a short update...

Well here I am again posting and its probably been a month since my last post....so here is the new news with us....Levi is getting bigger by the day and is very active...like kicking me right now... :)  I love those little kicks but I'm not going to lie I'm not a fan of them at 4:30 am when he loves to wake me from my sleep...Reece is just as active as ever...but I guess I should expect that out of an almost two year old....his birthday is in July so just one more month...I've already started planning his Mickey Mouse Birthday party...my goal is to have most of the supplies bought and the whole party planned by the time his birthday rolls around...We also have Father's Day is coming up so I'm trying to get some creative juices flowing on how to celebrate that with my hubby :)....I haven't really been doing any new food recipe trying lately as I find it hard to find the energy to do that after a day of playing with Reece who keeps me going all day I might add...Rainy season has officially started here which means just about every afternoon it rains for about an hour....but I am thankful that hot season is over since I am pregnant and my little oven going all the time was making me a little miserable there for awhile....I'm hoping to have a few new sewing tutorials coming up but first I have to get out and buy some fabric and some velcro for one project that I'm in the middle of...I've been working on exercising a little bit and stretching in preparation for Levi's arrival as I am hoping to have a VBAC this go round....I guess thats all really...hopefully I will get my act together and get some sewing done before Levi gets here because I know I wont get anything done after he arrives :) thanks for reading

Our Recent Activities

Well I know its been awhile but I thought I would catch you up on some of the things we have been doing lately :)  I have made a goal for myself to do more activities with Reece instead of just letting him play and watch tv...so here is a few pictures to let you see....

Marc surprised us with a trip to the Manila Ocean Park and Reece was in love :)

Today I tried out a Pinterest find 'Puffy Paint' well and Reece had a blast painting his shower :)  all it takes is some shaving cream, food color, and some paint brushes....

 He even painted my foot for me :)

Well there you go now you are up to date on whats been going on here...and if you missed it some how I am 20 weeks pregers with our second boy Levi....  He is due to arrive the end of september and we are very excited to be expecting again :)

talk to ya soon

Hanging Plates?

We have been trying to figure out a good solution for some decorations in our living room and we could never seem to find the right thing that both of us agreed on....so when we were on our date last Thursday we saw something that caught our eye...yes both of us thought this would be a great solution for one of the walls in our living room and then quickly decided that it would look good in our kitchen as well....so here it is....  I loved the look of these plates and the little foam things they had stuck to them...we took this as our inspiration and went shopping the next day :)

We found some awesome plates for the kitchen and we couldn't have found a more perfect match for our living room...we love it!

so here was the process we choose how many plates we wanted to hang and had a rough idea of how we wanted to hang them...

here is my rough ideas :)

we decided on the one on the second pattern :) so as you can see i already had some newspaper ready and once we decided I traced the shape of the plates and made sure they were spaced out right...

I also marked where the lip of the plate was so we would know where to place them...now most people would us those wire plate hangers or those awesome plate discs but we dont have those here and really drilling into cement walls nine times just isn't that fun...(all of our walls are made out of cement here the whole house is built like that)... so we opted for some awesome 3M tape stuff...

 

These are pretty strong...and don't worry we tested it out before we did the whole wall...no chance I was going to be woken up in the middle of the night to nine plates crashing to the floor....so next we attached our 3M tape to the plates and hung the newspaper on the wall....centered of course :)

Then I cut out little holes where the tape would go...and my awesome hubby stuck them all on the wall one by one :)

 

and this was our final product :)

 

What do ya think? I love them and the green is the perfect pop of color that our brown and tan living room needed :)  and 3 days into it no plates have fallen off the wall...so our next project the plates for the kitchen wall :)  I'm super excited to do that project :)

Oh and if you didn't get the notice we are expecting our second little bundle of joy in september so I'm sure I will have some baby projects on the way once we find out what we are having :)

thanks for reading

Easy Asian Green Beans!! Yummy!!

Ok I found this Recipe on Allrecipes.com  this is one of my favorite places to find recipes online because you can see the reviews it got and also you can adjust the portions for whatever fits your family....  These Green beans were a big hit with my family.  I was looking for a different way to cook our veggies as I was starting to get bored of our norm....so I just looked for green beans and found these...they are call Sweet and Spicy Green Beans on allrecipes  but they are very good....
So here is the recipe and my changes in ( ) next to it

INGREDIENTS:

3/4 pound fresh green beans, trimmed 2 tablespoons soy sauce 1 clove garlic, minced (i used 2 cloves)

1 teaspoon garlic chili sauce (i had none so i used a dash of chili powder and a dash of onion powder) 1 teaspoon honey 2 teaspoons canola oil

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Arrange a steamer basket in a pot over boiling water, and steam the green beans 3 to 4 minutes.
2.	In a bowl, mix the soy sauce, garlic, garlic chili sauce, and honey.
3.	Heat the canola oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the green beans, and fry for 3 to 5 minutes. Pour in the soy sauce mixture. Continue cooking and stirring 2 minutes, or until the liquid is nearly evaporated. Serve immediately.

