menu plan: tortilla soup perfected

back to the menu plan, are we?  my friend chelle was over last night and as we were chatting, i laughed and told her i am an oxymoron.  an introverted exhibitionist.  i don't need nearly as much social interaction as the average human and only a slight fraction of what my son requires, but oh do i like to make a public display of myself.  so funny that.  so back to the public posting of the menu plan as that is very motivational for me.

i thought i'd share my tortilla soup recipe one more time, because i have perfected it and because, let's face it, i am no domestic goddess and in the kitchen i am pretty much a one hit wonder.

ingredients:
1 package bone in, skin on chicken breasts (2-3 large breasts)
half package of frozen diced onion
20-30 baby carrots, sliced
fresh cilantro (1/4 cup maybe? i never measure) leaves only (the stems are too strong for me)
1 can rotel
3-4 ears corn on the cob (or one bag frozen corn)
finely shredded mexican cheese (garnish)
tortilla chips (garnish)
avocado (garnish)
sour cream(garnish)

cook chicken, onion, cilantro, carrot, salt and pepper till chicken is done.  take chicken out and add rotel and corn on the cob.  when chicken is cool enough pull mean off bones, shred it, and return it to the pot.  take out corn on the cob, slice it off cob, and return it to the pot.  serve with your choice of tortilla chips, avocado, shredded cheese, and sour cream.

notes:  i've found that boiling the corn and then slicing it off causes the kernels to swell and stick together a bit even when they're cut off.  probably this doesn't affect the taste much, but i think it looks cool!

tip on freezing the extra cilantro can be found HERE.

this week's menu:
sunday: fajitas
monday: spaghetti
tuesday: leftovers
wednesday: tortila soup
thursday: carrie's?
friday: sherri's?
saturday: taco salad

and since blogging/scrapbooking a favorite recipe is one of the centipede challenges, i get another segment added to my centipede.  hooray!  :)

kit building: centipede style

so christy has laid down a centipede challenge of building a kit from leftover kit bits.  i don't quite have those as i'm pretty current right now, but i have had it in my mind that i want to do a little stamping on vintage paper.  i'm planning on using my ink pads, obviously, they're all in that vintage receipt holder bottom left.  then i might use some embossing powders or distress stains or paints or mists or stickles even from that 3-tiered pottery barn tray that a sweet little birdie gave me for a house warming present.  there are some rubber stamps in that far left basket there; i might use those.

or i could use some clear stamps; three of these bins have those.  they don't get used much.  hoping this challenges jogs my interest in them.

and i'll be flipping through my 12x12 file of lovely vintage pages.

and pulling the leftover bits from my may kits in once i've finished a couple more pages with them.  fun times ahead!  :)

randoms

the gman received the gatorship award today (good citizenship) as well as honor roll again.  so proud of him!  he is so self-motivated.  seriously, so proud of him.  i was going to take him to lunch after the awards ceremony, but this morning he clarified that lunch is BEFORE the awards ceremony.  doh!  so i took him subway to school and then we went home early anyway (because good citizens play hookie?  ha!).  we did end up eating out for dinner though.  sherri introduced us to the big bad wolf.  now i've spent these last 12 years thinking the big bad wold was a tattoo parlor, but turns out it's an extremely tasty and popular mom and pop eating establishment.  who knew?  sherri, of course!

spring is finally here!  really it is!  i've meticulously checked the ten day forecast every day for weeks and gleefully checked it multiple times today.  the highs are all in the mid-sixties to mid-seventies for the next ten days.  surely it can't go back to freezing again after that!  surely!  i think i shall celebrate by removing the remnants of halloween black and painting my toenails a lovely pastel shade (or two).

when we got home from school we took a walk all around a yard exclaiming over all the lovely weeds.  the glorious purple ones, the carpet of blue ones, the eensy white daisy-esque ones, the dandelions that must go. g was the one who found the violets.  so precious.  he loves all these tiny flowers as much as i do.  yes, i know i'm taking him man-meter down a notch.  hey!  real men can be botonists!!!

