My Kids Reaction to SNL Will Farrell Skit

I wanted to share with you this FUNNY skit from SNL! We LOVE Will Ferrell and this cold medicine skit was a hit with the whole family! It is hard not to laugh especially when you watch Brenden's reaction to it! ENJOY!

Maple Chicken and Vegetables~CrockPot Recipe

I had to share with you what I made for dinner last night!!! It was SO EASY that it almost felt wrong! This is totally a recipe that is PERFECT to bring out when you just have a baby, surgery, or just simply have WAY to much going on! A HUGE plus is that it is healthy AND your kids will love it! 

I really didn't measure out exact amounts of what I put into my crockpot... But I will guess the measurements... If you don't follow exactly it won't really matter!

All you need is:

• About 4 Chicken Breasts 
• 3-4 medium sweet potatoes peeled and cubed
• 16oz bag of baby carrots
• small red onion chopped
• 3 tablespoons of 100% maple syrup
• salt and pepper

This literally took me 5 minutes to prepare and I was DONE!

All you do is throw your chicken in the bottom of your crockpot and season with salt and pepper. 

Pour your Maple syrup over top.

Add your baby carrots, sweet potatoes, and onion.

Sprinkle a little more salt and pepper and you are DONE!

Set your crockpot on low and let it cook for 8 hours!

This is what everything looked like thrown together before I cooked it!

A few tips:

Make your sweet potato cubes large because they get VERY soft and tend to mush (unless you like it that way).

Also, even if you or someone in the family doesn't like onion.... you should still add a little! They cook WAY down and you can't even tell they are in there! 

My kids and husband didn't know! =)

Here is the end result picture one last time! The chicken is so soft and easy to pull apart! The veggies are separated from the chicken in the picture because I pulled all the chicken out to shred it right before serving. I also drained the excess juice from the crockpot. You can serve it like this or just mix it all back up and serve it in a bowl! YUMMY!

This recipe is now on my monthly dinner list!

Summer Grilled Cheese

OH MY GOODNESS! This sandwich is to DIE for!!!! I saw this a few years ago on an Oprah episode. Her best friend Gail was driving all around checking out signature food! I wished I could remember what restaurant served this Grilled Cheese sandwich because I would LOVE to taste it one day straight from them but I'm happy I remembered the ingredients! This makes a perfect lunch or dinner on a beautiful Summer day, where you can get some of the ingredients FRESH from the garden! 

Here is what you need:

• Sourdough Bread (I used Multigrain Sourdough from Trader Joe's)
• Havarti Cheese (I love how CREAMY this cheese is but you can sub if you have another favorite)
• Sliced Tomatos
• Fresh Basil
• Secret ingredient HONEY
• (Optional) If you are a meat lover...the boys add Ham to the sandwich 

 I had a little helper to make the sandwiches last night! All you do is layer the cheese, tomato, and basil on one side of the bread. If you add ham just make sure the cheese is the first thing touching one side of the bread. Then add your honey all over the inside of the other piece of bread and top the sandwich. Cook on stovetop in a pan or on a griddle... I like to butter the outside of the bread.

Yummy!!!

I just wanted to add something fun to this! We went Strawberry picking two days ago and our Farm Fresh Strawberries were SO YUMMY paired with this sandwich! Also, the basil we used was from our home garden... If you don't grow anything else at your home, Basil and Rosemary are a must.... They are so easy to grow and you can use them in many different recipes! 

  

If you end up making this, let me know what you think in the comments! My 6 year old son said to me last night after he ate his whole sandwich, "Yummmmm...I want you to make these everyday!"

Pressed Flower Cards: Mother's Day or Any Other Occasion

This project was SO MUCH FUN!!! It's been such nice weather over here in Kansas. We are always finding activities to do outside! One thing my kids LOVE to do is "go exploring". I told them we were going on an exploring adventure with our bike/scooters! We looked at nature, collected flowers etc., and we played at the park! 

   

 My son was SO excited to find these purple flowers because it's his teachers FAVORITE color! We are not only making Mother's Day cards but since school is ALMOST over, my son wanted to make a card for his teacher!

After all of our fun, I took all of our flower findings and put them in a BIG book and then put a weight on top of the book! It only took a day for them to become beautifully pressed and ready for our craft!

I had the kids choose what flowers they wanted and place them on a blank card however they liked it. You could also just use any nice piece of scrapbook paper... just a long as it's a little thicker than a plain sheet of printing paper.

I then put a little hot glue down to hold the flowers in their place. 

We actually did this part of the project in the basement while waiting out a tornado warning! It was a good thing to keep our minds off of the crazy storm outside! 

 The next step would be to paint a thick layer of Mod Podge over the whole surface of the card! It will give it a nice finished look!

 Here are the finished cards, my son got some yellow marker on the front of one card!

 Beautiful for Mother's Day, Birthdays, Teacher Appreciation, Thank You's, etc.

*Also, I wanted to mention, if you like what you see on my blog then PLEASE click the follow button on the right! I would LOVE that! Thanks for dropping by and reading my posts! I hope I am inspiring you all to get creative in your own homes!

No Sew Handmade Tea Bags with Personalized Tags!

This No Sew Homemade Tea Bag idea is a great idea for Mother's day, to a Mom or Grandma who LOVES tea or even for a Tea Lovers birthday! It's a neat personalized gift that the person can actually use and enjoy! BUT don't just stop at Moms.... My Dad LOVES Tea also... You can make these for Fathers Day/Birthday to your tea loving Dad!!!

