Week 1 of My 2014 Challenge

I know this gal who last year made her New Year's resolution to try one new recipe a week for the year.  I love to cook and bake so I thought it would be fun to try that out this year for myself, I don't do New Year's resolutions so this should be fun.

For week one I tried Honey-Mustard Chicken and also Sugared Asparagus.  My hubby and I both loved both of them and they got his seal of approval.  Which means he'd eat them again!  Plus asparagus isn't his favorite so it must have been pretty good.  The only thing that I would do differently is not put quite as much chicken broth in with the asparagus, probably only 1/2 a cup and cook less than 8 minutes.  I like my asparagus to be more on the crispy side and not mushy, I might have cooked it a little too long :) 

And last but not least I made White Chocolate Mousse for dessert.  It was VERY rich, and there was enough for ten of us so I'll probably only make this again for a dinner party.  The recipe calls for one vanilla bean but I substituted vanilla extract and vanilla paste instead.  I didn't snap a picture of the dessert because it was white in a white bowl, not a lot to look at!

My very talented friend Maria Cole who is on this years Graphic 45 design team had one of her projects featured on their blog again.  She is so freaking talented it makes me scream!  Maria and her husband Scott moved back to Oregon this past year and we miss her (I'm secretly hoping that her husband Scott gets promoted to the office that he works with up here so she can be Jaxson's nanny).  Hopefully she'll be able to make another trip up here to visit us in the spring and her and I can go golfing again.  The last time we went golfing it also happened to be my first time golfing and I only lost three golf balls.  My husband is a golf fanatic and a superb golfer, I think it'd be painful for him to go out with me at this point!

Our little man is feeling much better this week, unfortunately he passed his little cold onto me so I'm a little under the weather.  It's hard to watch your kid be sick and then as soon as their better and bursting with energy you're sick and want to crawl underneath the covers.  I'm sure this is not the first time this is going to happen!

I'm super excited because the UPS man just delivered my Oliso iron to my front door.  Don't get the wrong impression, I hate to iron clothes!  I'll be using it for quilting and the occasional piece of clothing.  This thing senses when you take your hand off of it and automatically lifts itself off of the ironing board onto these four little retractable feet so you don't scorch anything.  So cool!!  I'm trying to make a Downton Abbey quilt with the fabric line that just came out last month.  My goal was originally to have it done before the show started (last Sunday) but that sure didn't happen.  Well I'm off to break it out of the box and find a recipe for week two!