Christmas

No, I'm not skipping Thanksgiving, which is one of my all time favorite holidays. However, we did pull out our haul from the 75% sale at Target. I am so excited. It's a total change of my usual decor. It's bright! Turquiose, hot pink, red, and lime green, I can't wait. I want to make one of these from the multipack of ornaments I bought last year.

I've been in a decorating slump and it feels good to have some new ideas!

Dental Pumpkin

This one loves contests. Mostly because she wins. Alot. She decided to enter the pumpkin carving contest at her orthodontist office.Contest ends tomorrow, but didn't this turn out great!?

P.S. We've got her convinced she wants to be an orthodontist when she grows up. She's a smartie.

Craft Blog

These girls are getting some serious craft on. This is my sister's good friend.
Check it out.

Crockpot Chicken Pot Pie

This isn't my picture BTW, I can barely take pictures of my kids, let alone my food! But it all looked something like this!

The crockpot is a staple in our home. I use it 2-3 times a week, even in the summer. Because it does the work for me, I have found I can adapt many recipes for it's use.

This week I tried crokpot chicken pot pie and my family LOVED it.

Hope you will enjoy it too...

Start in the morning.
Cook three chicken breasts with a can of cream of chicken soup on low for about 3-4 hours. About 4-5 hours before serving add three diced potatoes (skin off), and about a cup of carrot slices. At this point I threw in a cup of diced celery, but it was a little overdone.
Next time, I'll probably wait and add the celery until an hour before when you add a cup of frozen peas. At this point I added:
1 tsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp parsley
1/2 poultry seasoning or seasoned salt
1/2 tsp of onion powder (your could also skip the seasoned salt and just add onion salt)
(or something like that, I usually just stand over the crockpot and sprinkle)


So, just to recap:
9:00am-started the chicken and cream of chicken soup
12:00pm-added potatoes, carrots, and seasoning
4:00pm-add celery and peas (I actually used some left over edame the kids had refused to eat plain the night before. They loved it in this though.)

Now for the top:
There's a couple routes you could go:
Easiest:
Puff Pastry Sheets cut into squares(So fattening, and my kids were going nuts for them!) OR
Ready made pie crust cut into squares

Easy:
Bisquick Biscuits (side of box)

You go, Martha Stewart!
Homemade Bisquick Sour Cream Biscuits

3 c flour
1 1/2 T baking powder
1 1/4 tsp salt
1/3 c cold butter

Mix these together with a wire pastry cutter, and add 1 egg and one cup of sour cream.

You could roll out and cut with the cream of chicken soup can, OR drop by spoonfuls on the baking sheet.
Bake @450 for 8-10 min.

Happy Baking!
Amber

Halloween at My House

I love Halloween. Not morbid spooky Halloween. I'm talking nice witches with warts, black cats, and smiling faces, and fake glittery pumpkins. This year, I painted one of my broken kitchen chairs black and it turned out wonderfully well with my bucket of Halloween kids books. I got some great ideas off Pintrest for the mantle with cheesecloth and lots of free printables!

I also love Harry Potter. If I have to be the last person on the block doing Harry Potter Halloween, so be it. Long live Diagon Alley Apothecary.

 My little one brought this darling fall paper home from school and it's so cute I can't stand it. I think I'm going to use a brown sharpie over her pencil and put it in a floating frame with fall leaves.

Cleaning out the iPhone

Over the years, if I've loved something, I've snapped a photo for future reference. Now, I have someplace to put them!

Like these rugs from Target! Love them!


Or this bedding @ Gardner Village

This headboard would be a great DIY project. It was attached to the wall at the villa we stayed in @ Marriott Mountainside in Park City, Utah. You would need some serious patience to make all those molding squares, but, I wondered how it would turn out if you used 25 dollar store picture frames and painted it all. I bet it would look awesome!

Tangeled Rapunzel Birthday Party

Thanks to Paging Supermom for the great ideas and printouts! The printout banner and lanterns were my favorite! I made easy satin hair clips for party favors, along with paint sets and make your own crowns.

Welcome!

Have you ever wanted to come up with new decor or try a new recipe and scoured the internet for the best ideas? Me too, srsly, what did we do before internet or google!? I wanted to a site I could share homemaking ideas, tips, tricks, or decor and pin my own ideas to pintrest. Even though my brain is often fried (thanks, homework), pintrest has renewed my creativity spark! Welcome and enjoy. Leave me a comment and say "Hi"!"