Halloween Dinner: Chicken Parmesan Mummies

We had our Halloween dinner last night!

As tradition, we dimmed the lights to eat our spooky meal...

Chicken Parmesan Mummies

on a bed of baby bats (Farfalle pasta dyed gray while cooking)

with blood red sauce.

We also had Halloween shaped Parmesan garlic bread

& Halloween jello jigglers (:

I got the idea for the Chicken Parmesan Mummies from Somewhat Simple

although I ended up using crescent roll dough instead of biscuits.

It was super easy & so tasty!

Do you like having fun holiday meals?

Check out our other Halloween dinners:
Nightmare Before Christmas
Mummy Braided Chicken Roll

xoxo

Sunday Cookies

While growing up, we had this Sunday tradition

of eating roast for dinner after church & chocolate chip cookies for dessert...

My mom STILL makes a delicious roast every Sunday
& then makes these yummy cookies for dessert!

1 cup butter (softened)

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 egg

2 tsp vanilla

2 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups chocolate chips

Cream butter & sugar. Beat in egg & vanilla. Add dry ingredients & combine; stir in the chocolate chips.

Bake with love at 375 degrees for about 10-12 minutes.

Note: These cookies taste best when you reserve a tiny handful of chocolate chips for each person to eat on the side while they are baking ;)

xoxo

Platypus Day 2014

Whatcha doooin'?
Oh yeah, you're probably reading this post...
Did you remember to celebrate Playtpus Day this past Saturday?

We did (:

There was no way we would miss it!

We couldn't celebrate at Disneyland like we have in the past years,

but we still tried to make it the best day ever.

Okay, so maybe it didn't go anything like I had planned,

but it was still a fun day!

photo credit: glam.rastamonk.com

Here, let me tell you the back-story...

I promise it has nothing to do with lawn gnomes or doonkelberries.

I woke up on Saturday thinking,

"I know what we're gonna do today."

But then I remembered Hubby had to work all morning

because of all the crazy weather over the past few months.

'Tis the life of a busy auto damage adjuster.

<le sigh>

When he came home, he changed into his Perry shirt & we ate lunch.

My pregnant mind is having a hard time remembering what we ate,

but I know it was some sort of food.

Hubby & I were sporting Perry the Platypus shirts again,

but the kidlets had grown out of the shirts I made for them last year.

I didn't have the time to make new ones for them this year,

so they wore regular clothes.

So sad...

Anywhooo, we couldn't start our party right away

since we are STILL trying to pack & get our house ready to list.

We let the kids watch some Phineas and Ferb while we were packing,

but us adults easily got sucked in & stopped being productive,

so we had to turn on Pandora instead.

The sister missionaries from our church,

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,

came by around 3 to help us clean & pack for a couple hours...

They're the best!

We ended up getting quite a bit done,

so we felt pretty good about starting our party shortly after they left.

We had a themed dinner which consisted of Phineas and Ferb mac & cheese, Phineas and Ferb shaped jello jigglers (A much smaller scale of the gelatin in Isabella's pool that was hit by the Turn-Everything-Evil-inator. Not nearly as large or evil & a different flavor, but just as jiggly...), mini corn dogs from Mr. Slushy Dawg, slushy gatorade & Icees (also from Mr. Slushy Dawg).

As you can see, it was kind of a lazy dinner...

(I even took pictures of the boxes instead of the actual food.)

But hey, Perry is a platypus.

They don't do much.

After dinner, we watched some Phineas and Ferb together as a family while our food settled.

We had plans for the biggest ice cream sundae ever made,

second only to the one that Doofenshmirtz ended up accidentally making,

but we all got sleepy so we nixed that idea...

I wish there were more hours in the day

so that we could have done everything I had imagined.
In my head I had pictured:
teal streamers,
teal, orange, & brown balloons (& Balloony)
decorating our living room.

I had pictured at least a half day of events including but not limited to:
pin the hat on Perry (to make him become Agent P),
a "Where's Perry" scavenger hunt,
a game of Skiddley Whiffers,
& of course watching Phineas and Ferb.

Although it wasn't how I had imagined,
It was pretty fun for just winging it when we had so much going on.

I'm thinking that next year we'll have 'The Candace Special' for dinner... grilled cheese!
That is of course if we can't make it to Disneyland.

xoxo

Happy 2014

Happy {belated} New Year!

