Easter Décor

Happy Easter Weekend, everyone! Here in Michigan, we have been greeted with buckets of sunshine and increasingly (finally!) warmer temperatures (50's--yeah!) for our Easter weekend. The weatherman is predicting rain for Easter day, but shhhh, we won't speak such ugly things! :)

It's also no secret that between work, grad school and the bajillion extracurriculars I have going on, I've been extremely short on time lately. And, thanks to St. Patrick's Day and Easter falling so close together on the calendar this year, I was left with nearly no time to decorate for Easter. Sorry, I just can't decorate for a holiday if it means plowing over another holiday (St. Patrick's Day). Especially since my Grandmother is 100% Irish! 

I went straight to my favorite shops to peruse this year's Easter decorations. Surprisingly, I didn't find things I liked at Pier 1. I love Pier 1, but every once in awhile, they "go left" with their decorations and they end up being a little too quirky for my taste.   (I still love you, Pier 1!)

This year, I found the most adorable items at Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma.

Every once in awhile, I get "cutesy" things because, well, I can't resist. I wonder who will be the recipient of this adorable little guy perched atop a wine bottle? Hmm....

I loved the contrast of the twine (rough,rustic) with the elegance and glam of these sparkly Easter eggs.

 I liked the contrast so much that I mimicked it with these mercury easter eggs by stringing them with twine I had at home.

I hung all the eggs from our dining room table tree. (Love that tree! One of my smartest purchases!)

Here's our wreath! I bought this wreath from Pier 1 last Easter. I love it because after Easter, you can keep it up throughout spring.

Again, here is another adorable and "cutesy" purchase. 

 I picked up some beautiful, long lasting flowers from our local grocerer...

And placed them inside a vase that I placed inside an Easter basket. This Easter basket has zero calorie content! ;-)

Next to the dining room table tree, I placed a box of these delicious Parisian easter-colored, candy-coated almonds. DELICIOUS!

And of course, no Easter would be right or complete without these delicious, addictive Cadbury eggs. I placed these near the Easter basket of flowers.

I hope you all have a wonderful Easter!!

Cheers,
Samara

Friday Night Food Fiesta

Raise your wine glasses, friends--we have made it to Friday! Today I thought I'd share a delicious and low-fat recipe I recently made for my husband and me. It is seriously one of the easiest, quickest, most delicious recipes I've made in a good long while. (Just what you need for Friday night, after a long week of work when you probably have little-to-no energy!) And while it may still be very cold and snowy here in Michigan, spring is technically here. This recipe will help you dream of the beautiful upcoming spring and summer. Pair this dish with your favorite sangria and enjoy!!

Southwestern Fried Rice Chicken 

(Obtained from Weight Watchers' "Four Ingredient 10 Minute Recipes" magazine.)

Ingredients:

Cooking spray

2 large garlic cloves, minced

1 1/2 cups pulled cooked skinless, boneless chicken breasts*

1/2 teaspoon salt-free Southwest chipotle seasoning

2 (8.5) packages Southwest-style precooked whole-grain rice medley

1/4 cup water

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro (optional)

*I totally cheated with the cooked chicken. I picked up a cooked rotisserie chicken from my local grocer, took the skin off and used the chicken. HUGE time saver!!

Directions:

1. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray.

2. Add garlic, sauté 30 seconds. 

3. Stir in chicken and seasoning. Sauté 1 minute. 

4. Add rice and 1/4 cup water;cook, stirring constantly, 2 minutes or until thoroughly heated. 

5. Garnish with cilantro, if desired.

Yields 4 servings (serving size, 1 cup). 7 Weight Watchers points per serving!

Ready to cook?

Ingredients are ready!

Have a fabulous Friday!

  

Cheers,
Samara

Jammed St. Paddy's Day Weekend

Between overtime at work on Saturday, Finance homework for school and a work committee project, I managed to squeeze in a little fun this St. Paddy's Day Weekend.

