Max's Wolf Suit

So last year at Christmas I was trying to think of what to get my little man, who at the time was only 7 months old, and I remembered the book "Where the Wild Things Are" my brother had when he was a kid. I searched high and low until one day I found it after having to ask a sales clerk at Barnes and Noble. I was super excited especially when I read it and saw that the little boy's name was Max just like our son. After I bought it I found out that it was going to become a live action movie and decided I wanted to dress my Max up as Max from the book for Halloween. I searched (again) for a costume but all I could find was one person who made them on E-bay. I decided to make it myself with the help of my super sewing Aunt! She made all of my cousin's costumes, most of my cousin's pageant outfits, and my wedding dress. She said it would be very easy so we set to work using an old cat costume pattern and my aunt's imagination. I am so pleased with the way it turned out!

Crockpot Salsa Chicken

This meal was suggested to me by my best friend Kayla at Central Cooking. After 1,000,000 times of her telling me how much she and her husband liked it and after seeing her post the recipe on her blog I finally decided to make it! I was pleasantly surprised. It was super easy and tasted wonderful!



You will need
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 cup of your favorite salsa
1 lb of frozen chicken breast
1 packet of taco seasoning
Put the frozen chicken in the bottom of the crock pot, pour seasoning on top of your chicken, mix the soup and salsa together and spread over the chicken. Cook in your crock pot on low for 7-8 hours until the chicken is cooked. When chicken is done shred the chicken (I used my handy pampered chef chopper ( I LOVE that thing!)).
We put our chicken in tortilla's and topped with cheese and lettuce. You can make it into nachos or eat any way you'd like....My 1 year old ate it straight from the bowl!

Review: Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse Novels 1-3

I received this wonderful first book as a gift for my birthday from my wonderful best friend Kayla. As she gave it to me she said "I have a feeling this will begin another obsession." Boy was she right! This being based on how we were both obsessed with the Twilight Series and both read all four books in a matter of weeks. I had heard of this series before from both the internet forums on Goodreads and from my most favorite magazine Entertainment Weekly, where I had read about the show based on the books on HBO also and wanted to read them but I had SO many books on my library queue and wanted to knock some of them out of the way first. When I received this first book I decided to forget them begin the series. I was drawn in and in LOVE within the first chapter! I absolutely adore the main character Sookie and Charlaine Harris is such an awesome writer. I love or love to hate every single character that comes along! I have yet to be bored at any part of the three books I have finnished in the month I have had these books. After finnishing the first book I made my husband go out and rent for me the first season of Trueblood and fell in love with it too! Although they did change several main things I still feel it follows the book well.
The first of the series Dead Until Dark introduces you to Sookie and Bill (or Vampire Bill as the town of Bon Temps, Louisianna refers to him). Sookie is a waitress in a local bar and reads minds. Most of the people in town thinks she's crazy especially after she meets Bill and becomes his girlfriend. In this book Sookie tries to discover who is killing women in town who have been connected to both Vampires and her womanizing brother to try and clear both of them of the murders.

In the second book of the series Sookie is inlisted to help some of Bill's vampire friends find a fellow vampire that was kidnaped right from Fangtasia, a night club where vampires and humans come to meet that Bill's boss Eric owns. She also comes across a radical group that is fighting against vampire rights.

In the third book Sookie must try and rescue Bill from a group of vampires that want something very usefull from him. She gets help from Eric and a Werewolf and ends up learning of other supernatural creatures she never knew existed. She also learns something about Bill that makes her wonder if being a vampire's girlfriend is what she wants.

Father's Day Pt 2

Every year at Father's Day I have no idea what to get my dad. Sure he'd be happy with a gift card for any of the home improvement stores in the area but I just didn't want to get him the same thing I did every year. This year it hit me: OATMEAL PIE! My dad LOVES my grandma's oatmeal pie. Grandma rarely makes it any more . My aunt teases my dad by telling him she only ever gets to eat it when my grandma knows my dad is coming over. When Ruthie and I took it over to him he was beaming, especially when I told him it was grandma's recipe!

