Wrapped up Nicely

My first week writing this blog has been nice, indeed!  Weekend is here - any fun plans out there in the big, nice, blogosphere?  For me, I'm watching UCLA football tonight with my fiance, working a bit tomorrow (I'm a wedding planner!), and going to a cookie party Sunday afternoon!

To wrap up the week, a few things that I found exceptionally nice this week:

Getting mugged in NYC (how is this nice, you ask? click it - you won't be disappointed...).

Beautiful Malibu wedding, featured on Style Me Pretty .

This is why I adore my friend Jasmine, she loves a good plan as much as I do!  xo JP!

The cookie recipe I'm attempting for Sunday's party.  Advance apologies to my fellow cookie-partiers - I'm experimenting with this recipe!

I'm thinking of going red for my wedding....red lips that is.  Here's a great guide on how to pick the perfect red for your skin tone (now, if only I could figure out my skin tone!).

Happy Weekend!

xo
d.

Easy Homemade Chicken Stock

Last week I decided that I would try my hand at homemade chicken stock to use in my Thanksgiving recipes.  I've watched plenty of chefs on the Food Network make it and thought I'd give it a whirl.  The result - savory delicousness that I'm still swooning over!

The easy part?  I used a leftover roasted chicken from my local grocery store!  The fiance and I ate most of the breast of said roaster, so following dinner I used the rest of the meat left on the bones, as follows:

Leftover Roasted Chicken
handful of black peppercorns
handful of kosher salt
1 bay leaf
sprig of fresh thyme
1 whole brown onion, quartered
couple of whole cloves of garlic
couple of carrots, large diced
1 celery stalk, large diced

I threw all of the ingredients in a large pot of water, brought it to a boil and then turned it down to a low simmer for 2 hours and that was it!  I know most recipes call for cooking it for way longer than 2 hours, but it was bedtime, so I tasted it and thought it was delish, so I pronounced it done!  Since I was tired, I placed the whole pot in the fridge to cool overnight, strained it the next morning and placed in small containers to freeze.

Now I'm on the search for soup recipes to utilize my stash of stock.  Any suggestions?

photo via countless calories