Fun Farm Birthday!

So R's 3rd birthday was a big success! Everyone had so much fun at the farm!  I had a lot of fun making and designing his little party.  I got most of my cool party stuff at an awesome little Etsy shop Pink Lemonade Party.

OMG Crockpot Baked Potato Soup!

This was SOOO good and really easy! I got the recipe from here Mama Loves Food, via Pinterest cut the recipe in half and made some minor changes. 

(Sorry about the not so pretty bowl but I was ready to eat!)

This is what I did:

2.5 lbs potatoes diced 1/2inch cubes (I guessed half a 5lb bag) after reading some of the comments on her blog, I peeled half and left half with skins on..perfect!
I diced small about half an onion and used 2tsp of minced garlic from the jar which equaled 4 cloves
I used 2, 14 oz cans of chicken broth
1pkg cream cheese
1 tsp Tony Chacherie's seasoning and 1/2 tsp pepper

Add everything except cream cheese and let it cook on high for 4 hours. (I am sure you could do her suggestion of low all day but I started late) I scooped out appox 1/3 of the contents of my crockpot and added 1/3 of 1 pkg of cream cheese and blended in my blender until it was creamy, and poured it back in, then cubed and added remaining cream cheese to the crockpot. ***UPDATE** I've made this twice since this post and now I just add the whole package of cream cheese when I blend the 1/3 of my soup and potatoes and it works great!*** At this point you can take out more if it doesn't look creamy enough to you, but this to me was the perfect consistency.  Cook for 30 minutes on high after you add the cream cheese then it's done! I had some bacon in the fridge so I fried it up and crumpled over some shredded cheese.  Again, SOOOO GOOD!! We ate the whole thing, next time I might have to make the regular sized recipe so we can have leftovers!!

Homemade Costume Success!

Well it was my first try at making a homemade costume since learning to sew.  I have to say I think it was widly successful! It was SO much cuter and sturdier than the store bought version.  I have to admit it was VERY simple because of the material I didn't have to hem anything, but it gave me the oomph I needed to definitely try again next year! Hope everyone had a fun Halloween!

Pumpkin Pre-Pre School Printables

Just wanted to send you a quick link to some of the pumpkin themed "school" work we are doing right now.  Perfect for a 3 year old! Here is a great source (links to the pumpkin printables)  Confessions of a Homeschooler

Starting school with mom

R and I started "class" today.  I wouldn't exactly call it "homeschooling" because I think that is a certain cirriculum that you follow and mine is just willy nilly, but, it is me teaching him at home.  There are so many resources and printables out there for free that it really makes my job easy.  Day 1 theme was trains.  R loves to learn anyways so I knew it wouldn't be a problem getting him to do any of these activities and it wasn't, plus..hello it's TRAINS!  He'll be 3 next month and he has a great memory like his older brother.  He already knows his abc's.  He can recognize all the uppercase abc's and we are working on the lowercase (that lowercase l is tricky since it looks like a 1 or an I).  He also knows and can recognize his numbers to 20 sometimes 25.  We are working on recognizing 2 digit numbers like 35 instead of just thinking it's a 3 and 5.  He's great at patterns, shapes, and puzzles already but those are ready to be expanded into sizes, small, medium, large etc.. There is so much to learn and teach! It's been a few years since I have done all of this, my oldest is 11 now.  I think I did a pretty good job the first time around though and now with the internet my resources are even greater.  Here are a few pictures from day 1. (ignore the toys on the ground behind him) I got my train printables from LAWTEEDAH.

Crockpot Pork Carnitas and Cilantro Lime Rice

Tastes even better than it looks! I know my blog has been a lot more "or something" than sewing lately.  I hope to get back to more sewing soon, but for now here's a really yummy recipe I made this evening!

Crockpot Pork Carnitas

Ingredients:

2-3 lb pork tenderloin roast (trim off the fat, it should be pretty lean though)

1 can salsa verde sauce (I found Hernandez brand at the grocery store)

1 can diced green chilis

1/4 cup of chopped onion

1 can of rotel (I used mild for the kids, but mexican would be good)

1/2 the juice of a lime

1/4 tsp of cumin

1/4 tsp of salt

1/8 tsp of chili powder

Rub tenderloin with seasonings.  Place in crockpot and put the rest of the ingredients on top.  Simmer 8-9 hrs on low until pork is shredded.

When done, I scrape off most of the sauce and put the tenderloin in its own bowl and shred it.

I scoop out the sauce from the crockpot and put in a separate bowl since only my husband and I add that to our tacos.

To add as toppings to our tacos I use cilantro, cheese, sour cream and salsa.  I also made Cilantro Lime Rice, which I will tell you the recipe for below.

