Eggalicious

Shanelle posted pictures of eggs that she modge podged, and I thought it seemed like a fantastic idea! So, for the past few days, that's what I've been working on. I was at Joann's yesterday, and found this cute little egg stand, so I put some in there, and the others are in a plain old egg crate.





I'm envisioning a photo shoot with the girls in their Easter dresses with these eggs, so stay tuned to see if that actually takes place.

For the Love of Food!

I've had this ground chicken that I wanted to do something with, but didn't know what. So I did my favorite thing, and went to allrecipes.com, chose the option to search for ingredients, and found this great recipe. It's definitely a keeper!

Zesty Chicken Meatloaf

Ingredients
1 pound ground chicken
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups bread crumbs
3 tablespoons salsa
2 tablespoons Ranch-style salad dressing
1 (1.25 ounce) package taco seasoning mix
1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
sour cream (optional)

Directions
1.Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease an 8x4 inch loaf pan.
2.In a large bowl, mix together the ground chicken, eggs, bread crumbs, salsa, salad dressing, and taco seasoning mix. Pack into the prepared loaf pan.
3.Bake for 1 hour in the preheated oven. Top with cheese, and serve with sour cream.

Based on the reviews, the only thing I did differently was to use a little less bread crumbs (I used about 1 - 1 1/4 cups), and a little more salsa (I had a little over 4 tablespoons left in the jar, so I just used what I had).

I made my dad's famous spanish rice to go with it, which I can't really post the recipe for, because it's definitely a watch-and-learn kind of thing. I just learned recently when we were in Pensacola.

Then last night, I made the salsa that Megan brought to our Laguna Playdate a couple weeks back. It's Pioneer Woman's recipe, and it is really good - especially if you love cilantro!

Restaurant Style Salsa

Ingredients
1 can (28 Ounce) Whole Tomatoes With Juice
2 cans (10 Ounce) Rotel (diced Tomatoes And Green Chilies)
¼ cups Chopped Onion
1 clove Garlic, Minced
1 whole Jalapeno, Quartered And Sliced Thin
¼ teaspoons Sugar
¼ teaspoons Salt
¼ teaspoons Ground Cumin
½ cups Cilantro (more To Taste!)
½ whole Lime Juice

Preparation Instructions
Combine whole tomatoes, Rotel, onion, jalapeno, garlic, sugar, salt, cumin, lime juice, and cilantro in a blender or food processor. Pulse until you get the salsa to the consistency you’d like—I do about 10 to 15 pulses. Test seasonings with a tortilla chip and adjust as needed.

I didn't have the jalapeno, but the rotel gave it a little spice.

Now to this morning, I decided to put eggs over spanish rice and slather it all with this delicious salsa. One of the best weekday breakfasts I've ever made myself!

The Grandmas will love this one

But I hope other people take the time to watch it!

My girls from Kelly Spear on Vimeo.

Two Sisters

This morning, I got up before the girls were awake and took my shower. As I was getting out of the shower, I heard my doorknob jiggle, and then the door opened. Kendall was previously unable to turn the doorknob in order to open it. That's gone now, because not only did she open mine, but she opened hers first. I don't know if kids usually figure that out before she did, but I was happy she hadn't figured it out. She was confined. Now that's all over for me, and I'm having visions of her opening her door in the middle of the night, and trapsing about through the house.

Anyways, I was still getting myself ready, and I heard Cameron on the monitor. I figured I'd put Kendall's new-found talent to use, and have her go in and calm Cami down. That worked like a charm. These two sisters love each other, and as soon as Cami saw Kendall, her cries turned to laughs.

When I went in her room to get her, Kendall wanted to get in the crib with her (climing in the crib is yet another thing she can't do that I'm fine with), so I put her in it.

They had so much fun together. Even if that meant Cami getting covered up by all of Kendall's stuffies, she still loved it.

Quilting Bee

Okay, there's going to be a lot of links and names in this post, so stay with me, people.

