Category Archives: Holidays

Recipe // pork carnita and avocado tacos

November 4, 2014

I just love gourmet tacos. There are a lot of fun gourmet taco restaurants popping up all over the place, and they are just amazing! I took a few of my favorites and tried to re-create some at home!

I love pork carnets, and they are so easy to make in the crock-pot! If I’ve learned anything about preparing pork, it’s that low and slow it the best way, always.

Crock Pot (Slow Cooker) Pork Carnitas

serves 6-8

4-5 lb pork roast

2 teaspoons dried oregano

2 teaspoons garlic powder

2 teaspoons chili powder

2 teaspoons cumin powder

1 can 14 oz can diced tomatoes with juice

1 cup beef broth

juice of 2 limes

1 dried bay leaf

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper

4 garlic cloves, minced

Place roast in the crock pot. Place the remaining ingredients on top, stir, and cook on low for 8 hours or high for 4-5 hours.

For the tacos, I like to use the Tortilland brand uncooked corn tortillas.

I place some cojita cheese, pork carnets, radishes, green apples, and you can put sliced red onions and jalapeños and finish it off with some mexican crema, or mexican sour cream.

We also made some avocado tacos. If you haven’t tried avocado tacos, man you are missing out. They are so so good!

I use the tortillaland uncooked corn tortillas and heat them up. Then add a layer of cojita cheese, then avocado, then some radishes, then some beets slice very thin with the mandolin. Then I top it with a little mexican crema, or mexican sour cream. Then, I finish it off with a little kosher salt. Yum!

We ate these tacos Halloween night before we headed out to go trick or treat.

This year we had a cute Little Bo Peep.

A scary Frankenstein.

And, our little UPS guy.

They had a blast, and would barely hold still for a few pictures. The second they saw other trick or treaters out there, it was over. No more pictures for mom, they wanted to get out there asap!

They loved every minute of it. Halloween and holidays really are magical with kids!

{all photos by me}

Holiday // halloween feast

October 31, 2014

Happy Halloween!

I hope you are having a great day! Amidst all the last minute preparations I wanted to quickly share some of the details of our Halloween feast we had with my little family.

I don’t have the time to set a fun table all the time, but when I do I really enjoy it! Making the holidays a little extra special for my children is one way I show my love for them (hello love language) so it was a lot of fun for me to set up and see how excited they were. The little pumpkins on the table are actually bread bowl pumpkins from Harmons. My kids loved that the bread was orange!

A quick and easy detail I added was adding a little sprinkle rim to the glass goblets I found at Tai Pan.

It is so easy to do. All you have to do is put a little corn syrup in a dish, then dip the rim into the corn syrup, then dip it into the sprinkles and pat them on well. And, there you go! So easy!

A lot of this I had already in my party box. I know hoarder status, but it’s nice to have things on hand that you can pull out of your hat!

I placed little pumpkins on the plates with some wash tape with their names on it.

I had some mini easels, so I thought it would be perfect to put the cookies on it as a decoration as well as a yummy treat.

I went to Trader Joe’s and they had all of their fun pumpkin flavored treats, so I pretty much bought them all.

Mini pumpkin pies, pumpkin salted caramels, pumpkin scones.

I put some black and white gum balls from Orson Gygi into some beakers for table decor as well.

The cheese spread was fun. I used those babybel cheeses and drew little jack-o-lantern faces on them with eatable markers, and rosemary crips, and pumpkin crasin crackers.

I decided to go simple on the food. My local Sams Club had these darling pre-made pumpkin shaped ravioli that I added some thyme and pine nut browned butter sauce.

I also served some steamed broccoli rabe as “witches brooms.” The kids loved all the little details.

This was a fun new tradition for us that I hope we can do every year! After we finally got a chance to carve our pumpkins. Traditions are the best!

I hope you have a Happy Halloween! We are excited to head out to trick or treat!

{all photos by me}

best of armelle blog // easter edition

April 10, 2014

Can you believe that Easter is already a week from Sunday?

Well, if you are scrambling for some fun Easter ideas, I thought I would share a few of my favorite Easter DIY posts from Armelle blog over the years.

DIY Easter “Carrots” (shown above)