Another recipe: Golden Mushroom Chicken

Today we have another crockpot recipe. Don't get the idea that I cook exclusively with the crock--only when I'm being lazy busy. I call this recipe Golden Mushroom Chicken, but when I got it from my sister (thanks Bek), it didn't really have a name. I had to give it one because I generally get asked "what's for dinner" at least five times a day, and it got really old saying, "That one chicken thing with the golden mushroom soup that Aunt Bekah makes. You like it, remember?" Golden Mushroom Chicken is a lot shorter to say. :)

Golden Mushroom Chicken

2-3 Boneless, skinless chicken breasts
4 oz. cream cheese
1 can golden mushroom soup
1 packet Italian salad dressing mix
1 C chicken broth (I use 1 cup of water and 1 teaspoon of chicken base or bouillon)
3 C rice

Around lunch time, put the chicken, cream cheese, soup, salad dressing mix and broth into the crock pot. Again, I usually put the chicken in frozen unless I'm getting a late start. If it's 2:00 or later, I thaw it in the microwave and cut it up a little so that it will cook faster. Put the crock on high for 4 hours or so and then shred up the chicken with a fork.

Once the sauce is ready, cook the rice, and serve the chicken sauce over the rice. If you have a rice steamer with a timer, you can even put the rice in the steamer at the same time you put the other stuff in the crock. Just set it so that the rice will be freshly cooked at the time you want to eat.

This one is popular with everyone except Mr. Macamoni Cheese. He'll eat it, but not without some argument. Of course, he only really loves three things besides chocolate in all its forms: mac and cheese, peakabutter sandwiches and mashed potatoes. Unless you count condiments: one of his favorite tricks is to take a hot dog or corn dog and put a whole pile of ketchup and honey mustard and ranch on his plate. Then, while you think he's eating lunch, all he's really doing is dipping the hot dog in the mess on his plate and licking it off. He likes it even better if he manages to eat some ketchup with a spoon. Yummy!

super quick and easy dinners

I'm back already for another blog post. I amaze myself sometimes.

So, a couple of family members have asked for some of my recipes that my family really loves that are easy, and I thought I'd put them here on my blog for everyone to enjoy. Also, I'm trying to force said family members to actually look at my blog. I'm all about ulterior motives.

Today's recipe: Pink Spaghetti

Ingredients:

2-3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 can spaghetti sauce
1 jar alfredo sauce
1 1/2 packages angel hair pasta
3 T. butter (optional)
Romano or parmasan cheese (optional)

Put the chicken, spaghetti sauce and alfredo sauce in the crock pot on high for about 4-5 hours. I usually just put the chicken in frozen, but if I'm getting a late start (like 2:00 in the afternoon), I'll thaw the chicken in the microwave so that the whole thing needs less crock pot time. After the whole thing cooks for 4 hours or so, you should be able to shred the chicken with a fork, so go ahead and do that and make sure all the sauce is stirred up really well. Let that sit while you boil the pasta according to the package directions. We really like angel hair, but you can really use whatever pasta you prefer.

If desired, while the pasta is cooking, you can melt the butter (I just use the microwave) and toss the melted butter with the cooked and drained pasta. That just gives the pasta some flavor aside from the sauce. Also, grate some romano cheese to top everything with. The freshly grated cheese really makes an ordinary dinner into something extra good. If your kids are like mine, you can delegate the cheese grating to them, thus making this dinner even easier. :)

Not only does this serve my family of seven with leftovers for lunch the next day, everyone in the whole family actually likes this. Quick, easy and everyone likes it--that's not a combination I manage every day.

One more..

One more post and then I'll probably disappear for three more months. :) These are pictures of the valances I made to go in the rooms we just painted. The floral print is in the kitchen with the purple paint, and the stripes are in the living room with the green paint. Each has the opposite fabric for the straps that hold them up. I'm pretty happy with how it all turned out. Now I just need to find some energy to work on the rest of the house. :)

OK, I may be proud of my sewing at times, but I think I'm even more proud of this: The girls made these skirts themselves. I taught a sewing class as part of our homeschool co-op that we do with a couple of other families. All the girls made pajama pants first, and then we did these skirts. I was so impressed at how much better all the girls were with their sewing after just that one project. They had improved a lot at keeping their seams straight. I'll admit that I'm releived these turned out so cute because I would have hated to feel embarrassed when they wore them to church. It's bad enough remembering that I actually wore some of my early sewing projects to church. :) Fortunately, these are darling and I couldn't have made them better myself.

