Food Again

I tried yet another recipe this week, and it was really good.  We'll be doing it again so I'll share it on here.  I definitely messed up the recipe and sort of made it my own, but I like the way it turned out so I'll probably do it the same way again.  I got the recipe for these Chicken Roll-ups from here (courtesy of Pinterest, of course).  So here's how I did it:

Ingredients:
1 (8 ounce) cans Reduced Fat Pillsbury Refrigerated Crescent Dinner Rolls
1 (10 3/4 ounce) can cream of chicken soup, undiluted
2 cups grated cheddar cheese (or any cheese of choice)

4 ounces cream cheese (very soft)  (I used 1/3 less fat cream cheese)
1 tablespoons butter (very soft but not melted)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 tsp minced onion flakes
1 large cooked chicken breasts, finely chopped or shredded
1/2 tsp seasoning salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper (or to taste)
1 Tbsp. milk


Recipe: 
Set oven to 350°F. Spray a 9x13 dish with cooking spray. 

For the topping, mix together the following:
1 tbsp milk
1/2 cup cheese
1/2 of can of undiluted chicken soup. 
After well blended, set aside.  

For the filling, in a separate bowl the following until well blended:
4 oz of soft cream cheese
1 tbsp of butter
1/2 tsp of garlic powder. 
Chopped/shredded chicken
1/2 tsp onion flakes
1/2 cup of cheddar cheese
Remaining 1/2 can of undiluted chicken soup 
Season with seasoned salt or white and black pepper to taste. 

Unroll the crescent rolls. Place 1 heaping tablespoon chicken filling (or a little more) on top of each crescent triangle, then roll up starting at the thicker end. Repeat for all 8 crescent rolls.
Drizzle a small amount of the topping mixture on the bottom of the dish. 
Place the crescent rolls seam-side down on top of the creamed mixture in the casserole.

Drizzle the remaining topping on top and sprinkle with 1 cup (or more) grated cheese, or amount desired. 

Bake for about 30 minutes and ENJOY. 

You could definitely make the topping and mixtures before hand and just leave them in the refrigerator until it was time to roll them up and bake them.  Oh, and for the chicken, I just boiled a few boneless skinless chicken breasts in my crockpot right before I went to bed- just put them on high for 4 hrs, and they were ready in the morning (my crockpot switches to low/warm after it finishes).  Anyway, we'll be doing this one again at some point. 

And because I can't do a whole post without a few pictures of Kate, here is what she was doing tonight.   She was walking all around the house holding 2 things- my brush and her comb.  My little girly girl. :) 

Almost ONE :(

Kate is 11 months old today.  Wow!  I'll do her monthly update soon, but I still need to actually take her 11 month pictures.  It's been rainy today and I'd really rather take them outside.

And because she is now 11 months old, this means I am in full-on party planning mode. :)  I ordered the invitations to her party today.  Yay!  Let me tell you, birthday cards are expensive though! I found the perfect ones on Shutterfly.com and they said they were just $0.40 per card.  Perfect.  I got everything looking the way I wanted it to, and when I went to check out they were $2.50 PER card.  No thank you.  I ended up finding some pretty cute ones at Walmart.com

We're not doing any real "theme" for this party, except for it being really girly and pink.  Kevin basically told me to do whatever I wanted, so I am.  However, he did preface that by saying that if we ever had a boy, he would have a sports party for his first birthday. Ha!

Anyway, I'll share all of the birthday fun AFTER her party.  In the meantime, here is what Kate has been up to the past week or so...

Yes, she's walking!  She took a few steps around 9.5 months old but she quickly lost interest.  Then this week, she just took off.  She's been walking pretty much non-stop and only crawling if she falls down and her hands are full of toys so she can't get herself standing back up.  Crazy.  And she is seriously into EVERYTHING.  She opened up every single one of our kitchen cabinets that she could get to tonight.  I guess we're going to have to baby proof ALL of them.

And here's one more video of Kate playing with her Daddy, just because I think it's cute.  Love her little laugh!

