Sweet Glazed Blueberry Biscuits

With fall quickly approaching (and I say approaching even though the calendar says it's fall because I live in Florida ), I basically live in my kitchen this time of year.

There's something so cozy and comfy about having my pumpkin scented candles lit, my house dressed up with fall decor, and the smell of something yummy baking in the oven.

I think the colder months, in my house, tend to bring on food that's a little more heavy.  Which in turn, makes me a little heavier as well! :)

These blueberry biscuits are a perfect way to transition from summer to fall, in my opinion.

Breakfast for dinner happens once a week in my house and this a new favorite "side" to an already delicious meal!

Sweet Glazed Blueberry Biscuit Recipe:

For Biscuits:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
3 Tbsp. sugar
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 stick COLD unsalted butter
3/4 cup buttermilk (can use regular milk)
1 cup frozen blueberries ( can also use fresh blueberries that have been frozen overnight)
1/2 stick melted salted butter (for brushing on the top)

For Glaze:

1 cup powdered sugar
3 Tbsp. milk ( more if you need it thinner )
1/2 tsp. vanilla

Directions:

Preheat oven to 500 degrees.

Stir the glaze ingredients together ( powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla ) and make sure the sugar is completely dissolved.  Set aside.

Combine all dry biscuit ingredients (flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt) and cut in cold unsalted butter. Cut in the butter until the pieces are pea sized and pretty well mixed in.  Add in buttermilk. Stir until well combined and the dough separates from the side of the bowl.  Place the dough on a well floured surface.

Sprinkle a little extra flour over the dough and begin kneading for about 2 minutes.  Press the dough out ( you don't have to roll it) and flatten it to about 1/2" thickness.  Place blueberries over the dough.  Knead a few times and flatten the dough back out to about 1" thickness.  *note: the berries will start defrosting slightly as this point so you will see specks of blue in your dough*

Using a biscuit cutter, or a round glass, cut out biscuits.  Place them in a prepared cast iron skillet.  If you don't have one, an oven safe deep round skillet or pan that has been greased will work too.  Make sure the biscuits are touching.

Bake at 500 degrees for 10-12 minutes.  Half way through the baking time, take the biscuits out and brush the top of them with all the melted salted butter.  If any sides are showing, brush them with the butter as well.

Your biscuits are done when the tops are slightly brown and some of the berries burst.

If you need to leave them in slightly longer, make sure to watch them because they burn easily.

When you take the biscuits out of the oven, let them cool in the pan for 10 minutes.  After the ten minutes, pour your glaze over the biscuits. You can use as much or little as you'd like, depending on your taste.

Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

Easy & Delicious Baked Honey BBQ Chicken

Chicken.  It's the most versatile of all meats in my opinion.  There is nothing you can't slather over it, mix it with, or crumble it over.

We eat a ton of chicken and I'm always looking for new ways to serve it.  

This delicious and simple chicken recipe is not only sweet and savory, but it's also very easy and takes little time to prepare. 

Honey BBQ Baked Chicken

Ingredients:

12 chicken drumsticks (thawed)

1 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. black pepper

1/8 cup brown sugar

1/4 tsp. paprika

1/4 tsp. garlic powder

Sauce:

1 cup BBQ sauce (any kind will work)

1/2 cup honey

1 Tbsp. ketchup

1 tsp. worcestershire sauce

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a small bowl combine salt, pepper, brown sugar, paprika, and garlic powder to make a rub.

Trim any excess fat off of chicken legs.

Rub the mixture onto the chicken legs, coating evenly on all sides.

Place on a foil lined cookie sheet that has been sprayed with non stick spray.

In another small bowl combine all sauce ingredients.

Take half the sauce mixture and brush onto the chicken.

Cook the chicken legs in the oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

Turn chicken and brush with remaining BBQ sauce and bake an additional 25-30 minutes.

When done, chicken will be fork tender and glazed.

Enjoy!

How To White Wash Your Fireplace in 3 Easy Steps

I have to make it a habit to start my posts with an apology.  I've been such a slacker on posting lately.

We've been so busy with updating our home that it leaves me very little time to do anything else!  But I wanted to share with you our super simple update for our fireplace.

Lets start with the before:

This is what the house looked like before we had painted the trim, walls, and fixed the flooring.

When we first looked at this house, I loved the fact that it had a fireplace.  Being married for 10 years, we've never lived in a home with a fireplace.  (They're pretty rare in Florida).

I was so excited and the more we visited our home, the more I envisioned spending cold winter nights all cozied up next to it.  But the dark brick and outdated gold really didn't sit well with me.  It completely darkened up the bright room I was trying to achieve.

What are the options when updating your fireplace?  Replace or paint.
Renovating the fireplace was completely out of budget with all the other projects we had lying ahead of us.  So painting the fireplace was our only option.