My Aunt Macy was in town visiting from Louisville, Kentucky and nearly all the women in the family decided to do a late celebration of her birthday (which was earlier this month) at, where else? The nail salon!

 So many colors, so little time

 

We sipped champagne

And the salon owner made some of her delicious egg rolls for us to enjoy

 

Here we are! L to R: Me, My mom, Aunt Margaret, Aunt Macy, Grandma and Sister-In-Law Angie

I'm fairly certain my mom wished I'd stop having pictures taken so she could eat her egg roll--ha!

 My final hand product. What do you think, darlings? :)

 

       

Some of us were finished quicker than others, so we headed next door to Chapelure, a coffee and fine pastry shop.

This is just a small sample of the pastries they sell. Sooooo hard to decide, so we purchased an assortment of pastries and took them back to the salon to torture those still getting their nails done. (Muahahaha) OK, we really did share the pastries, but we were able to enjoy the desserts without the awkwardness of balancing our (still going) nail appointment. ;-)



After we'd been waiting for awhile, some of the ladies got restless and decided to have a hand display "fight". The one with the most nails left is the victor!

 

We had a very brief intermission before the Irish birthday dinner started!

My husband and I purchased an iTunes gift card (on the wish list!) for my Aunt and wrapped up the gift we'd picked up for her on our honeymoon last year from The Vatican--a rosary in her favorite color. (Green)

Dinner was delicious and cooked by my (very Irish) Grandmother. Corn beef and cabbage! I'm not really a beer drinker, so a few years ago when my husband and I had just started dating, he suggested this cidery beer--Strongbow--and I've had it on every St. Paddy's Day since! Add a maraschino cherry and you have a non-beer drinker's St. Patty's Day drink perfection!

   

I whipped up a quick and delicious breakfast (American, not Irish, sorry!) for me and my husband on the morning of St. Paddy's and served it on beautifully handmade green plates. (A wedding gift!)

 And, very sadly, this is what I posted to Instagram Sunday afternoon. My ACTUAL St. Paddy's Day festivities--Finance homework. Blah. Note the festive spirit on the homework, though!

  

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday! Happy St. Paddy's Day from the Morgans!

Cheers,

Samara

Saturdays and Strawberries

A couple of nights ago, I shared this picture from my Instagram account after whipping together a little treat for my me and my husband. 

I received so many "likes" on Facebook, that I decided to put it up on the blog. It's the easiest recipe ever and is extremely low fat. You need only three ingredients! 

Ingredients

1. (Spray) whip cream

2. Strawberrries* (cleaned, sliced and diced)

3. Dessert shell (shortcake)

* Feel free to substitute with another type of fruit, but strawberry is my favorite!

Take one dessert shell (one per glass) and break it up into little pieces and drop into champagne glass.

             

Next, take a spoon and press the shortcake down into the glass to allow for more room to complete your layers.

   

Take a small handful of strawberries and place them on top of the shortcake.

Spray a little whip cream. Complete a second layer--shortcake, fruit, whip cream.

Top off with a strawberry garnish and enjoy! 

Happy Saturday!!

Cheers,
Samara

Celebratory {Skinny} Coffeecake

This past weekend, I actually had an entire weekend off from work. If that wasn't reason enough to celebrate, receiving a 4.0 in my most recently completed grad school course certainly was! I decided to use this weekend of having a teensy time to myself to try out a healthy and delicious recipe I recently pinned on Pinterest--Skinny Coffeecake!

Skinny Coffeecake paired with Cafe Americano

I've been trying to slowly incorporate healthy recipes back into our household diet, and that includes (healthier) sweets. After all, healthy living should be a way of life, not intervals of punishment!

This recipe I found boasts a mere FOUR Weight Watchers points per serving. OK, that's four points for made-from-scratch, ooey goodness of coffee cake. So without further adieu, here is the recipe for Skinny Coffeecake!

