Homemade Chicken Taquitos

I saw a recipe for chicken taquitos over at one of my favorite blogs (and also a lady who's name matches mine) Annie's Eats. I'm pretty sure this other Annie and I would get along great!!

I modified her recipe a bit but since I'm writing this on 5/15 I honestly can't really remember how. What I liked about it was I had everything I needed on hand, which is a plus for me. I also liked it because we like Mexican and this was very tasty, easy, cost efficient and something that would make a good freezer meal!! We had them with Rice a Roni and corn.

They are on the menu to make this week, so I will post soon on how I make them to fit our family!

Bridal Shower Scrapbook.

I had a blast making this next project. It was something that I'd seen one of my co-workers do for a teacher who retired this year and knew it would be super easy to transfer. It basically is a guestbook for a shower (or any other event) that is handmade, gorgeous, lots of time and energy (and money) but very worth it in the end!!

Below will eventually be a few a video clips.  At her shower we passed around the pages and the guests signed them with whatever they felt like saying. Some were funny, some were serious, but they all were heartfelt and bound into a book that Leena and Jerome can treasure forever!!

The first one is of the book before I went to Chicago to deliver it to the bride-to-be. I wanted the other members of the wedding party to see what I'd been up too :)

Leena is supposed to be sending me a video of the finished product because I totally forgot to take video of that, but it turned out wonderfully!

When I first has this idea I went to the logical place - JoAnn's fabric. I knew I want the book to be an 8X8 format. Once there I found some paper packs that went nicely together, bought them, and started on my way. If I'd had more time (and patience) I would have put details on each page but I would bet I spent about 10 - 15 hours on this project. PHEW!!

cutting coupons...

Last week I watched the pilot episodes of Extreme Couponing. Holy Moly. Jason watched about 10 minutes of the last one and his jaw was on the floor! Since it was my spring break I stayed up late to watch them and during that time I was unconsciously drawn to coupons.com, Krazy Coupon Lady, and many more "frugal" websites. Eegads!

My goal was to save money while NOT buying unnecessary items. Some lady on that show bought like 56 tubes of mustard, and her family doesn't even eat mustard it was "just too good of a deal to pass up". STRANGE! I think I did pretty good on this trip. We generally "stock up" at Winco. I know the point of extreme couponing is to match up deals at standard grocery stores with coupons. I, however, am not an extreme couponer. I am not even a novice couponer. I am total amateur.

I used 11 coupons and I saved $7.83! The ONLY thing I bought that we don't already use was from this coupon on top. I bought these Mozarella Cheese Sticks. Obviously I'm craving them. Other than that it was salad dressings, cheeses, frozen lunches/dinner, cinnamon rolls, as examples. I certainly bought other things that I didn't have coupons for but maybe this is the start of something...

I also have about 10 coupons left from brand's that Safeway does not carry.

I do not want to become extreme but I wouldn't mind saving some money!

More after the next trip :)

happy bunny day cakepops ~ round one

Today I headed out to Tigard (about an hour away) to visit a great friend and actually, she is the person introduced me to cakepops about a year ago :) Thanks Meggers, Thanks.

Megan has an adorable little girl and is expecting a little boy in July! She and I were roommates in college and have been friends since. Since it is my spring break we decided to get together and make some cakepops! The fancy ones we made were bunnies, and they turned out...hilariously awesome. I definitely want a re-do on the bunnies.

Some are adorable, some are hilarious. Check out the top right one ;-)

We did some shapes too. We used the same methods my Mom used for the hearts for Valentine's. Stuff the cakepop mixture into a cookie cutter and press it out. Next time I will get a picture...It was a big harder at Megan's house, I felt kind of silly :)

We also used the "I want to use a lot of color but don't want to waste candy" trick. We had two melters going. We started out with dying the white chocolate pink and then after we were about half way through we added some blue to make purple. Turns out, you need LOTS of pink to make purple. Wish we'd had red...

We did a lot of balls and flowers that were a solid colors on the candy coating and brighter but still spring colors (ie. not pastels) in the sugar (sprinkles). 

I really liked the colors!

I even brought a little "welcome to the neighborhood" basket to our new neighbors!