I've done a lot of projects in my time, but I have never once painted brick.  Ever.

First things first.  I had to decide what kind of look I wanted.  Did I want all white brick?  Did I want a little of the brown color to show through?  I decided to white wash it.  And I'm so glad I did.

Don't get discouraged through this process.  I, at one time, really felt like I had ruined my fireplace.  But the more I worked with it and fixed any mess I had made, the more gorgeous it became.

Have a little patience with this, and have fun! It's so easy, I promise.

What You Will Need:

-White Paint, Water Based.  ( I used leftover paint from our trim )
-Water
-Container
-Painters Tape/Drop Cloth
-Rag
-Paint Brush

Directions:

Step 1: Prepare Area
1. Prep your fireplace for painting by cleaning it.  I simply vacuumed it off and wiped away any soot it had.
2.  Tape off any areas you don't want any paint on.  I taped along the walls and all around the mantle.
3.  Place a drop cloth around the floor to catch any excess drips or splatters.

Step 2: Mix Paint
In a throw-away container, mix 1 cup of white paint + 1/2 cup water
The consistency of the paint will be very thin, almost like glue.

Step 3: Paint
Using a good quality paint brush, (like a Purdy brush) brush on your paint mixture onto 2-3 bricks at a time.  Be careful around your grout.
Then pounce around the brick with your rag, dabbing quickly and then rub in the paint to get off any excess dripping paint.
The brick is very absorbent so the color will fade as time goes on.
*You will have to decide exactly how light you want the color of your fireplace to be.  Depending on the darkness of your brick as well, it can take anywhere from 2-4 coats of paint to get your desired look.  (I did 2 coats because I wanted a grey-like color).*

Note: Depending on the look you're going through, decide whether to paint the grout or not. 
I did at first (as you can see on the bottom step) and I had to go back with a grey paint and paint over it.  Painting the grout makes it look very painted and not very natural. So be careful not to get any paint onto the grout if that's not the look you want.

That's it!  It was so simple to do and the look was a dramatic change and completely transformed the feel in our living room.

Here's the after:

I also painted our mantle bright white and painted the brass as well.  We also replaced all the old brown trim surrounding the fireplace with a thin white trim.
I'll be showing you how simple all that is to change in the next post  :)

A side by side shot:

I put before and "during" because I'm still looking for the perfect accent pieces for my mantle.

Ps: Where's the best place in your opinion for home decor?

I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have about this tutorial, just leave them in a comment below!  :)

Update: Buying Our First Home and Why You Should Always Keep An Open Mind

If you follow me on Facebook then you probably know that in the beginning of March we purchased our first home!

This was one of the most exciting things for us as a family because we had always dreamed of owning our own home but everything we looked at before this just wasn't for us.  The homes were either too small, not in a very good neighborhood, or just not what we were looking for.

I have had envisions of my dream home for years, (just look at my Pinterest) but I noticed the more houses we looked at, they just didn't fit what I wanted.  The floor plans were all wrong, and it just wasn't what I had hoped for in our home.

That's when we decided to look at some older homes and try and get a fixer upper.  If there's one thing I learned in my 10 years of looking at homes, is that older homes are built WAY better than the newer homes.  When the market picked up and the housing market was booming from 2002-2006, the houses were slapped together quick to make a sale.  And you can tell.

The home that we rented for the past 5 years was built in 2006.  It was beautiful.  It was new.  But it was also starting to show that it wasn't built very well.  Cracks were appearing everywhere, things were starting to burn up, and things were falling apart.

When we first met with our realtor last year, I wanted a newer home.  The criteria that was given to my realtor was very strict and I refused to look at any home that were built before 2002.  ( I know what you're thinking, what a spoiled b****. . . . ) but living in a newer home for so long, I was sort of accustomed to living a certain way and I didn't want to go backwards.

We searched for months with no luck.  The floor plans just didn't make any sense to us.  There was so much wasted space in these houses and the bedrooms just weren't big enough.  The houses were too small and anything that was large enough to fit our family was completely out of the price range we wanted to spend.  None of these newer homes had any character.  They were all the same.  Nothing stood out to us.

The biggest part of my "Operation Dream Home" was my kitchen.  I wanted my kitchen to be a separate room.  I wanted a lot of counter space and lots of cabinets for storage.  I found nothing.

Every house had the kitchen in the middle of the house, hardly any cabinets, and barely any counter space.  Some of the houses even had hood range microwaves that were hung so low, making a huge pot of soup would have been a challenge!

The more time passed, the more discouraged I got.  I just couldn't understand why nothing met the expectations I had.  That's when my husband fed me a dose of reality and put me in check and told me we needed to start looking at a few older homes.  I was against it!  I knew the older homes would end up being disgusting, needing lots of work, and not being at all what I was looking for.

