Thanksgiving 2024

2024, Family, Holidays, Michigan, Troy

Days off together are uncommon and special, so Donald and I like to make the most of them when we can. This Thanksgiving day, Donald woke up before me and put on the America’s Thanksgiving Parade (from Detroit). I had mentioned that watching the parade(s) in the morning was a childhood tradition (and to this day, Mom still loves to watch the parade as she gets the Thanksgiving meal started).

We were running low on groceries (I need to grocery shop more routinely), but Donald was still able to make us coffee and a cheese omelet for breakfast.

We had a slow, peaceful morning watching the parade. It was fairly bright outside with some blue skies peeking through, so we opened the door to be able to enjoy the view from the couch. Even just our storm door was pretty good at keeping the cold out, which we were thankful for since it was in the upper 30s for a high today.

Stuffed animals looking out the front door

We got ready and headed over to Mom & Dad’s for Thanksgiving dinner. We got to nibble on crackers and cheese spread as an appetizer — I really love the Chicken in a Biscuit crackers with the sharp cheddar spread! While we were hanging out, we upgraded Dad to YouTube Premium, so he wouldn’t have to deal with ads any more. I think it was the best present we could have gotten him!

Dinner was ready just after 4 pm. It was a pretty typical Thanksgiving meal for us: roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole (although this year, the topping was a bit different – a pecan praline), low-carb Hawaiian rolls, asparagus, cranberry sauce, deviled eggs, and stuffing.

After dinner, Mom washed the dishes and then read a book in the living room, Dad and Donald watched some YouTube videos of people playing guitar. A bit later, Clint, Donald and I played a round of Marvelous Heroes.

We left after midnight to head home, having filled our bellies and hearts with goodness. We are thankful for a lot of things, to be sure, but we are most thankful for the people in our lives. We hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving with friends and family as well!

Love, Jenn & Donald

Front Storm Door Installed!

2024, Exciting Adventures of the Everyday, Home Improvement, Michigan, Troy

The view we have all been waiting for! Our finished street view! We painted our house yellow earlier in the summer/fall and on Thursday the security door was installed. It’s a quite sturdy steel door, painted blue on the exterior and white on the interior. We also installed a new storm door with full view glass (so you can see the pretty deep blue color of the door more), and a built-in retractable screen. On those rare perfect spring/fall days where it’s warm out, but not hot enough to have the AC running, we would like to be able to open the house up to a nice cross breeze and some fresh air.

I think…. this means that we are finally ready for winter?! Pretty close to it! Donald is still feeling a bit under the weather, so once he has recovered from his cold, I’ll ask him to bring in the Christmas decorations from the garage and we will start decorating the house for the holidays!

How early do you start decorating? What are some of your favorite holiday traditions?

Love, Jenn & Donald

New Front Door!

2024, Exciting Adventures of the Everyday, Home Improvement, Michigan, Troy

We had our first snow of the season today! It wasn’t too much, and it didn’t last very long, but I’m quite surprised that it waited until the third week in November! We’ve had a very mild autumn so far. This is what it looked like – just a dusting on top of the car.

Today, we had our front security door installed! It was a little bit chilly outside to have a gaping hole in the house, but we stayed in our offices and worked while Phil installed the door, and the rooms stayed fairly warm.

At this point, the door was held in place with these temporary pieces of wood, but it was starting to give us an idea of what the finished door would look like – so exciting!

And… HERE IT IS! There’s still some finishing touches left to be done (trimming off the foam that you can see on the bottom after it has set a bit), but it looks great! We’re very happy with the lever and lockset that we have selected as well! I didn’t think that the door would make that much of a difference to the feel of the living room, but I think that it looks like a whole new space! Donald is already thinking about other things we can do to update and decorate the room! (New ceiling fan? Crown moulding?)

It was a bit too dark outside once everything was finished (Grrr, Daylight Savings Time changes!), so I’ll take photos once it’s light outside again. Let us know what you think of the new door!

Love, Jenn & Donald!

Jenn and Donald’s Chicken Pot Pie Stew Over Rice

2024, Adventures in Cooking

This wasn’t a planned meal, but we hadn’t made our grocery list yet for the week and were winging it with what we had on hand. What we ended up with was basically a chicken pot pie (minus the pie part) and served it over some jasmine rice.

Ingredients

  • 4 Tbsp. butter – we like KerryGold
  • 1 c. carrots, diced – I didn’t measure them, just grabbed a bunch of baby carrots until I was tired of dicing them
  • 3-7 cloves of garlic, minced – garlic is a variable, add as much as you like
  • 3 chicken breasts, grilled then diced into small pieces – you can make the chicken however you want, but it was nice out and Donald likes to grill
  • 1/4 c. flour
  • 4 c. chicken broth – you might be able to use a cup less, but we were waiting on the rice to finish cooking and kept adding more and cooking it down
  • 1/2 tsp. thyme – I mean, I didn’t actually measure it
  • 1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes – again, imprecise addition, no sense in dirtying another measuring spoon
  • Salt and pepper to taste – I use less salt because I don’t use the low-sodium chicken broth
  • 1/2 to 3/4 c. heavy cream – we used heavy cream in a recipe earlier in the week, so I just added whatever was leftover

Directions

  1. Send your significant other outside to grill up the chicken breasts. Donald had decided to marinate them in Italian salad dressing for about 1/2 hour prior to grilling. While this is happening, prep the other ingredients. Donald also measured out the flour and put all the other ingredients on the kitchen counter.
  2. Set up a cutting board, knife, prep bowl, paper towel, and your iPhone at the table. Watch an enjoyable TV show or YouTube video while dicing the carrots and mincing the garlic. Toss them together into a prep bowl as you go.
  3. In a large pot (hopefully, one with good handles, as mine does not and I used a potholder to hold it in place, but the potholder was too big and I ended up singeing it), melt the butter, then add the carrots and garlic. Stir for a few minutes.
  4. Add the diced chicken, then sprinkle the flour and mix until everything has a nice coating. Cook for a couple minutes, then add the chicken broth (we reserved some, but ended up adding in the full 4 cups as we went). Add in the thyme, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper, then stir occasionally as the sauce thickens.
  5. While the stew cooks, make the rice. Donald used our rice cooker. It took longer than the stew, so I kept adding broth to the stew and cooking it down as we waited. It gave the carrots more time to soften, so it all worked out.
  6. Once the rice is done (and you don’t have to keep cooking down the stew), add the heavy cream to the stew and stir. Let it thicken for a couple minutes, then take it off the heat.
  7. Serve the stew over the rice and enjoy! We are currently watching episodes of “How I Met Your Mother” as our dinnertime entertainment.