Chicken Tortilla Soup

Anyone besides me always grab a rotisserie chicken when they shop at Costco or Sam's Club, regardless if you have plans to eat it for dinner that night?  Well, if you're like me and you happen to have a chicken in the fridge, this soup is the perfect recipe to try!  It tastes amazing and is really simple.  And, something about it just feels like fall comfort food.  Let me know if you give it a try!

(The bit of O.C.D. in me wants to point out that I should have wiped the inside of the bowl.  Unfortunately, I didn't notice that when I took the pictures, so please ignore the messy bowl!)

Ingredients:
3 tbs butter
1 diced onion
2 cloves of minced garlic
3 tbs flour
6 cups of chicken broth
3/4 cup of half & half
3 tbs taco seasoning
1 cup of salsa (mild or spicy depending on your spice preference, I used mild)
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can of kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup of frozen corn (or substitute one can of drained corn)
1 rotisserie chicken, meat removed from bones and skin (or you could use a couple of cooked chicken breasts
for garnish- sour cream, shredded cheese, olives, cilantro, corn chips (or anything else you like)

Directions:
In a large heavy bottomed skillet over medium heat melt butter.  Add onions and garlic.  When soft, about 5 minutes, add three table spoons of flour and stir well until a thick paste is formed.  Cook for a minute or two, then slowly add the broth.  Stir constantly so lumps don't form.  Add the half & half, salsa and taco seasoning.  Stir until smooth and well combined.  Add the tomatoes, beans, corn and chicken and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to a low simmer, cover and cook for about 15 minutes. Serve with your favorite garnishes (suggestions above).

Serves 6-8

Sheet Pan Dinner

Sheet pan dinners are pretty popular, and I completely understand why.  Quarantine life is pretty much cook, eat, clean, repeat around here and  getting a healthy fast dinner on the table is pretty much a daily struggle right now.  Here's a simple supper that comes together quickly and has minimal clean up, which is pretty much my love language right now.  Plus, this is simply a guide, feel free to switch up the protein, veggies and even potato options.  Sweet potatoes would be delicious!  Enjoy!

Preheat oven 425 degrees.

Have 1-2 large sheet pans ready and sprayed with non-stick cooking spray.

In a large bowl chop 8 medium sized red potatoes into 1-2" chunks.  If using sweet potatoes you probably just need 2 large ones. 

Add chopped veggies of your choice, example, onions, peppers, asparagus, brussels sprouts, carrots...  (chop roughly the same size as potatoes so everything cooks evenly)

Add protein of choice.  I prefer already cooked sausage.  Chicken apple, turkey kielbasa, garlic chicken, anything along those lines, chopped in to similar size pieces to the potatoes.

Toss in olive oil, granulated garlic, salt and pepper.  (Or spice blend of choice.)

Bake for 10-15 minutes.  If adding broccolini or tender veggies, wait until now to add them, then continue to cook another 10-15 minutes.  Recipe can be found on Instagram highlights @lilyseclaires.

Dining Room Reveal

I want to start off this post with a disclaimer.  I am in no way advising you to go out and buy new furniture that you cannot afford.  This is not a sponsored post.  We were in no way endorsed given or paid for any of the items in this room.  That being said, we have been saving for years and years to get to this point in our lives.  We finally purchased our dream fixer-upper and we've already put a ton of elbow grease and hard work into this property.  One of the things we choose to do was make a few changes to the furniture in our new house.  As you can imagine, things that once worked in our old house, just didn't fit the space in our new house.  Luckily, I've gotten pretty proficient at posting items on the Facebook Marketplace, and have been able to sell nearly everything that didn't work in our new house.  This gave me a good budget for the new home and the items we wanted to buy.  Plus, we had saved up a little for a few special items as well.  Today I'm talking about my dining room, the table and chairs we choose and how I went about creating the look for this space.

First, because the living room and dining room share the same chimney and are back to back, I decided to keep the white paint going, and paint out the brick on the dining side as well.  I also had my painters continue painting the wood paneling and stain the beams the same color as the living room.  I only had one wall that my china hutch, a gifted piece I painted years ago, would fit, so that decision was pretty easy to make.  The window already had the plantation style shutters, and I opted not to do drapes in any of the main rooms in the house because I really wanted a bright and simple feel.  I did not place a rug under the dining table, but I may decide to change my mind about that in the future.  My thought was, little kids spill and drop stuff all the time, so it would be easier to clean up without it.  Although, I did notice that Target had some great options for indoor/outdoor rugs that can be hosed right off and look like jute, which I find nearly impossible to clean.

The table I had was only a five foot long table.  It fit perfect in our old house, because I had it built for that room.  In our new house, we had so much more space, and I plan do do more entertaining, so I really wanted to be able to seat more people.  The table I ended up buying was from Pier One, abd was a bit costly.  But, our local store is closing, so they had a major sale.  I still waited (and called almost every day to see if it had been marked down more) for a few weeks and finally got lucky last weekend with and additional 25% off the already reduced price.  It was still expensive though, and my husband and I talked about it first before making the purchase.  I was hopeful that I would be able to sell our other table for almost as much as I was paying for the new one.  I ended up getting the matching chairs and bench as well, although only one chair and the bench were in stock and on the super sale.  I did list the other table set, and yesterday it sold for $600, which ended up making our new dining set a great deal and very affordable for us!

For now, I styled the table with my faux winter arrangement, some books, candles and some lemons from our tree out back.  There's a trade off here, friends.  Buying all new linens to go on my pretty new table would have been fun, but using things I already had around the house saved me money, and for a gal who likes a bargain, that's a win-win in my book.