I was right!  The houses got more gross as we went along.  There were even a few times we walked in and walked right out.  And I can't forget the one time I didn't even have to go in.  One look at the outside, there was no way I was going in there without the proper protective gear on.

At this point.  I gave up.  For 6 months we looked at nothing.  Anything that was sent my way, I turned down.  I felt that our home just wasn't out there and it wasn't meant to be that we would ever own our own home.

A bad experience with trying to get a new refrigerator from our rental realtor AND a positive pregnancy test later, we decided to look one more time.  I came across this house we had seen for a few weeks but I always skipped over.

I decided to go look at it.

Our realtor was shocked.  He told me the house was worse than the pictures and that it was in pretty bad shape.  ( I guess he started to know me pretty well towards the end!)  And he was not lying.  I walked in thinking it wouldn't be so bad.  The more I walked around, the more bad things I saw.

But this time it was different.  I knew this was the home we always wanted.

Was it brand spankin' new and gorgeous?  Not at all. But I saw something in this house..

The layout was PERFECT.  I believe this home was a custom built home because in all the models of homes we've walked through over all these years, I had never seen this floor plan.

It was everything we've been searching for.

The kitchen was huge, the 4 bedrooms were gigantic,  and it had three bathrooms!

It had a Florida room the length of the house, a huge garage that my husband would live in if he could, a fenced yard, and more square footage than the house we rented.

It had triple the amount of closet space than my rental had, it was on a safe dead end street near our kids school, and the roof was only 2 months old!

And not only did it have more than enough room to fit our growing family, it had a fireplace and a bay window that I had always dreamed of!

And not to mention the price tag.  It was SO much cheaper than all these newer homes and had a million more things to offer and so much more space.

I had to look past the negative, and think about the positive.

I didn't see all the dark wood trim EVERYWHERE in the house.  I saw what I could make it.
I didn't see the holes in the wall, I knew we could fix them.
I didn't look at the horribly blue sponged wall that would eventually become my daughter's room.  I saw a gorgeous pink room fit for a princess that we could eventually make it.
I didn't even really look at the dark dungeon these people called their kitchen.  I saw my dream kitchen.

 I saw potential in this house.

There was nothing in this house that money, time, and paint couldn't fix.

When you look at older homes or even newer homes that need some work, you have to look past all the faults.  You have to envision what you could make out of this house.  And that's what we did.

We didn't look at anything as being impossible.  We looked at the house as a project.  A very VERY large project.

After inspections being done and appraisals being completed and everything else in between, everything fell into place.  The house was built so well, we faced no problems.  We knew the house would be treated as a "shell' and we would make the inside the way we wanted.

Here we are, a month and a half after our closing and we are still doing renovations.  We've gotten a lot done in a short amount of time and everyday we do a little more.  We hope that on our year anniversary of buying this home, we will have everything completed and done!

I think I've rambled on long enough but I wanted to give an update and let everyone know where we're at in this whole process.

I also wanted to give some type of hope or encouragement to families going through the whole house buying process.  It's not an easy one.  In fact, it's probably the hardest and most stressful experience you'll ever go through.

But if you keep an open mind, it can be an enjoyable process too.

Over the next few months I'm going to be sharing some of our updates we've completed, some budget friendly tutorials on how we've transformed rooms in our home, and some future projects I'd like to take on!

Keep checking in! :)

xoxo

Super Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cookie obsessed?  Perhaps I am.  I've tried so many recipes to find the perfect cookie.

But with all the recipes I've duplicated or created myself, there was always something that I didn't really like about each one.

Crunchy edges?  No thanks.
Huge chocolate chunks? Meh, not really for me.
Thin crispy cookies?  I don't think so...

I've been looking for the perfect soft and chewy cookie and this is the one!

 If you've been searching for a soft and yummy cookie that's soft on the inside and chewy on the outside, look no further my friend!  This is it.

Unlike pretty much every cookie I've ever tried, these actually become more delicious the more they sit and cool.

Usually I LOVE cookies straight out of the oven.  But these are even more fantastic as the hours go by.  Which is a good thing...because eating 10 cookies throughout the day isn't as bad as eating 10 straight out of the oven.  Right?  No? Well I gave it a shot ...

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 cups flour
• 3 tsp. cornstarch
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Cream butter, sugar, brown sugar, egg, and vanilla in a large bowl until smooth.

3. In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients (excluding chocolate chips).

4. Slowly pur flour mixture into wet mixture and stir to combine.

5. Add in chocolate chips and mix well.

6. On a greased baking sheet or parchment paper, drop a tablespoon of dough, spacing them out about 1-2 inches apart.

7. Bake for 8-10 minute.  Do not let them brown or over bake.  Center will be a little undercooked.  That's perfectly okay!