Other baptism pictures

These are some pictures I took of Avonlea earlier in the spring of her in her totally beautiful baptism dress. As you can tell, I'm pretty proud of it. I think it may be the most beautiful thing I've made (although I'm pretty sure I thought that about Felicity and Elisabeth's baptism dresses, too.) Sometimes when I make something I'm proud of, I think that the house will burn down to destroy my creation, but with kids, there's no need of fire to provide destruction. One time when we had afternoon church, Elisabeth decided to pass the time between getting ready and actually leaving for church by riding her bicycle...in her white baptism dress...and it got caught in the chain...and there what weeping and wailing...and not all the tears were Elisabeth's. Fortunately, after a great deal of careful soaking and washing, the only remaining damage is a couple of snags on the skirt where it had caught on the bicycle chain. But Avonlea had better have learned from her sister's mistake. After all, what else are big sisters for?

It's all about Avonlea

Recently, life here has been all about Avonlea. First, she had her birthday. It was extra special because it was the big 8!

Next came the dance recital. For the first (and probably last) time, she was the only one of our girls in the recital. She was part of a tumbling routine, and did a terrific job. During the rehearsal, she fell doing her hurdle cartwheel, so I was watching that part especially during the performance, and she nailed it. She amuses us all with her tumbling tricks--like when she forward rolls off the chair onto the floor to have prayer. She can do a back kick over now, and one day she was walking between the living room and the twins' play room, and just suddenly did a kick over to get from one room to the other, then stood up and walked off like it was just the most natural thing in the world. Her older sisters will probably never get tired of telling that story. :)

Finally, we had her baptism. Here she is dressed and ready to go with Daddy. Notice Isaac trying to make sure he gets into the picture. Remember when he hated having his picture taken? I'm not sure what happened to that kid. The only thing he likes better than having his picture taken now is getting to be the one taking the pictures. Thank goodness for digital cameras. Delete, delete, delete. Every so often he takes one that's a keeper though.

Here is Avonlea with the other kids who were baptized at the same time. They're a cute bunch.

One more picture just because I liked this one so much. Avonlea wanted one of her and Tabitha just because they were matching, but Tabitha was being so uncooperative this time. Usually, Isaac is the problem, but today it was Tabby. Anyway, she wasn't cooperating about the picture with Avonlea until I offered her a piece of candy when we were all done with pictures. Wow! Amazing how a little bribery will bring out a smile.

Here are the rest of the pictures. I have to say, trying to get all five kids to look good in the same picture is pretty much impossible for me.

Here are some pictures of the kids in their Easter clothes. Those of you who live near me, may be surprised that I got such sunny pictures on Easter Sunday, but of course, I cheated and made the kids get all dressed up today when the weather was nice so that I could take pictures.

I cannot tell you how excited Isaac was to have a tie like Daddy. He talked about his new tie all the time for the week and a half between when we bought it and Easter. Then, yesterday when he saw it sitting on my dresser, he grabbed it and hugged it. I wonder if he'll still like wearing a tie by the time he's twelve.

This one of Avonlea got cut out of the last post somehow.

One day the girls discovered that I still had an old prom dress and my wedding dress in a box in the closet. They put them on, wrinkles and all, and took turns between being the bride and being the bridesmaid. I even dug out my bouquet so that they could throw it. :)

painting pictures

Here are some purple walls in the kitchen. I love how the color looks with the trim. These pictures aren't the best for seeing the color, but I promise, it's great in person.

Here's Norm up on the wimpy ladder painting the kitchen. We ended up getting a better ladder later because I couldn't really reach the top of the walls on this one.

