Cooking with Pinterest

I will go ahead and say that Pinterest has really changed my life, especially with cooking! Do you ever feel like you are in a rut with dinners? Meaning, I cook the same thing over and over! Now, I try to do a Pinterest recipe at least once a week. We have had some really good ones! Here is a list of our favorites!

Chicken Pesto Bake

I made this last night - Ryals and I usually are craving something easy on Sunday nights when we return from our weekend travels and it usually turns out to be spaghetti, which is bad because I can eat about two platefuls of that stuff! This was so easy and quick to put together and was DELICIOUS! I did not make the "skinny pesto" - I used a little bit of store-bought pesto and it was great. Do not skip the parmesan - that makes the meal!


***Side note - Skinny Taste is an excellent blog. I follow her blog and Pinterest boards.


Beef Tenderloin with Shallot Mustard Sauce

Soooo....I was GOING to make this, but then I found out a beef tenderloin costs about $42 at the grocery, so I bought sirloin instead (because it looked really good). BAD idea - it was not the same. The meat was really overcooked (probably my fault) and sirloin is supposedly not a great cut of meat. HOWEVER, the sauce for this dish was really good - it had a nice flavor. If you can afford beef tenderloin for a week night dinner, I would highly recommend it!

Italian Chicken

This was amazing! I made it last week and Ryals loved it. Very easy to put together as well. I think the key to this dish is using artichokes from a jar that are marinated to give it a nice flavor.

Pork Tenderloin marinated in...

This has become one of the Stone family staple meals. I have made it a lot and it never disappoints. It is expensive to buy all the marinade ingredients at first, but once you have them all you can make it over and over for very cheap. Pork is very lean, but can be tough to cook. Make sure you don't overcook it - searing it in a pan before you bake it is key to keeping the moisture in. Yummy!

Cheeseburger Wraps

I have made these twice. The first time I followed the recipe to a T and Ryals was not super crazy about them. The next time, I scaled back the minced onion and added more ketchup to the ground beef and he LOVED it. This is an easy meal to make - I served mine with a salad and baked beans.

Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole

This was REALLY good, but did not seem healthy (lots of rice, cheese and "cream of" soups). It takes a long time to cook since you have to wait on two different types of rice to finish before you add it to the casserole. I really liked it though - it serves a lot of people, so it would be good to serve for a party!

White Chicken Enchiladas with Green Chile Sour Cream Sauce

I will have to say, this is probably the holy grail of all recipes I have tried on Pinterest. Ryals said these were restaurant quality enchiladas. I have made them many times now and he always loves them! I am having some high school friends over tomorrow night and am planning on serving these! There are lots of recipes for enchiladas, but I think this one is the best!

Have you tried any of these recipes? Try them and let me know what you think!!

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The Blog is Back!

After almost a year of not posting, I am finally back! I'm not sure what has caused me to be such a slacker, perhaps getting engaged, married and moving has put a damper on my free time??? Anyways, I am going to try to be much better at documenting our new life together!

This past weekend was an anomaly because I was actually in Atlanta with no plans. Ryals went on a bachelor party for his friend Ben Lyons to the Destin/Baytown area so I was free for the weekend. My parents came down to stay with me - mom and I had plans to go to Scott's Antiques Market in search of a 6 drawer dresser for our bedroom (Ryals still has clothes in boxes - hallelujah we now have a piece of furniture to put it in). More to come on what I found in a later post - I had never been to Scott's before, so it was overwhelming how much they had!

Sunday my family left pretty early and I did not have to pick Ryals up from the airport until 6 PM. So I was pretty excited about having almost a whole day with nothing to do. I don't have a lot of spare time in general, so I never get to do anything crafty or DIY. I immediately contacted Hollie in hopes of having an art day!

The condo that Ryals and I live in is pretty industrial, with exposed ceilings and columns, and can get pretty dark at times. I have been trying my best to get more light into the space, as well as more COLOR. I have loved some of the paintings I have seen on Pinterest and Etsy. Here are some art images that I think would look great in our bedroom:

So I went to work! I have not painted since college, which meant I really had no clue what I was doing. Hollie had a huge collection of paint for me to chose from! I started by painting the whole canvas the color of her front door. Here is how we both started:

Hollie's inspiration came from a painting she saw in her boss's house. Here is her progress:

I put on a couple coats of paint and loved how easy it was to add color or just paint over it if I didn't like it!

Something is missing - I need more color???

Finally done! I did not know what I expected as the result, but I like it a lot!

I was initially planning on hanging it in our living room, but it was too loud! It will be perfect for our bedroom:

I am hoping to keep updating our bedroom and post a blog about that as well! I have been using some pretty bright colors in there - Ryals and I both agree that our current bedroom furniture and linens will become a guest room once we buy a house.

What do you think?

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