Roasted Tomato Bisque

 I LOVE tomato soup!  Seriously, LOVE it!  And I have now perfected my new favorite tomato soup recipe.  It is SO easy and so yummy!  Enjoy!

Roasted Tomato Bisque

Recipe by: Krista Faulkner

2 1/2 lbs tomatoes halved (any will do, but I use a mix of roma and compari tomatoes)

1 yellow or white onion quartered

2-3 cloves of garlic smashed once and peeled

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Salt & pepper

1 cup shredded carrots

1 pat butter (or you can just use a little more olive oil)

1 can condensed tomato soup

1 can (soup can...) milk or cream

Spread the halved tomatoes, quartered onion and smashed garlic on a sheet pan.  Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.  Roast in a 450 degree oven for about 20-30 min, just until the edges start to brown.  While those are roasting shred your carrots and place in a pan with the pat of butter and saute on medium heat just to soften them up.  Once the tomatoes, onions and garlic are done roasting place them in a blender or a food processor (or you could use an immersion blender too...) with the softened carrots.  Blend until smooth, or you could leave it a bit chunky if you like.  After blending pour into a sauce pot and add in the canned soup and the milk.  Heat through and serve.

This soup is great as is or you could serve it with croutons on top or with grilled cheese.  Any way is delicious!

Merry Christmas!

Colorado

I never thought that living in Colorado, again (you all know that's where I was born and raised...  19 awesome years!) would ever be an option for my family.  First of all, my husband hates the snow and cold weather and more so, keeping us from my home state, would be that he has chosen a career in NASCAR, which is deeply rooted and headquartered in the South (pretty darn far from CO).  With all that working against us, a NASCAR job in DENVER, CO has landed in our laps.  Crazy!  I know!  We were in negotiations for quite a while and my stress levels of a possible move and major life change were sky high (fueling my lack of blog posts lately...sorry...).  Matt has now officially accepted this new position and given his current team his 2 weeks notice.  Matt will start his employment with Furniture Row Racing in January 2012.  He will be back and forth between CO and NC until we are all settled out there.  The plan is to pack and find a renter for our house in January and we are hoping to all be in Colorado in February.  We will be keeping our house here in NC, selling right now wouldn't be optimal and there is a chance that we could be back in North Carolina in the future sometime.

While I am sad to be leaving North Carolina (and Matt's parents, and lots of great friends... sad!), I am ecstatic to be moving "home".  None of my immediate family lives in CO anymore, but I have lots of extended family still there and many friends I will be excited to reconnect with.  We will be a 1 day car trip from my parents and my brothers and sisters (YAY!).  We will be back in Mountain Standard Timezone (yay for 10 pm news!) and close to great skiing.  We are all excited for this new adventure and looking forward to living in Denver.

p.s.  If any of you follow NASCAR you will now have to root for the #78 Furniture Row Racing car driven by Regan Smith.

Trick-or-Treat!

I took J & E to my friends house for some photos in their Halloween costumes.  They turned out GREAT!  These  guys are so funny.  Check them out...

Cousins!

Here are the Hymas cousins!  They all look so cute!

Will+Audrey+Max+Luke

Welcome, welcome!

Welcome to the world little babies!  My newest nephews were born earlier today!  I don't have all the info yet, but I'll post an update when I get it.  But here they are!

Luke (baby A) & Max (baby B)

I SO wish they all still lived here!  I want to snuggle them SO bad!!  Congrats to Kristin, Patrick, Will & Audry on the new additions to their family!

I Heart Faces: A Touch of Sun

I don't often submit photos to contests, but I LOVED the I Heart Faces photo challenge this week.  I had so many fun photos to choose from.  It was a hard decision, but I decided on this beauty!  This is Kelly and she was one of my most favorite brides ever!

For more entries go here:

Swahili

While in Utah, my brother-in-law, Chris asked if I was teaching the boys Swahili.  The answer is no, I am not teaching them to speak Swahili even if that's what it sounds like.  They don't speak English, but they do have this fascinating language between themselves.  It's so funny to watch them communicate with each other.  They both use their hands a lot when they talk too.

I'm interested in teaching them sign language so I've borrowed some Signing Time videos from a friend.  I'll let you know how it goes.

New look

I've know for a while that I was in need of spectacles...  I haven't worn glasses or contacts since I was 8 years old!  When I was a baby I had a couple different eye surgeries and needed the glasses to help heal from them.  When I was 8 the eye doc told me my vision was all good and I didn't need to wear them anymore.  That was the best day of my life, up to that point!  I remember being SO excited to ditch the dreadful things.  But over the past few years I could tell my eyes needed some help.  I finally took myself in for a check-up.  And, yep, I need help.  I tried on just about every pair of glasses they had in the place and my favorite frames were some super cute Coach ones and a fab Fendi pair.  Unfortunately, I have these 2 crazy, grabby almost 2 year olds, so $500 specs were completely out of the picture.  I found these babies at Costco and the price was definitely right.  Not too bad, eh?

 

Bedroom

I've been wanting to put up some vinyl up in the boys room for a very long time.  My friend Amy came in, did all the work and made it happen.  I think it turned out great!

I LOVE that Dr. Seuss quote.  I think it's perfect for twins!  My boys are definitely unique and their little personalities couldn't be more different.  And I love that they are so different, it makes everything more fun.

Bedtime

Even though the boys don't talk yet, they understand exactly what we are saying.  Tonight as I was calling out bedtime the boys when crazy and started chasing each other all over the house with their whale ball-popper toys.  It was hilarious!  Why do they get SO hyper at bedtime?