there will be much gardening this weekend.  g made me dig up some wild onions so he could inspect the bulbs.  then he promptly cut off the tops and replanted them to see what they would do.  my little scientist is always thinking up the next investigation.  we have lots of baby plants to get in the ground.  pretty sure a lowe's run is close to the top of the list in the morning.

i got another project life spread done this afternoon.  february is finished!  hurrah!  i just wasn't motivated to do this spread at first.  the photos on the right were too drab and dark.  no fun, no fun.  and who wants to bother with photoshop editing on cell phone pics that are never going to be fabulous anyway?  not me, not me!  i noticed some of the cool kids using an app called vsco.  of course, turns out this app is only on iphone and we all know i'm not a cool kid.  i googled though and found a similar app for android called vignette.  it does some really neat stuff.  having lots of fun with it.  and lookie!  i finally finished february!

on this page:  just four more of my little haiku on 6x6 pieces of scrap paper.

on this page:  my kitties getting a little braver about checking out the country life, g learning to cook scrambled eggs, and one of his besties at our place then his.

one of the centipede challenges is to blog or scrapbook your bucket list.  i don't really have one of those.  i'm a live in the moment gal who feels pressured by too much looming on the horizon.  but i was thinking today that it might be fun to have a very small bucket.  like a few little things i'd like to get done in april.  things that i meant to do in december, january, february, march . . .

1. diy shower curtain
2. diy raised garden
3. closet organization
4. lego purge
5. mantel display
6. marathon in a week
7. mailings

i'll keep you posted . . .

finally, if you're into project life, betsy's started making journaling cards for jbs/jessica sprague.  this is the first set.  they're currently on sale for $2.62 and there are pdfs that you just download and print!  betsy makes those especially for me as i am a bit digitally challenged.  ;)

quality literature: pollyanna

i read pollyanna at a fairly young age.  i began reading chapter books in second grade and ripped through my  older sister's collection of classics fairly quickly thereafter.  and then i read them all again several times.  i reread it this week and it was just as charming as i remembered it.  the premise is a little girl who has been taught by her father, a minister, to look for the best in life no matter the circumstances.  and yet it is not at all preachy; it's just a breath of fresh air.  it's fairly girly, so i probably won't  read it to g, but plan on renting him the movie starring hailey mills and kurt russell instead.  i think he would enjoy that and i would enjoy the reinforcement of a valuable life lesson; happiness is a choice.

i think if i'd had a girl i would have a much larger personal reference of book suggestions to pull from.  i'll share them here for all of you who have little girls or who enjoy children's literature.  from my sister's bookshelf i remember heidi, girl of the limberlost, rebecca of sunnybrook farm, little women (and all the sequels), and, of course, the little house series.  in my pre-teen years i collected all the books from the anne of green gables and emily of new moon series.  and then in my twenties, as a middle school teacher, i was very much into newbery award winners.  some favorites of those, perfect for young girls, were the midwife's apprentice, ella enchanted, walk two moons, catherine called birdy, missing may, and sarah plain and tall.  enjoy!

doh!  and i totally forgot to mention, but mentioning now, we have a fun new game over at jbs mercantile!  based on my all time favorite 80s video game, centipede!  you simply have to complete a challenge to be entered to win!  the more challenges you complete, the more your centipede grows, and the more chances you have to win!  and you can even write your own challenges!  come play with us!

get it scrapped!: grey squirrel

i'm not feeling nearly so wordy tonight as i was last night.  perhaps because i've just used up quite a few words posting about our latest game over on the jbs message board.  (centepede anyone?).  or perhaps because i'll be chatting online within the hour over at masterful scrapbook design (oomph and polish).  but you can find more thoughts and details about this layout and many others in an article on ideas for creating scrapbook pages with elements from book pages over at get it scrapped!  chat with you again soon!  :)

get it scrapped!: snowbird is a flake

this post couldn't be any more appropriate for the weather right now or my sentiments about it.  oh.my.goodness.  it's sleeting out there.  sleeting.  as in frozen precipitation.  in APRIL.  and it's not even april fool's day.  it's april second.  and i live in the SOUTH.  gah.  at the risk of sounding like my mother, I HATE THIS WEATHER!  just had to get that off my chest.

how about a little funny to brighten my mood?  so sunday was easter.  g still believes.  he just KNEW the bunny was going to bring him some seeds.  the bunny musta thought a $20 stuffed in one of the eggs would be sufficient.  the bunny was wrong.  g bellyached about that all morning.  and most of the afternoon until he got his seed fix at lowe's.  at one point he told me those "special animals" sure weren't doing a very good job this year.  confused, i asked him what he meant by those "special animals."  "you know," he replied, "like snowbird and the easter bunny."  HA!  so apparently my 9.5 year old still believes in santa claus, the tooth fairy, the easter bunny, and SNOWBIRD.  sometimes i wonder how i'm raising such a gullible child, but i guess my post from sunday would indicate that he comes by it honestly from his mom and grandma.

by the way, should you care to get a better understanding of just who snowbird is, check out ideas for recording the weather on your scrapbook pages over at get it scrapped!  it's a good one.

and speaking of get it scrapped!, celeste and i have another critique group starting next week!  these are way fun, motivating, and inspiring to me, especially now that i don't have as many local scrapbook friends.  there's  always a great camaraderie that develops amongst us scrappy students.

and how about a little about this layout while i'm being so wordy?  it came together really quickly.  i had it in my mind to punch out those birds and run them across the entire background.  after doing the first row i wasn't quite as pumped about the idea.  it seemed like too much work.  but carry on!  as i was cutting the negative strips off to get to the unpunched paper to punch some more i realized i could mix in some of those and save myself a lot of time.  i also mixed in some of jenni's new washi tape and some machine stitching.  love the look.  it started feeling a little monotonous toward the bottom so i added a touch of yellow patterned paper for the journaling.  i wish i could say that the yellow on white doesn't make me laugh, but it does.  what can i say?  i have a middle school boy sense of humor.  "don't eat the yellow snow!"  ;)

project life: on vacation

i was a bit worried how project life would work out on vacation.  i didn't want to overwhelm my album with too many pics from the florida trips to visit the fam that we take three times per year (i know, it's a hard life ;).  turns out it was easy peasy to select photos.  for the most part, i just chose one or two that represented each event, with the exceptions being the crawdad hunting and riley's birthday.  i've always tended toward "moment" scrapbooking.  i don't scrapbook chronologically, but rather enjoy flipping through my photos and working with ones that speak to me in the moment.  i like to scrapbook my insights and emotions rather than events.  events for the most part never got scrapbooked except through an occasional mini album.  project life plus scrapbooking turns out to be a winning combination for me.  i'm getting the daily life recorded and still doing the scrapbook pages that i can pour my heart and soul into.  love.

on this page: the jbs mercantile april kit offerings went up for sale today (add-ons will be available to non-members tonight after midnight cst).  these first two pages are mostly a mix of the NEW historian add-on (perfect for project life) and the artisan add-on.  i am so stoked that heidi swapp is releasing her ghosts alphas again.  i still have a huge jar hoarded from back in the day and now that i know how awesome they are for project life i will be using them up!

on this page:  i managed to keep the florida trip to one spread with an added 6x12 insert.  not bad! 

this spread has the highlights of the birthday party.  i really just love family birthday parties.

on this page:  this spread was done entirely from the historian add-on with the addition of jenni's skinny alpha stickers in red.  this was my first time working with a kit specifically designed for project life.  it was SO easy to work with!  i especially liked that this one had a broad range of colors. i was able to use mostly blues and yellows on the first spread and then more reds and pinks on the second.  the two spreads still coordinate quite nicely though.

on this page:  i adored the sequin colors jenni chose for the kit and scattered them across this spread like bokah.