Friday Favorites {9-2-16}

Although I've been sick all week and it seems like nothing was too great around here, I still want to share my Friday FAVORITES from this week!  

My first FAVORITE is this GIVEAWAY that I am co-hosting with An Apple For The Teacher!  Enter the Rafflecopter HERE for a chance to win at $25 Gift Card to TPT!!!

One of my daily FAVORITES is watching my sweet baby girl do tummy time! She just smiles, roll around and tries to giggle! She's almost got it down! Gawd my heart could just explode with love!

This thing. Guys, this is the read deal. Since I've been under the weather I haven't cooked much, so I stopped in to try out Taco Bell's breakfast, which I had never done before. I got the Breakfast Crunchwrap and it is definitely a new FAVORITE! Any time I decide to break my diet I am definitely heading to Taco Bell for Breakfast!

My FAVORITE lesson I taught this week was a lab with Skittles to walk my students through the scientific method. I feel like it's very important for them to have a good grasp on the scientific method before we begin our actual district curriculum, so we tested the question "Do Skittles dissolve faster in warm or cold water?"  They loved watching the Skittles dissolve!

My absolute FAVORITE thing each day is when I see my beautiful Pre-K baby walking down the hall with her "buckle and bubble"! She is soaking up information like a sponge and I couldn't be happier that I get to see her every day! Love this kid tooooo much!

My FAVORITE moment from this week is when I realized that I've lost 17 lbs since I started my weight loss journey in June! My face really tells the tale!

My last FAVORITE of the week is this recipe my mom made my family the other night when I wasn't feeling well enough to cook: Chicken and Potatoes with Garlic Parmesan Cream Sauce!  I love this recipe so much that I've blogged about it before, but when my mom made it, it tasted even better!   Definitely try this recipe out!

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Friday Favorites!

Today I am linking up with Momfessionals for Friday Favorites! This is my first time linking up with them so I'm super excited!

Favorite Book:  The Sweetness of Forgetting by Kristin Harmel is one of the greatest books I've ever read.  It perfectly weaves together a story of love, history, and secrets!  I was completely intrigued by the storyline as well as the historical side to the story.  I definitely recommend it!

Favorite Recipe:  As I've begun my journey into getting fit and eating healthier, I've tried out multiple new recipes that I would've never tried before.  One of my favorites was Baked Cauliflower Nuggets! I was truly impressed with them.  They were healthy and delicious and I will definitely make them again!

Favorite Vacation:  Because I had a baby in April, we decided to not take an actual family vacation this summer.  But we have been very blessed in that we have gotten to go to our family cabin, FOREST VIEW CABIN, at Lake Tenkiller here in Oklahoma multiple times! It is beautiful and incredibly relaxing.  We are heading there one last time this weekend and I can't wait!  Like us on Facebook!

Thanks for reading! I hope you have a great Friday!
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Recipe Roundup- Chicken Dishes!

Since I've been on maternity leave I have had plenty of time through out the day to sit around on Pinterest and ask myself "What in the world am I going to cook for dinner?"  I've pinned some super delicious recipes lately on my Food-Main Dishes board!

Here are my three favorite recipes that I've made the past few weeks, with links to their recipes! 

                                    One Dish Queso Chicken Bake from the Pinning Mama
Mexican food is my favorite food of all time, and this dish was delish!  Very easy to make and it hit the spot for my Mexican craving. You literally throw everything in the pyrex dish and then cook it! I highly suggest it for a busy weeknight dinner!

Chicken Parmesan Baked Pasta from the Budget Savvy Diva

Chicken Parmesan is my very most favorite Italian meal so I just had to try this out! It was an excellent recipe, but next time I will definitely add some more sauce.  It was a little dry when I made it, but deliciously tasty nonetheless!

Cheesy Spinach Dip Chicken Pasta from Crunchy Creamy Sweet

This was an instant family favorite! I couldn't believe how creamy and delicious this dish was.  It is a definite must try! I almost wanted to bust out some tortilla chips and eat it with chips! Lol!

Follow me on Pinterest for more awesome dishes to try out! I wish I was creative enough to create my own recipes, but why recreate the wheel when delicious recipes like these exist?!

Homemade Pizza Rolls! (My very favorite thing!)

This weekend we had some friends over and I decided to make my favorite finger food-

Homemade Pizza Rolls!  

Below is my recipe!

 Ingredients:
1 lb. hamburger meat
1.5 cups cheddar cheese
Garlic and Herb Pasta Sauce, or your favorite kind (use as much as you want)
1 pack egg roll wrappers cut in half diagonally
3 tbsp. Cornstarch
1 cup Water
*You also need wax paper and a fryer

Directions::
Cook your hamburger meat in a skillet.  Put in a bowl in the refrigerator to cool down.
When the meat is cooled, add the cheese and sauce.

