Crazy 8's

I've been tagged by Jess. Here are some of my favorite things.

My 8 Favorite Restaurants:

1-Bajio's

2-Applebee's

3-Jonny Carino's

4-Craigo's

5-Red Lobster

6-Perkin's

7-Anything Mexican

8-Elephant Bar

My 8 Favorite T.V. shows:

1-So You Think You Can Dance

2-The Hills

3-The City

4-Grey's Anatomy

5-Private Practice

6-Rachel Ray

7-The View

8-Ellen Degeneras

8 Things I did yesterday:

1-Showered

2-Cleaned the kitchen

3-laundry

4-Played with Macy

5-Watched Sesame Street

6-Made a yummy dinner

7-Went and saw my parents

8-Played online

8 Things I'm Looking Forward to:

1-Motorcycle races this summer

2-Jared coming home

3-Tyson calling on Mother's Day

4-Pictures from Tyson

5-Valentine's Day

6-4th of July

7-Macy's birthday

8-Payte's parents moving to Idaho

8 Wishes

1-I wish I had a maid

2-I wish I had a personal trainer

3-I wish I could meet Rachel Ray

4-I wish I could be like Rachel Ray

5-I wish I wasn't so anxious about everything

6-I wish I could travel more

7-I wish money wasn't an issue

8-I wish I had a bigger house with a grand piano and dance studio

I tag: Brook, Ally, Mom, and Jenny!

I love you Betty Crocker!

As sort of a New Year's resolution, I am trying to be better about keeping a budget. I have definately found that food costs our family way too much money each month, so I am trying to find affordable, yet tasty meals. Luckily I ran in to bettycrocker.com. They had 5 meals all planned out that cost less than $50. Many of the items are already in my pantry, so it ends of being even less. The recipes look simple and yummy so I am excited to try them out next week. It even has a grocery list completely organized and ready for you to use. I printed the recipes and the grocer list out and put them on my fridge. My husbad took a look at them and got pretty excited, so that might be a nice way to get him home in time for a warm dinner! I will let you know how it goes! Here are some pictures of a few of the yummy looking meals.

New Recipe

I absolutely love finding new recipes to try. I guess you could call my looking for recipes a hobby. The internet is the best place to find great new things and it's free! My favorite site is kraftfoods.com, and I tried a new chicken recipe that the whole family absolutely loved! It's also fairly healthy. Only 340 calories per serving. So here it is:

What You Need:

2 tsp. oil
3 cups sliced fresh mushrooms
1 medium onion, chopped
1 can (15 oz.) stewed tomatoes, undrained (I used italian style)
1/4 cup KRAFT Zesty Italian Dressing (I used fat free, and it still tasted great)
3 Tbsp. tomato paste (if you can, buy this in a tube and keep it in the fridge)
4 small boneless skinless chicken breast halves (1 lb.)
1 cup KRAFT Low-Moisture Part-Skim Mozzarella Cheese
2 slices OSCAR MAYER Fully Cooked Bacon, crumbled

Make It:

HEAT oil in large nonstick skillet on medium-high heat. Add mushrooms and onions; cook 5 min., stirring occasionally. Stir in tomatoes, dressing and tomato paste.
ADD chicken; cover. Reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer 12 min. or until chicken is cooked through.

(at this point I (Sherie) transferred the meal to a baking dish and then added the cheese and bacon. I baked at 475 for about 10 minutes or until it's bubbly and brown) or you can do the following:

SPRINKLE with cheese and bacon; simmer, uncovered, 5 min. or until cheese is melted.

First time Playdough!

Last week I found out the company I work for was laying off a few people and elimating many jobs. My job was one that got cut. I was only working from home 1 to 2 hrs a day though, so that wasn't a big deal to me. They did offer me another position, but I would basically be working full time, and that just wasn't an option for our family right now. So now I have a little extra time in the day, especially while Macy is napping. The other day I decided to try making some playdough. It was so easy and turned out great. Macy loves it and it keeps her busy for a while. All it took was equal parts of salt, flour, and water. I added food coloring for fun. So here are a few pictures of Macy's playdough time. The one picture looks like she's eating it, but she figured out quickly that it does not taste very good!

Simple Pleasures

I enjoy watching Macy getting so much pleasure out of the most simple things in life! Right now she especially loves playing in the snow. Payte had the day off on Monday so we decided to go sledding in our back yard. Our porch is over our daylight basement, so the stairs are quite tall. They were already mostly covered with snow, so Payte just leveled them out and made a great big sledding hill for Macy. Macy would lay clear down in the sled and we would send her off all by herself! We got such a kick out of watching her! Once she stopped clear across the yard, she would yell, "Again!!!" So I would take her up the hill and pass her off to Payte over and over again. When Payte and I got too tired to play that game, we just plopped down in the snow for a few minutes and watched Macy play. We built her a chair and a very small and sad snow man. We had so much fun that day! We also had a great Christmas, but me being the bad mom I am forgot to bring my camera to my parent's house. So they have all the pics. I'll post them one of these days I guess! But for now, enjoy the Macy snow pics!