Ingredients

For the cake: 
 1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2/3 cup brown sugar

2 large eggs, room temperature
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
Dash of salt
1 cup nonfat vanilla Chobani

Topping:
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1/2 cup chopped almonds

 

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8 x 8 baking dish with nonstick cooking spray. Set aside. In another bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt until mixed.

2. In a large bowl, beat the butter, applesauce, brown sugar, eggs and vanilla until creamed. Mix the Chobani into the appleasauce mixture until fully combined. Add the flour mixture and stir until fully combined. Pour 1/2 of the batter into the prepared baking dish.

3. To make the topping, mix the sugars, pumpkin pie spice and almonds together. Sprinkle 1/2 of the topping over the batter. Cover the rest of the batter and then sprinkle the remaining topping over the batter.

4. Bake cake for about 35* minutes or until golden and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

* The recipe on Pinterest called for 35 minutes. Others said it took them longer than 35 minutes. For me, I cooked this exactly 33 minutes. It was moist, but to make it so moist that I can press my fork down into it and retrieve it without issue, I'm going to cook it for just a couple of minutes less than 33. Please note, though, my oven tends to run hot, so try sticking with the 35 minutes for the first time and adjust to your taste/preference.

Nutritional information per slice:
Calories: 170.5
Fat: 4 grams
Carbohydrates: 28.03
Fiber: 2.5 grams
Protein: 5.3 grams

 

Ready to go into the oven!

Voila! All done!

Enjoy with your favorite cup of java! 

Cheers,
Samara

Luna de Miel baskets (AKA Honeymoon Baskets)

When I realized a few of the couples going on our trip to Cancun had never been on a honeymoon, I used this as the perfect excuse to do a little shopping and make some mini honeymooon baskets! ("Luna de Miel" is "Honeymoon" in Spanish!)

For those of you who have never heard of these, it's a basket of goodies for the couple to take on their honeymoon and can consist of anything you can think of that would be useful and/or fun for the couple to have while on their honeymoon. There are no limits!

Two of the three honeymoon baskets I made

 Italy Honeymooners

I'd seen the idea over the last year on a couple of other blogs I love and on Pinterest as well. I made a first attempt at these baskets when some of our friends went on their honeymoon to Italy last summer. I included all sorts of fun things I'd seen others include along with some of my own ideas. I incorporated as many Italian-themed things as I could. The couple was so appreciative and absolutely loved it. (Definitely made the time spent creating it worth it a million times over!)

Cancun  Honeymooners

Since there were THREE baskets total for this round of honeymooners, I decided to make them smaller to cut down on time and cost.

As I've said before, I'm a creative person, but not very crafty. So, these projects allow me the opportunity to practice making things like hanging flag signs!

I wanted to use as many bright, primary colors as I could find for the signs because when I think of the warm locale and the Mexican flag (red, white and green), this is what I think of! I also found red baskets that helped the colors of the flag really POP!

 Some of the supplies
 

No flight or beach vacation would be right without gossip mags!

Included in the basket:
Sunscreen
Hand sanitizer
Gossip magazines
Plane snacks
Pepto Bismol
Ibuprofen
Dramamine (Great for all those boating activities!)
Mini photo album to put pictures in afterwards
Burt's Bees lip balm
Custom water tumblers
Mini champagne bottles (not pictured here)
Hot sauce (Just for fun, was made in Mexico, and all of the guys loved hot sauce on pretty much everything!)

I ordered the water tumblers from Etsy--monograms for the ladies, first names for the guys. Each couple had matching colors, and the colors were white, red, and blue. (To keep with the bright color theme)

 

The couples loved them and I can't wait to make the next couple a basket!

All this talk of honeymoons makes me remember my own honeymoon fondly, so I thought I'd share a picture from our honeymoon in Italy.

At Trevi Fountain, ROME (Right after we threw money in the fountain!)

Happy Friday, darlings!

Cheers,
Samara