Bon appetit!

A few weeks ago I finally took all our Bed Bath and Beyond gift cards we had received as wedding gifts and began completing our wedding registry. One thing I have been lusting over for years was this gorgeous cast iron Dutch oven!





So pretty and fits perfectly with all the blue I have incorporated into my kitchen! My favorite thing about getting new cooking stuff is trying out recipes I had been putting off because I didn't have the right equipment to make it with. The first thing that popped into my head was Julia Child's Boeuf Bourguignon! (That's French for Beef Bourguignon lol!)

I can't believe I don't have any of her cookbooks, but I found the recipe for it here, and I even found some old videos of her making it on her cooking shows on you tube! The videos were fun to watch but were very different from the recipe I found. I think she may have dumbed it down for the TV audience and I was looking for a challenge!

I decided to invite my family over for dinner and ended up making the stew the night before to make things easier on me. I highly recommend doing this as much as you can when making a big dinner. Also, with things that need to marinade like stews, the flavors are usually much better the next day! The sauce was so amazing that I didn't want to waste any of it so I froze the leftover sauce to use the next time we have steak for dinner! The only thing I would do differently next time is to double, no triple, the amount of braised pearl onions! They were so delicious and there just weren't enough of them!





Wanting to keep with the French theme, I bought some fingerling potatoes and found this terrific recipe from Emeril and served my famous (well, in my family anyways!) green beans that I sautée with shallots and olive oil.





I decided to end the meal with another cooking bucket list item I've been dying to make: bread pudding! Back when I served tables at a French restaurant, they always served bread pudding and I've always wanted to try it. I'm not a fan of the traditional kind with raisins and always loved the kind with fresh fruit, so I was stoked when I found this blackberry bread pudding recipe on Pinterest! I made mine with raspberries and blackberries. It was very easy to make and I highly recommend making it when you have company over because you can make it ahead of time and just pop it in the oven right before you serve dinner!








I swear, any excuse to break out our fancy china makes me a happy girl! Especially since we have a new place to keep it, but I'm saving that for a future blog post! Matthew and I are in super spring cleaning mode right now and are completely re-doing our entire apartment and I will be ready to post pics soon!


Have a good night!

Kelly Smallcombe

BCBA Countdown 3

Time for another wonderful BCBA countdown! I finished my third month in February and completed the most monthly hours yet! My new responsibilities at work provided me with lots of extra hours, so that was nice. This month is another story, so many cancellations already, grr!

Anyhow, I completed 118.75 hours, which brings my total to 325.42. Only 1174.58 to go!

I need to complete 1000 hours by September in order to sit for the BCaBA exam, which is kind of like a pre-BCBA. It won't really mean anything in the long run once I get my BCBA, but it will be a good warm up for the real exam which only has a 33% pass rate, yikes! It's kind of like an AA degree versus a BA degree. Once you get a BA the AA isn't significant anymore, but an AA is good to have until you complete the BA.

(Wow, I just read that last paragraph and my head started spinning, sorry!)

Have a good night!
Kelly Smallcombe

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Ch-ch-ch-changes! Part Two: Bye Bye van der Kleuts

So this is the change I've been avoiding because it was major and really sad. My sister's husband Alex got an amazing new job offer in Virginia in December that ended up moving their whole family across the country. They have been gone about two weeks by now and thankfully we FaceTime a lot.












We had many sleepovers with the boys leading up to the move. I miss them so much! I miss my sister and Alex too! I helped put together an awesome goodbye party for them before they left though! Thanks again to Rosa and Guy for offering their house as the location and to Brady for supplying the karaoke gear!






















We miss you guys so much!

In happier news, I was offered new responsibilities at work! I was chosen to help run our Generalization Program, which is when we get our clients together with their families and go on outings where they can practice the skills they learn in their home sessions and work on socialization skills as well. It's my first leadership opportunity so I'm pretty excited and honored they picked me! That school thing is really paying off!

We have also (finally) started spending all the money and gift cards we received as wedding presents on completing our wedding registry, so I will post all the new additions to our home soon!

Cheers,

Kelly Smallcombe

Ch-ch-ch-changes! Part One: Birthday Fun

So I have been meaning to do this post for awhile and now the time has come when I can't really post about other stuff without updating on all these changes that have happened.

I'll start with my favorite change: my hair!!!





I had let it grow out for the wedding but it was really starting to bug me! I was looking for something different and meant to get a shoulder length bob, but my new hairstylist (and my friend Christina's sister) gave me the courage to go shorter!





