Cheesy Potato Soup

Today I tried THIS recipe for cheesy potato soup that I had pinned on Pinterest a few weeks ago. It seemed so darn easy, and I've never gotten potato soup to meet my standards before so I was curious to see what this recipe would bring.

Well, the recipe definitely was really easy, and it was done in less than an hour (probably helped by the fact that I cut the potato pieces really small). I don't know why I didn't really realize that there wasn't anything in it except potatoes...I wanted carrots and the celery! Next time I make this, I will definitely add some more veggies.

I chopped green onions and had extra cheese to top the soup with, and also made some bacon to crumble. I've used the oven to make bacon in the past but this time I only needed a small amount and didn't want to heat the whole oven up for 4 little slices, so I decided to try using the toaster oven. PERFECT! I'll be making bacon for breakfast like this now :o)

Also, I saw a "life hack" pin a while ago about disposing of grease easily and tried that method as well. All you have to do is line a small bowl with foil, pour the grease into it, and then throw it out once it has hardened. Genius!

update on 2012

Yikes!!! Life in 2012 has been INSANE so far! I have been so incredibly busy that a number of things had to fall by the wayside in order for me to get ANY sleep at all, and unfortunately, this blog became one of those casualties. Sigh.

Life has slowed down a bit now that March has arrived. Even though I haven't posted anything in a while, I've still been pinning and creating based on those pinspirations. Here is a giant update of all the Pinterest-related things that have happened in the past month or so:

Food:

Cheeseburger Soup (recipe can be found HERE)

Wow. This soup was D-licious! My family was very skeptical when I told them I was making a soup modeled after a cheeseburger, but they changed their tune when they tasted it! I made a HUGE batch (because I had full faith that it would be amazing) and it disappeared in a matter of days. I will definitely be making this one again!

Taco Chicken

There are a million variations of "shredded chicken made in the crock pot" recipes on Pinterest, but I actually followed the recipe that a friend gave me. The process is so easy that I don't know if calling it a recipe is really the right word. Here's what you do:

Combine 1 can cream of chicken soup with 1 jar salsa in a crock pot. Add frozen chicken. Cover and cook on high for 1 hour, then cook on low until chicken shreds easily when you poke it with a fork. (Sometimes I add water if the sauce looks too thick, but if the chicken is frozen I don't usually have to add any.) So easy and tastes great!

Now here's the best part: There was a pin on Pinterest saying that if you put chicken in a standing mixer and mix it on low, you will have perfectly shredded chicken in seconds without doing any work. I couldn't wait to try this because the shredding part is my least favorite job. It worked PERFECTLY! Shredded chicken in seconds! I will be doing this for every shredded chicken recipe from now until I die. Seriously.

I also realized that taco chicken would be an amazing filling for chicken enchiladas, so I will be trying that in the near future as well. Yum!

Lemon-Dill Chicken (recipe can be found HERE)

mmmmm I love anything with lemon and I love anything with dill, so I was really excited to try this recipe. It turned out great! I didn't make skewers because I didn't have any skewers and it was really cold out so I didn't want to use the grill. Instead, I just marinated the chicken as directed in the recipe and then pan seared them. I chopped the chicken into bite-sized pieces and topped salads or mixed it into other recipes all week long. I will definitely make this again, and hopefully the next time it will be warmer so I can try the grilled version.

PB&J Smoothie (recipe can be found HERE)

I am enjoying the end of one of these smoothies as I write this. SO GOOD. I make smoothies for breakfast every day and was getting bored with my standby combinations, so it was the perfect time to experiment with this recipe. I didn't really follow her recipe, I just used her concept of combining peanut butter and jelly in a smoothie. I made my strawberry smoothie as usual and added a tablespoon or two of peanut butter. I've made it two days in a row now, and I'll probably have one tomorrow, too!

Spasanga (recipe can be found HERE)

All I can say is WOW. Whoever came up with this recipe is a genius. My friends just had a baby boy and I wanted to take them dinner one day to help with all the craziness of life with a new baby. I came across this recipe as I was deciding what to make them and it fit my needs for something that could last for a few meals and is easily reheated.

The recipe was easy to follow, and although I didn't actually get to taste it, I received RAVE reviews :o) I will be making this for my family in the near future since I still have most of the ingredients in the fridge!

Zucchini Fries (recipe can be found HERE)

mmmm I love anything called a fry. Ha. My vegetarian brother was home for dinner one day and we decided to try these for our happy hour snack. The dipping sauce paired with this recipe was great, but we thought the actual fries were pretty bland. If we try them again we thought we would add some extra seasoning to the coating of the zucchini sticks so that they would have some zing on their own.

