Last Minute DIY Christmas Gift Idea| Orange- Rose Petal Cuonut Sugar Scrub  

Merry Christmas friends!!! 

How is everyone doing? Hopefully y’all are not stress trying to find gifts for your love ones. I wanted to come on here and give y’all a quick gift idea that you can make in your kitchen. There are so many different ways you can make sugar scrubs, so don’t worry if you don’t have the same ingredients that I used. Check out my ‘Home Spa’ board on Pinterst for more easy DIY spa ideas that you can make in your kitchen.  
To make the Orange – Rose Petal Cuonut Sugar Scrub that I made, used the ingredients listed below. I purchased all the materials for my sugar scrubs at World Market, except for the mason jars and sugar. I had enough ingredients to make eight 8oz jars. Which is perfect when you have unexpected guests coming in town and need to pull a last minute gift together.

  • 2 packs of dried crushed rose petals ($1.99 each)
  • 1/2 pack of dried crushed orange peels ($1.99)
  • 1 jar of coconut oil (around $4)
  • 4 cups of sugar  
  • *I got a 12 pack of  8oz mason jars from Walmart

Now all you have to do is mix all the ingredients together and scoop them into the mason jars. 

All you have to do now is put them in cute little Christmas bags or simply place bows on top. 

I hope y’all have a very Merry Christmas!

Xo,

Marion 

Perfecting my Tomato Veggie & Bean Soup Recipe

Hey y’all!

I hope y’all had a fabulous weekend and got to watch some Sunday night football. Tonight I want to share with y’all my Tomato Veggie Bean Soup recipe adventures that I’ve been working on for awhile. I really enjoy creamy tomato soup and have tried to make this soup several times. I love making this soup for our social gatherings that we have with our neighbors and friends on cold rainy days. 

This soup is a close 2nd to my #1 soup that I made Friday night in the crock pot.

Even though this soup turned out really good I think it would been better if it cook longer on low heat. My flavors were definitely on point and I received compliments on the soup, however I think the flavors would have blended better by cooking longer.

@marionlovenotes These are the seasons I like to use on my french bread including butter

@marionlovenotes The bread is ready to be toasted!
@marionlovenotes I toasted French garlic bread to go along with the soup.
@marionlovenotes A yummy red wine pairs lovely with my soup. I really enjoy these social gatherings that we have with neighbors and friends.

I really enjoy creamy tomato soup and have tried to make this soup seveal times before using different techniques. However Ken enjoys more of a heartier soup with beans and chucks of veggies. 
So I have been working on a soup that has that creamy tomato flavor that I love with the chucks of veggies and beans that Ken loves. I’m so excited to finally say I nailed it! OMG I made an amazing soup Friday night in my new crock pot that I scored for $9.90 at Walmart Thanksgiving night. If you follow me on Instagram @marionlovenotes and watch my Insta-stories you are already familiar with this.  

@marionlovenotes I just finish putting all of the ingredients in the crock pot and its starting to cook now on low.

What I love about this recipe is that, most of the ingredients are everyday food staples that most southerns already have in their pantry. I also love that you can pretty much use whatever vegetables that you have on hand. 

@marionlovenotes Oh how I wish this was a scratch and sniff blog post so you can smell this

Now what made this recipe the best soup that I’ve ever made? 
1.) Cooking the soup on high for 30 minutes to 1 hour and then cooking it on low for at least 7 hours in the crock pot

2.) Cooking sausage with the onions in olive oil in a firing pan until brown

@marionlovenotes This is the sausage I use, you can use a spicier flavor if you want

3.) Using the the same oil that the sausage and onions was cooked with to help season the soup
4.) Practice

Ingredients:

*This recipe will serve up to 4 people but can be double or triple if needed. You can also used vegetable broth instead of beef and omit the sausage if you are vegetarian*

Olive oil 

Onion (2 medium size)

Rosemary (2 clippings)

Diced tomatoes  (16 oz. can)

Celery 

Carrots  

Beef Broth / bouillon cubes

Garlic (2 tablespoons)