Grandma Ferguson's Oatmeal Pie

Ingrediants:

1. 3/4 c Quick Oatmeal

2. 3/4 c sugar

3. 1 stick butter

4. 2 beaten eggs

5. 3/4 c maple or pancake syrup

6. 1/4 c pecans (I left these out)

*to fill pie shell sometimes it's better to use one and one half times ingrediants (I just doubled it)

Preheat oven to 350

Mix syrup and oats. Melt butter, then add to sugar and oat mixture. Add eggs and mix well. Pour into unbaked 9" pie shell. Bake on middle shelf about 30-45 minutes. (I baked for at least 50 minutes, it took a little longer since I doubled the ingrediants)

Father's Day Pt 1

This year fathers day for my husband came early. Since he had to work during the day the kids and I decided to celebrate early. So Friday I made him the meal he likes the most: French Onion Chicken. I have never seen some one so in love with onions! Especially french fried onions, sometimes I'll buy ffo to make this chicken and when I go to make this dish they're all gone! I found this recipe in an old pamphlet for Hidden Valley Ranch that my grandma gave me in a recipe book. I've since seen it in magazines, only a little different. I also made some quick cheesy mashed potatoes.

French Onion Chicken

from Hidden Valley Ranch

Ingredients:

1 lb chicken breast

2 cans french fried onions

bottle of honey mustard dressing

Heat oven to 350. Crunch up french fried onions in a bowl. Dip chicken in honey mustard and then in onions. Place on baking sheet and cook until chicken is done.

We also got Daddy a new weed eater/edger.

Catch and Release

Does any one know what's in this jar? Its not salsa.......anyone? It's lightening bugs! While outside grilling the other night Ruthie and I noticed that the lightening bugs were out in full force. I explained to her that when I was little, my brother and I filled huge jars with the little glowing creatures. She got so excited and said she wanted to do it too. After searching for an empty jar unsuccessfully, I just grabbed a half used jar of salsa from the fridge to clean out. When Ruthie saw she asked "Mommy, do lightening bugs like salsa?"

This child is scared of bugs so I was quite surprised that she wanted to catch them but after we cleaned the jar and went back out she kept a distance. I was really the only one catching them. It was so funny, she just kept saying over and over again "Mommy lightening bugs are SO cute!". So cute she did not want them near her :)

So after she had her fill of watching me catch them we went inside to show daddy and to eat supper. After supper she was looking at the jar and talking to them. I overheard her showing them her super cool Little Mermaid shirt that plays music. I was cracking up!
After a while she decided that she wanted to let them go. We went back outside and liberated the lightening bugs and they flew away. Ruthie was so happy that we freed them, as long as they did not fly in her direction. When they were all out of the jar she got bored and decided to climb on the porch swing......

The Bizzare Culinary Tastes of a Four Year Old

My daughter eats some strange things. For example, she dips her chicken nuggets in her macaroni and cheese, she puts ketchup on her grapes and likes ranch dressing on her hot dogs. Although, I shouldn't be too shocked since my husband has been known to eat pudding with not a spoon, but string cheese as his utensil of choice. When she was asked what she would like for supper tonight she first said "cheesy taco no, I want a hot dog". After processing this in her mind for a bit she said "cheesy hot dog taco". I at first was disgusted but I remembered all the strange things she's eaten and decided it wouldn't kill her. So I heated up a tortilla shell, put on some cheese, and cut up a hot dog to put on it as well. Not surprisingly she enjoyed it (weirdo) and I won't be too shocked if she asks for one, if not something even stranger in the future.

Coolest day at work!