Here the kids pose in front of the newly green living room walls. I thought I'd taken some better pictures of this, but I guess not. Still, you can see the colors.

I don't know why I even pretend that I'm going to keep up with blogging. I often think that something that happens in our lives would make a good blog post, but then I just run out of minutes in the day, so it never gets written. Of course, if I liked writing more and reading less, that might help, too. :)

For April Fool's Day, someone replaced my children with look alikes who are so helpful and obedient that it only took me minutes to recognize the substitution. I should, perhaps, mention here that my own kids are actually quite helpful and obedient, but it's just not usual for them to do jobs without being told, and it's pretty common for them to need to be told to do something more than once. The substitution may have actually occurred as early as last Friday when Elisabeth asked to do an extra chapter of math and Felicity asked to read extra for history. Then, Monday evening, Felicity voluntarily caught up the extra math chapter so she was with Elisabeth again and she vacuumed without being asked to. On Tuesday, Felicity did several more chapters of math without being told to. This morning, Elisabeth and Avonlea got up and began sorting the clean laundry so that they could put theirs away before I was even up. Then, later, they were cleaning one of the upstairs bathrooms bathrooms without being told to. I don't know what's going on around here, but I like it. :)

I'm also enjoying my newly painted kitchen. This weekend we're working on the family room, so when that's done, I'll post some pictures. The kitchen is a really dark purple, and I really love it. I know some people (my parents) are a little skeptical about how this can possibly be a good color for painting the kitchen, but I promise it's great. The family room will be green and both room swill have valances made from coordinating fabric. The kitchn will have a floral print with purple flowers and the family room will have green and purple stripes than match the colors in the floral. I'm so excited to have this done. We've lived with the flat builder paint for six and a half years, so almost anything would be a good change by now. :)

budgeting

So, Norm and I are big Dave Ramsey fans. We actually did a lot of what he teaches even before we'd ever heard of him, but we had kind of fallen off the budgeting bandwagon for a while. When I started listening to him in the car whenever I had errands to run in the afternoons, we became inspired to begin budgeting again. The kids have really been very cooperative about the whole thing by not whining and asking for things that we tell them aren't in the budget. It helps that at this point we have some room for fun things in the budget, but, still, they've been great about it.

Today, I took them shopping to get some things for each other for Christmas. I started out with Avonlea. She and I had talked about how much she could spend (which wasn't much) and agreed that I would pay half and she would pay half out of her spending money. The first three gifts were easy and under budget so that she actually had a little extra for the other two if she wanted, but not very much. Those two were harder, and we walked around the store for a while looking at things. Over and over she would look at something and see the price and say, "That doesn't fit my budget." I loved it! I kept feeling tempted to tell her she could spend a little more, but I didn't do it because I think that the lesson in not spending more than you have is more valuable than any of the presents she could have bought. Later, I headed out with both Felicity and Elisabeth. Both of them bought all their presents with their own money this time, and they both decided how much to spend before we entered the store and stuck to it. Christmases past have usually involved spending Mom and Dad's money for presents for each other with only a loose price limit, so this was just so great to see. And I even think that the recipients will all like their gifts.

In other great news for today, I cleaned my room! I usually like to keep it clean (just because it's one of the few rooms that doesn't get messed up again in five minutes), but it had gotten pretty cluttered. It's hard to retreat for a few minutes of rest at any point in the day if my room is at all messy. So, today I took a break from the Christmas preparations and renewed my retreat. I didn't relax at all today, but I feel so much more relaxed just because there is one clean room in the house!

exercise your brain

Growing up, my identity really centered around the fact that I got good grades. "Smart" was who I was, and it was a big adjustment for me when I finished college and became a stay at home mom and no one cared anymore what my GPA was. Sometimes I still like to do little quizzes and games to make me feel smart, and according to this website, doing things like that can help keep your brain fit. Of course, as I play some of these, I realize that I'm not as smart as I used to be. :)

scriptures and prayer--twin style

Today Isaac was saying the blessing on the food. Well, let me back up and say that Isaac has been excited about Christmas for about two months now--ever since the subject came up as Christmas things began to appear in the stores and I started to ask the kids what they might like for Christmas this year. He's been begging for a Christmas tree all this time, and one of his most frequent things to say has been, "Christmas not yet." Well, yesterday we finally got the tree out. It's not decorated yet, but it's prelit, so it still looks Christmassy with the lights on. So, today, here's what Isaac prayed (remember, he's supposed to be blessing the food), "Dear Heavenly Father, please bless the Christmas tree and....bless the Christmas tree...." I whisper, "Bless the food." So he says, "Please bless the food and the Christmas tree. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen." Do you think he likes the tree? I wonder what's going to happen when we have to take it down!