 

 Cut your egg roll wrappers.
Combine cornstarch and water in a bowl and mix.

Grab one egg roll wrapper, and lay it down on wax paper as you see in the picture below.
Place a small amount of the cornstarch/water mixture across the long, top portion of the wrapper.
Put a spoonful of the meat mixture in the middle of the wrapper.

Roll up wrapper from the bottom.

Fold left side over.
Then fold right side over.
Do one final flip and make sure the flaps are nice and sealed (or else you will have leakage in your fryer)

Fry them delicious babies up until they float!

I love to dip them in the leftover pasta sauce!
Enjoy!!!!

MMI and a GIVEAWAY!

Happy Monday, bloggy friends! I'm linking up with 4th Grade Frolics for Monday Made It!

My first Monday Made it is a Back to School GIVEAWAY that I am hosting with the wonderful Alison from Rockin' and Lovin' Learnin'! If you haven't entered yet go HERE to do so!  You could win a $35 Amazon Gift Card or $15 to Alison's TpT Store!

 My second Made It may seem a little strange, but I made my kitty finally eat! We were thinking we were going to have to take him to the vet because he wasn't eating but at last he did this morning!!!  Last night was our first night with our adorable new kitty. We haven't given him a name yet, but my daughter has come up with some pretty funny options. Her favorite right now is Mutasa, but I'm pretty sure that one isn't going to stick!  Any ideas for names?!

I've been trying to get back into the groove of posting more recipes, as cooking is one of my loves, so here are two recipes that I absolutely adore!  You can follow my Pinterest board and find lots of yummy recipes HERE!

First up is Crockpot Ranch Chicken from Stockpiling Moms

3 ingredients and ridiculously easy to make.  I had it with au gratin potatoes and it was a hit!

And lastly is one of my favorite recipes of all time, Slow Cooker Cheesy Chicken and Rice from Southern Plate!  I make this all the time and the little crunch of the corn in it makes it absolutely to die for! And again, very easy to prepare.

Don't forget to enter my Back to School GIVEAWAY!  Have a great Monday!

4 Recipes you MUST try!

I love summertime for many reasons, but one of the biggest reasons is that I have time to find and try out new recipes!  It has been a (really) long time since I've posted recipes on here, but tonight I am going to share three of the most recent recipes I've tried from Pinterest and what I thought about them!  Follow me on Pinterest HERE to check out all my pinned recipes!

Easy Baked Ziti from The Country Cook

This meal was wonderful and quite easy to prepare.  I absolutely love alfredo sauce and red sauce mixed together and that is what drew me to this recipe.  Penne noodles covered in alfredo on the bottom, red sauce with hamburger meat on next, and cover with lots of mozzarella cheese on top!  Simple and delicious!  Definitely try it out for an easy weeknight meal, and then you will have tons of leftovers to take for lunch the rest of the week!

Better than Takeout Fried Rice from Inspired Dreamer

This is by far my favorite fried rice recipe.  It's way better than the stuff you get at the Chinese buffet!  Once again, easy to make and your husband will think you slaved away all day making it!  To go along with the fried rice, I always cook sweet and sour chicken.  My recipe is below the pic.

Jamie's Sweet and Sour Chicken

Ingredients:  2 cups Cornstarch, 2 eggs, 2 tbs. oil, 1 lb thawed chicken breasts, sweet and sour sauce (my fave is La Choy brand)

Instructions:  Put the cornstarch and eggs in two separate bowls.  Cut your chicken breasts into small pieces.  Dip each piece of chicken in the eggs and then in the cornstarch. Repeat. (double dipping truly makes it better!) 

When all of your pieces of chicken are coated, heat up the oil in a fry pan.  Fry the chicken for a few minutes on each side until golden brown.  Remove chicken from fry pan and place in a pyrex dish.  Coat liberally with the sweet and sour sauce.  Bake at 425 degrees for 25 minutes.  [I have never attempted to make my own sauce because I heart this one so much! But I'll probably try it soon!]

I cannot even describe the deliciousness of this chicken.

You must try it with the fried rice!

Chicken Tortilla Bake from Homemaking Challenged

I made this recipe tonight and it was pretty good.  It was the most simple recipe I've made in a long time, as it only has 5 ingredients!  Corn tortillas, chicken breasts (I used rotisserie chicken which made it super duper easy), rotel, cream of chicken, and shredded cheese!  It was creamy and tasty and the rotel made it just perfect.  The only change I will make in the future is I will try out flour tortillas instead of corn tortillas.  The ones on the bottom of the pan were kind of dry and I didn't dig that.  Overall this was tasty and incredibly easy to make.

Hope you got some recipe ideas to try in the future! All of the titles and images are linked back to the original pin so you can easily find the recipe!  Enjoy!

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