Meal Time Monday

One of my favorite easy recipes to make for dinner is Enchilada Casserole. I have made it for years and love it just as much for leftovers too.

I use a round casserole dish and bake it at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

Ingredients:

1 lb. hamburger

30 oz. enchilada sauce

2 c. shredded cheddar cheese
5-7 tortilla shells

Directions:

Brown 1 lb. of hamburger and drain.

Mix hamburger together with 30 oz. of enchilada sauce.

Add about 1/2 cup of the meat/ sauce mixture to the bottom of dish.

Alternate layers of tortilla shells with a scoop of the meat/ sauce mix (enough to cover the shell) and a handful of shredded cheddar cheese.

Bake in oven and let set for about 5 minutes before serving.

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We served ours with mexican rice and a salad. Enjoy!

Snowman Fun

Hooray! The snow was perfect today for snowman building!

Mommy snowman with a warm heart and glasses!

Tuff guy daddy snowman with the wild and crazy hair!

Little snowman for B! He got a super cute snowman kit from his grandma for his birthday. It looks so cool lit up at night!

Snowman Art

This past week we made some snowman art. We have so much snow on the ground but it has not been "right" for snowman making outside so we decided to make them inside!

We used three sections of a Styrofoam cup for our circles dipped in white paint.
Next we sprinkled white glitter on the wet paint.


After they were dry we used twine for the arms, foam shapes for the buttons, eyes, and nose, felt for the scarf and hat.

Why I love Book Club

The book club I am part of stems from our local MOPS group. We have been meeting for about a year and a half now. We meet every other month and I have been lucky enough to make each meeting. We also take turns hosting and the hostess chooses the book we read. One of our guidelines we try to go with is that we try not choose books that are super new because many of us like to get the books from our local library vs. purchasing them new in hardback. Our library usually only has one copy that we take turns with and some of the ladies have also purchased their books online at used prices.

One of my favorite things about the book club is that I have read some books I would never have picked for myself. Some of them I have really enjoyed ( The Good Earth, Three Weeks With My Brother, & The Notebook) and only one or two did I dislike (The Red Tent). It forces me out of my usual genre (Good in Bed, Something Borrowed, Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons, Yada Yada Prayer Group, Stephanie Plum Novels.

We are meeting at my house in a few weeks to discuss the book Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio. I had found this book at a garage sale a year or so ago and needed to make a decision one night on what our next selection was going to be. I grabbed this one out of my overflowing book box of "books to read". I really enjoyed it. It was full of sadness with some humor and love mixed in.

I am currenty reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck. This was not a book club selection by two of the gals in BC say it is their top favorite, so I thought I would give it a try. It is HUGE and for the first week or so I swear I was not even making a dent in it. Now I am over half way done and pick it up any time I can. I am really enjoying it. It is so interesting. Full of twists and turns with all of the characters.

I have looked at the new techie items out there for the digital reading of books...the e-reader thing-a-ma-jigs. There is the Amazon Kindle, which I first heard about when I saw Oprah giving them away on one of her shows, and the Nook by Barnes and Noble which I heard about at the stores while shopping one day. A Cowgirl at Heart just got one (Kindle) for Christmas and I can't wait to hear more about how much she loves hers as she breaks it in a bit. There are others I'm sure, but these are the only two I have really heard about.

One of the things I would have liked one of these for is that I heard that while you are reading if you come across a word that you would like to look up, you can just push a button. My lazy butt is not getting out of bed to go get a dictionary so I think I would use this feature. Right now I rely on my "context clues" from good ol' 4th grade to help me.

Okay that is just a lame reason for why I would like one...I really just think they would be cool to have and have basically a bookstore at your fingertips. Prices are generally lower on purchasing e books as well.

Freezer Paper Shirts

I have been having so much fun again making freezer paper stencil shirts. You can check out my first ones I did here.


The first one I did recently was a "Max" from Where the Wild Things Are. I made one for B to wear when we went to see the movie at the IMAX. He ran into one of his buddies from preschool while we were there!




He loves his Wild Things shirt!


The next one we worked on was the Alivin shirt to wear to the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. He is totally the cutest kid in the theater when he has his theme shirt!


I know I have already posted this picture, but the third freezer paper shirts we made were our shirts for NYE. B had 2010, mom sported 20, and dad wore 10! How cute R we?

If you have not tried freezer paper stenciling yet, it is so easy! You can do it on shirts, bags, pillowcases...endless possibilities. Let me know if you decide to try it.

Happy New Year! Welcome 2010

Our New Year's Eve was full of lots of fun this year. We attended a party at the Children's Museum.

I just love the way our shirts turned out for us to wear out! I think they were adorable!

This event was called the "First Night of Play". It was our first year to purchase tickets. When we arrived we were handed tickets for dinner and a gift bag. The line looked a little long so we went ahead and waited for the pizza before the line got any longer. After dinner we hunted down the gift bag station since we had seen several people carrying theirs around and it looked like it was full of fun goodies!

The canvas bag consisted on bubble wrap paper to be used later on for the countdown at 8 PM, party hats, horns, 2010 glasses, bouncy balls, stickers, tattoos, glow sticks, bubbles and some more little stuff. Perfect stuff for a party!

We played around in the different areas of the museum.

While we were playing upstairs in the "Garden of Gizmos" exhibit, we were able to watch the fireworks in downtown Omaha out the windows. It was nice to be able to see them from the cozy inside!

B enjoyed the face painting station and also made a glow bug (you can see it sitting on the table by him)

Our play time went fast and it was time to get our party stuff out because the countdown was about to begin. Everyone stopped playing and starting marking their spot on the floor for their bubble wrap.

10...9...8....7....

Happy New Year!!!

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We arrived home about 9 PM and had a babysitter at the house for B to stay with while we attended a grown-up party.

Mom and Dad had lots of fun at their party welcoming in the New Year at 12 again! (Instead of 8 this time!)