I know I'm a couple weeks late,
but how did you ring in 2014?
My mom (Nani) was in town, so we got to enjoy our holiday traditions with her!
We stuck with our tradition of eating cheese fondue & chocolate fondue,
then playing/eating Candyland,
but things were a little different this year...
You see, we couldn't find our Candyland game.
It's still packed in a box somewhere.
I don't know why I thought I had already unpacked it,
because clearly I didn't.
We ended up playing the Dora the Explorer version online instead.
Little Dudeman didn't seem to mind one bit though.
It was a memorable end to one year,
a great beginning to a new one,
& we loved having Nani there celebrating with us!

Let's take a look at last years resolutions, shall we?

2013 Resolutions:
1. Read scriptures daily (Need to work on that daily part)

2. Kneel for daily personal prayers (I did okay, but need to work on kneeling every day)
3. Create a better budget & stick to it (YNAB has been amazing, but we need to be more disciplined)
4. Keep our home clutter-free (Fail.)
5. Have family home evening every week (Again, we did okay for a couple weeks then slacked off)
6. Exercise & play together as a family (That whole exercise thing? Yeah, it didn't happen.)
7. Have more park days (It helps having a "park" in the backyard)
8. Read at least two books ("The Host" & "A Memory Apart")
9. Invite people over (Need to work on that.)
10. Be a better me (wife, mom, daughter, sister, friend, leader, etc...) (I'm not the best person to ask, because there's always room for improvement in my opinion, but I did my best.)

2014 Resolutions:
1. Read scriptures daily
2. Have family home evening every week
3. Get out & enjoy nature as a family
4. Use YNAB phone app often to stay on track with our budget
5. Get unpacked & keep our home clutter-free
6. Invite people over
7. Have date night once a month (at home dates are fine if we can't get out)
8. Write at least five blog posts each month
9. Read at least four books
10. Have more patience with the kidlets

Wish me luck!

xoxo

Halloween Dinner 2013

So remember that Halloween post

where I explained that Halloween didn't feel like Halloween this year?

On Friday we had our Halloween dinner.

A day late.

Trying to keep that tradition alive.

It was tasty, but even this dinner didn't seem very Halloween-like.

We didn't get out the Halloween tablecloth.

We didn't use our Halloween plates.

We didn't even clear off the table.

We just enjoyed our slightly Halloween themed dinner.

But hey, the tradition happened, right?

Here's what we ate:

Mummy Braided Chicken Roll

Here's that recipe.

It's a favorite around here.

Bloody Jello Jigglers

I was going to do my usual orange & grape Halloween jigglers.

However, I had no grape & only had one 3 oz package of orange.

What we did have was an abundance of red jello flavors.

So I went with cranberry & made 'bloody' jigglers.

The bloody spatter/streaks on the plate were made from the thin layer of jello

that spilled over in the jello mold while transferring it to the fridge.

Goblin Eyes

Green grapes.

Easy.

Healthy.

Delicious.

That's it.

That's all we had.

Again, nothing super fancy.

No decorations or whatnot.

It was an enjoyable family dinner tradition

& I didn't have to put a whole lot of extra thought into it.

Huzzah.

If you haven't seen our Nightmare Before Christmas Halloween dinner from last year,

you should definitely check it out!

xoxo

Halloween 2013

How was your Halloween?

Ours was windy & rainy all day long...

Because we've had such a crazy month:

I didn't get out any decorations,

I didn't have costumes ready,

we didn't carve/paint pumpkins,

we hadn't had our traditional Halloween dinner,
we hadn't watched The Nightmare Before Christmas,
(or any Halloween movies for that matter)

we hadn't enjoyed caramel apples,

(even though we picked 1/2 bushel at a local orchard)

& I didn't have candy until the day before.

It just didn't feel like Halloween.

So when it came time to make lunch for the kidlets,
I decided to pull off an impromptu Halloween muffin tin meal.
This is what happens when I don't plan ahead of time...

We watched The Nightmare Before Christmas while eating pumpkin shaped cheese, ghost shaped pb&j, apple slices, a banana ghost, a pumpkin orange with an apple stem, & of course caramel sauce to dip the apples in.

Simple, cute, & mostly fruit.
Not quite as 'themey' as my usual,
but I like how it turned out.

After the first couple handfuls of trick-or-treaters came by,
I finally pulled out our Halloween bin to decide on costumes.

I wasn't sure how well the paint on the Calvin & Hobbes costumes would handle the rain
(it might have been fine, but we didn't want to take the chance that it might run)

so we decided to take the simple route
& go as student witches & wizards.

