Women of Influence

This picture is very special to me.  It was sent to me from MI as a "we miss you" message.  I love this picture because it includes all the women that helped me become who I am today.  Each one of them has taught me something important and I can't imagine not having them around.  They are fabulous, strong, intelligent women and I am privileged to know them. 

Cheers to you ladies!

Kimmy (BFF), my Aunt Karen, Ma Large (Kimmy's mom) and my mom.  Maddy's in the middle.

Crock-Pot Italian Chicken

If you invite my mom to your wedding, and you register for a Crock-Pot, she will buy it for you.  The Crock-Pot is my mom's go-to gift.  She swears by them.  Because of this, the Haus of Kendi has three.  Mom says you need more than one. :)

There has been a Crock-Pot resurgence in the Kendi Haus as of late.  Pinterest has given me a bunch of new recipes to try and something about colder weather just screams "Crock-Pot"!  Here is our latest culinary venture...

Cheers!

Crock-Pot Italian Chicken

 

You can find the complete recipe here.  I found that using the suggested amount of salad dressing was just too overpowering of a taste.  I would suggest going half dressing, half water.  This would probably make it healthier too.  

Stats

Time: prep = 20 min.  cook = 6 hrs

Servings: 4

Cost: about $5

Leftovers:  yes

Peace

This has never happened before.  I'm so glad I was able to capture the moment...

Cheers!

Brown Bag Tally 2012

In the year 2012, I brought my lunch to work 175 times.  Not bad for starting in April.  This year, I hope to hit 200.  I feel so much better with how we are eating and looking these days that it should be an easy number to reach.  I'm working up to bringing my everyday for a year!

Cheers!

Kendi Christmas

Christmas in the Haus of Kendi was a mix of hectic and festive.  We had a lot to do before we hit I-75N, home to MI.  We did decorate the house and put up a tree and Kevin took his mini tree to work for his desk.  I was very pleased with how everything came out and I have a bunch of ideas for next Christmas. 

The house all decorated.  It looked so pretty at night.

I'm very proud of the wreath that I made.  It was before Pinterest.  ;-)

Decorating the tree in my giant sweater and boots.  I'm wearing mistletoe on my head.  :)

Kevin made his grandpa's Nuts and Bolts.  They have it every year at Christmas time.  I'm so lucky I married a man that knows this recipe.

I even got us tickets to see a performance of The Nutcracker.  I love the music, but I always see Fantasia in my head even when I watch the ballet.

Waiting for the show to start.  We got good seats.

Kevin took his mini tree to work to sit on his desk for the holidays.  I wonder if it was a distraction...

And what would holidays be without hearing Linus tell us about the true meaning of Christmas...

Tradition

As it got closer to Christmas, it got more and more crowded under the tree.  Hope everyone liked their presents.  We worked really hard on making and picking good ones!

Spoiled

Needless to say, the boys were less than thrilled with all the holiday antics...

Cheers!  And here's to next Christmas!

December Pinterest Party

So, I think it's been well established that there are only, like, four people not on Pinterest these days.  I myself am completely obsessed.  Because of this obsession, I tried to start a weekly Pinterest party with a few of my equally obsessed girlfriends.  Well, my first attempt failed (I completely forgot that I was going to have the party that day).  Thankfully, my girl Tanisha picked up the slack and planned one in December at her house.  It was just the thing I needed to kick off my Pinterest Christmas.

We decided to make it a monthly event and we even established a format for the parties:

1:  The hostess will do a food pin, so we have food to eat and can try a new recipe

2:  Each month we'll pick a different category to pick pins from, since we all inadvertently chose beauty product pins...

3:  We bring enough supplies for the other ladies to try the pin we picked.  That way we are all try a bunch of pins each party.

Here we are hard at work on the first project

We did my pin first.  I chose "Gardener's Hand Scrub".  It was very easy, only 2 ingredients.  All you need is Dawn dish soap with Olay and sugar.  That's it!  Find the complete instructions here.

Mine pin is done!

We moved on to Shannon's pin.  She picked a body scrub, also super easy and smelled really good.  She got the scented sea salts from Whole Foods and we mixed in different oils like coconut oil, grape seed oil and olive oil.

Shannon's body scrub

My finished scrub (please ignore my hair.  It was raining that day)

Shannon also brought a lip scrub for us to make.  This was also really easy and only a couple ingredients.  You can find the recipe here.  I haven't tried the lip scrub yet but I love the one you can get from Lush, and I'm sure this is pretty similar.

Finished lip scrub

Danielle baked banana bread for us and packaged it up so pretty.

We were really excited with how everything turned out.  I got a few Christmas presents taken care of too!

This month is jewelry and accessories hosted by Shannon.  Can't wait!

Cheers!

Happy New Year!!

After ringing in the new year (and our 5th anniversary) in serious style, the Haus of Kendi is ready for 2013!  We celebrated the end of 2012 in Savannah, GA at a NYE ball at the Hilton.  I found my fab dress at a consignment store for $47.  The other ladies seemed to really like it.  And Kevin always looks so dapper in a tux.

NYE 2013

 
Hopefully '13 will be nicer to us that '12 was.  I plan on making some dreams come true this year come hell or high water so look out!



Oh, and did I mention it was a masquerade ball?  ;-)

Cheers!