Crock Pot Girl: Slow Cooker Style

It's Crock Pot season. In actuality, a new era of slow cooking started here a month after baby Vivie arrived. We were beside ourselves trying to balance three kiddos and our basic human need to eat. The great take out food nightly debate was making us cranky.

Then one evening, after the babies were all asleep and Brett and I had dined with the toaster and some English muffins,  I noticed several friends "liked" Crock Pot Girls on Facebook.

Intrigued and hoping to overcome my self perceived status as a failed homemaker because I couldn't possibly mother three girls and cook nightly meals, I "liked" and made this:

Balsamic (Crock Pot) Chicken 

4-6 boneless, skinless, chicken breasts

2 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes

1 onion thinly sliced (Not chopped)

4 garlic cloves

1/2 cup balsamic vinegar

2 T olive oil

1 tsp each: dried oregano, basil, and rosemary

1/2 tsp thyme

ground black pepper and salt to taste

Pour the olive oil on bottom of crock pot

Place in chicken breasts, salt and pepper each breast

Put sliced onion on top of chicken

Then put in all the dried herbs and garlic cloves

Pour in vinegar and top with tomatoes

Cook on high 4 hours, serve over angel hair pasta

We haven't looked at a take out menu since!

Which means that at the top of my wish list there's a new crock pot of all things. If it's going to be sitting on my countertop every day, I want it to be prettier.  Unlike this bad boy, which we received for our wedding 14 years ago.

It could be the ugliest thing we own. It has a forest green ceramic insert and an ivy trellis, I do believe.

So, I'm dreaming about an upgrade. A crock pot  Slow Cooker that costs $175. All stainless steel and white ceramic yumminess.  Available at Williams Sonoma.

I wonder if they have a leasing program?

One of Those Days

I don't recall if I found this card or my husband did. 

He used to check out the postcards while I'd troll for treasures. But I love it. 

It makes me LOL as they say these days. Post stamped 1908. 

Halloween Decorations

I know, but I just can't! Even with my little ones. Bad mom? We do have pumpkins on the door step and all that. But nothing inside.

I do think though, that I might borrow an idea from my "idol mom" Meg of the Whatever blog and buy a few to paint.

Little Women

We have so many little women in this house.

There's Charlotte, above, our newest resident, having come from my grandmother's estate. She was made by my father's aunt, Garnet Moore Keeney, an artist who spent most of her adult life in Arizona. The figure's dark hair and delicate features remind me of photos I've seen of my Grandmother Charlotte as a young woman.

There's Zora.

She always had a spot in my maternal grandmother's home. I love her dreamlike quality. Relaxed, barefoot. Now, she looks out over me and the girls and my husband as we eat our meals in the dining room every day.

And then there are these two gals.

Vintage painted ladies, random Etsy purchases. The fair haired girl was first. I love how that painting is framed so low and off center. I love her pale blue blouse and the pink background. The blue lady up top came from the same seller and at first I wasn't sure....she looked more amateur...but I've grown to really like her too and she's a great companion. They're always hanging out by my secretary desk.

The true stars in the collection though are these three.