Roasted Green Beans and Mushrooms (recipe can be found HERE)

This recipe looked SO GOOD on Pinterest but we were disappointed with the results. (I guess it was bound to happen eventually!) I think we baked them a bit too long so they were a little dry and not very flavorful. I would try this recipe again, but in a smaller batch and with more marinade.

Zucchini "Noodles"

I found a pin that suggested making "noodles" out of vegetables for a carb-free alternative to pasta noodles. The pin led to a picture but no website, so HERE is the link to the pin. My sister and I decided to give up carbs for Lent this year. It has been going well, but she was really craving pasta this week so we decided to make these as an alternative and stay on the "no carb wagon." She used a vegetable peeler to make long strips of zucchini and yellow squash. After blanching them in boiling water and draining them, we topped them with a piece of salmon and some delicious white wine reduction sauce that she created. She said it met her need for a pasta dish, and I thought it was a great alternative that stayed within our dietary guidelines for Lent. Awesome!

Pirate Snacks

I have been active within the Hungarian Girl Scouts for my entire life. They have a mardi-gras costume party for the little scouts every year and this year's theme was Pirates! I found some great ideas for pirate parties on Pinterest, and decided to make these snacks. All I did was make blue jello in clear party cups and then top them with a quarter of an orange with a toothpick flag stuck in it. Ta-Da! Pirate boats!

The kids loved them and the parents did too! The snack was healthy but still exciting, and they really enjoyed them.

Sewing:

There are a TON of people in my life who are having babies lately, and I've been giving my sewing machine a workout making all kinds of baby gifts.

Onesie with faux vest (Find it HERE)

I fell in love with this adorable onesie when I saw it on Pinterest, but it took forever for someone to have a boy so I could finally make it!! I bought some cotton fabric in a "grandpa vest" pattern, some wooden buttons, and a white, long-sleeved onesie. I didn't use a pattern, I just cut the fabric to the size of the onesie and sewed it all together. I LOVE how it turned out and I can't wait to see him wear it!

Burp Cloths (find it HERE)

I found a great picture tutorial for making burp cloths using hand towels. (What a great idea!) I made a couple to give with the onesie and they turned out really well.

Finally, I wanted to share with you a great blog that I stumbled across through Pinterest. I spent the better part of a Saturday browsing through posts on "One Good Thing by Jillee" and I can't wait to see what she comes up with next!

If you actually made it all the way to the end of this post...congratulations! You deserve a pat on the back for your perseverance! Thanks for reading, and I promise I will stay on top of postings in the future :o)

lip exfoliator - WOW!

Holy moly. My lips have been driving me INSANE for far too long thanks to nasty winter weather. Peeling, chapped lips that I was constantly picking at...but not anymore!!! Once again, Pinterest has come through and provided the perfect solution to my problem. Enter the lip exfoliator located HERE.

It took me 30 seconds to mix it up (in a shot glass, ha) and another 30 seconds to scrub it all over my lips. After a quick rinse at the sink I feel like a new person! I plan on doing this once a week from now on so that my lips never get to the cracked, desert sands state that they were a minute ago!

Loaded Potato Nachos

We don't cook potatoes very often at our house, but as I scanned my Pinterest recipe boards THIS jumped out at me and then nothing else sounded as good so I gave it a try.

First of all, I am a purely visual person, and it drives me nuts when a recipe calls for something that is "medium sized" and I don't have any clue what medium really means. So, for those of you who are also visual learners, here's what I started with. 3 "medium" potatoes:

And here's another visual for how thin/thick I cut the slices, because telling me to cut something into 1/16 inch pieces does NOT help me out at all.
After slicing all 3 potatoes into relatively uniform rounds I laid them all out in a single layer on a baking sheet. I melted some butter in the microwave and then brushed the rounds with it, adding salt, pepper, and garlic powder. I was afraid I would over season so I ended up under seasoning it, and I really wish I had the sea salt grinder I used to have before I broke it because that flavor would have been amazing. I'll have to buy a new one soon. I flipped them all and brushed and seasoned the other side as well. Here's a picture of them right after they went in the oven because I forgot to take one before and didn't want to take them out once they were in.
Meanwhile, I also used another Pinterest idea from HERE where I learned that baking bacon is the only way to go. I lined another baking sheet with heavy duty foil (foil is the best kitchen clean-up helper ever), laid out the bacon, and baked it for 10 minutes (while the potatoes were already in there). In the future I would definitely add a wire rack to raise the bacon up and keep it from festering in it's own grease. yuck.
While the potatoes baked for a while I chopped up all the toppings. Regular onions, green onions, and the bacon after it came out of the oven. I also chopped up a fresh tomato and had some shredded cheddar ready to go.
After the potatoes were starting to get crispy I covered them with all of the toppings except the tomatoes and let them bake until the cheese was melted.
Look how amazingly delicious it looks!!! You can't even imagine how great it smelled. Not to mention how fabulous it tasted. Wow. I'm loving these potatoes!
Next time I would probably cut the slices a bit thicker so that it was more potato-y and less crunchy by the end, but these were definitely a hit! I added the fresh tomato and then dipped them in ranch dressing (because I can dip pretty much everything in ranch dressing) but you could also top your serving with sour cream or anything else you usually put on a baked potato. YUM