Weekend

We had a pretty low-key weekend at home and it was great.  Sometimes it is so nice to have zero plans.  So on Saturday we slept in, did some cleaning and housework, and then just stayed around the the house all day.  Kate had fun playing with her toys and hanging out.

Kristi and Nicole came over later in the evening and we picked up a pizza.  Then we all ended up at Dairy Queen and got Blizzards. Yumm...

We came home and played around in the yard for a little while.  Kate practiced her newly refined walking skills in the grass.

Today we went to church and then took a road trip to Georgia with some of our family.  Kevin used to live there, and there is a BBQ restaurant that we seem to go back to at least a couple of times a year.  So good!  I hate that I forgot to pull out my camera.  Next time though!

Catching Up...

We tried to go watch the big fireworks display that they do downtown on Wednesday night, but it didn't quite work out.  The timeline of events online showed that the fireworks were supposed to start at 9:30 pm.  We got there about 9:25 so we knew we would have to wait a few minutes.  We waited, and waited, and waited.  While we killed time, Kate played around in the car with my phone, pretended to drive, etc. 

At 9:55 we gave up.  It was already WAY past Kate's bedtime, and we both had to go to work the next day.  So we drove home.  I'm sure they started the fireworks 10 min after we left, but we were kind of glad not to be caught in the downtown traffic.  I'd heard that they were expecting close to 50,000 people, and some of my co-workers said it was a nightmare trying to get out of there.  Oh well.  Kate isn't old enough to remember any of it anyway.  Maybe next year.  

Thursday evening we went back to the car dealership to get my spare key, the book that goes with the car, etc.  We just didn't have time to get all of that when we bought it on Tuesday since it was already pretty late.  Kate had fun playing in their little kid room. 

And, I have tons of pictures from today so I will post those tomorrow.  We didn't do anything special; I just actually pulled out my camera instead of using my phone all day. :)  

Foodies

I have done a terrible job of updating my Recipe Blog lately.  Probably because I've done such a poor job of actually trying new recipes these past 6 months or so.  Regardless, I DID try a few new ones in the past week and they were both winners, so I think I'll share them. I'll also add them to the recipe blog so I can actually find them later.

The first one was a crockpot recipe- Crockpot Italian Chicken.  I found it on Pinterest here and I think I may have actually tried this one before.  It was really good and we'll try it again sometime.  We might try it over pasta instead of rice, but it was good over rice too.

stick-a-fork-in-it

 Crockpot Italian Chicken: 



Ingredients:
2-4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (can be frozen)
1 pkg. (8 oz.) cream cheese (let sit out to soften- or stick it in the microwave)
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 pkg. italian dressing seasoning (the dried kind in the packet)
rice or pasta

Stir the cream cheese, cream of chicken, and seasoning together in a medium bowl. Place the chicken in the crockpot and cover with the mixture. Cook on high 4-6 hours or until the chicken is cooked and fall-apart-tender. After the first two hours when the chicken is softer i cut it up into strips for easier eating, but it's not necessary.  Serve over pasta or rice.  Yumm!


Okay the next recipe also came from Pinterest and was also a winner.  It's not REALLY a recipe, it's just something I did not know.  I found it here.  Who knew that you could make ahead burritos, freeze them, and then just stick them in the microwave when you're ready to eat.  I guess it makes sense since you can buy freezer meals, I just never thought to make my own.  


Freezer Burritos:


Basically, I cooked a batch of rice in my rice cooker along with a can of diced tomatoes, one chopped onion, and a clove of garlic.  I made a batch of burritos using the rice mixture, black beans, refried beans, chicken, cheese and salsa.  Then I wrapped them up individually and stuck them in the freezer.  When we're ready to eat them, we'll just unwrap them and stick them in the microwave for 3 minutes.  Perfect!

Fourth of July Fun

We have had a whirlwind few days.  So first, Happy 4th of July from our family to yours!  

The above picture was taken today at lunch at Cracker Barrel.  I LOVE this little rocking chair Kate is sitting in and have been wanting to get her one.  I've been checking craigslist pretty regularly for one, but so far no luck. 

