Recipe Recap: The Happiest Belly's Best Recipes!

I've gotten a few requests for some of my favorite recipes and wanted to share the link to my first ever blog written when I was home on my maternity leave with Sweet Thing. The Happiest Belly was my outlet for sharing my favorite recipes, kitchen tools and cooking shortcuts. I loved writing this blog, but I ended it when I began blogging about my experiences teaching special education. Since leaving teaching to stay home with my little turkeys, the Happiest Belly came back into existence as This Life Well Loved. I wanted to continue to share my cooking adventures, but I also wanted to share my DIY, decorating and life-as-a-SAHM adventures.

Here are links to some of my favorite Happiest Belly recipes. Pardon the pictures! My photography skills are a work in progress, ha!

My Version of Bang Bang Shrimp

Homemade Twix Bars

Baked Jalapeno Poppers

I'm not a football fan (sorry, dear husband!), but I absolutely love any excuse I can find to make game day food! To me, the perfect game day food is indulgent without being stuffy: this game day favorite is cheesy, smoky, spicy, bubbly..the perfect addition to any game day feast or just on a Tuesday- that's how we roll at our house!. My mini-obsession started a few months ago with these fantastic baked poppers our family had at a little restaurant up in Chicago. My sister-in-law made an incredibly delicious version for Thanksgiving, and I have been hooked ever since. My version combines four creamy cheeses with smoky bacon. It's baked until bubbly. The mild heat of the peppers is a delicious contrast to the richness of the filling. You can play around with different cheese combinations here; my SIL added goat cheese, and they were fantastic!

I rationalized eating like fifteen of these because I baked instead of fried them.

Whoops.

Rodan+Fields Review

My childhood friend, Sara, recently became a Rodan + Fields consultant and sent me a few samples to test and review.  I have crazy sensitive skin, so I enlisted my wonderful neighbor and stellar Girl Scout cookie buyer, Scott, to try out the products. 

 Scott received both a pre-shave exfoliator and a mini-facial kit.

After testing out both products, here are his impressions:

As I read the instruction card and looked in the mirror at my dreadful winter skin, I opened the product and applied. I was a bit apprehensive at first; however, that soon subsided. Just a bit of background on my skin: I’m combination as I have some dry and a few oily places throughout. I’ve tried abrasion products before which ultimately produces an acne breakout or an adverse reaction. I’ve had no adverse reactions and my skin looks as smooth as silk this morning.

I wet my face before realizing that, with this product, doing so was unnecessary. This was definitely a brownie point since you can apply it right out of the package! As I applied the product, it had a fairly neutral spa smell which I appreciate. I gently put the product on and gave my face a good scrub for around a minute and then washed my face.

As I dried my face I immediately noticed the smoothness and that a lot of the dry “wintery” look was gone. As I moved on to the capsules I was instantly sold on this product. Upon opening the capsule and applying it, your skin is instantly smoother than silk.

The final step is a capsule for your lips. I was a bit skeptical but I woke this morning and my lips were smooth and all the dry winter chapping was gone! Definitely an easy and quick product with tremendous results!

I'm super excited by Scott's experience! I get "good neighbor" points with him, Sara gets a customer, and R+F gets some great feedback! 

Everybody wins!

For more information on how to snag these products at 10% off with free shipping, contact Sara at: saralapidus@gmail.com

You can order directly from Sara by visiting www.slapidus.myrandf.com.

Mention This Life Well Loved, and Sara will send you a free gift with your order!

Happy Weekend :)

Anniversary Potatoes

Yesterday we celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary with a quiet family dinner at home followed by a surprise dessert. On Saturday we'll head out for a grownups only anniversary date, but we were super excited to celebrate at home with our sweet girls. They were so excited to have an anniversary dinner - let's face it, our 9 years have been made incredibly blessed by these two yahoos, so dinner alone would feel incomplete. 

The Catfish and I got busy making barbecue ribs, a yummy salad, cheddar biscuits and some fancy hasselback potatoes. The Catfish has determined that these are "anniversary potatoes", and she is totally right! They are super easy to make but have such a great 'wow' factor. Perfect for a special dinner of any kind. 

The Perfect Post-Holiday Appetizer Spread and a Marinated Mozzarella Recipe!

I'm excited to share some super simple, colorful and (mostly) healthy appetizers I served over the holidays that are perfect for any post-holiday get-together.

Since our whole family was in town visiting from Chicago over Christmas, I decided to make a few appetizers for everyone to snack on until our big evening meal was ready. I went with an Italian theme because it's well within my comfort zone and each appetizer pairs beautifully with a good glass of wine!

I decided on serving a variety of veggies with a pesto dip:

along with super simple grilled vegetables dressed with a garlicky balsamic vinaigrette: 

and a colorful antipasti tray:

Winter Decor Update and a Super Simple DIY!

The holiday season has officially come to a close.

 Although I'm sad to see it go, I'm excited to decorate for Winter, especially since it's our first Winter season in our new house. 

I tried to re-purpose anything I could from the Christmas season and found that there were quite a few things I had out for the holidays that would also work until Spring makes her entrance. 

Here's how I reworked my kitchen decor:

I added a bud vase with a white faux hydrangea leftover from a different project. I changed out the wine bottle holding the gold branches from dark green to silver (thank you, my good friend, spray paint!). I emptied the hurricane vase that previously held ornaments and added a little fake snow and a boring white candle that I spray painted gold (see below for instructions on this project). I placed the bud case and sweet little cupcake block on a white tray embossed with snowflakes. 

Total cost: $0

Cocktail Time: Raspberry-Infused Champagne!

The worst blogger ever is back after a bit of a hiatus- to make it up to you, I'm sharing my favorite cocktail from the holidays! Next week once we're back to our old routine, I'll share a holiday recap with a few little recipes that would be great for entertaining over the winter months.

This cocktail was is served at Nordstrom's annual holiday party and has a pretty entertaining story behind it. After drinking it at last year's party, my friend, T., and I were obsessed to the point that I hounded one of the shoe salesmen for the recipe months later. This is how great Nordstrom customer service is: the poor guy took my email, did some recon and actually emailed me the exact recipe four months after the party!

I discovered Gruet Brut at the recommendation of a stranger with beautiful accessories at Jungle Jim's grocery store the other day only to find later that this particular bottle was written up as a best buy by Food and Wine! At $15.99/bottle, you can't go wrong! 

Highly recommend!

 So without further ado, here it is: 

Raspberry-Infused Champagne

Ingredients: 

Gruet Brut

Frozen raspberries

Raspberry simple syrup