Today I had some interesting customers. I was just sitting at one of the desks in the testing area, reading my book, and one of my co-workers (I’ll call her “A”) were waiting on a customer. The customer said she just needed to change her name on her drivers license because she got married. When A asked to see her marriage license the lady said she had a complication, her marriage was a same-sex marriage. A said that we couldn’t do that because Illinois does not recognize same-sex marriages. Well I remembered getting a memo a while back that said if they had gotten their social security card changed we could change their drivers license. Of course I interrupted A because any chance I get to be right when she’s wrong I’m all for. Of course she argued with me and I said that I would call Springfield and see what we could do. Then another co-worker got her spouse next in line and he told her the same thing. When I called Springfield the lady did not know what to do so she tried to connect me with her manager but they were busy and she gave me their number to try and call later. Well while I was waiting to call that department back I decided to look for the memo (I have memos strung all over the break room so it was going to be a challenge). Well as I found mine my manager found it in our operations manual and it said that if we can link the two names-not by a marriage license -but for example a social security card, we can change their drivers license. Which it makes no sense to me why a marriage license even thought it’s from another state, and we do take marriage licenses from other states for straight couple’s isn’t good enough to link two people’s names together if they’re same-sex but whatever, anyways, these ladies had their social security cards changed. Apparently at the social security office they had a problem because they weren’t going to change their cards but the office called Iowa where the ladies were married and Iowa said that since their marriage license was a legal document then they had to let them change their cards, which allowed me to change their licenses! I was super excited because even though Illinois does not recognize their marriage we can still change their licenses just like everyone else!

Baby Shower Cake

Today I went to a baby shower for my husbands cousin. My sister-in-law is a pretty awesome cake decorator and she made the cake. Actually, she made two, one was a "joke" cake. Both cakes were one's with the "baby belly" on them only one cake actually had a baby in it. She took a toy baby and put it in a balloon filled with water and covered it with fondant so that when they had the guest of honor cut into it her "water broke" and she "delivered" the baby. She thought it was pretty funny, my four year old little girl however, was scared to death! The look on her face was absolutly priceless when my husband's cousin took the baby out of the middle of the belly and squeezed the water out of it. Here are some pictures I got from my husband's aunt's myspace :)


Real Cake & Joke Cake



Cuting into the cake

Jack Daniels Marinated Steak

My husband and I love steak. At Christmas my parents bought us half a beef so we had steaks, hamburger, and roasts for a long time! All we had left in our freezer were three packages of steaks and nothing special to do with them. While at the grocery store one day we came across Jack Daniels EZ Marinader and decided to try it since we really LOVE the Jack Daniels steaks at TGIFRIDAYS. So this past weekend I tackled cleaning our grill which we've had forever but never really used. Tonight we fired up the grill and cooked up some really wonderful food. The weather was kind of scary (lots of wind and dark clouds, but it only sprinkled) but we got through it and it was so worth it! I also made corn on the cobb and some fast instant cheesy mashed potatos. All we did was put the steaks in the marinade during the day (about 8 hours) and cooked them to our liking it was super easy! The only thing I think I'll do next time is to take out some of the marinade to pour on top after we cook the steaks.

My first post= Deep Fried Pickles and Jones soda

On my mom's last birthday we went out to one of our local steak houses. This particular restaurant my daughter likes to call "the pigs and the peanuts" because of the large statue of a pig out side and the fact that they let you throw peanut shells on the floor. Anywhoo, my dad suggested we order deep fried pickles as an appetizer. Now, I like, maybe even LOVE pickles but was hesitant to try them cooked deep fried but they turned out to be really good! I had forgotten about them until one night this past week my husband and I were watching Deep Fried Paradise and one of the restaurants' claim to fame was deep fried pickles! I immediately decided I was making them and I was going to do it soon! So today was the day! I will say that I enjoyed mine with some Jones soda and it was wonderful!

Deep Fried Pickles

ingredients:
1. pickles of your choice (I used kosher pickles spears)
2. 2 eggs
3.1 cup flour
4. 2 cup bread crumbs (I used Italian seasoned)

Heat oil to 375. Mix together eggs, flour, and bread crumbs in a bowl. Place pickles in bowl with batter (I cut up my pickle spears to make smaller) and stir until pickles are well covered. Place pickles in oil and cook until they rise to the top. Place on paper towel to drain and cool then enjoy!