I have seen this recipe all over Pinterest (I believe even from day 1) so I decided to break down and give it a try. It is usually called Italian Chicken - but we renamed it Batman Chicken Pasta because of the bow tie pasta that I used. Elie really likes calling it Batman Pasta - not that she even has a clue who Batman is! So here is what you need:
2-3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 packet of Italian Dressing mix (dry envelope)
8 ounces of cream cheese (I used half fat free and half regular)
1 can of cream of chicken soup
1/2 can water
If you can tell from my picture, I made a boo-boo. I opened the cream of mushroom soup, and when I was about to pour it in, I realized I was supposed to use cream of chicken - so I used the mushroom soup the next day.
Add all ingredients to the Crock Pot and cook for 2.5-3 hours (depending on your chicken). Next time I will pre-dice my chicken, but this time I didn't have time to wait for it to defrost and cut it, so I just stuck it in frozen (I cooked it for about 3.5 hours since it was frozen). Also, since I used fat free cream cheese, it is super hard to get it to melt and blend with everything else, so in the beginning I stirred it 3 times about 30 minutes apart to try to get it blended. We had a few small pieces that didn't blend, but you couldn't tell when you ate it.
We really liked the pasta, and I will definitely make it again. Pinterest Link
There was no recipe linked to this Pinterest Link - so I just used the information under the picture and modified it a tad.
After enjoying a fun 'Not Back to School' Day yesterday, this morning we woke up excited to begin our day starting Kindergarten. I've had a lot of people ask why we are going to do Kindergarten at only 3 years old. Here are a few of my reasons:
I looked at a lot of preschool curricula, and they were mostly letters, letter sounds, counting, color, shapes, etc. We are BORED with this right now. Elie could do most of those things before she turned 2, so I feel that she is ready.
She has already begun blending sounds together for reading. Preschool curriculum does not contain blends, while Kindergarten does.
I am fully prepared to do this two years in a row. I think the first year I will lay the foundation, and next year we will get more in depth. But with this expectation, if she is ready to move onto 1st grade next year, I will pursue that as well.
I decided that the best curriculum for Elie (and me too) is My Father's World. I spend hours at HEAV's Virginia Homeschool Convention looking at different brands of curriculum. Others just didn't strike what I was looking for. Some didn't contain all subjects including Bible, and My Father's World did. Some required an enormous amount of books to purchase, and we are just fine using a library card. While others involved having your child sit in front of a TV while learning (which goes against my personality/personal beliefs for homeschooling for lots of reasons - I want to homeschool, not have my child watch TV all day. I am my child's teacher, not a TV screen. I am not a big fan of TV watching for kids anyway. My list could go on, but I shall digress.) I will post another blog entry later as to why I love My Father's World so much.
We began our day singing "This is My Father's World". After practicing a few times, we sang along (only a little bit) with a great YouTube video I found. Here it is:
Elie loved the song because it was sung by a 'lady' (Amy Grant). Lately, she has been only wanting to listen to songs sung by women. I hope the pictures will help the song to stick and mean something to Elie...eventually!
After reading about the first day of creation, Elie created a page in her creation book - one for dark and one for light.
Next she labeled the front of her book "Elie's Creation Book". She is pretty good at her name, and I just told her what letters to write for the other words (not as clear as her name, but this is only the beginning).
She was super proud of her writing, and I was too!
We also worked on circling the date on the calendar with specific instructions (use a orange crayon to circle September 5th).
The purple paper on the top will eventually include each day of creation, cut and glued by Elie. At the end of the school day, she was able to remember that on the first day, God made the darkness and the light. I think the first day was a success!
We then went outside and took a few celebratory pictures for the first day. Elie decided we needed an impromptu lesson on sinking and floating. So we gathered a few items (all made by Mother Nature of course) and threw them into the water to test whether they floated or not. Here is Elie testing a leaf.
The Elie tried some strange poses with her 1st day of Kindergarten board. As soon as she laid in the grass, a huge butterfly landed on her dress. I tried to snap the picture, but it began to fly away. There it is at the end of the word Kindergarten.
Woo-Hoo! We finished our first day, and boy was it fun!
I recently read about celebrating a 'Not Back to School Day'. Since we homeschool we don't have to have to follow a strict calendar, so this is a great way to celebrate that. So when all of the other kids in our area went off for the first day of school, we hit the road and had a great day! Here's what we did all day!
