Share A Meal Monday

The clock says 11:17 so it's still technically Monday and I'm sharing my recipe! Sorry it's taken me ALL day to get to it, I'm sure you've been checking non stop (guffaw!)

We had friends over for dinner tonight and I made my wonderful mother-in-law's recipe for Frito Casserole that I posted last week. And even though the lady at Superstore told me corn chips were banned in Canada (??) and I wouldn't find them I sent my hubby on a trip to Safeway and guess what - he came back with some! Take that Superstore Lady! So the meal was lovely, corn chips and all. For dessert and an evening snack I made my wonderful momma's caramel popcorn. Now this my friends, is a TREAT.

I must share:

Conda Rae's Caramel Popcorn  
(Conda Rae is my momma's name - I once had someone ask me, "what's a Conda Rae?!")

1 cup margarine

2 cups brown sugar

1/2 cup corn syrup

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp vanilla

6 quarts popcorn (*to me that means 2 batches in my popper*)

Melt margarine, add sugar, salt and syrup. Bring to a boil and stir, then boil without stirring for five minutes. Remove from heat and add vanilla and baking soda. It will foam so stir until it's all mixed. Pour over popcorn and stir until all popcorn is coated. **You can stop here and eat it like this all gooey and warm but if you aren't going to eat the entire batch right away I suggest the next step - pour popcorn into a roasting pan and bake at 225 F for one hour, stirring every 15 minutes. This bakes the popcorn and makes it crunchy like Kernels Popcorn so you can have it for a few days. If you don't bake it and let the gooey popcorn sit it will go HARD and stick together. Bleh. I always bake mine (after having a bowl of it gooey of course!) ENJOY!

If you are all already in bed and don't want to link up I understand but here's the linky anyway!  Have a great week!

The newest member of our family

As you know we recently finished (for the second time) our basement. I'll do an extensive post on that but in the mean time I want to show you what we rewarded ourselves with for all our hard work. (Ok, we were going to buy it anyway but now feel totally justified!)


Dah dah dah duuuuuh:

 I put Rigby on it to give you a bit of context.

 The end with the chaise. Fun word right?

The other end - the piece Rigby is on and the end piece beside him both recline - they are "wall crawlers" so you can recline all the way back even though the furniture is pushed up against the wall. 

Had another body besides my two babies been home there would be a picture of me laid back lounging in it right here but there wasn't so I'll just tell you how much I love it instead of show you. 

I LOVE IT.

Share A Meal Monday

We ate this meal at my in-law's for dinner last night and I want to share it with you. It's another one you can adjust to your liking and I love recipes that you just use what you have around.

Frito Casserole

1 lb hamburger

1 onion chopped

1 14 oz can tomato sauce

1 16 oz can tomato paste

2 tsp sugar

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp chili powder

1 tsp garlic plus

1 cup minute rice

3 1/4 cup water (sometimes I add a tad more)

Corn chips

Brown hamburger and onion, add spices, sauces, rice and water. Simmer for 20 minutes until rice is tender. 

You put a layer of corn chips on your plate and spoon the meat and rice mixture onto that. Now here's the fun part with the variation- you can top it off with whatever you'd like: tomatoes, peppers, olives, onions, cheese, sour cream and salsa - whatever! It's easy and makes quite a lot so there's usually leftovers which in my house is a BONUS!

Thanks for linking up, have a great week! 

Amazing Giveaway!

If you are in the area (like within a DAY'S drive, I'm serious, it would be worth the trip!) then you MUST go enter this giveaway! The fantastic photographer (and even better friend!) MANDY BAKER is doing a GIVEAWAY! The only requirement is that you be a MOM in need of a little pampering... and do I even know a mom that isn't?!?!! You will get your hair done, your make up done and have a private photo shoot with MANDY! Ok, click HERE and go enter! 

If she gets 50 entries she's going to pick TWO winners.

GO ENTER!

she's at it again!

You HAVE TO go see what my sister's been up to. This girl continues to blow my socks off!

one of those days

Today I can't help but think of one of my favorite Josh Ritter songs. It's a song about a relationship but today it describes my two-almost-three year old little turkey. I'm sure many of you moms can relate.

I'll leave you with just the chorus:

"I'm trying hard to love you - you don't make it easy babe."

Let's call them fraternal twins

You know how some moms of twins dress their kids exactly the same - all matchy matchy because, well, they're twins! And then other moms of twins dress their kids entirely different because, well, they're 2 different people. I think if I was a mom to a set of twins I'd be the latter mom, at least I'm that mom to a set of chairs.

Here is the makeover of my second chair. It resembles the other while maintaining it's own identity. 

And here they are side by side. They look enough alike to tell they are related but different enough they won't be getting confused for each other any time soon. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before they start switching places to see if I'll notice....

Organ Donors

We have ordered a new beautiful sectional (which arrives in 6 days but who's counting?!) So in preparation for it's arrival (and out of necessity to have our carpet relaid) we took out our current couch and loveseat. When we moved them out Neil literally took a sawzall and cut them in half. Not wanting to waste good materials he then turned the furniture into organ donors - removing the firm foam seats and the batting from the backs.

We had 4 foam cushions like this

and 2 HUGE bags of batting like this

With the help of my friend Laura who is a recovering expert we turned them into these

and even added handy carrying handles

perfect for little bodies to climb on, sit on, jump on and lay on.

With only ONE of the bags of batting I was able to make these 2 huge pillows. Neil wants me to make one HUGE pillow with the entire other bag of batting but I reminded him that these things are fun but we do have to store them somewhere too! We'll see.

So thanks for your guts loveseat and couch, we're happy to keep parts of you around.

Bad Bad World

I have told you before how much I love Guster and with the recent release of their new album Easy Wonderful (it's aaaaMAZiiiiiiiiiing! You have to yell it like Oprah....) that love has grown stronger. For their song Bad Bad World they held a contest for fans to make the official music video and here is the winner. You can go check out the honorable mentions here and I definitely would, er, did. Because it's a warm and fuzzy feel good video I thought I'd share it with you, I hope it makes you feel good.



Bad Bad World from Guster on Vimeo.

Share A Meal Monday

I made this meal on Friday and I kinda forgot how much I love it. It's done in the crockpot which right away is alright with me. Raise your hand if you love throwing a bunch of things in one pot, walking away for hours and coming back to a warm and delicious meal!!

Also, I've added a SAMM link on the side bar over there ------> so we can easily access all the SAMM recipes. Click on it and you'll be taken to all the SAMM posts where you can get back to the recipe links.  Well that was kinda redundant.

Cream Cheese Chicken

4-6 chicken breasts (I usually cube mine)

2 cans cream of chicken soup

1/2 pkg cream cheese

1/2 pkg dry Italian dressing mix

* The original recipe uses a whole brick of cream cheese and a whole pkg of dressing mix but I prefer using half, it's too rich for me the other way.*

Mix cream cheese, soup and dressing mix in a bowl. Pour over chicken in the crockpot. Cook on high for 3 hours, until chicken is cooked. Serve over rice.