Miss You Mug

Marshmallow Fondant

I got this recipe off allrecipes.com (just search marshmallow fondant).. but I changed it a little. 1 bag mini marshmallows 1/4 c water 1 t vanilla 2lbs powdered sugar I also don't follow the directions they have very well..so here's what I do! Before mixing fondant prepare a rolling pin and pastry mat by smothering them in crisco (or butter if you want "healthier"..but at this point, i'm not sure "healthier matters!!!) Pour desired amount of marshmallows in big microwave safe bowl. (if you use 1/4 bag, then use 1/4 the recipe above, etc...) It is easiest to do smaller portions and color them as you melt the marshmallows. For a 9x13 cake you will need about half..maybe a little less. Ok, so microwave the marshmallows until fluffy and melty... about 20 seconds...maybe 30? Then add water (again, adjust recipe to how many marshmallows you chose to do) and vanilla and desired food coloring. Mix, and add some of the sugar. Add food coloring til desired color is reached (keeping in mind that it will fade some as you add more sugar.) Mix with hand mixer until it's too stiff, then dump onto a pastry mat and finish mixing by hand. I suggest smothering your hands in crisco as well. it just makes the fondant a little shinier, and keeps you from being a sticky mess. I just mix it til it is a fun play-doh consistancy... I never use an EXACT amount of sugar. And I always, always always buy extra sugar. Make sure to clean the pastry mat thoroughly between colors. Let the fondant set for at least 10 minutes before trying to roll out. The allrecipes one says overnight, in the fridge. I don't do that... but i'm not a professional, so i can do it the easy way! The easiest way i have found to transfer fondant rolled out large (like for a whole cake) is to use my pastry mat-which is silicone and very flexible) and get it on the cake before peeling my mat off. that's me tho..and like I said, I'm definitely not professional, and never plan to be.

Just showing off the snowman I made for my grandma :) This isn't the true finished project since I crocheted a green scarf for it instead of the one pictured. I forgot to take a picture though!

Mexican Tortilla Bake

My version of Taste of Home's Chili Tortilla Bake, which you can find here: http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Chili-Tortilla-Bake Ingredients: 1lb lean ground beef 1 cup chopped onion 1 cup chopped green chili pepper 2 cans (8oz each) tomato sauce 1 1/4 c corn 1 can black beans 2 T chili powder 1/2 t garlic powder 1 t ground cumin 1/2 t oregano 6 flour tortillas 1 1/2 c shredded cheddar cheese Crumble beef and brown it with the onion and green chili pepper. When browned add in the tomato sauce, beans, corn, and spices. Heat through. Spray two 9in cake pans. In the bottom place 1 tortilla. Spread 1/6 of the beef mixture over the top and sprinkle with cheese lightly. Layer 3 tortillas in each pan and top each with cheese. Bake for 30 minutes at 350*. Easy, huh? Serves 6. And it's 12 WW+ points for 1/8. (Which I think is a lot..it's 1/4 of one pan.) Not bad if you are good all day. Plus my kids like it... as compared to other "diet" food.

Amazingly easy and tasty Sandwhiches

Pepperoni & Cream Cheese openfaced sandwhiches.
I shouldn't need to say more. But I know I do. These are amazing. Simply toast a plain bagel, add cream cheese (I use the 1/3 fat stuff) and then on a separate plate heat about 14 pepperonies for 10-15 seconds (don't overheat!) and lay them over the cream cheese. Enjoy.

These are so amazing. My survival during my pregnancies DEPENDED on these. I think I had one at least once a week...often more! (And no, I didn't gain extra weight..lol) Now I try to avoid them because of the fat content...BUT...they make a mean comfort food. TRY IT. Even if it sounds weird. Or don't. You'll only be missing out on the greatest combination of food ever!

9 & 10 month bear pics

Kaden turned 9 months on Easter Sunday. Hence the dressed up picture with his bear. :) Also, hence the lack of Easter pictures. Hmm...should have thought it through better.



By 10 months it was getting increasingly difficult to get him sitting with his bear. This was the best I could do. It makes for some fun pictures though.

Oklahoma/Camping

This next set of pages is my top favorite, I think. I LOVE the texture here, and the colors, and the patterns...just all of it. I might have something to do with the fact that it is also great memories!




These next ones are the first time (and only, I think!) camping with a kid. It was long nights, with a baby between us trying to keep warm AND asleep! We had fun, and Kaden had a blast. He was born to be outside.