Tabitha wanted to "read" from the scriptures tonight. We have an extra set that she likes to call her own, so she gets that out, opens it up and begins, "And it came to pass..." so far so good. Obviously, she's been listening some of the time when we read scriptures. "And it came to pass that there was a guy...and he had an eye and he had another eye. And it came to pass that this guy had another eye." By that point we were all laughing so hard that she stopped "reading" to see what was so funny. One of the girls suggested that she meant the letter 'I' instead of the word 'eye' because she recently learned to write 'I', but, even though she kept pointing at the page when she said, "eye" I don't think she was looking for the letter 'I' because the scriptures she likes to call her own happen to be written in Japanese. They're Norm's old missionary scriptures. It might be a while before she can really read them. :)

Elisabeth made this delicious apple pie for Thanksgiving. She truly did it almost entirely by herself. I can never decide if she's going to be a great musician, a great linguist or a great cook when she grows up. :)

Here's Felicity with her great facial mask on on her birthday when I did her facial and her nails. I'm sure this picture will be a favorite for years to come.

Here you can see her hair. It's hard to see the highlights because they're subtle. They just make her hair look a little bit lighter really. She likes it though.

Once a month blogging

You know how some people do once a month cooking? I think I should try once a month blogging. That would mean that I am right on time since my last post was exactly one month ago.

We had a really quiet Thanksgiving here. It was just us, and it was so peaceful. I did spend a lot of time cooking, but we ate and had things cleaned up by about 3:00, so then I had the rest of the day free to do other things--mainly enjoy our families current obsession: Stargate. We've now finished all of the SG-1 series, including the two movies and have moved on to Atlantis. We've had such a busy time this semester with so many classes and lessons, that I felt especially thankful for the time I got to spend with Norm and the kids.

I have to say, I just love having a babysitting age daughter. It is such a joy to me to be able to go to the store without taking five kids along. I think I may survive raising all of these little crazies after all.

OK, Tabitha has long been known in our family as the shyest kid ever. When she and Isaac were babies and I would take them shopping with me, everyone would want to look at them just because they were twins. Isaac always totally ate up the attention, but Tabitha would start screaming the second anyone looked at her. But now all of a sudden, she's so chatty with everyone. She is still shy in some situations, but she'll talk to more and more people all the time, and when she talks, she really talks. I mean, she wants to tell you the story of her whole day--or what she imagines her day to be, sometimes it's a little bit hard to tell. The truly great thing about it though, is that she has the funniest facial expressions and gestures when she talks. She's obviously trying to imitate the rest of us, but my facial expressions look really funny on her face.

Avonlea is one of the most flexible kids I've ever seen--especially through her back. She has now taught herself to do back kick overs and she can make her feet touch her head while bending backwards. She is just learning so much in her tumbling class this year. I wasn't too sure how much she would like going to tumbling since both of the older girls dropped it this year, but she's doing great with it. If she wants to keep doing it, I may have to move her to a real gymnastics place instead of a dance studio that teaches one tumbling class.

I hate trying to come up with an ending for blog posts and emails and letters, so this one is just ending...right now.

A long, long time ago my friend Siouxsie tagged me to post the fourth picture from my fourth folder. Here it is, a picture of Isaac and Tabitha right before their first birthday. It was really blurry, so I sharpened it in Picasa, but I'm not sure how great it looks. Still, you've gotta love this classic twin action. I mean, how often do you get to see one baby crawling over another sleeping baby? I'm only surprised by which one is sleeping and which one is crawling. :)