Yes, I understand that our school uniforms are not up to Hogwarts standards.
We're working on adding to them little by little,
& eventually will have our complete uniforms.
We received plenty of compliments on them "as-is" last night,
but that was probably because of those adorable red-heads that were wearing them.

We lost a wand while we were out & about,
so today we're going to retrace our steps to try & find it.
If we can't find it while we're on our walk,
We may have to make a trip to Ollivanders in the near future for another one.

Tonight we're going to have our {belated} Halloween dinner,
then make caramel apples.
We're going to nix decorating pumpkins this year,
but I think that will be okay.
Don't you?

Oh, & if you missed my Harry Potter party posts last month:
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3
Check 'em out!

xoxo

Halloween costume 2013 - Possibilities

Halloween really sneaked up on us this year.

I'm sure that's partly because we're still trying to get settled,

but mostly because Gram passed away a couple weeks ago.
I can't believe it's already been two weeks

We've had a lot going on with the funeral & everything...

Since Halloween is only one day away at this point,
instead of creating/finishing our Wreck it Ralph costumes last second

I think we'll be taking the easy route

& wearing repeat costumes this year.
That's okay, right?
I'm thinking yes.

Besides...

Nobody in our new area has seen us wear these costumes before!

We probably won't decide until tomorrow,
but here are some of our easy options...

Chances are that Hubby & Little Dudeman will be going as Calvin & Hobbes again.

Little Princess will either be rockin' the Perry the Platypus costume,

the butterfly fairy costume,

or she may go as a little witch from Hogwarts.

I'll be Isabella again if Little princess is Perry the Platypus.

I never finished making my caterpillar costume to go with her butterfly one,
but I can always throw on a muumuu & lei like last year
or just find something in our costumes bin.

OR
We may ALL go as witches & wizards.
Fresh from Hogwarts.

It will be a surprise.
Don't worry, I'll post pictures of what we actually end up wearing.

On a complete side note...
Keep your eyes out for my review of K5 Learning.
Coming soon.
K5 Learning has an online reading and math program for kindergarten to grade 5 students.  I've been given a 6 week free trial to test and write a review of their program.  If you are a blogger, you may want to check out their  open invitation to write an online learning review of their program. - See more at: http://www.k5learning.com/review-k5

xoxo

Breakfast Casserole

We eat this yummy Breakfast Casserole & Pull-A-Part Bread for breakfast every LDS General Conference weekend & Christmas!

1 bag frozen hash browns (shredded)

2 cups shredded cheese (I use more)

2 cups heavy cream

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp garlic or onion salt

bacon, ham, sausage, beaten eggs, & other things typically found in omelettes (optional)

Put the potatoes in a greased 9x13 pan. Sprinkle the grated cheese & seasonings over the potatoes. Then pour the cream on top. Bake at 350 degrees for about 45-60 minutes.

Note: Mix the bacon, ham, sausage, beaten eggs, & other mix-ins with the potatoes prior to the cheese & cream if you want them in your casserole.

Both the Breakfast Casserole & Pull-A-Part Bread are delicious enough on their own,

but personally, I feel like they need to be served together.

It could just be the tradition factor of always having them together that is making me say that,

but every time I make one without the other I feel like something is missing.

Breakfast Casserole is the best friend to the sweet & sugary Pull-A-Part Bread.
It's kind of like that saying, "You're the peanut butter to my jelly."
You can't have one without the other.
Well, technically you can...
but your taste buds may disagree.

Pull-A-Part Bread

It's that time of year again...
Time to watch LDS General Conference!
That means no rushing in late to church with the kids on Sunday morning.
It means Hubby can sleep in since he doesn't have to be at the church at 6:30 am for early morning meetings.
It means we get to be spiritually uplifted by watching/listening to talks from the prophet, apostles, & other church leaders as a family in the comfort of our own home.
It means we get to lounge around in our pajamas and eat our traditional conference brunch of Breakfast Casserole & this yummy Pull Apart Bread.

1 square butter or margarine

1 Tbsp water

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

2 (7.5-oz) cans Pillsbury biscuits

3/4 cup sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

In saucepan, melt butter. Coat bottom & sides of 8x8 with 2 Tbsp melted butter. Add brown sugar & water to butter. Heat to boiling, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat. Mix sugar & cinnamon together in a large ziplock bag. Break each biscuit in half, place in bag and shake until well coated with the cinnamon sugar mixture. Loosely place coated biscuits in buttered pan. Pour caramel over top of dough. Bake 20-25 minutes at 375 degrees. Invert immediately onto cookie sheet or large plate and remove from pan.