A couple of weeks ago, Tink asked if anyone wanted to do a craft-along with her...the project being a camera strap for SLR cameras. I was in. So was Melissa. Melissa had the swell idea of me and her sewing along together. I was totally down with that, since my sewing skills are extremely basic.

She also recruited our friend Emily to sew along with us. We all have SLR cameras, and we're all pretty crafty, so it just made sense.

After a few schedule changes, we finally met up today at Melissa's house. Three mommies....4 kiddos. Use your imagination. And yes, Mr. Judah is wearing Mookie's pink boots. He was in a house full of girls, what can I say...





We (especially poor Melissa) got very little done. Emily came to Melissa's not even thinking about doing the camera strap. Apparently, her sewing skills are even more basic than mine, so the thought of doing something as big as a camera strap was too much for her. So, she sewed bean bags (which were super cute!). So, Melissa was helping Emily with her bean bags.



I was plugging away, until I got to the very last patch for the one side, and my sewing machine decided to lock up on me. So Melissa took a break from tutoring Emily to take a look at my machine. During this time, our friend Angie came over. Melissa recruited Angie to look at my machine, and after SEVERAL minutes, Angie somehow managed to fix it! So I was back.



But Cameron wasn't having it. It was way past her naptime, and she was just done. I was able to get a little more done, like sewing on that last patch, ironing the seams down (while holding Cameron), and sewing the two sides together. But that was it.



Poor Melissa was still cutting out her fabric. I felt so bad. She also cut out my fusible fleece for me before I left.

Anyways, we had to go back home, so my two little bits could eat and sleep. I quickly put them down, and got right back to where I left off.

I'm so happy to say that I finished it! And I'm really happy with how it turned out. I liked the way Tink sewed her lines, so I did mine the same way (it was different than the tutorial). It fits perfectly, too! I was really nervous about this one, and did not have high expectations, but I really am very proud of myself and the work I did.





Melissa, if you want me to watch Mookie for you so you can finish yours, just say the word!

Oh, and as for the title of this post...when I told Grant what we were doing, he kept calling it a quilting bee. He's so funny.

More

Here's a few more pics of our time with Rory, Anne, and Nathaniel.

Mimosas, Frittatas and Muffins...Oh My!

We've just come to the end of a great visit from two of Grant's college roommates, Nathaniel, and Rory, and Rory's wife, Anne. Saturday morning, we planned to have a brunch, and it was yummy!

I made a biscuit frittata and bacon, Anne made "to die for" blueberry muffins, and we had mimosas...Grant even experimented with a "milkmosa," but I don't think he wants to talk about that. Anyways, everything looked so pretty, we all took pictures before we dove in.





We ate every last bite, and it was delicious!

This little cutie was good enough to eat, but we refrained ourselves.

Duh!

I don't know why I only put up our pictures from the banquet. So here's more!

Grant's roommate from college, Nathaniel, is in town for a few days, and he came to the banquet with us.



Melissa wasn't there, but her other half was.



And this is Grant's boss, Lt. Col. Nakamura.

Fancy Party

I mentioned before, that Grant was up for a big award. Well, last night was the banquet where the winners were announced. Grant didn't win, but we enjoyed our time out of the house at the "fancy party," which is how I described where we were going to Kendall.

Grant's been in the Air Force almost seven years now, and we've never been to anything formal, so it was fun to get all dressed up. We clean up pretty nice!

I LOVE my camera!

I've mentioned on here before that Grant got me snazzy new camera for Christmas. What I haven't mentioned is how obsessed I am with it, and how - almost 3 months after getting it - I still get goose bumps when I take pictures with it. I still don't know alot about it (I'm hoping Tink will come for a visit and give me a tutorial), but I love playing around with it.

Take today's little adventure as an example. We've been having some fantastic weather here lately, and I set up the little sprinkler thing for Kendall to play in today. She had a blast, and I had my camera there to capture her enjoyment. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.









Kendall happened to catch a glimpse of Watley lapping up some water, so she decided to do the same. I was only a little horrified.