Here is what you will need to make the Tea Bags:

• Loose leaf tea 
• A few fun pieces of Scrapbook paper (One design per type of tea)
• Crochet thread or Embroidery Floss (any color)
• Clean Lightweight Fabric (Cheesecloth, muslin, cotton, or in my case I used Chiffon)
• Hot Glue Gun and glue stick

I was looking around at Loose Leaf  Tea and I ended up getting 5 different types of Teas at Whole Foods for just a couple dollars! They had a HUGE selection for a great price!

   

The next thing you will need to do is cut your fabric in 6 inch squares. It is ok if your line isn't perfect! It will still look good! Once you have all of your squares of fabric cut, lay them one at a time on a plate. Add about 1 Tablespoon of tea at the top and in the center.

Then start rolling the fabric!

When you stop, you will want your seem in the middle of the roll of fabric.

Then all you do is fold together and tie it tight with a piece if your thread. I cut my thread in 9 inch strips and it was the perfect length! 

There you have it! Your tea bags are now ready for their personalized tags!

   

The next step is to make your personalized tags... All I did was create a shape in Illustrator and typed in fun quotes and verses. For example, these tea bags are for both Grandmas, so I asked the kids what they wanted to say to them and typed it on the tag. When they drink their cup of tea, they can think of their Grandchild! You can also put fun facts like "Tea is Calorie-free"! Get creative with it!

Then I cut out the shapes and glued it to a piece of scrapbook paper. I only put a small line of glue on the bottom, you don't want to completely glue it down. Once you have glued the shape down, cut out around the shape again so you now have a pretty backing on your quotes!

Now its time to connect the tags to your tea bag. Just hot glue the string into the little opening!

   

 If you are giving different types of tea you could either write what it is on the tag or do something like this! I used a different type of backing for each type of tea and then made a little card to put in with the tea. The card will tell you what type of backing goes with what type of tea!

 Now that you are done with your tea bags you need some kind of box or package to put them in. I took advantage of Garage Sale season and found two cute plastic boxes with clear lids for 25 cents each. Before I found this, I was going to cut a cracker box in half and have the kids paint it and use that for the box or HERE is another cool idea I found on how to make a gift box out of a cereal box.

Anyways, I had my kids paint their boxes.

We added their handprints on a piece of paper with a quote from each. Then I painted Mod Podge over the outside and inside of the box to seal the paint and paper!

 Here is the finished gift box of tea!

What a sweet present for any tea lover!

Simple & Fun Accessory for your little Spiderman

Here is a simple, fun, and cheep idea that you can use as an added accessory to your child's Super Hero wardrobe! Especially if you have a child that loves Spiderman! 

All you need is a pack of hairnets! It's about $1.50 at Walmart for a two pack!

All you have to do is cut off the two metal clamps on the hairnet and it opens like the picture on the right!

   

 Then let your little one go WILD with it! They can throw it ALL over the house.... It won't knock over any furniture because it's such light material! Also, because of the material, it gets stuck to things that you throw it on! See how excited my daughter got when it stuck to the deck post outside!

      

 My son even came up with this idea to pull a string from the hairnet and wrap it around your fingers....

Then when you throw it, you can pull it back!

***This could also be a fun and cheap accessory to a superhero birthday party!

Baby Q invites, Personalized Cupcake Toppers, and Tiger Cake

I have waited long enough to show you guys a few more things I created for my Tiger theme baby shower. First of all, it was coed so we used the theme of a BaBy Q.  This is just a fun BBQ, with all of your friends to enjoy yourself and in celebration of baby to come! Here is the cute wording I used in the invitation I made!

I also wanted to show you a great idea that you can use for any celebration to come! I was researching tiger cupcakes and decided it would be so much easier to make whatever kind of cupcakes I wanted and then add the decorations this way! It's so simple to make your own personalized cupcakes with these cute toppers. All you need is A few wooden skewers, some scrapbook paper, a hot glue gun, and your printer at home!

I first created as many circles as I could to fit a normal sheet of paper. Then add whatever image you want on your cupcakes. This could be the theme, your child's name, monogram, age, etc. The possibilities are endless with these! Then cut out your circles. As you can see I also made a third set of circles for the backing which are a little larger than the circles with the tigers and monograms on them.

   

Cut your skewer in four pieces. Then hot glue the skewer between the two circles of paper!

   

 These personalized cupcake toppers are so CUTE and so EASY for any type of party!

Lastly, I wanted to share with you an easy way to make a tiger cake! Since I put a lot of work into my cupcakes, they were carrot cake with maple cream cheese icing (No white sugar or white flour), I decided to use a box marble cake with pre made chocolate icing! It was so much fun to add the tiger stripes in orange icing, you can't really go wrong on the stripes.... You could switch this and make your icing orange and your stripes with chocolate but I was trying to get the least food coloring possible! =) Also I think its fun to have reverse stripes!

I seriously LUCKED out and found this AWESOME tiger at a garage sale for 25 cents the day before the BBQ!!! It makes for a great topper! They also have plastic animals at the dollar store every once in a while and that's a great deal considering I looked at buying one new and it was half this size for 6 dollars!!! YIKES!

Here is the inside of the cake! Tiger striped even inside! Hope this helps you get creative for your next party without spending a fortune! =)