Chicken 'n' Dressing Casserole

I didn't find this on the P; it was on Facebook but close enough....  

This was another easy and delicious success!! My Dad had saved it on his timeline so I took it was a hint that he wanted to try it and made it for dinner on Monday when I was at my parents' house. 

While this is easy to do, if you don't have a couple of the ingredients pre-cooked, it can be somewhat time consuming. I had to make cornbread, boil eggs, and bake chicken breast in order to make the casserole. Luckily I was able to multi-task while I had them in the oven. I served this with a side of steamed veggies (and I also had a small salad). It was a nice, warm dinner to enjoy on a cold night!

I bought the healthiest ingredients I could... Lower sodium broth, healthy request soup (Campbell's), and boneless skinless chicken breast. 

Will I be making this again? Definitely!!! 

Grilled Cheese: Grown-Up Style

I saw a recipe for these sandwiches one day last week (or the week before) and decided to try them them week. Oh my deliciousness!!!! The turkey,cranberry, Brie grilled sandwich might be my new fav! 

This is a nice twist on the classic grilled cheese. I modified it slightly. The recipe called for sourdough bread and cranberry chutney. I used light whole grain bread and a can of jellied cranberry sauce. I also used light Brie cheese instead of regular and spray butter rather than regular butter. 

It was simple to make....

I sprayed my bread with butter and then sandwiched my ingredients between the two. I put my turkey on first then my cheese and topped it with cranberry sauce. Then I cooked it like a typical grilled cheese. I'm thinking you could also use a panini maker for this. 

I can't wait to try this with Thanksgiving leftovers!!! 

Crockpot Orange Chicken

This was fantastic!!! I'd seen it on Pinterest a lot and finally got around to trying it. It was very easy to make too. 

The chicken went into the crockpot for three hours, then it was drained. After that I mixed together the barbecue sauce, orange marmalade, and soy sauce (I used light). Then mixture then goes in with the chicken and cooks for 30 minutes. 

It was delicious and had an awesome flavor to it. It reminded me of the orange chicken at a Chinese restaurant except it wasn't fried. It was probably a lot healthier than Chinese takeout!!! I served mine with a brown rice and quinoa blend. 

I highly recommend this recipe! 

Corn Dog Muffins

I don't have the best pictures but I will post these anyway! Since Little Miss was over on Saturday I wanted to make something kid-friendly for dinner. I had seen these on Pinterest a while ago and decided we would make them. She usually likes to help me cook but considering I have purchased her so many toys, she wasn't interested. Instead she looked at me and said, "I go play in my bedroom. You make dinner." 

I didn't go to great lengths with these. I picked up a package of reduced fat, low calorie hot dogs and a package of corn muffin mix. I made the mix according to the instructions on the package. Then I cut up some hot dogs. I put some mix in a muffin pan, then some hot dog chunks, and then put more mix on the top. I baked them according to the directions on the muffin mix package. 

The result? They were pretty good! I typically eat healthier foods and put more effort into my meals but I didn't think Little Miss would find it necessary for me to slave over a gourmet meal. Neither of us seemed very hungry so we had some apple slices on the side. 

Ghosts!

The Little Miss and I made two kinds of fun ghosts this weekend.  These projects were planned because I knew I'd be babysitting and thought we should have some fun. 

First we made ghosts out of cotton balls! I already had glue and construction paper so we just has to pick up a couple bags of cotton balls. I think we ended up with six ghosts. I picked up two bags of cotton balls at the dollar store for about three dollars total. 

I outlined the ghosts, in glue, on the paper then put more glue in the middle. All Little Miss had to do was stick the cotton balls to the glue. When we were done I cut out eyes and mouths to glue onto the ghosts. 

She was a little apprehensive about our next project but she had so much fun making these that she ended up getting really excited about them. I already had the supplies for these on hand. We used black construction paper and acrylic paint (white and black). 

For these ghosts I put some paint on paper and then stuck her foot in it. We then placed her foot onto another piece of construction paper. We repeated the process until we made several ghosts and I was out of white paint. She would've made these all day if I had let her!! I think this ended up being her favorite project of the day!!

After the ghosts dried I made some eyes and mouths on the ghosts with black paint. Then we were done! The acrylic paint wipes off of skin very easily if you clean up right away. This project has the potential to get messy but with good adult supervision you should be just fine. Little Miss will be three in a few weeks and she did a great job!! 

Painted Pumpkins

This weekend my favorite little girl and I worked on painting some pumpkins. These were super easy to make and don't really have directions except... Get paint. Paint pumpkins. We spray painted some and hand painted some. As you can see she's a great artist! :) Also, if you notice in the picture of the front porch, my ceramic stand (from a previous post) is being used in the display.