Note: Double this recipe for a 9x13 pan

This post was featured:

St Patrick's Day Food

 Hope everyone had a wonderful St Patrick's Day!

Ours was great, but really busy...

We got ready & made sure to wear plenty of green all day long.

We had church, then I stayed after a couple hours for choir.

What can I say... I love to sing!

Then we went to see Gram (Hubby's Mom) at her house for dinner.

We told her we would take care of food & made a green dinner for St Patrick's Day.

It's tradition.

This is what we had...

Green pasta with a 'creamy' green sauce, green jello, garlic toast, & green 7up.

If I had a clover cookie cutter, I probably would have cut the toast into shamrocks.

'Cause that would have rocked.

It tasted delicious though, & that's all that really mattered.

We also were going to have peas, but I forgot to cook them & everything else was ready to eat.

Oh well...

I found this recipe for Halloween Pasta & figured that we could just make green sauce instead of orange.

Well, our sauce didn't turn out nearly as creamy & that's probably because I didn't follow the directions...

Whoops!

We used 1% milk instead of whole milk (which I'm sure made a HUGE difference),

we used monterey jack instead of cheddar (I figured white cheese would look better with green food coloring),

I skipped the pepper (because I don't like pepper),

& we didn't use any black sesame seeds (although I'm sure that made no difference whatsoever).

Anywho, it was super thin so we added an extra tsp of flour to hopefully thicken it a bit.

No such luck.

You can barely even see the sauce in the picture.

It still tasted yummy though, & after tasting it I realized it tasted an awful lot like Welsh Rarebit...

So although Hubby thought I was crazy, I took the leftover sauce home & had Welsh Rarebit for breakfast this morning!

Yes, it's green Welsh Rarebit because of St Patrick's Day...

I'm aware that it doesn't look very appetizing, but I sure enjoyed it!

My Gramma used to make this for us all the time for breakfast (:

If you can get past the slightly different texture of the sauce & the soggy toast, the flavor is really yummy!

Not for everyone, but I love it!

After dinner last night was Oswald, but I'm not going to get into that right now.

No need to be mixing holidays & confusing you guys!

Let's just say I still have a sugar hangover of sorts...

Since we were so crammed for time yesterday, our St Patrick's Day lunch was postponed until today...

We had peas, a clover sandwich, green applesauce (not to be confused with green apple applesauce), green jello, gold coins, a jellybean rainbow, a cotton candy cloud, & lucky charms.

No, I didn't get a shamrock cookie cutter in that short amount of time...

I simply cut out a shamrock on paper, laid it on the bread, & cut around it with a knife.

Yes, skittles (taste the rainbow) would make more sense than jellybeans for a rainbow,

but I had jellybeans & was trying to be resourceful! :P

I have one last St Patrick's Day food picture to share with you.

This is what my family back in Minnesota had for dinner last night...

Roast, green mashed potatoes & green gravy, peas, & salad with green dressing.

Our traditional Sunday dinner meets traditional St Patrick's Day green dinner! (:

Check out other awesome muffin tin meals @ Another Lunch

March Madness - Platypus Day, Pi Day, Party Planning

I haven't posted in a while.

What have we been up to this month?

Let's see...

Our S is for Snow unit for Mommy School has been 2 weeks long due to Little Dudeman not feeling so hot,

prep & planning for Little Princess' 1st birthday party,

& making sure we had everything we needed for all our fun meal traditions coming up!

We went to Disneyland for Platypus Day,
but since they don't make Perry shirts in 12m or 18m I had to make shirts for the kidlets.
Nothing fancy, just white tee shirts, baby Perry, doo-bee doo-bee doo bah.

We were actually slightly disappointed in how few platypuses we saw in comparison to the first 2 years.
I think we counted 32...
Last year was more like 120+
I wished people that had Perry paraphernalia a "Happy Platypus Day" if there were at least 2 Perrys in the group.
Most of them had this I-didn't-know-it-was-Platypus-Day look on their face.
Hubby started to wish that he wasn't wearing his Perry shirt since he wanted to act like he didn't know me...

Then I was busy planning the YM/YW combined activity - Easter Minute To Win It.

I think it turned out pretty fun & can't wait to share that with you!

Later that week we had a youth fireside & YW sleepover that I didn't want to miss.

