Daily Dash of Danielle

Happy Friday Followers! There's 3 days until the new year which means that everyone is talking about their New Years resolution/resolutions. I'm not big on New Years Resolutions because I can never seem to follow through on them so this year I am trying to the word of the year challenge. I was researching the one word challenge and came across Mountain Modern Life - which is a blog that I can across when trying to find the perfect word of the year. They had an interesting post that offered 5 tips for choosing a word of the year. I found these tips to be incredibly useful when trying to decide on my word of the year so I decided to share them. 1. Reflect on the past year of life. Ask yourself these questions and right down whatever comes to mind without self-editing. -what could I use more of in my life? -what could I use less of in my life? -what characteristics would I like to have? -by the end of the day I fell _____(fill in the blank). -how do I want to feel? 2...

Good afternoon and Happy Thursday followers! I can't believe that there are only 5 days until Christmas and I still have Christmas shopping to do....I said I was going to be done before vacation but obviously that's not true. I know I just posted about soup the other day but I made the most delicious batch of Zuppa Toscana last night and paired it with crusty bread and nice glass of pinot noir. That's probably not the suggested pairing but after the day at work that I had...it was much needed. For those of you who aren't familiar with Zuppa Toscana, first it is a soup served at Olive Garden. Second, it is a broad category of soup that means "soup in the style of Tuscany". It usually has some combination of kale, spinach, potatoes, cannellini beans, etc. This soup was delicious and so easy to make. Shout out to Pinterest and The Chunky Chef for this recipe. Ingredients: 1 lb ground Hot Italian sausage  (I subbed tu...

Hi followers and Happy Tuesday!   I am so sorry that I have been missing in action for the last few two weeks. It was finals week, I still had to work, and I left for vacation immediately after that and am just now catching my breath. This post will be brief because I plan on catching up throughout the week - I'm shooting for a post every other day until I catch y'all up on everything.  I know I just came from the most beautiful warm weather but being back home made me crave a good bowl of soup. With that being said, today's post will be about my copy cat Olive Garden Chicken Gnocchi soup which is my favorite soup on their menu. Picture below:  Ingredients:  1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter 1/4 cup flour 1/2 cup finely diced celery 1 cup finely diced onion 2 garlic cloves, minced 4 cups half-and-half 1 (12-ounce) package gnocchi (I used the vacuum sealed gnocchi, found in the pasta aisle) 1 cup finely sh...