Holiday Weekend Wrap up...

Well, with a little help from cheesesteak pizza on Black Friday...

Our house went from this:

To this:

And from this:

To that:

Even our scarecrow gets a holiday makeover:)

I sat in our living room last night (one of the FIRST times since the parade on Thursday morning;) and could NOT believe the Christmas decorations were up!  Don't get me wrong, I've been dreaming about this day since....hell, the day we took em down LAST year...but it's still crazy how fast time flies!

Guess we better celebrate all the JOY we can get this time of year!

Anyway....we kept our 'warm & cozy' eats going over the weekend, including Scott's first EVER attempt at 'from scratch' waffles....

And ummm...he may have found himself a new job.  These pumpkin waffles were OUT-STANDING!  I do believe he found himself a hidden talent...YUM!

(Not to mention, it was DOUBLE exciting since it was our first "Christmas-y Sunday breakfast" of the year;)

And after tossing around a few dinner ideas, we decided to delve into our pantry and freezer and managed to pull out this meal, all from food we already had on hand (always helpful;)...

Presented by Santa...of course:)

Scott baked the ham, coated in Dijon mustard, brown sugar and pineapple juice.  This is one of his FAVORITE meals that he gets too far and few between, so he was in his glory;)

As a side, I decided to make some mashed potatoes....but since this was one of Scott's favorite meals (and since he made such good waffles), I figured I'd add a little something extra to kick em up a notch...

And the ingredient of choice...one of our favorites:  Caramelized onions!

Creamy mashed potatoes studded with sweet caramelized onions = Scott LOVED them! (and so did I:)

And finally, some farmer's market steamed string beans.  I'm not a lover of fresh string beans, but these were fine:)  We needed something GREEN after nearly 4 days of CARBS:)

Well...OK...one more carb:)  I finished off the weekend with one last sliver of my sweet potato/cheesecake/maple whipped cream creation.  This baby was SOO decadent that I'm honestly glad to see it depart from my house;)  It's been fun, Pie, but now it's time for you to go;)

So anyway....I hope you had as festive....

...and as relaxing weekend as we (and Penny) did;) ....

And now I can't believe how fast this weekend (year) flew by...but now we have LOTS of things to look forward to now!  I'm already counting down the minutes until we go get our tree on Saturday morning;) hahhahahaha...

Hope you have an 'easy transition' Monday;)  Enjoy your day:)