Okay, so the biggest part of our holiday excitement was that I got a new car. :) YAY.  I have had the same 2001 Nissan Pathfinder for the past 10 years and it has been a GREAT car.  I really have loved it.  The plan was for me to get a new car later this year or even next year.  We have had to do a little work on my car lately with the A/C and some other issues, and after the recent HOT weather we've been having, we decided to get a little more serious about looking for me a car.  We looked at the Toyota Highlander that I liked and realized that it wouldn't work for us... especially with me only being 5' tall.  Then we test drove a Pathfinder and I loved it!  Tuesday night we went to the Nissan dealership for me to drive one that Kevin had looked at earlier in the day.  It was perfect, the price was right and they gave us what we wanted on our trade in.  I drove it home. :) 

Saying goodbye to my old car was almost sad!  I had it since I was a senior in high school. kept it through college, grad school, and now 5 years of working.  

But I do love my new car, and hope it last just as long (or longer) than the one before it!  I'm sure Kate will appreciate actually having A/C in the back seats too. 

Anyway, I fed Kate spaghetti tonight for the first time and she seemed to enjoy it.  I knew it would probably get messy so she started off in just a diaper and bib.  At first, I fed her off of the spoon but she really wanted to feed herself so I let her.  She did a good job of keeping it off of the floor, but not so good of a job keeping it off of herself.  

Yep, she loved it.  And then she went straight from the high chair to the tub. See the aftermath of the spaghetti? 

We are heading downtown tonight to see a big fireworks show that our city does.  Hopefully Kate will enjoy them and not be terrified.  We will see!  Happy 4th of July!!

Wonderful Weekend

I meant to update this last night, but that didn't happen.  As soon as I sat down to blog, we got hit with a big lightening storm.  After the disastrous storm that we had almost exactly a year ago, we pretty much run around the house and unplug everything we possibly can to avoid another lightening strike.  Needless to say, the laptop was unplugged and I did not blog about our weekend.

So, I'll blog about it now...

This weekend was wonderful.  We didn't do anything.  We didn't go anywhere.  It was fantastic.

I feel like we've either gone somewhere or had something to do every weekend since busy season was over.  This might be a slight exaggeration, but not much.  So it was great to be able to sleep in on Saturday, hang around the house with each other, go to lunch together, and do whatever we wanted to do.

We spent almost all of Saturday at home.  Kevin let me sleep in, and I stayed in bed til 9:30.  Awesome!  We finally got motivated and decided to go eat lunch at Little Pig's BBQ.  Kate got her first taste of BBQ and loved it- not surprised.

Since we were already over that way, we ran to the mall so I could exchange something and Kevin could go look around the golf store.  I guess the combination of lunch and shopping wore Kate out. 

Since Kate has become more mobile she is go-go-go ALL the time.  She has never been much of a cuddler (is that even a word?) but she is even less of one now that she can pretty much get herself where ever she wants to.  The ONLY time that she is somewhat relaxed and calm is when she's having her bedtime bottle.  And this isn't even an all the time thing.  So I said all of that to say, I really enjoy it when she lets me hold her.  Definitely enjoy this evening bottle time! 

If you live anywhere in the US, you probably know that the southeast had a major heat wave come through this past weekend.  It was NOT fun to see this...

It ended up getting up to over 106 degrees, which is an all time record for where we live.  Crazy. After church on Sunday, we went to lunch and on the way home I stripped Kate down to just her diaper to ride home.  She got so flushed and sweaty on the 10 min ride home and I felt SO BAD.  I drive an older SUV that does not have air vents in the back seat.  Even though the A/C was blasting, and it was all aimed toward the back, it never cooled off before we got home.  It doesn't help that Kate is still rear-facing.  Kate spent the rest of the day in just her diaper.  Call us redneck if you want to, but she was cool. :)

It was so hot that we let our outside dogs come in for a little while.  They only came in our laundry room, but they seemed to enjoy the air conditioning.  Kate liked having them nearby too.

Happy Monday!