Thankful Things

It’s the month of thanks and the season of giving…so why not change up those Friday Favorites to reflect that? It’s favorite things gone thankful things. 🙂

First on the list of things I’m thankful for today…doctors who work on Thanksgiving. I went for a run yesterday and while I was running, I felt something in my eye. When I reached up to rub it away, I poked myself in the eye with my nail. It hurt in the moment, but I brushed it off pretty quickly and kept running. As the day went on, my eye got more and more red…it got more and more watery…and it got more and more painful. It felt like a burning sensation. Diagnosis: I scratched my cornea. A quick Urgent Care visit later, I had eye drops and a recommendation to take Advil to help the pain because…surprise! The eye drops don’t help the pain at all. They just keep you from getting another infection while your eye is scratched. In any case, I am super thankful for that doctor who spent their Thanksgiving at work and I am super thankful for my family who put up with my cranky mood for a few hours yesterday afternoon. 😉

I am thankful for artists who make albums with songs that I love so much that I don’t skip any of them. A few are Florence + the Machine and Lana del Rey. I’ve always liked Adele, but she went right back to the top of my “LOVE” list when her album came out this past week. I bought the extended version at Target so I could hear the 3 extra songs (duh) and I have basically played it on a loop ever since I purchased it. On Monday, I was listening to it on my phone during my planning period at school and I forgot to turn it off before my students returned. While I was teaching, they were bouncing off the walls, but I could still hear someone whispering no matter how I redirected them. I finally got annoyed enough to say, “WHO is whispering?! PLEASE STOP!” And someone sitting on the carpet near my desk was like, “Miss McGraw…it’s not us…it’s your phone.” Hahaha #Adeleiswhispering #teacherfail

I am thankful for the Pinterest hack of using coconut oil to remove your eye makeup. I usually use Neutrogena face wipes to take my makeup off and I really feel like I need them. Even when I wash my face, there is still makeup on my eyes. Last week, I ran out of my usual Neutrogena wipes and at first, I wasn’t bothered. After a few days of extra makeup on my eyes, I knew I had to go to the store to buy them, but I never remembered to stop on my way home from work and so it became a vicious cycle! My friend recommended that I use coconut oil and listen…at first, I was very weirded out by the whole process because I cook with coconut oil so putting it on my eyes felt very strange. Now, I am a believer. It takes the makeup off my face so much better than anything else I have ever used and I really think it’s doing a little bit of moisturizing, too! If you have coconut oil in your kitchen, you should give it a try. 🙂

I am thankful for a fun last few days of school before Thanksgiving Break! The countdown was REAL. Students and teachers alike were itching to get out for the holiday, but we created a good balance of learning and fun activities to survive. 🙂 Monday started with one of my students bringing me an apple and Tuesday was a flurry of end of the unit quizzes, but I was able to squeeze in a fun video of Kid President’s Thankful Things and time to make a Thankful Tree for the hallway! They all wrote down things they are thankful for at school. This was a struggle for some, but we brainstormed and in the end, a lot of them wrote down the names of teachers and friends in the class, so that was nice to see and read! Now let’s talk about the mandarin oranges pretending to be a pumpkin. That was my great teacher idea for Halloween. Well, the day before Halloween, we had pajama day and an early dismissal. Needless to say, I did not remember to hand out the snack. So it went home on Tuesday with a note about why I am thankful for them. 😉 Teacher win or teacher fail? I can’t decide! And Wednesday, I left the little people with a substitute teacher while I flew back to Pittsburgh.

#enoughsaid

Finally, I’m thankful for these three! This is our standard holiday cousin pose. I have no idea how it started, but it’s tradition! We used to line up in age order and also just happen to be in height order, but that doesn’t work anymore! The two boys on the left are my brothers Jake (16) and Alex (21) and then my cousin Nick (20) is right behind me. We were missing our fifth amigo, CJ! CJ is the same age as me but he was in Ohio having Thanksgiving with his girlfriend’s family. Luckily, those two came home for dinner, so I crashed their dinner around the time they were having wine and dessert to visit! All in all, it was a great Thanksgiving, even with a red, burning eye. 😉

Happy Thanksgiving to you! I hope you had a wonderful holiday with your family and maybe got a few good deals today! I snuck away to the mall for an hour with my youngest brother before his volleyball practice this afternoon and though we were there for a short time, I managed to get three pairs of leggings for myself because 1) major sale and 2) priorities. Ha! Have a great weekend!

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A Decadent Mini Dessert

One of my favorite holiday traditions is all the baking that occurs! In the past, I have been pretty disordered in my thinking about food, and to this day, I still don’t like everything to revolve around food, because we are not meant to live to eat. However, the holidays bring you a little bit of grace  because there is so much yummy food to be had!

Today I am sharing a recipe that I recently saw posted on Astleigh’s blog because it is so delicious and it is so easy! Previous food posts on this blog will have you knowing that I’m a five ingredients or less kind of recipe gal, and this one certainly fits the bill. Even though you don’t have to do much, your guests or family or friends (or whoever you are feeding!) will think you slaved away in the kitchen for hours.

Behold: Mini Gingerbread Cheesecake Bites.

Original recipe found on Hill Collection Blog!

Directions

Take the cream cheese out of the fridge to soften.
Preheat the oven to 350*F.
Store the cheesecake bites in the refrigerator.