Why, OH WHY, did I not texture the orange part of the second page? I will never know.

7 & 8 month bear pages

As simple as they are, I love these pages.



I just noticed it kinda looks like the croc is getting ready to beg for some food. Hmmm. (It would be appropriate for a scrapbook of Kaden, I guess.)

Christmas!

Oh how a baby changes Christmas! The wonder, the excitement..just everything. We spent Christmas with my side of the family, and Matt and Bonnie got to visit us for a day.





Again, I wish you could see the texture of these cardstock stickers. They are *almost* as good as my Cricut cutouts...but much more pricey! I had bought them before I got my cricut, but was more than happy to have to use them.

5 & 6 month bear pictures

These pages were tough for me. There are some of pages where you're just glad to have them done. I am pretty hard on myself, so I know most people won't see the things I see...but some will... and that's the part I'm trying to ignore!


Good thing he is so darn cute.

Thanksgiving!

In 2008 from May to November there were 4 babies born..and all of them were able to be together for Thanksgiving. It was a perfect time for pictures! I found the stickers I used at Hobby Lobby. They are called cardstock stickers and they even had 4 little Indian/Pilgrims. I wish you could see the texture of the stickers...they match the texture of the stickers throughout the book..and lately I've been looking for some for Kate's book.. guess what I can't find? I had fallen in love with them, too!


We also took pictures of just the 3 boys... l'il turkeys. They've lived up to that name since!

Acacia, the lone girl..and first granddaughter... learned early how to hold her own. My favorite picture is the last one that shows how tired of her Kaden was by the end of the pictures.

Our Favorite People pages

Here are the next 2 page spreads. I loved this one. I just had so many pictures of Kaden with all kinds of people we love. I spent a long time getting those circles cut from the cricut and arranged to look "random". It's so true that being purposely random is a hard thing to do. See the texture under the alligator. I think this is the page that helped me fall in love with texture. I can't wait to enlarge my colection of folders.



By the way, Kaden was the first baby Brad (above picture) had every held.

This next photo is Kaden with his Grandparents and Great-Grandparents. The next one is with several of his aunts and uncles. Somehow Uncle Andrew made it on their twice... He should feel special.




He is so loved.

Finally some more scrapbook pages!

So, I've had Kaden's scrapbook "done" for about 3 months now (except for one set of pages which is my brother's wedding that we went to when Kaden was 3 months old...adn somehow I completely forgot...shhh don't tell my brother!) and, Yes, I am just now getting around to posting pictures. I'm really happy with the scrapbook, and think it's crazy how much my style has changed in the process of just 1 book. I learned a lot. The most important thing I learned is I LOVE TEXTURE. I will point it out when I can. It adds so much to a page!

These are the baby shower pages...it's so nice to remember how blessed we were at Kaden's birth and how everything we could have possible wanted or needed was given to us. In the first page, it is the surprise baby shower thrown by my highschool girls volleyball team that I coached. They each wrote "advice" on the bibs to help remind me the joys of mothering. I love them!. Also, there is a pocket with a white paper that a little girl (about 3 years old) drew for him as her baby shower "gift"...it was so incredibly sweet.

The diaper shower was thrown by our church in Gillette...we had only been here 6 weeks...how cool is that?

I don't have pictures of the shower Luke's extended family threw for me, or the one our church in Butte through. Like I said before...so blessed.



Oh and Kaden was about a week late. Hardest.week.ever. It's so much easier after the first baby!

I wish I had another recipe to share...

I have this amazing sandwhich (?) I really want to share with you. BUT I refuse to do it until I have a picture. And I'm not making it just for the picture. SO I do promise the next time I make it, I will share it promptly. Until then, know that I am hiding an amazingly mouthwatering secret easy recipe.

Did I mention that it's amazing and mouthwatering? And easy?

Breakfast Casserole

Thanks to my good friend Rachel Allen who gave me this easy overnight breakfast bake recipe the night before I needed to take a "main dish" for a brunch at MOPS. If you know anything about me, I don't eat breakfast. If I do, my idea of breakfast is a really chocolatey granola bar. So, here's to Rachel, who helped me look like I had it all together in the morning.