I like corn tortillas but the rest of the family uses flour.

Cilantro Lime Rice

I have looked all over the internet for recipes similar to Chipotle's because I love their Cilantro Lime Rice.  The one I ended up with is from Skinny and it's pretty dang close!  I loved it!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup long grain rice
• 1/2 lime, juice of
• 2 cups water
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 tbsp fresh chopped cilantro
• 3 tsp vegetable oil

In a small  pot, add rice, water, 1 tsp oil and salt. Boil on high until most of the water evaporates. When the water just skims the top of the rice, reduce to low and cover about 15 minutes. Shut off flame and keep covered an additional 5 minute.

In a medium bowl, combine chopped cilantro, lime juice, rice and remaining oil and toss until completely mixed.

Overall a DELICIOUS MEAL!!  Hope you enjoy!

Jars of Salsa

I could look at these all day! But instead they were eaten. If you have never made salsa, like me, I highly suggest trying The Pioneer Woman's Restaurant Salsa it uses canned tomatoes and rotel.  SO EASY! I follow it exactly except I use one can of original rotel and one can of mexican rotel.  My whole family loves it! We are never buying salsa again now!  Fresh homemade salsa is supposed to last about a week in the fridge.  Mine didn't even last 24 hours! But my hubby did take some to work, where another batch was promptly requested.  It took 10 minutes to make this so if you haven't given salsa a try yet, here ya go!

Beef Enchiladas your kids will eat!

Another quick easy meal, one my kids LOVE!  These aren't like they make in the restaurants with all that sauce, just a little on top.

Ingredients:
1 lb of lean ground beef (or if you want to be tricky, lean ground turkey, or half of each)
1 can of MILD Rotel 
1 package of taco bell taco seasoning mix
1 package of shredded cheese
1 can of mild enchilada sauce(red kind, I like Old El Paso)
1 package of small flour tortillas

1) Brown your ground beef and add taco seasoning just as if you were going to make tacos.
2) When done, add can of mild Rotel (I drain out the juice)
3) Add 3/4 package of cheese appox 4-6 oz
4) Put a scoop of mixture in tortillas and roll up and place in baking pan
5) Add can of enchilada sauce on top, sprinkle cheese
6) Bake 15-20 min at 350 degrees or until bubbly.

(If you want to make this dish ahead of time, stop at step 5 and refrigerate)

I also made the Pioneer Woman's Restaurant Salsa..it was so easy and so good! I have a link on my Pinterest.

Seriously easy pasta dish recipe

There isn't much to this. I grabbed what was in my pantry and freezer.
Frozen cheese tortellini (would work well with frozen ravioli too)
Package of chicken (all I had was southwest flavor lol)
Can of diced tomatoes
Minced garlic
Some fresh spinach I had in the fridge
Olive oil
Wish I would have had mushrooms
Saute all your ingredients until warm
Boil your pasta, drain
Put together add some parmesan
Eat!
P.S. I did this post on my phone! So I have no idea what the format will look like. :)

Crockpot recipes and more Pinterest!

If you have yet to get on Pinterest, now is the time to start! I have a board just for Crockpot Recipes! Why spend all day in the kitchen when the crockpot can do it for you! Pinterest doesn't post a bunch of unwanted junk to your facebook or twitter if you connect through them, thank goodness! It's just a fun way to see what everyone else likes to wear, eat, craft or dream about.

Yummy Recipes

I will be adding a Yummy Recipes tab to my page soon, at the request of family and friends.  That always makes you feel good, people wanting to make what you eat! I post a lot on Facebook with pictures which probably entices a little.  I will start out tonight with the easiest and also the kids and I newest discovery, Wingstop Ranch! Just a note if you didn't know...I live in Texas and in Texas we eat Ranch Dressing with everything! So us Texans are somewhat connoisseurs when it comes to good ranch.  We have a place here called Wingstop.  They have really yummy wings and awesome ranch dressing! Well, I have discovered EXACTLY how to make that dressing here at home. (I will not reveal my sources)  What's funny is it's actually super close to the normal recipe.

Best Ranch Dressing there is:
1 1/2 packets (so obviously you need to buy 2) Hidden Valley Ranch BUTTERMILK recipe dressing
1 cup of buttermilk
1 cup of mayo (I used Kraft Real Mayo)

Uh yeah that's it, so basically you would normally only use 1 packet of dry seasoning, so you are just increasing that part to 1 and 1/2 of the dry seasoning and it makes a huge difference and tastes exactly like they make at Wingstop.  Chill it in the fridge about an hour and use it on everything like we do here in Texas! It will actually last 2 to 3 weeks in a good fridge container.  I found a really awesome dressing measuring cup and container in one through Pampered Chef, if you want to order one, click HERE.