I was busy working on party invites the rest of that weekend & was actually kind of excited about it since I got to use my new toy that Hubby got me for our anniversary last year...

My Silhouette Cameo (:

How on Earth did I ever make those Mickey invites without it!!!

Yes, I cut them out by hand...

I'm crazy.

I know.

We like to celebrate Pi day by eating circle foods, and of course, pie.

We had a slightly abnormal Pi day this year...

Breakfast was going to either be pancakes or quiche, but we had to leave our house around 7:45 to make it to the walk-in hours at the doctors office.

I'm no morning person, so there was no way I was making breakfast before we left.

I skipped breakfast & Lil Dudeman ate some dry fruit loops on the way.

Not the healthiest breakfast, but at least they were circles.

We waited there over an hour before we were seen since there were a few people ahead of us.

We were going to have circle sandwiches for lunch when we got home,

but we had to run a few errands while we were out & I was pretty hungry after not having breakfast,

so we stopped at Sonic & had lunch there... 

We had pizza for dinner & had dreams of a delicious Claim Jumper blackberry pie for dessert.

We had been looking all week but couldn't find one anywhere.

We would have settled for pecan, but couldn't find one at our last stop while running errands.

Bummer.

What's Pi day without pie?

I also wanted to do some of the fun Kindergarten Pi day ideas that I found at Helping Little Hands.

But alas, I am not superwoman & simply had too much going on.

Maybe next year...

So that's what has been going on around here...

But what do we have coming up?

Little Princess' 1st birthday party is tomorrow.

We have a St Patty's Day green dinner & muffin tin lunch coming up on Sunday.

Our family tradition of Oswald is coming up this Sunday.

What's Oswald you ask?

You'll just have to check back to find out (:

My sister will be coming to visit the last week of March,

and of course Easter will be here before we know it!

Yep, it's pretty crazy around here...

March Madness?

I think yes.

xoxo

Family Valentine's Night

Monday evening we finally had our family Valentine's Lady & the Tramp dinner...

We had wanted to do it last week, but we were swamped with something every single night!
We would have had Spaghetti & Meatballs like they do in the movie, but since Hubby isn't a fan of meatballs we ate Heart Shaped Chicken Parmesan & Spaghetti served with garlic bread, tropical fusion jello, & had Apple Pomegranate Martinelli's to drink.

It was delicious & we were so stuffed that we had no room for dessert!

Normally we use our red tablecloth & eat by candlelight, but I slacked off a bit this year...
Forgot the candles but at least we remembered the tablecloth!

After dinner we all cuddled up on the couch and watched Lady & the Tramp together to end the evening...

Tony's Town Square Restaurant at Disneyworld - April 2009

This year instead of exchanging cards, we made a family card... It was actually the craft at story time last week at the library, but we jazzed it up a bit after we got home by putting scrapbook stickers on it. The kids 'wrote' in it, then Hubby & I wrote things we love about our family inside! We each got a side, but covered it up when we were done writing so we didn't know what the other person had written & then we read it together...


Our family LOVE card
I'm thinking that we are gonna have to make it a tradition!

Milk Chocolate Fondue

Milk Chocolate Fondue. New Years Eve deliciousness. 'Nuff said.

1 bag of milk chocolate chips

1 can sweetened condensed milk

A dash of salt

1/4 cup oil

1/2 cup milk

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

In a heavy saucepan over medium heat, combine chocolate chips, sweetened condensed milk, and salt until chocolate is melted. Stir/fold in the oil, milk, and vanilla until mixed well. Serve warm.

(Tastes great with strawberries, apples, marshmallows, pound cake, bananas, pretzels, cheesecake, etc...)

Cheddar Cheese Fondue

I love cheese fondue but we tend to make it only once a year on New Years Eve.
It's a shame I don't make it more often because it is simple, delicious, & I love cheese.

1 1/2 cups chicken broth or milk (I like to use 3/4 cups of both)

2 cloves garlic, chopped (optional) (I use 1/8 tsp garlic powder instead)

8 oz sharp cheddar cheese, shredded

8 oz mild cheddar cheese, shredded

2 Tbsp cornstarch

In a fondue pot over medium heat, heat the broth/milk with the garlic until bubbles appear. Toss the cheese lightly with the cornstarch & add to the broth/milk mixture. Stir until cheese is completely melted. Keep warm over low heat.

(Tastes great with sourdough bread, french bread, lil smokies, meatballs, carrots, pretzels, broccoli, cauliflower, etc...)