Ingredients:

8 slices bread, cubed
3/4 lb breakfast sausage, browned (I used 1/2lb plus about a half a cub of fried ham)
2 cups cheddar cheese
2 1/2 cups milk
4 eggs
1/4 t mustard powder
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 c milk

Layer the bread, then sausage, then cheese in a 9x13 baking dish. Mix the milk, eggs, and mustard powder, then pour evenly over the bread, sausage, and cheese. Cover and refrigerate 8 hours or more (overnight). Mix cream of mushroom soup and 1/2cup milk to have ready for the morning. In the morning, preheat oven to 300*. Spread cream of mushroom/milk mixture evenly over casserole. Bake for 90 minutes or until the egdges are turning brown.

*If you like mushrooms a can of mushrooms would be a a great addition to this recipe. I think green pepper would also do well.

Chicken Noodle Soup

This recipe is so very "ish" it's not even funny. I will try hard to give amounts but please realize it's different every time I make it. I just add things til it tastes amazing and then I quit. I am laughing because my recipe literally says "add desired amount of water and boullion" and "saute some onion".... amounts? HA!

Ingredients:

1/2-1 onion, chopped (I probably do a small onion worth)
2 T oil or butter (I always like butter better)
2 chicken breasts, cubed
4-6 cups Water
4-6 bouillon cubes (1 per cup of water)
poultry seasoning
thyme
sage
rosemary
spaghetti, alfredo, egg noodles or other desired noodle
1-2 cans cream of chicken soup

Saute the onion in butter of 1-2 minutes. Add chicken and 2 bouillon cubes cook until mostly done. Here you can either add 4 cups water and 2 more bouillon and a sprinkling of each of the other spices, bring to a boil, then add desired amount of noodles. Or you can take the chicken out and boil the noodles in the water with 2 more bouillon, and a sprinkling of each spice. Either way is fine. Once the noodles are "al dente" (cooked but firm to the bite) (add back in chicken if you removed it), add 1-2 cans of cream of chicken soup. This totally depends on how creamy you want it. If it is too water add more soup, too creamy or not soupy enough, add more water.

You really can't ruin this recipe. (Unless your lid comes off one of the seasonings. I mean, I can't imagine that tasting good.) Also, if you don't have the seasonings the soup will still be great. If you can at least add some rosemary or thyme... Come to think of it, if you can, just add them all. They really do make it taste totally home made!!!

If you want to be really cool you could always make homemade noodles to. Oh my goodness they are good. I do it occasionally (when I want extra work, extra clean up, but amazing soup.) (Which actually is less often than occasionally.)

*Hash*

Lately we've been having roast, carrots, and potatoes for dinner on my Monday night cooking club night...then Hash for Tuesday night. It's just an EASY meal for me when it's such a crazy night. And my family loves it. So... everyone in my cooking clubs- and a lot of other people keep wondering, "What the heck is Hash?" Well, I didn't know either, til I married Luke. Basically it's just leftover roast with a twist.

So, first you have to make a roast. The way I do it is turn my crockpot to high (if the roast is frozen, low if it's thawed) and put in a 2-3lb roast (or 2!). I pour about a cup of water over the top, then sprinkle it generously with garlic salt, onion salt, salt and pepper. (No, it is NOT too salty.) Then I chop an onion into 8 wedges and throw them in. I leave it on that setting from about 1pm to 3pm. At 3pm I add as many potatoes (halved) and carrots (halved...or baby carrots) as I can cram into my crockpot (and always wish for a bigger pot) and turn the setting to high. I sprinkle those with the same 4 spices. I leave it on high for about an hour then turn it to low again until it's time to eat. (if you can't be around all day, like I am, then just stick it all in (with a thawed roast) and turn it on low for about 4 hours) So, night 1 I serve that meal...

The next day, I chop the potatoes and carrots into bite size pieces and fry them in a layer of oil (preferrably, actually, bacon grease. Say, 2 Tablespoons...) When they seem almost fried I add chopped (bitesize) roast pieces and continue frying it all until the first piece burns. (Try not to let a bunch of first pieces burn all at once. Or you could just keep frying them until they are hot!) Now, one tip is to get the pan and oil heated up on medium heat until you can flick water into it and it sizzles. THEN and ONLY then do you add the potatoes and carrots. This is what makes them crispy. While it's all frying I like to add more garlic salt, onion salt and pepper to the pieces. Oh my goodness...until I had hash I hated roast. Now I tolerate roast to get to the hash. I've even considered making a roast and saving it for hash. But I don't think Luke would love that.

This meal is seriously SO easy. Quick clean up. And even in the summer it's do-able since it won't heat your house to blazes. Before you judge it, TRY it. At least the hash part.