Enjoy!

Note:  When first out of the oven the edges will be a little crispy.  As they cool, they become softer. 

_________

Yield: 48 cookies

Easy Banana Bread

There's something comforting to me about banana bread.

I remember coming home from school and seeing a tupperware sitting on the kitchen counter that I knew had to either be cupcakes, rice krispie treats, or banana bread.

I actually look forward to my bananas becoming ripe just so I can make banana bread.

I got this recipe from my mother when I first got married and it's the only banana bread I'll ever make.  I've tried healthier versions, subbing out some of the butter for applesauce, or even using whole wheat flour.  While they're all better for your health, they're not better for the soul, people!

This banana bread is moist and delicious and so super simple to make.  You don't need any fancy equipment and you can pretty much just dump everything into a bowl, bake it, and you'll end up with perfect banana bread every time.

___________________

Prep Time: 10 Minutes

Cook Time: 1 Hour

Yield: 1 Loaf

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2-3 very ripe bananas
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 cups flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees and grease a 4x8inch loaf pan.

In a medium bowl, mash bananas.  Add in butter, eggs, milk, and vanilla.  Mix to combine.

Add in flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt.  Mix well.

Pour batter into prepared loaf pan.

Bake for 50-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean and the top is firm and golden brown.

Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack.

Remove banana bread from pan, slice, and serve. (It's delicious slathered with some cream cheese!)

Enjoy.

Christmas Gift Scavenger Hunt -- Includes Free Printables

Christmas time is the perfect time to create lasting memories for your family.  This year my husband and I decided to do a Christmas scavenger hunt for our kids.

Every year we buy the kids one "big" Christmas gift.  When they were younger, they were individual gifts like play kitchens,  Fisher Price tool benches, and other large gifts like those.  But the older they get, their "big" gifts aren't so big anymore.

Their big gifts now are only considered big because of the price tag.

We were blessed enough to be able to buy two "big" gifts per kid this year.  One being an Apple iPad and the other was the Wii U.

We decided to give the iPads last after all their gifts and wait about 2 hours after all the excitement faded away a little bit (and all the wrapping paper had faded away too!) to give the Wii U.

There was only one problem.  The Wii U had been hidden in the oven and it completely slipped my mind that I had cinnamon rolls that needed to be baked for Christmas breakfast.  Major mom fail.

So about an hour later we decided to do our first scavenger hunt.  And it was a HUGE success.

I thought I'd share the idea with you to give you some inspiration on creating your own fun memory.  I'll be including my printable clues for free at the end of this post.

I understand some people won't be able to exactly do the hunt as we did, but even using a few from the hunt will maybe give you come ideas to create your own.

Keep in mind that our kids are 8, 6, and 3 so for older kids these might not work.

Here's how the scavenger hunt went:

Clue 1:  This clue was wrapped in a shirt box under the tree.  It directed them to our play room.
Clue 2:  This clue directed them to the shower.
Clue 3:  This clue directed them to the dryer.
Clue 4:  This clue directed them to the garage.
Clue 5:  This clue directed them to the oven.  The gift was wrapped with a note attached.

You can rearrange the order of these clues in anyway you want or even leave out a few.

Just make sure the last clue directs them to where the gift is hidden.  You can also leave the gift unwrapped as well, but we chose to wrap ours.

We folded all the clues and placed them in envelopes that we're wrapped with wrapping paper.

Here's what the clues were:

Clue 1: Don't be puzzled and don't you fear for this is not your gift this year.  There's something special for all of you, but to find it you must follow the clues.  The clues will lead you, don't you see? Find your first clue where you play the Wii.

Clue 2:  Shampoo and soap make you squeaky clean, look inside here for your next clue to be seen.

Clue 3:  You're halfway there, I'm not telling a lie.  Go to the place where your clothes become dry.

Clue 4:  Organized people park their car in here. but ours is all junk not once inch is clear.

Clue 5:  This fun filled game we hope you're lovin, go find your next clue it's right in the _____.

Note attached to the gift:  You've reached the end, now go open it and play.  And we hope you always remember the magic of today.

_____________________________

You can download all the clues here:

Clue Sheet 1:

Clue Sheet 2:

Clue Sheet 3:

Clue Sheet 4:

*There are two clues per page, except for the first one and the last one.

 Just cut them out, place them in envelopes or boxes and you're ready to go!

_____________________________


I wish I had taken more pictures of the scavenger hunt (and had better quality pictures) but I was actually recording it on video while my husband snapped some pictures with his phone.

Judging by the excitement on their little faces, I'd say they were pretty happy with their unexpected gift.

They spent the next few hours cozy on the couch in their christmas pajamas playing together and having a blast.

They got the gift they really wanted. And those smiles and the happiness they felt was just the gift I had asked for.  We all win.