Petite Boutique Wares On Sale!

Calling all my petite friends! My friend Laurie's store, Petite Boutique, is having some great sales on their spring and summer fashions! You can read about it by going to Laurie's blog. If you live in Nashville and haven't checked out the store yet, you should definitely do so. It's located in Cool Springs, and you can find all the location info on her blog.

Happy shopping!

Comfort Food, Comfort Friends

Hugs, smiles, laughter, reminiscing, and making new memories...Thursday was one of the best days I've had in a while. We had so much fun with Luke & Luci (Congdon) Perry, and we also got to enjoy Jeremy & Kenya Whaley's company for dinner at our house. Jeremy & Luci were some of our best friends at Cedarville, and we haven't all been together since Josh and I got married in May 2001. It's been WAY too long! But now that Luke and Luci are both Southwest employees, they occasionally get long layovers in Nashville and even get to travel standby for free for as long as they're employees. Pretty awesome, right?

Josh, Delaney, and I (Kaden stayed with our neighbor for the afternoon) picked up Luke & Luci at their hotel near the airport. We then headed down to Cool Springs to visit Laurie and Petite Boutique. [The pic above is L-R: Laurie, Me w/ Laney, and Luci.] Laurie had fun dressing Luci up in just about every outfit in the store, and Luci had fun being a model. ;-) She even picked out a few things for the road! Delaney was surprisingly sunny and pleasant. Not that she's not sunny and pleasant normally, but I figured she'd get bored without toys. But I think she's already aligning herself with her gender...she was happy as a lark while we were shopping! (Get a grip on your wallet, daddy!) I guess she figured that being 5-foot-4 or under qualifies her to shop at Petite Boutique. :-) She loved admiring herself in the big mirror Laurie has outside the dressing rooms, too.

So after the shopping adventure (the guys went to get a snack while we shopped), we headed back to our house for dinner. Since Kenya is a vegetarian, I wanted to make something that she could eat, and I recently watched a Food Network show called Everyday Italian that had some tasty-looking vegetarian dishes: Baked Penne with Roasted Vegetables and Veronica's Veggie Meatloaf with Checca Sauce. In the words of Rachael Ray, YUM-O!

I am very new to this whole food photography thing, and so far, I stink. Josh said, "Hmmm...that dish tasted a lot better than it looks in your photo." But nevertheless, I had to include it here just to practice. :-)

I made the veggie loaf completely vegetarian, but I decided to add some chicken to the baked penne for the rest of us meateaters. I also made this dish gluten-free by using GF pasta.

Gluten-Free Baked Penne

1 package of boneless/skinless chicken breasts or tenders
Olive oil/PAM spray/Broth -- whatever you want to cook the chicken in
2 red peppers, cored and cut into 1-inch wide strips
2 zucchini, quartered lengthwise and cut into 1-inch cubes
2 summer squash, quartered lengthwise and cut into 1-inch cubes
6-8 white mushrooms, quartered
1 yellow onion, peeled and sliced into 1-inch strips
PAM spray
1 teaspoon salt, divided
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, divided
1 tablespoon dried Italian herb mix
1 pound Gluten-Free penne pasta
3 cups marinara sauce
1 cup cubed fontina cheese
1/2 cup cubed mozzarella cheese
1 1/2 cups frozen peas, thawed
1/4 cup grated Parmesan, plus 1/3 cup for topping
1-2 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Place your rainbow of veggies on a cookie sheet with 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/2 tsp. pepper, and the Italian herbs. Spray the top with PAM and lightly toss together. Roast in the oven for about 15 minutes until tender.

While the veggies are roasting, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. In a separate saucepan, cook the chicken for a few minutes on each side. When it's almost cooked through, cut the tenders into bite-sized pieces. Set aside.

When the water boils, add your pasta and cook for about 6 minutes. [You want the pasta to be undercooked so that it doesn't get soggy in the oven when you cook it a second time.] Drain the pasta.