Recipe List

Crust:
Gingerbread cookie dough

Filling:
1 block cream cheese
1/2 c powdered sugar
1 t vanilla extract

First, you will take your prepackaged cookie dough and round the pieces to the size of your mini muffin pan. In my case, there were 12 pre-cut cookies. I broke those 12 pieces in half and rolled all 24 of them to fill my pan!

You will bake these mini crusts for 10 minutes at 350*F.

While that is baking, you can soften your cream cheese and mix it with 1/2 cup of powdered sugar and 1 t of vanilla extract. I knew that I was making cheesecake bites, but I still expected this “icing” to taste very sugary and I was kind of disappointed when I licked my finger. 😉 That feeling quickly passed!

When the crusts are done baking, use a cookie dough scooper to create a half circle indent in them to make room for the cheesecake filling. Now for the part that scared me most: creating my piping bag with a Ziploc bag! All I did was scoop my filling into the Ziploc, seal it tight, and cut off a tiny corner of the bag. I almost wish I would have cut the corner a little bit wider so the filling would’ve spread differently!

In any case, you will squeeze cheesecake filling into each of the 24 mini crusts…and then you will probably have some filling left over, so you will have to go back and make each of your bites even! All that’s left to do is arrange them on a pretty plate, take them to Friendsgiving, and explain the recipe to every guest who takes a bite. 😉 At least, that’s what happened to me!

Then, if you are anything like me, you will pawn the leftover cheesecake bites on the rest of the guests at the party and bring only a measly three bites home for yourself…but as you can see, I needed just a little bite before I put them in the fridge. 😉

So tell me…what will you be baking this Thanksgiving?!

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Linking up with Andrea for Recipe Club!

  

Favorite Things Gone Thankful Things

It’s the month of thanks and the season of giving…so why not change up those Friday Favorites to reflect that? I’m so excited to be writing again after so many weeks of falling off the blogging radar. I am, first, most thankful for every one of you who reads this blog. I would still write even if my parents were the only ones who read my posts, but I love that others enjoy my writing, too!

 

I am thankful for big comfy sweaters. Nobody likes an early Monday morning, but everyone loves a cute outfit. 😉

 

My mom was in town twice last month so of course we did our fair share of shopping. She picked this out for me when we were shopping at Marshall’s. I love the different patterns and I love the POCKETS!

Just the best little sweater there ever was.

I am thankful for running friends turned real life friends.

Moving to a new city where you know zero people is not the easiest thing in the world. This I learned when I moved to DC last fall for grad school. Little by little, I started to find my place here. I went to as many events as possible hoping that maybe I would make some friends. Church helped a lot, but so did reaching out to acquaintances I knew in the area. Kristen and I graduated a few years apart at Duquesne so we became really good friends, and then this summer, we started going to Lululemon’s running club on Monday night. There, we met the rest of these pretty faces…and then we realized we actually really liked each other and could make plans outside of run club haha!

It’s nice to make real friendships with people. It is so easy to meet others and feel like you have a forced friendship just because you are in the same place doing the same thing. That is not the case with this group! We truly enjoy each other’s company and look forward to our workouts together each week! Last weekend, we all went to Nationals Park for a beer, wine, and cider festival. It was so fun to just be outside enjoying the wonderful fall weather!

I am thankful for delicious recipes found in blog land.

Here you will see a picture I stole from Hungry Runner Girl…but that’s because I loved my soup too much to take a picture. 😉 Chicken cream cheese chili in the crockpot. Doesn’t get much tastier or easier than that! I may or may not have had this for lunch and as a snack almost every day this week. You can be the judge of that. HRG got this recipe from a friend and has since updated the ingredient list a bit. If you plan on making this, add a can of tomato soup! It makes it taste even better!

I am thankful for unseasonably warm weather in November.

 

I suppose that sentiment should be followed by a “knock on wood”! When cold weather comes, I will literally curl up in a ball and cry. I love snow. It is magical. And I’m a teacher, so give me #allthesnowdays and #allthe2hourdelays but I despise being cold. It makes me almost as cranky as being hangry. Ha! I’m like a bear. I almost need to hibernate. 🙂

Last Friday was funny. The sky and clouds looked like a combination of “about to rain” and “sun doesn’t want to set”. You certainly won’t find me complaining about the sun setting slowly even though we’ve set the clocks back…

…or the fact that it will occasionally still be in the 70s even though I feel like winter should be right around the corner. My mom has driven to work in 33* weather with the seat heaters on all week. Pittsburgh, I love you big, but your 33* November mornings certainly do not make me want to rush home. 😉

Although this did happen last weekend…I didn’t check the weather before heading out for my run and I wore shorts and a tank top. I ran the fastest I have in weeks because I was trying to get back home! #alwayscold #allthetime

I am thankful for hilarious coworkers.

Our team leader sent this minion picture to us yesterday before school. We all had subs in our classrooms in the afternoon so that we could attend meetings and plan for the rest of the semester. While that time is always more than appreciated, it is also a very tedious task to plan for months at a time, so there was no shortage of snacks and inappropriate jokes. We are a rowdy bunch! The math coach that was working with us was laughing so hard because we get our work done, but we certainly have fun, too. I don’t take it for granted that the five of us work so well together. For my first year of teaching, I couldn’t have better support!

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Bloggers, looking for a link-up? Click over to any one of these amazing blogs to join us for Friday Favorites!