Bye bye hair! Sadly, it was not quite long enough to donate. I am loving the new short hair. It only takes me five to ten minutes to do my hair in the morning, compared to almost an hour if I needed to wash and blow dry my long straight hair. Before I cut it I had pretty much given up and was just putting it up in a bun every morning!





Me and Katie from Sailors and Saints. This salon is amazing! I will have to do a post with all the pictures I took when I was there. Just one of those places where there is so much original art and quirky furniture and decor that I love so of course I had to capture it all! I highly recommend this salon, and especially Katie Keller! It's in such a cute area of San Jose in the Rose Garden district. Check it out here!

So my hair cut was a birthday gift to myself and that was just the beginning of the bday festivities. My birthday buddy Jenni and I decided to do laser tag this year! We started out with a yummy Italian dinner first.





My hair at Pizzeria Venti (my hair really was the guest of honor that night ha!)





So much yummy food and Karrie and Skyba surprised us with tiramisu for dessert!






Happy birthday to us! (Wow, I just realized that this happened a month ago. Oops!)

Laser tag was legendary! Endless How I Met Your Mother references too!







My first birthday having a husband! He did good (huge target gift card, score!)






Karrie, Sarah, and Meredith making a Charlie's Angels pose, and me pretending to shoot my sister below. Sorry the laser tag pics are blurry!








After kicking butt at laser tag, we headed to our favorite stomping ground Fibbar McGees in downtown Sunnyvale for drinks and dancing. Here Jenni and I are doing our traditional shot of chilled Hypnotic (cause we're pussies and can't do shots of real liquor lol). It's ok, we made George do one too!

For some reason the picture of the traditional bday face licking between George and I is not showing up in my iPad so I guess I will have to add that later.

So it looks like this turned into more of a bday blog so I will have to do a part 2 to the changes blog. . .

Cheers!

Kelly Smallcombe

Location:Ch-ch-ch-changes! Part One: Birthday Fun!

Thanksgiving in March!

Yes, that's right, I cooked a full on Thanksgiving dinner tonight! What brought this on? Well, first I would have to introduce you to the newest member of our family:




Meet Mixie Smallcombe! She's not the same mixer I had registered for but we found a deal on her at Costco that we just couldn't refuse! It's not the gorgeous willow blue I wanted, but it's bigger at 5.5 quarts and came with a bonus attachment. It's a bowl lift style which means the head doesn't tilt back, but that's actually a good thing since it sits perfectly under my shelves. Otherwise, I would have to pull it out whenever I wanted to use it and it's frickin heavy! Plus, now I can use all the Bed Bath and Beyond gift cards I've been hoarding to get more of our china, yay!!
I heard that mixers are good for kneading dough so I looked up this awesome Clover dinner roll recipe .




Not only was this the first time using my mixer, but also the first time working with yeast! I've always just made banana or zucchini bread, so this was a fun experiment.




Using the Spiral Dough Hook to mix in the flour.




My dough after rising in the fridge. I then rolled it into little balls and placed three in a muffin tin to make the pull apart rolls.




Ta-da! They came out so beautiful and definitely worth it!




The turkey! The whole reason for the dinner was this free 12lb. Jennie-O turkey we get every year from our local supermarket. It's too small for thanksgiving dinner and we ended up throwing the 2011 one so I was determined to actually cook the one we got last year! It was yummy and the gravy packet it came with was so good!




The rest of the spread. I love to buy huge bags of potatoes on sale and then cook and freeze them for dinners. It's a lot of work though, but I knew if I got a stand mixer I would do it more often and I was right. The mashed potatoes came out so creamy and smooth and were so easy to make!!




I also made Brussels sprouts, spinach, corn, and stuffing. The Clos Du Bois Chardonnay was delicious in our Riedels too!




I finished up the night with some homemade whipped cream for the pumpkin pie. Ok, Mixie pretty much made the whipped cream on her own, I just dumped in some sugar and vanilla when she was almost done! (No, I didn't make the pie from scratch. I'm not THAT awesome, but Sara Lee is.)




Thanks again Mom and Grandma for coming over to help eat all the food! My dad had to work so he couldn't make it, but we sent home a ton of leftovers for him! Hope you liked them Dad!
I know I haven't blogged in awhile, but there is so much going on I just haven't had the time! I'll post a recap blog tomorrow, promise!
Good night everyone!
Kelly, Matthew, and Mixie Smallcombe (JR sends his love too, I'm sure!)
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