Chicken and Mozzarella Roll-Up

Today, I will show you a really easy dinner you can make.

All you will need is:
boneless skinless chicken breasts
salt
pepper
any other spices you want (we used Garlic Garlic, Onion Onion, and Dill)
string cheese

Directions:
1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
2. Pound out your chicken until it's about half an inch thick.
3. Sprinkle your spices onto the chicken. We used salt, pepper, Garlic Garlic, Onion Onion, and dill.
4. Place your piece of string cheese at one end of the chicken and roll it up. You can use a toothpick to keep it in place if it won't stay by itself.
5. Place on a baking pan that's been sprayed with non-stick spray. Bake for about 20 minutes. Enjoy!

S'Mores Housewarming Gift

If you've been following my blog, you know that my husband and I are buying a house. We actually close on Friday! Ah! We're so excited. Anyway, I was on pinterest (of course) and I saw some housewarming baskets. What? Awesome! I mean, I've heard of housewarming gifts. I've heard of gift baskets. I don't live under a rock. But I was thinking about how nice they sound. It's a good way to show your friends that you care. And you DON'T have to spend a fortune to make one!

It seems like everyone we know is buying a house right now! My sister just bought one last fall, 2 of our friends that are getting married this summer built a house this past winter, and 2 of our other friends literally just moved into their new home a week and a half ago. I thought it would be nice to bring them something just to show that we care. Since we're currently packing, we don't have a ton of time to make something extravagant. We also don't have a ton of extra money. Here's what I came up with and it cost me less than $10! (Sorry about the bad quality pictures. I made this pretty quick and brought it right over to our friends.)




I wrote a little poem for them. If you're not into poems or you think they're too cheesy (cause let's be honest, they kind of are), just put some kind of tag on it that says "Welcome to your new home!"

I bought this lantern from Hobby Lobby. It's originally listed for $9.99, but there's almost ALWAYS a coupon online for 40% off one regular priced item, making it only about $6! They come in almost any color, too. The little 'can' that you see at the bottom is like a Sterno can. You open it up, light it on fire, and use it to roast your marshmallows. I got this one from Dollar Tree. I put enough stuff in there to make 8 s'mores (4 skewers, 8 marshmallows, 16 graham crackers, and 2 chocolate bars). I originally put the marshmallows and graham crackers in Ziplock bags, but then I remembered that I had some leftover treat bags (which you can also get at Dollar Tree). It looks much classier with these bags.

This is what you get! Our friends loved their gift!

Here's a rundown of the costs:
Lantern $6
'can of fire' $1
chocolate bars $1 (I actually got a package of 6 that cost $3)
Marshmallows FREE (I already had some)
Graham Crackers FREE (I already had some)
Treat Bags FREE (I already had some)
Skewers FREE (I already had some)
Total Cost $8

Even if you have to go out and buy everything, it should cost you less than $15. That's still a pretty good deal in my book.

Leave your ideas for what to put in a Housewarming Gift Basket in the comments below!

Pirate Party

My son turned 3 on March 24th. Oh they grow up so fast. He's potty trained, he talks more than anyone I know, and he's SO active! I love this little boy. If you would like to see pictures that I've taken of him recently, check out my photography blog here.

Anyway, have any of you heard of Jake and the Neverland Pirates on Disney Junior? Well, my son LOVES it! He has tons of Jake and the Neverland Pirate toys and he loves watching the TV show and he even runs around yelling "Ahoy Mateys!" I decided to do a mix of generic pirate things and actual Jake and the Neverland Pirate things.

Since I'm a stay-at-home mom, my son doesn't really have any friends his own age so this party was mostly for family and family friends. My son was actually the only child there. However, I still tried to make this a kid friendly party. Since there were no kids besides my son, we didn't play any games, but it was still a great party!

DECOR

We cut a whole bunch of black lines to look like the dotted lines on a map that lead to the treasure. We started at the door where you enter and put the giant red X (made of red poster board) over the food table, which ended up being on the opposite wall.

We decided to get our son a pop up Bucky so we just set it up and used it as a decoration. He was so surprised when he walked in and saw it.

You can find these Jolly Roger flags on Amazon for pretty cheap. And this flag was HUGE! It was a great use of wall space.

FOOD

This is the cake! You may recognize it from the post I did a couple days ago. It's super easy and really cute!

You can see some of the food that we had, but it wasn't all out yet when I took this picture. We had cheese, crackers, meatballs, fruit salad in a pirate ship watermelon, goldfish, Cheetos, veggies and dip, and cookies.

These cookies are pretty easy to make. Just make sure that you go slow and don't try to rush the icing.


ACTIVITIES

There was a dress up area that had eye patches and cardboard pirate hats.

We also had a photo prop. I thought it was pretty funny.

You could also apply your own temporary pirate tattoo.

And then, of course, my son opened his presents.
We really enjoyed our party. I hope that you can take some of our ideas and make them your own.