Texas

Yesterday I saw a story on Joanna Gaines' instagram account about her spring installation at her store Magnolia in Waco, Texas.  I started thinking about how cool my trip there was and what I loved and would like to go back and see again.  And, it got me thinking, I don't think I ever shared pictures of my trip with y'all!  (Bringing the Texas here with a y'all, y'all...) Anyway, back to the point, I'm finally posting some of my favorite and most inspirational photos from my trip last spring of the Silos and Magnolia properties on today's post.  I also think I'm going to work on a post of what my recommendations are for things to visit if you've got a trip planned.  It was a great place to go a long girls weekend/getaway!

Living Room Reveal

Good morning!  I'm starting my Monday off with a blog post about the reveal of our newly made over living room.  I shared on my last post our big news about moving and showed some great before shots of the two rooms we've made the most changes in so far, the living room and the dining room.  Since the dining room is still a work in progress (just ordered new furniture) I am going to show some after shots of the living room and try to post a full source list at the end.  Since a picture says a 1000 words, we'll just start there!

So, the first thing we did... was hire a painter, who actually turned out to be an amazing all round handyman... but, back to painting.  We got the keys to our house on December 10th, which left us 14 days until Christmas, and 4 days until we actually had to physically move from the old house to the new.  Not a lot of time, and look at that dark paneling.  Everywhere.  There was no way I could take on a project of this magnitude without help.

I had been looking at paint samples and checking out all of the paint may favorite bloggers have used, and I decided to go in a little different direction.  A lot of folks have used Pure White or Cloud White, or Alabaster.  I was drawn to Chantilly Lace by Benjamin Moore, but my painter uses Sherwin Williams paint so they color matched it with the BM paint swatch.  I am so happy I went with this white!  It looks amazing without being too yellow and it also doesn't feel cold at all with the darker stained beams and the flooring.

We decided just to go for it and had Enrique paint the walls, fireplace and the ceiling in between the beams.  We also decided to have the beams stained a darker color, and Enrique started to get my style and stained the mantle as well.  It turned out beautiful, but it was a ton of work.  It took three painters 10 coats of primer and about 5 more coats of paint to get it looking good.  We did a satin finish on the walls and fireplace and semi-gloss on the trim.  Of course, as soon as the paint was finished we realized putting black switch plates and outlet covers on these walls wasn't going to work.  So, Enrique also changed out all the electric for clean white.  We had to spray paint the vents because they were funny sizes and we couldn't find new replacements. 

The transformation of the fireplace was pretty amazing.  Before there was an awful huge cast iron and electric insert.  It took three men to remove it.  The paint actually looks a bit different on the brick than the rest of the room because the brick was so porous and absorbed the paint so much.  It looks a bit like a distressed German schmear, which was something I remember Chip Gains trying on Fixer Upper a few years ago.  The end result though gave me heart eye emojis!! 

I decided to go for it and embrace the white and ordered the IKEA Farlov section with right sofa.  It is slipcovered and I can already attest to the fact that it washed well!  Best advice I can give with a white sofa (if you are OCD like me) is buy two slipcovers right off the bat.  That way if one cushion gets dirty, you can strip it and replace it right away instead of waiting for it to wash and dry.

We decided to have the TV mounted on the brick with an angled mount so everyone in the room can see it.  We watch a lot of TV and that was important to me.  I have a collection of art and a mirror that I layered on the mantle, but didn't want to clutter it up with too much stuff, so it's pretty simple. I used the Ikea cabinet I had in our old house to hold a few books, my camera supplies and a couple collectibles I like to look at every day.  That pretty much sums up the space.  I'll try to do a source list below, but really the star of the room is those dreamy beams, and the thing that made the biggest impact was a can or 10 of white paint.  Be sure to follow along with me @lilyseclaires on Instagram to see all the behind the scene changes as we update this entire 1961 Ranch House!




Sources: sofa- ikea, mantle mirror- hobby lobby, art- target & hobby lobby, wall mirror-target, glass cabinet- ikea, throw pillows- home goods, lamps- target, candle sticks- tj maxx, coffee table- antique store, rug- sam's club.

New Year, New Home

Happy New Year friends!

I've been working on this blog post for about a week now, and I'm finally finishing it up today.  Having the kids home during Christmas break was wonderful, but it didn't leave a lot of free time for writing.  I'm making it my New Year's goal to get back to blogging at least once a week.  And in my first blog post of the year I have some big news to share!  We moved!!  I've been wanting to share this news for a while, but honestly, there were several days when I just didn't think it was going to happen.  Our lender and our mortgage broker dropped the ball several times, the holidays had multiple people on vacation that were necessary to complete this process, there were issues with the closing documents... You name it, it happened.  But, it did HAPPEN!  I can't wait to share it all with you because, (surprise, surprise) it's a Fixer Upper!!  I know, you probably saw that coming.  But I want to start today's post with some great before pictures of the living room and dining room.

As you can see, it really needed some love!  I can't wait to show you what we've accomplished so far, but for now, I want to walk you through what drew me to this home.  The beams!  Aren't they amazing?  They give this space so much character.  But, the dark wood, on wood, on wood, was just too much for me, so we made some pretty huge changes.  The fireplace in the living room also got a pretty big facelift.  And can we talk about that chandelier?  I couldn't even give it away!  I'm telling you, big, big changes happened and I can't wait to share them all with you! 

Want a sneak peek and more before photos?  Check them out over on Instagram @lilyseclaires or  Lily's E'Claires on Facebook.

It's All About The Sides

It really is, isn't it?  I mean sure, turkey is delicious.  But, without the sides, it's just not Thanksgiving!  And mashed potatoes and stuffing are great, but if you're anything like my family, you've got to have something green in there too.  These Brussels Sprouts are just the thing and so simple to make!  You don't even need a recipe!

Eat up!