So there you have it!  these are great and Reece my 1 and a half year old kept asking for more and he usually avoids green beans....its worth a try just to give you a different flavor..

Jessi's Potato Soup

Jessi's Potato Soup

Ingredients
1 cup cheddar cheese
8 med-lg potatoes (divided)
1 can cream of chicken
1 can cream of potato
1 onion (cut into small pieces)
2 stalks of celery (cut into small pieces)
2 stalks of leeks (cut into small pieces)
3 Tbsp flour
1 1/2 cup water
4-5 strips of bacon (more if you want more)
3 Tbsp sour cream
2 cups of milk

Directions
1. boil 1/2 of the potatoes (these should be cute into small bite size pieces) until very soft drain and set aside
2. boil other half of the potatoes until very soft.  drain and then mash
3. cook bacon and break into pieces (or use bacon bits I didn't have any so I just did this)  set aside 2 Tbsp of the grease
4. cook onion, leek and celery in grease
5. when the veggies are soft add flour and water to mixture and cook until thickened
6. take off heat and add bacon bits
7.  add cream of chicken and potato to the mashed potatoes
8. then add onion/flour mixture, milk, and sour cream to mashed potatoes
9. mix these ingredients together well.
10.  Add the small potato pieces and cheese and stir with a spoon
11.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

This recipe makes a thick soup and is filling enough to serve by itself.  My hubby loved it so much he said it was better then Outback Steakhouse's Potato Soup.  I was shocked :) A good shocked and glad he liked it so much and so did my son who ate every last bite.

If you try it let me know how you thought it was or even some of the adjustments you made.  I bet it might taste good with some sausage pieces instead of bacon...Hmmm might have to try it like that next time.

 

 

First time peach cobbler...

Well yesterday we attended a meeting with some of the faculty from our bible college here in Manila and it was at my mom's house so she asked me if I would make a dessert.  Specifically peach cobbler because she had bought the peaches to make it.  I agreed and went on my search to find an easy recipe for peach cobbler since I never made it before in my life.  lol  I should really taste things before I serve them to other people especially if I have never made it before... oh well....  the recipe I had was so simple...here it is

Peach Cobbler

1-2 cups peaches
1 stick margarine
1 cup milk
1 cup sugar
1 cup self rising flour
       (if you don't have self rising flour it is so easy to make your own....for every 1 cup of flour mix with the flour 1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon of salt)  this is what I did and it worked great...

Directions

Heat oven to 375.  Melt margarine in a baking dish (I just put mine in a bowl in the microwave and melted it and then transferred it to the baking dish).  Add other ingredients (I would mix the flour and sugar and milk with the butter in the dish before you add the peaches it might help with the sloshing out of the dish).  Mix.  Bake for 30-45 minutes until the crust is brown and bubbly.  Serve with ice cream.  

This was really easy and it turned out really good...I doubled the batch so that I would have enough for the 20 people that were there.  I also mixed in the juice that the peaches were in.  Some recipes say to leave it out and others don't say but I figured it would help give the whole dish a little more flavor and it did.

So there you go.  Sorry I forgot to take a picture I was in a bit little of a rush :)  until next time

Slow Cooker Lemon Garlic Chicken

Ok so I said I would post some recipes that I have been trying lately and this by far is one of the best ones and its in the crock pot which I think is one of my favorite kitchen appliances by far well except for the kitchen aide mixer I got for Christmas... :)  ok so on to the recipe :) and I just added a few extra dashes for good measure...  I am no precise cooker here :)  I'll put what i did next to the ingredients :)

Lemon Garlic Chicken

Ingredients

• 1 teaspoon dried oregano  (Just covered the breasts until I thought it was enough)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt   (Just covered the breasts until I thought it was enough)
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper   (Just covered the breasts until I thought it was enough)
• 2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast halves  (i only used about 1 lbs or 1/2 kilo here in Manila)
• 2 tablespoons butter (no butter)
• 1/4 cup water (1 1/2 cup)
• 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (1/4 cup)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon chicken bouillon granules
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley
• 1 Block cream cheese (cubed) (also suggested online was heavy whipping cream to get the creamy sauce effect for over noodles)

Directions (I didn't follow any of these directions)

1. In a bowl, mix the oregano, salt, and pepper. Rub the mixture into chicken. Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat. Brown chicken in butter for 3 to 5 minutes on each side. Place chicken in a slow cooker.
2. In the same skillet, mix the water, lemon juice, garlic, and bouillon. Bring the mixture to boil. Pour over the chicken in the slow cooker.
3. Cover, and cook on High for 3 hours, or Low for 6 hours. Add the parsley to the slow cooker 15 to 30 minutes before the end of the cook time.

My directions 
1. Defrost Chicken 
2. add all ingredients except salt, pepper, and oregano
3. cover the tops of chicken with 3 left over ingredients 
4. set crock pot on high and leave for 3-4 hours


Serve with noodles and any veggie of choice


So there you go.  I hope you like this recipe, my family loves it because it has great flavor and I love it because it doesn't take that much to make it.  I have put this in the crock pot before we left for church and then just heated up left over noodles to go with it when we got home from church...

Give it a try and let me know if you did anything different