Parsley 

Oregano

Basil

Bay leaves (3 small or 2 large)

Salt

Black Pepper 

Red Pepper Flakes 

Habanero Peppers (2)

Paprika 

Dried Beans Soup mix (1 cup)

Cilantro (1/2 cup)

Water (if you don’t use liquid broth)

Cooking Instructions:

  1. Soak dried beans according to instructions on the package bag in water. This is an important step that cannot be skipped. 
  2. Line crock pot with liner and or use non sticking spray . 
  3. Cook onions and sausage with oil in the frying pan.
  4. While sausage and onions are cooking, slice veggies up and dump them into the crock pot. 
  5. Drain soaked beans and dump them into the crock pot 
  6. You can also dump the can tomatoes in the crock pot too as well. 
  7. By this point the sausage and onions should be ready to be dump into the crock pot. Don’t forget to dump the seasoned oil into the soup mixture. 
  8. You can also add the rest of the spices & herbs in the crock pot. 
  9. At this point you want to add your bouillon cubes or broth. If you added the cubes instead of the broth you may have to add a couple cups of water. You just want enough water to cover the mixture.
  10. I like to put the crock pot on high for about 30min to a hour then on low for at least 7 hours. This would be perfect to start in the morning before work or let it cook over night. If you don’t have a crock pot you can do this in a Dutch oven just keep an close eye on it. 
  11. Then taste the goodness!

I didn’t plan on sharing this recipe at first so I don’t have measurements for everything. I mostly eyeball it any way, and season to my liking. I hope you enjoy this recipe and let me know if you give it a try.

Xoxo,

Marion 

2016 Thanksgiving Recaps 

Good morning y’all!!! 

I been so busy lately, I haven’t had time to come on here and write a blog post in almost a month. 

How was y’all thanksgiving?? …..Did y’all host dinner?…..What did y’all  cook? 

I had the pleasure of hosting Thanksgiving dinner in our home this year. Thankfully Ken’s mom and sister helped me out with cooking the dinner. Unfortunately, I can get very stress out when trying to cook for a large crowd.  I always worry about how the food tastes, will I get everything cook on time, will my guest even show up, and the list goes on and on. However all the food turned out great and we had a house full of people. I did  find it helpful to write out a detail grocery list and menu. Having those written out helped us stay on task. We are traditional thanksgiving eating people here so we like to cook all of the standard thanksgiving foods. I’ll leave my menu below just in case y’all are interested ;

Baked Turkey

Smoked Ham

Crock pot Chicken 

Collard Greens

Cabbage 

Black Eyed Peas

Sweet Potato Casserole

Devil Eggs

Macaroni & Cheese

Cranberry Sauce

Dressing

Rolls/ Cornbread

Banana Cheesecake

Peacon pie

Sweet Potato pie

Lemon/cucumber/ mint water 

Cranberry Apple Sangria 

Eggnog 

Wow I still can’t believe we pulled it off and had dinner ready to be serve by 5:30pm!

I believe the table turned out looking very lovely. I tried to keep it simple but festive at the same time . 

I was so busy the day of our dinner I forgot to take a lot of pictures, however I have a few to show y’all. 

The crock pot chicken turned out really tasty. I put foil balls underneath it to keep it from just sitting in the  juices. It also helped it brown the chicken all the way around and not just the top.

We had our dinner on Saturday sense we both worked during the week  and it just made it easier to go Thursday night and black Friday shopping. Yes I’m the crazy lady in the stores. This year I had Ken’s dad & nephew-n-law to be my body guards so that helped me out a lot. 

Well that’s my Thanksgiving recap! I’m in full Christmas mode. Actually if I’m being honest I been in Christmas mode for the longest time. I put up a 6ft tree that I got from the dollar store upstairs in the hallway about five weeks ago.  

It’s super cute and I love having  a little bit of Christmas as I walk upstairs . I hope y’all have a great weekend and I can’t wait to come back to show  y’all  my 2016 Christmas house tour!

XO,

Marion