Italian Baked Chicken and Pastina

Italian Baked Chicken and Pastina

My husband said..."This is as good as any restaurant pasta I have ever ordered!"  Need I say more.

Hope you enjoyed this weeks recipes from My Kitchen Cafe.  She is constantly cranking out delicious meals so keep up with her blog if you like trying new things.

Lemon and Garlic Grilled Chicken

Lemon and Garlic Grilled Chicken

We had this chicken with potato's and corn on the cob.  The chicken was delicious with a TON of flavor.  I think I'm going to cut the marinade time in half next time I make it.  The flavoring was a little too strong for my liking.

Slow Cooker Italian Beef

Slow Cooker Italian Beef

I've never been able to cook a good roast until now.  This easy crock-pot recipe creates a juicy roast with lots of flavor.  My husband loved it and there is nothing better than when your man loves the meat you cooked...ok there are a couple things better but I'm glad he liked it!

Baked Chicken Taquitos

Baked Chicken Taquitos

Crispy and Yummy on the inside.  I felt kind of cool making homemade Taquitos.  I'm used to just popping frozen ones in the microwave.  I also made the following sauce that comes from my friends family:

Avocado Ranch dip:
1 Hidden Valley Ranch packet (prepared)
1 ripe avocado

Blend together and you have a Creamy avocado dip!

My Kitchen Cafe Week

I decided this week to post everyday about a recipe that I have tried from the My Kitchen Cafe blog.  The meals are too good to be true and there isn't one recipe of hers that I haven't liked.  So enough of me talking, here is the first recipe:

Sweet and Sour Chicken

This meal is my new all time favorite.  It takes a little time but is SOOO worth it.  Click on the above link to try the goodness.

Sincerely,

Ms This

Swaddle Blankets

I never swaddled my first baby.  We tried it once at the hospital, she fussed a little bit so we hurry and took off the blanket declaring that she hated it.  Well I want to swaddle this next one because I think it would of made our first a little more comfortable.  A lot of people swear by it.  My friend recommend these cute blankets and said they worked really well for her son.  They are made really big and thin so you have enough material to swaddle and they won't get too hot.

This picture comes from Amazon.  Now if you clicked on the link you saw that the blankets are $25.  A little too pricy for my liking.  So I decided to make my own and here is what I cam up with:

I made these two blankets by picking out cute flannel material and using Bias tape to finish the edges.  It was super easy and only cost $7.00 a blanket.  Ok I lied the one with the coral edges was kind of hard.  The bias was really thin which made it difficult to attach to the material.  If you want to try something like this out I recommend using the Double Fold Extra Wide Bias Tape.  That is what the blanket with the white edge has and it was much easier to work with.  The finished blanket measures 42 x 42 inches.

Here is a shopping list for one blanket:

44 inches of flannel fabric (wash and cut square once purchased)

5 yds of bias Tape

Matching Tread

Sincerly,

Ms This

  

Anna Maria Horner

I own this book by Anna Maria Horner and love it.  Sadly I haven't done any projects out of it but hope to soon.  She has a great blog with lots of personality, humor, and good ideas.  I recommend checking her patterns and fabric out.  She's great!

Tents for Tots

"Ms. This" just gave birth to another beautiful baby girl.  She now has two girls that are very close in age and I wanted to look for something that they could enjoy playing with together as they get a little bit older.  I thought these tents were adorable and I could picture "Ms. This" and I playing (as princesses) in these tents when we were younger.  If you are interested in these darling tents click here.

Sincerely,

"Ms. That"

Diaper Case

I found this tutorial a long time ago and finally got around to making a couple for myself.  Lets be honest...Diaper bags are hard to keep organized.  To be even more honest mine is never organized.  I want to change that especially since I will have two in diapers soon and will need a Mary Poppins bag to go anywhere.  This diaper case holds wipes and 2-3 diapers, so that alone clears up a lot of space for me!
Here's what I made:

I love the above material.  When I first saw it an image of someone with big bangs, a hot pink shirt, and leggings in this material popped into my head.  So funky!

Click here for the link to the tutorial.

CoNFuseD?

Helpful hints on the tutorial:

*my pattern didn't print to scale so I had to use the flap pattern piece width as a guide for the width on the bottom part of the case.  I also disregarded the front piece pattern altogether and used the back piece pattern for both the back and the front piece.  Doing these two things made all of my cuts proportional.

Do it Yourself Magazine

I just got the new issue of Do It Yourself Magazine. It only comes every three months so I am pretty excited every time it shows up.

I've never disappointed with this magazine and if you like to make stuff at a very inexpensive price then I recommend this magazine to you.  Subscribe here.  They even have a deal going on for 1 FREE year!

Working with What I've Got

I went to Old Navy's "60% off" sale the other day and was loading up my cart pretty good.  I went to check out and as the lady scanned my items they rang up at full price.  I said "um aren't these on sale" and she said "I guess not".  I just happened to grab everything right next to the signs that said "60% off".  So I had so tell her thanks but no thanks.  The number of items I bought dwindled to two and I bought my girl some pants and no long had the matching shirt.  Shoot...I guess I might have to make one.

I came up with this.  And it looks really cute with her navy poka-dot leggings.

The knit was really hard to work with but once it is on the imperfections kind of disappear.

Here is the shirt that was supposed to go with the leggings.  Even though it is really cute I like my homemade goodness better than the alternative.  It feels a lot better spending $3.00 on fabric versus $12.50 on one shirt!

Sincerely,

Ms This

Tutorials Galore

Just when I thought I was close to getting all my projects done I found these cute Tutorials via UCreate:

I love this mail sorter.  There are so many ways you could arrange this.  Find the Tutorial here

How cute would this corsage be as a hair bow?  Find out how to make it here:

I love felt and think this Mr. Potato Head project would be so fun.  Check out the tutorial here:

I've been trying to think of something to hold my little girls head bows and I think this would be perfect:

Ruffles are too cute.  Here is the Tutorial:

Thank you UCreate for finding all of these cute Tutorials.  UCreate always has cute stuff and now I have new blogs to love.  Hope you enjoy them too!

Pretend

For Christmas my daughter received a kitchen set from Santa.  I made her a couple aprons to cook in.  They were super easy and I love how they turned out.

Of course they had to have matching hot pads...

I didn't get around to making all the felt food that I wanted to.  I made the mistake of starting out with the hand-stitched doughnuts.  They took FOREVER so I kind of lost my desire to make anymore homemade ones.

See how to make the felt food here

Since I didn't make a ton of food I had to buy some.  My friend told me about "Melissa and Doug" play food that is adorable.  It is all wooden and Velcroed together.  Each set comes with knifes to cut up and serve the food.

I bought mine on Amazon and have been very happy with the results.

Sincerely,
Ms This

Happy New Year

I haven't set my New Year's resolutions yet and I don't know if I ever will to be honest with you but I do have a "new" love for the "new" year....Buttons (currently 50% off at JoAnn's).

Another "new" I would like to try out is cupcake decorating.  My sister-in-law gave me this book for Christmas and there are a lot of cute ideas in it.  You can find it here: