My nieces 3rd birthday

Yesterday was my nieces Oreha's 3rd birthday party. My sister had the party at our parents house and everyone had a great time. I made her birthday outfit and her cake the day before the party. Oreha is a total girlie girl and had a Dora themed party which I think is beyond cute as I've always thought she could actually be Dora lol. Here are a few of my favorite photos from the party.

And on the way home we saw this amazingly beautiful storm off in the distance so I pulled over to take a few photos.

Tasty Tuesday - Easy Chicken Enchiladas

Today I'm starting the Tasty Tuesday link up over at 33 Shades of Green here is toady's recipe.

Easy Chicken Enchiladas

2 cups shredded cheese
1 can chicken breast
1 can green chilies
2 cans green enchilada sauce
2 small bell peppers (or 1 large)
1 medium onion
8oz sour cream
5 whole mushrooms
corn tortillas (I used 18)

chop onion & peppers as fine as you want and saute till soft

clean & chop mushrooms then add to onion mix once soft

mushroom/onion/peppers once soft

 

drain and chop chicken - set aside

 add chicken & green chilies to pan cook until hot

get out a 9x13 pan (I am using 2 small pans instead) and pour about 1/2 of a can of enchilada sauce into the pan to coat the bottom (here I poured about 1/4 of a can into each pan)

  

once your meat/veggie mixture is heated put into a mixing bowl

add 1 cup cheese, 1/2 a can of sauce & all of the sour cream and stir til mixed

if your tortillas are soft enough to fold without breaking go ahead and add your mixture about a tablespoon for each, if not heat tortillas in microwave till warm enough to fold

keep rolling tortillas until all mixture is used up, I was able to make 18 with this batch 

cook at 350 until cheese is melted (about 15 minutes) and there you go. We don't like them every spicy so we use mild for everything but you can make it hotter or add different veggies so it's easy to make it however you want.

   

Pin It

HAPPY INDEPENDANCE DAY!

As we celebrate Independence Day, remember...The American flag does not fly because the wind moves past it. The American flag flies from the last breath of each military member who has died protecting it. American soldiers, airmen, seamen and marines don't fight because they hate what's in front of them...they fight because they love what's behind them......

So what did you do to celebrate today? My family went out to my parents house for a cookout and to go swimming. Daddy bought the boys some fireworks and all the kids had a blast swimming and playing with glow sticks. Jordan wasn't crazy about the loud popping noise some of the fireworks made but other then that he really enjoyed himself.Here are a few photos from our busy but fun day.

My Boys - Jordan wasn't in a smiling mood

Me & my boys

Walker and his papa (my dad)

 

Jordan & his great uncle Bubba

 

Walker with 2 of his cousins

 

Jordan enjoying the fireworks & his glow stick

 

Jordan & his daddy

Well I hope everyone had a wonderful day filled with family & friends. And for those of you missing a loved one overseas GOD BLESS YOU!

4th of July Cupcakes - with Cream Cheese Frosting recipe

We had two 4th of July get together's this year and for both I decided to go the simple route and do cupcakes. The first bath for a party at my Papa's house I did simple Butter Pecan ones and Triple Chocolate ones with a cupcake paper/topper kit from Walmart. Took the easy way out and iced them with cool whip and red, white & blue sprinkles.

For our second get together I decided to do something a little more involved and make some homemade almond cream cheese frosting to go on 3 types of cupcakes - Butter Pecan (was a big hit at the last party) Chocolate Mint and Carrot Cake.





Crusting Almond Cream Cheese Frosting


This will make enough frosting for 6 dozen cupcakes and it is easily halved or even double depending on how much you need.

3 blocks room temperature cream cheese
2 sticks room temperature butter
1 cup vegetable shortening
4 lbs powder sugar
2 tablespoons almond flavoring (can use vanilla if you wish)


First either in a stand mixer or using a hand mixer cream together shortening, butter & cream cheese

Then add the almond flavoring and mix again

then add the powdered sugar 1/2 a bag at a time and mix thoroughly

You can be done or add food coloring as I did, I had some gel colors so divided my frosting into 3rds and left one white while coloring one blue and one red

then it's ready to use. The frosting with "crust" like buttercream and is nice and thick unlike normal cream cheese frosting which is runnier and never really sets.

I had planned on making "firework" cupcakes but my grass tip was no where to be found. I even had my hubby stop by walmart on his way home from work to see if they had one with no luck. So he bought me a nice little cupcake tip set and I used the cupcake star tip #1 to make big swirls then used a start tip #22 to make little "stars" on each cupcake then added red,white & blue colored sugar. Simple but it worked.

I used Reynolds wrap foil cupcake liners and BEWARE those things are HOT lol, I know common sense right lol but dang I burned my fingers a half a dozen times getting those suckers onto cooling racks.

In the cupcake tip kit that my hubby got me it had a cream filling tip that I HAD to try so I filled a couple of the cupcakes with leftover frosting and the cut one in half to see how it looked. Turned out great! My oldest son has now requested filled cupcake cones for his 5th birthday coming up. Should be fun :-)

And just cause he is so darn cute here is a picture of my son with a cake he decorated with left over frosting. (and yes that is cupcake on his face from being my taste tester lol)

Popsicle Holders - Why didn't I thin of that

The age old dilemma, give your kid a popsicle and they complain about their hands getting cold so what do you do you wrap it in a napkin or paper towel or as my sister does you put it in a kids sock. Well no longer thanks to Stephanie over at Under the Table and Dreaming. She has a great tutorial on how to make one from felt here I however did not have any felt in the house so I decided to let Walker pick out whatever fabric he wanted for the outside and used parts of a scrap fleece blanket for the inside and this is what I came up with.

and here are 3 of the boys enjoying their popsicles with nice warm hands :-)

Boys shorts out of old ACU's

My husband went through all his ACU's and pulled out a BUNCH of ones that are too worn out to be worn anymore so I have a big stack of them and decided to turn one of his  pld pair of pants into shorts for my boys.

I cut out Walker's shorts so that I could have both the BIG cargo side pockets that are on either side of the pants on his shorts

Jordan's was cut using the bottom hem of the pants leg so it didn't have any pockets so I cut one of the smaller cargo pockets out and put it on one of the leg pieces before I sewing it together. I made both using an elastic waste.

I also made Jordan an appliqued USA shirt using part of Darin's old ACU sleeve left over from the purse I made myself back in Dec.