Last weekend our friend Nicole Chubb Ralston came over to do a portrait session for us and we're pretty excited to get the shots back. Charisse and Nicole when to high school together and we've been hanging out more since we moved back from the city. Nicole started her photography business right around the time we started our blog, so we've both been enjoying going through the same experiences at the same time. Turning something you love and are very passionate about into something that puts food on the table (okay in our case, provides the money to buy the food) is a huge challenge that takes the kind of dedication and patience usually reserved for putting a rocket on the moon or getting that first real world job or making the perfect martini. Its really really hard. Okay so maybe every martini tastes perfect after the third one but still, you get the point. When you listen to someone talk about a business they started or a company they grew you never hear about all the nitty gritty details, nothing about how many forms you have to fill out to get a business license, how much time you have to spend on Google researching "business plan", how nothing goes "according to the plan" or how often that first big break they had was just dumb luck. Of everyone that we've talked to about this the two things that keep popping up are perseverance and knowing what it is that makes your thing different. If you have something you love, you can eventually find a way to make money doing it. Right now, we love these Lemon Chicken Tenders that Eric made. These are baked instead of friend, so we count them as "healthy" and they taste amazing. Perfect for the "big game" (we can't legally call it the Super Bowl) or when the kids are having a sleepover. They carry a ton of flavor that you wouldn't expect from chicken fingers but don't worry, the kids will like them too!
