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Christmas is Over

I just hate when Christmas is over... it's so much more fun to decorate and prepare for the holiday, than it is to clean everything up! I hope [all five of you that follow my blog :)] had a lovely Christmas and will have a Happy New Year! I had an awesome Christmas!

My wonderful hubby got me a large SD card for my DSLR and a new lens I've been eyeing! He got me a 50mm f/1.8 canon lens... it's great to get a really blurry background in your pictures. Those were my two favorite gifts from him!

My parents got me really cute boots, which are awesome... see picture below.

My other favorite gift is from my M& FIL. Sperry Top Siders... grey sweatshirt material on the outside and fur on the inside!! LOVE.

I got my two presents from my honey a few days early, because I had a little photo session with our little neighbor baby, Layla. She is soooooo cute! Her mommy and daddy are nice enough to let her be my little model for my new items at Elizabeth Lou and Company... and does she do these items justice! She is just so precious, I love taking her photos! As I mentioned before, it is  my new obsession! Please enjoy a few of the photos below from our photo session!

What were your favorite gifts this Christmas?!

Avocado Chicken "Parm"

I first saw this recipe on Pinterest. I thought it sounded interesting, and delicious! K and I made it last weekend for dinner and with a few tweaks to the recipe we thoroughly enjoyed it!

Interestingly, I came across "Slim-cados" in the grocery store when I was looking for avocados for the recipe. Apparently, they have 35% less fat than regular avocados. They are also much larger. They were quite acceptable for the dish that I made, but I wouldn't suggest them for something, such as, guacamole. They lack the buttery richness of a regular avocado (just about right for a "healthy" version of something!).

You can find the original recipe here, at Cuisine Paradise.

Here is my version:
(Really just a different avocado and no sauce!)

Ingredients:
2 Chicken Breast Fillets, halved lengthways
1/2 Cup Plain Flour
2 Tablespoons Fresh Milk
2 Eggs
1 1/2 Cups Dried Breadcrumbs
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil/Cooking Spray
1 Slim-cado, Sliced
1/2 Cup Grated Mozzarella Cheese 
Mixed greens, to serve

Method:

1. Place chicken breast in a clear plastic bag(alternatively between 2 sheets plastic wrap), using a rolling pin or meat mallet pound until 0.5cm thick.

2. Place flour and breadcrumbs on two separate plate and lightly whisk milk and egg together in a shallow bowl.

3. Coat 1 piece of chicken breast in flour(shaking off excess), dip in egg mixture then coat in breadcrumbs using your fingertips pressing on to secure.

4. Place on prepared baking tray lay with foil or baking paper, repeat the same process with the remaining chicken breast with flour, egg and etc.

5. Lightly spray or brush the prepared chicken with oil, bake for 8 minutes(turning after 4 minutes to have evenly colours on the breadcrumbs) in preheated 390 degrees F oven.

6. Remove from oven and arrange avocado slices over chicken and sprinkle with decent amount of mozzarella cheese.

7. Return to oven and bake for another 5 - 7 minutes or until golden and chicken is cooked through.

8. Serve with mixed greens

Little Lillian

Unfortunately, for my little pup, I have no children to be a mamarazzi with, so Lily gets to be my fill in baby for the time being!

She was pretty adorable this morning when I shot these pictures... we had just gone for a run and I think the 35 degree weather had gotten to her and wiped her out.

Please enjoy the below pictures of the napping beauty!

Drooling on her daddies "Das Auto" magazine....

During the latter part of this little photo session, she was wedged between my darling husband and our chair... she likes very small spaces!

Have a lovely Monday!!

Our House... This Christmas

We decorated our first home this year for Christmas! It was very exciting! I was shocked by how much more we had to buy for our house vs. our apartment, and there is still so much more to add! I'll definitely be hitting up the after Christmas sales this year!

Please enjoy this little photo tour of a Winchester Christmas!

Our Christmas entry. I wanted to get cute little things to hang on the hooks above this AWESOME Ikea show cabinet, but my darling husband declared that we have to use what we have, and he liked the little stocking and sled just fine... gotta love him!

Thank God for Martha Stewart.... we have no fireplace so I was completely stumped as to where we were going to put our stockings, until I saw her Christmas issue of Martha Stewart Living... the woman is a genius!

This is the lovely little vintage piece that my husband and I refinished. It's usually underneath of the TV, but we had to place it in the corner, now that we have the tree. 15 more days until Christmas!

A little bit of christmas in the dining room. My Mother In Law got us those adorable wine sweaters last year for Christmas... I just love them! You can't really see it, but they come with little knit hats too! My bottle of white zinfandel is currently sporting an "Uncork the Merry" Christmas ball... very classy.

A close up of the darling wine pair.

And finally... OUR TREE!

Enjoy your week... I'll be back on Monday with a MOST DELISH DISH!

What a horrible Blogtress I've been...

I have to apologize for my very inappropriate, and inexcusable lack of posts! This shortness of daylight has made it very difficult to take pictures for my blog.... I know, that's  an excuse... but it is true as well!

For my lack of posts, I've decided to post two today. So lets start with the first one....

I have a  new obsession. One I was quite taken aback by. I have always loved photography, I love to take photos, I love to look at pretty photos... but I never thought I would love "photography" so much! I took a photography class in high school with a 35mm camera and got the whole experience.... developing my own photos and all. I adored that, but I also knew that photography was a very expensive hobby, and also very technical. Learning apertures, shutter speed and ISO did not seem easy.

Well, as you may know, I have an Etsy shop (elizabethlouco.etsy.com) that sells women's and children's accessories. I know, that when I buy something, I always like to see someone wearing it... it makes it much easier to decide if i'll like it. So, I decided it would be nice to try and get some models for my items. I used my niece, Ella, who is 6 for the first shoot. That took some bribing... let me tell you. However, I had a lot of cute little baby headbands that I wanted showcase as well. So, I asked my very nice neighbor and friend, if she would be willing to let me have a little modeling session with her adorable little girl, Layla. She was very willing to help, and I thank her very much for that!

So, as I said previously... I have always been in love with photography, if you remember from one of my earlier posts (here) I talked about the photography workshop that I went to a few months ago. Since then, I've been becoming increasingly more interested. Mostly, I wanted to become an excellent photographer so that when I have babies, I can take pictures of them all day long! (and not have to pay someone to do it).

However, in the process of asking my husband to build  me -this-  photography backdrop (I love me a handy man!) and I started to aquire props etc, I fell in love. I loved building the set and coming up with creative and fun ideas to photography her. 

THEN, it came time to photo little Layla, and she was such a doll- so well behaved, and did I mention adorable? Yupp, fell in love even more. 

THEN, when it came time to edit the photos, I fell head over heels! Despite the fact that my trial version of Adobe Lightroom 3 had run out and I was forced to use the free software, Picnik (which was frustrating to say the least), I LOVED editing. My husband literally had to pull me away from the computer, as if I was an addict. I think my obsession was partly because I wasn't happy with the edited photos. I was use to Adobe Lightroom 3, which edits RAW images. If you use something like Picnik, or most anything other than Lightroom or Aperture, you have to edit JPEGS. When you edit JPEGS, you havelost 70% of the data in the photo, which makes the images much more difficult to edit successfully.

So, anyway, please enjoy the photos from my photo session with Miss Layla modeling items from Elizabeth Lou and Company!

There are so many more to share, but my photo software keeps closing on me! UGH.