Starbucks copy-cat

I am NOT a big coffee drinker, yet I can't help but succumb to the call of Starbucks every once in a while. When Starbucks is calling it's not usually for a crazy coffee beverage...it's for iced tea! But not just ANY kind of tea - Tazo Passion shaken iced tea lemonade. (Isn't it annoying that names are so darn loooong at coffee shops?!)

I absolutely love the Passion tea concoction but I try not to buy it too often because, let's face it, my life is lived on a budget. I gave into the call of Starbucks this week because I have a gift-card so it's like getting it for free, right? When I got home and my drink was all gone I was sad, so I decided to do a search online and see if someone else had come up with a cheap-o imitation of my delicious indulgence.

Honestly, I think it's possible to find ANYTHING you want on the internet!!! My mom makes fun of me because I reference Pinterest or Google in so many ordinary conversations, but it's TRUE! (and at least I cite my sources! I could pretend that I'm a know-it-all genius instead...)

THIS is what my search came up with. Seemed easy enough and we had all the ingredients at home already, so why not give it a try? (CONFESSION: I didn't find this link through Pinterest, but I did pin it to share with the rest of the pinning world, so it counts for the sake of the blog, right?!)

My grandmother swears by Aldi grocery stores,

and she swears by the electric tea kettle she bought there.

I now boil water for my tea in this instead of on the stove

and I guess I swear by it too!

I bought this tea from Starbucks a while ago

hoping I would be able to make it at home

but didn't find a good recipe until now.

I think you can find it at Target and grocery stores as well.

The directions on the website made a 3 quart batch of this tea and I only wanted to make one glass-worth in case it was terrible...I didn't want to waste the precious tea bags! I boiled water in my electric tea kettle and then poured it into my cup. I used only one tea bag and that was plenty. I let it steep for 10-15 minutes.

Country Time Lemonade is always present in our house!

After letting the tea steep I removed the tea bag and added 1 scoop of lemonade powder. (I have a very big cup! I would definitely adjust the lemonade to the size of your cup.) Also, I forgot to leave room for ice so I had to transfer some of the tea to another cup for the cooling process. oops.

Here's my cup of Tazo tea lemonade, the homemade way!

SIDENOTE: I LOVE TERVIS TUMBLERS! I was introduced to them when I lived in South Carolina and I brought them back north with me. I lovelovelove my "big cup" (as my preschoolers call it) and carry it with me pretty much everywhere. I bought mine at Bed Bath & Beyond but you can also find them HERE.

Final verdict on the tea: I think I definitely made my life more difficult by trying to make this in a cup instead of a pitcher, and next time I will remember to leave room for ice. The first sip was encouraging but not exact. Not to be discouraged - the longer I let this sit the more it tasted like the original! After it was thoroughly chilled and the flavors meshed a bit it was absolutely delicious and I wished I had made the big batch!

Earring Display

Being a jewelry lady is one of my four jobs these days and I wanted to find a way to display earrings in a simple but elegant way. After searching for ideas on Pinterest I found THIS. The pin didn't have a link to a website outside of Pinterest but I took the idea from the picture and figured out my own version.

I started with a $3 picture frame from Walmart. I took out the glass and cut a sheet of black scrapbook paper to fit the opening. Then I hot glued a strip of black rick-rack ribbon to the paper. I put a dot of glue in the middle to give it some strength - I didn't want it to sag if there were heavy earrings on it. Then I glued on the second strip, popped it into the frame, and I was good to go!

Here's a close up of the rick-rack strip with earrings on it.

Side view:

Finished product!

BTW these are not earrings that I sell, they're random ones from my jewelry box :o)

Make-Up Brush Storage Solution

I absolutely love using Bare Minerals make-up! It drove me crazy, though, that my brushes were always smooshed because I kept them in a travel bag with the rest of my five minute make-up routine supplies. I saw THIS on Pinterest and it completely solved my problem! (not to mention that it's a much more attractive solution than some of the other options out there)

On one of my MANY visits to Pat Catan's craft stores I picked up a $1 glass votive holder and a $1 bag of floral marbles. voila! Make-up brush holder.

So simple yet effective!

Now My brushes are perfectly fluffy and ready for me whenever I need them!