First we joined a few of our friends for a play date and made an apple craft while enjoying all kinds of apple yummy-ness. We then enjoyed lunch with a friend for her birthday.
My plan was to allow Elie to have such an awesome day - even allowing her to skip her nap. On the way home from lunch, she had other plans. Her typical 3 hour nap turned into a 10 minute cap nap in the car. This gave her a second wind for having friends over!
In the afternoon, a group of our good friends came over to play for a while. We had a great time running around at the park.
They climbed and climbed and climbed.
Then they all made dinner with dirt! We even had stone soup.
Once our friends left, Elie rode her bike for a while.
While Elie rode her bike, I checked the mail and look what came in!
Look what was on one of the first few pages.
So this is how we spend our 1st 'Not Back to School' Day.
This is one of the most popular ideas on Pinterest, so I had to give it a try. It was quite simple and easy.
I arranged crayons in a gradual fade from green to pink (Elie's room is primarily in green and pink). I used the color of the crayon itself, so don't look at the paper to judge the fade of colors because it can be misleading.
Then I hot glued the crayons in order onto the canvas. I was generous with the hot glue because I don't want crayons falling off, yet I didn't want any of the glue to show.
Tada
I then took the project outside (upon suggestion from a friend who got melted crayon everywhere!). Since I scrapbook, I have a heat gun - which get much much hotter than a hair dryer. With my heat gun, it took a total of 3-4 minutes to finish the whole melting process (the same friend told me took her 20 minutes with a hair dryer).
When the power went out one night, I was eager to get a divers stick (bright glow stick) and stick Elie in the tub. It is hard to tell by the picture, but just one of these glow sticks is bright enough for bath time. Fortunately, it lasted for a while, so I used it to light up my tub as well! Pinterest Link
This Pinterest Challenge was quick, easy, and delicious. Of course I modified it since the original recipe seemed like a heart attack waiting to happen. Plus my 3 year old would not be a big fan if I used regular pepperoni (not a spicy fan). Here are the ingredients I used:
honey wheat bread
fresh sliced mozzarella cheese
mini turkey pepperoni
cooking spray
pizza sauce for dipping
Now just make it like a traditional grilled cheese. Spray the pan. Layer bread, cheese, pepperoni, and bread. I microwaved the sandwiches for 30 seconds each to get the cheese melting (my first sandwich resulted in almost burnt bread and non-melted cheese). Then I grilled the bread until it was golden brown.
I heated a little bit of pizza sauce for dipping, and it was delicious!
The thought of making homemade peanut butter never crossed my mind until Pinterest, but oh am I glad it did. I'm just glad we will never go back to buying peanut butter (whether all natural or original, crunchy or creamy, high fructose corn syrup or not, stir or non-stir, crunchy or creamy). This peanut butter was by far the best tasting peanut butter I've ever tried!
Here's what you need:
peanuts (we got salted roasted peanuts in a shell and peeled them)
a strong food processor
Sounds easy? Right, it is...well other than spending hours peeling peanuts and having them already half eaten between the three of us. We only peeled a few cups at a time, so this is just one batch we made.
Ready to begin? Our food processor is an attachment to our blender base we received when we were married. After finishing the first batch, I was happy I didn't use my little $10 chopper because it would have given out in a heartbeat.
Here are the stages I encountered in making this recipe:
crushed peanuts
fine powder (sand like)
paste
thick paste
dough ball
gritty peanut butter
perfect peanut butter
Here is my peanut butter after 1 minute of processing.
Here we are 2 minutes in.
These two pictures are from 3 minutes into processing.
Not quite ready, but getting there!
4 minutes - almost there!
5 minutes and we are done! Look how creamy....mmmmmmmm!
I absolutely love this peanut butter. It is so much better than store bought. I have stored mine in the fridge just to keep it thicker and allow it to keep longer (I assume it will last as long as the nuts were originally good for, but as fast as we are eating it, I won't be able to tell you that personally!
On a side note, a friend of mine tried it and her peanut butter couldn't get past the balled up point (my guess is it depends on the strength of your chopper). She added melted coconut oil to it, and it blended well. Try it out and let me know how it goes!