Better than Mom's Green Beans

This is like...THE ONLY...way to eat green beans. Just sayin'. As I tried to write out this recipe I realized I had to add a disclaimer: this recipe is totally made up off the books. I don't even know how much I actually use of each ingredients. It's my best guess. So if you're just throwing things in..you're probably doing it JUST RIGHT.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 lb green beans (or bag of frozen)
3-6 slices bacon (ish..i really have no idea how much bacon it uses...)
1 T bacon grease or about 2 T margarine
1/3-1/2 cup onions, chopped
1-2 T sesame seeds
2 T apple cidar vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

Cover green beans in a shallow pan and boil until crisp tender. (Obviously the frozen beans don't take as long as the fresh.) Drain and set aside. In same shallow pan (I use a 10in round by about 2-3 inch high pan) fry bacon and crumble. Use 1T bacon grease OR melt 1T butter in pan and saute onion until tender. Stir in sesame seeds until they are slightly toasted. Add vinegar and crumbled bacon; mix well; then toss with green beans until well coated. If they are too dry melt another tablespoon of butter (or bacon grease) and toss to coat. Salt and pepper to taste.

*I often use crumbled bacon (you can get it cheap at SAMS) and butter if i don't have bacon. Or sometimes I even just fry up some ham in bacon grease and use it as the bacon.

I've definitely entertained the idea of using sesame oil in this recipe. I'll let you know if I ever do!
These are definitely not low fat, but they are stinkin' good!

Chicken Enchiladas

As a kid this was my favorite meal to go to Gramma's and have. (Besides, OF COURSE, her pizza.) I got the recipe when I got married and only then realized I had suckered for the easiest.recipe.ever to be my favorite. It's a great one to freeze because it bakes up as if it's never been frozen! Also...I've never met a kid who didn't like it!

Ingredients:
4 cups chopped cooked chicken
1 pint sour cream
1 can (4oz) green chilies (I usually leave these out!)
2 cans cream of chicken soup
1/2 bunch chopped green onions
1 1/2 c shredded cheddar cheese
1 1/2 c shredded monteray jack cheese
12 flour tortillas

Mix chicken, sour cream, cream of chicken soup and chilies. Place about 2 tablespoons of mixture in center of each tortilla and roll up. Place rolled tortillas seam side down in a lightly greased 9x13 baking dish. Pour remaining mixture over tortillas and spread evenly. Top with grated cheese and onions. Bake uncovered at 350* for 30 minutes.
Sometimes I make this as a casserole. Cut the tortillas in 1 inch squares (pizza cutters work great for this!). half of the tortillas in lightly greased dish. Top with half of the chicken mixture, and repeat layers. Top with cheese and onions and bake as above.
If you want to freeze it then just top with saran wrap and foil or a lid.

Chicken Pot Pie

A friend shared this recipe with me early this year and I have really enjoyed having it. It is so easy and quick-especially if your chicken is already cooked and, like me, you cave and buy the store pie crusts!

Ingredients:
2 refrigerated pie crusts (usually this is just one package with 2 crusts in it)
1/3 c butter
1/3 c onion, chopped
1/3 c flour
1/4 t pepper
1/4 t salt
1/4 t poultry seasoning (can easily be done without this..i added it!)
1 3/4 c chicken broth (or water with 2 chicken boullion cubes)
1/2 c milk
2 1/2 c cooked chicken chopped or shredded
2 c frozen veggies (I just use walmart's mixed veggies!)

Preheat oven to 425*. Place one pie crust in ungreased 9in pie plate.
In 2qt saucepan melt butter over medium heat. Saute onion about 2 minutes while stirring. Add salt and pepper; then add flour alternately with milk and chicken broth. (I've found it easiest to add some flour and stir it until the mixture is fairly clumpy, then add some milk until it is fairly juicy again, then add the rest of the flour and then the rest of the broth. This is to keep the flour from clumping in the liquid.) Stir mixture until boiling and thickened (a few minutes). Stir in chicken and mixed veggies.
Pour into pie crust. Top with 2nd crust and seal edges and flute. Cut slits on top. If you are going to bake it, nows the time to do that for 15 minutes. Then cover with a pie crust shield and bake 20-25 more minutes. Let stand AT LEAST 5 minutes before serving to let it thicken.
If you want to freeze it put it in the fridge until it is cold then cover with wax paper then either foil or saran wrap and place in freezer. Bake the same way when totally thawed.