Combine the pasta, veggies, marinara sauce, cheeses, peas, 1/2 tsp. salt, and 1/2 tsp. pepper in a big bowl. Stir gently until all of the ingredients are incorporated and the pasta is coated with sauce.

Pour this mixture into your favorite baking dish, approximately 9x13 in size. Top the pasta and veggies with the remaining 1/3 c. Parmesan cheese, and dot the top with a bit of butter (or skip this if you're cutting back on fat, like me!) Bake until golden-topped and heated through, approximately 25 minutes. Enjoy!

I don't have a picture of the Veggie-Loaf, but I highly recommend it as well. A couple of comments...I did not make the checca sauce from scratch. I used about a cup of Basil/Oregano canned tomatoes, and it came out great. The fresh basil really stands out in this dish, so if you love basil, you will go nuts for this veggie-loaf. In fact, I would rename this dish "Basil-icious Veggie-Loaf"! Oh, and it's naturally gluten-free (watch your broth, but it's easy to find a gluten-free stock at the market). Give it a try--everyone here gave it 2 thumbs up!

To our dinner party guests: Luke, Luci, Jeremy, and Kenya -- it was a blast. Let's get together again soon. :-) Seeing old friends and sharing life together in a totally new phase is a pretty amazing blessing.

Thankful Thursday

Yes, folks. It's that time again. This will be short b/c I'm right in the middle of preparing for company...

1.) Luci is coming today!!! Luci is one of our best friends from college, and she's visiting today with her husband, Luke!!! We'll be meeting Luke for the first time, so we're pretty pumped. We're going to stop by Laurie's store, Petite Boutique, because Luci is one of the 5'4 or under people. :-)

2.) Josh is off work today -- we have him all day to ourselves!

3.) I've had some free time to paint some blank frames that we got at IKEA. I also put 5 small prints that we got on our honeymoon in Banff in a frame and hung it up in our room. We've been dragging this stuff around with us from house to house since 2001, and now they (and we) finally have a home that we're settled in. I'm thankful for the chance to hang up pictures and put down roots.

4.) Warm weather. We didn't wear coats yesterday! Tennessee winter weather keeps us on our toes. Sometimes it's in the 20s, sometimes it's in the 60s! It looks like another beautiful day out there today.

5.) Laney's cheeks. :-) They're extremely kissable, and they make me happy, happy, happy!

Well, folks, I'm off to make a delicious dinner so that it's ready to go in the oven when we get back from Petite Boutique. Have a wonderful day, everyone. :-)

With a Little Help from My Friends

Thanks to those of you who commented, emailed, or called to see how you could help to encourage me in my new resolve (see my last post). I appreciate your prayers and support more than you know! God is good to provide the right people with the right words at the right time.

I love to "pay it forward" and lend a helping hand when I can -- and today I got an opportunity to do just that! My good friend, Laurie Roe, is opening her own clothing store here in Nashville that specializes in petite clothing for women. It's called Petite Boutique, and I finally got to lay eyes on her big project for the first time today. It was awesome to see all of the things I've been reading about on her blog in real life. It's wonderful to see a friend realizing a dream.

Plus, I got 5 hours of childfree bliss -- the first of its kind in quite a while. I mindlessly moved pants, skirts, blouses, and suits from plastic hangers to wooden hangers, and guess what?! All that mindless work was quite wonderful, actually. No one asked me for juice, needed a diaper change, or whined at me. I'm telling you, adults are a breath of fresh air. :-) Plus, I got a free lunch from Moe's out of the deal. What could be better?

It was WONDERFUL to see my family after our little hiatus. It's amazing how just a short time away rejuvenates me!

And by the way, if you're petite -- and even if you're not (Laurie's carrying some awesome accessories like handbags, jewelry, shoes, etc.) -- stop by or make a special trip to Petite Boutique! It's shaping up to be such a delightfully fun store. Best wishes to you, Laurie!