returns or calls me home
Here in the power of Christ I stand

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Have a wonderful weekend and thanks for stopping by!

Summer Mantle Decor

One project that I have been putting off for some time happens to be decorating our fireplace mantle. I don't know why I haven't taken down all of our Easter decorations on our mantle until recently, but maybe that was because I had no idea how we could change it up...that is until now.

 My plan was to keep our mantle decorated the same way from now (that is, once I pull the whole decor all together) until August, so the new look had to be something versatile.

That plan leads me to my post title, "Summer Mantle Decor." Since summer is quickly approaching, decorating with that idea in mind only made sense, so here is what I came up with!

I took some left-over canvas dropcloth and thought of ways to reuse it for a DIY project.

The dropcloth came from another project which you can read more about here.

After the dropcloth was cut to size (that size being big enough to fit into a picture frame) I laid it out on our table.

You can see that once the dropcloth was laid out, there were words peeking through. Can you see them?? 

This is because I had once used this particular fabric to recover our game ottoman, but since I had gone and changed up our ottoman a second time with new fabric, shown in this post, this dropcloth was perfect for what would become my new art work.

I wanted to somehow figure out a way to hide the words peeking through the fabric so on to my next idea!

That idea was to paint stripes on my fabric.

To do this evenly, I carefully placed painter's tape across the fabric and got my other supplies ready.

I went ahead and used some left-over paint for the stripes.

Can you guess what that color ended up being?

Sherwin Williams Sea Salt
The color of the stripes and the same color as our guest bathroom.

After the paint dried, it was time to take off the painter's tape to reveal the new look! 

This was the fun part!  :)

Next, I used an old frame (the same frame that was used for this project) and spray painted it white.

Now I could have just left the new piece like this, but it wasn't lookin' too hot, and needed something more.

So the plan was...somehow, in a neat and artistic kind of way, display "Love & Happiness" on the canvas.

I decided to use some rope and left-over canvas to "hang" pennants.

To do this, I just took some rope that we had lying around the house (I know...maybe it's a little weird that we have stuff like that lying around, but it comes in handy for projects like this)

and draped it across the canvas like so.

Next, I cut out little pennants from the left-over dropcloth and figured out how they were going to lay on the frame.

Once I got that all figured out, I took a Sharpie marker and began writing each letter out one by one-

"Love & Happiness"

Okay, now don't laugh too hard, but YES, I did make my ampersand backwards!!!

Don't worry, I did fix this but my hubby and I had a good laugh about it.  :)

The letters still needed to be attached in a way that it looked like they were hanging off of the rope.

So I used some spray adhesive to attach the letters (seen below) and Voila! my DIY art was coming together.

Our mantle is not completely finished.

I still need to figure out if I am going to keep those jars which are next to the frame, and if so, then I need to figure out what to fill them with.

Any ideas??

The only neat thing I could think of filling them with was an assortment of buttons! Ha!!

 We are pretty pleased with the outcome of our new art, especially since I didn't have to spend a single $ (or pretty penny, for that matter) on this project. So we are very happy about that!!

I would love to know what you think!! Please comment if you can and let me know how you have started decorating for summer.  :)

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Thanks for stopping by!