VACATION!

Hubby is on vacation for 2 WEEKS!!! YEAH!

As a special 'Happy Vacation!' breakfast I made brown sugar french toast with mixed berry compote and homemade whipped cream. Can I say YUMM-O! Hubby needs to be on vacation all the time!

The plan today was to throw a Signature Family Recipe mix in the crock pot and head out for the day. A while back I posted a craft project that Maddie and I did called Jumping Beans, well as it happens we used Peak brand beans and they were photographed as one of our materials. Funny enough a Sales and Marketing Coordinator for Peak brand happened upon my blog that day. I was then contacted about trying some of their products (super cool!). Aime so graciously sent me a box with three different Signature Family Recipe Mixes and I chose the Charlotte from Louisiana's Cajun Red Bean Entree for tonight's dinner.

The beans inside the pouch

I loved the fact that I could switch it up a bit and turn it into Gumbo. When we lived in Washington hubby and I fell in love with our local brewery; Silver City Restaurant and Brewery in Silverdale Washington. Among the MANY loves on the menu including beer battered halibut and chips, the Big Daddy burger and potstickers was my absolute favorite Gumbo. Of course we can't find anything like it here on the East coast (likewise we couldn't find good pizza on the west, go figure). So I crossed my fingers as I tossed everything into the crock pot this morning........

Ten hours later this was dinner!

The verdict:
Maddie says (with a mouthful) ~ Yummy momma!
Brandon says ~ Good but not very spicy. Would be good with some cornbread.
Amanda (me!) says ~ Pretty tasty and super easy to throw together.

Maddie asked that we find some farm animals today so we went on a road trip and ended up at Alice Acres Farm/Cows and Cones. Unfortunately we were there before they started selling ice cream so we will have to head back again soon! Nonetheless Maddie enjoyed visiting with the chickens, cows and sheep. I have to say my favorite part of the day was Maddie telling me "mom the sheep have no clothes! I see sheep bums!" :)


Let me just make my day a bit busier with a round of house cleaning (thanks hubby for doing a lot of it!) and making a birthday cake for Brandon's birthday....which is Monday (he is going to be 30 shhhhh!).

I whipped up a chocolate fudge cake with peanut butter mousse filling and chocolate buttercream frosting. Heavenly!


A super big Thank You! to Melody25 at Cakecentral.com for her awesome peanut butter mousse filling. I did change it up a bit and add some chopped peanut butter cups! I didn't end up using all of the mousse in the cake so we may have been sneaking in the fridge afternoon to steal bites of the leftovers!

Since hubby is on vacation I probably will be a bit late on postings for the next two weeks, but I promise great pictures when we get back from Sesame Street Place!