The hall closet aka...closet of death. Where do I begin? I guess I need to take everything out and get rid of the ten million coats and jackets in there. It's a moumental task...but it needs to be done.
Alrighty, here is the before 
And here is the after. What do you think? Better? 
Next week's tackle. The dining room. Specifically the overflow sewing stuff. It has to stay, but it needs to be less...well you know, all over the place.
I like this recipe because it uses flour tortilla rather than the usual corn tortillas. Oh and since I recently stockpiled a bunch of chicken purchased inexpensively I've been dusting off some of my chicken recipes.
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
1 onion, chopped
1/2 pint sour cream
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
1 tablespoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt (optional)
1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce
1 tablespoon chili powder
1/4 cup chopped green bell pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
8 (10 inch) flour tortillas
1 (12 ounce) jar taco sauce
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium, non-stick skillet over medium heat, cook chicken until no longer pink and juices run clear. Drain excess fat. Cube the chicken and return it to the skillet. Add the onion, sour cream, Cheddar cheese, parsley, oregano and ground black pepper. Heat until cheese melts. Stir in salt, tomato sauce, chili powder, green pepper and garlic. Roll even amounts of the mixture in the tortillas. Arrange in a 9x13 inch baking dish. Cover with taco sauce and Cheddar cheese. Bake uncovered in the preheated oven 20 minutes. Cool 10 minutes before serving.
I love popcorn and so do my kids. We go through a ton of microwave popcorn which can be fairly expensive. A blog post I read the other day got me thinking about the economics of popcorn and so began my quest for a thrifty alternative. I searched Craigslist and my usual thrift store haunts for a few week until I found a Presto Air Popper for $3 at the local Goodwill. There definitely is an art to getting great tasting air popped corn as opposed to tasteless bits of styrofoam. I've tweaked it with good results...yet I wasn't 100% satisfied. I continued my quest until I found it. It's the Nordicware microwave popper. It's awesome. I picked mine up at Target for $9 and it was money well spent. The popcorn is light and fluffy. You can use it with or without oil. I highly recommend it. In fact I'm having some popcorn right now.
I got an award! It's a "Thank You" award. I was thanked and now I am supposed to thank 10 other bloggers. They in turn thank ten others and link back to me!
Thanks Courtney of the uber awesome blog Sister to Sister. I just love your blog! It's so flattering to be honored by such a talented woman. You inspire me!
Now to thank 10 others. I am passing this along to you because I love your blogs too!
1. Dawn of Olabelhe
2. ChiChi of Where there's a will there's a way
3. Heather of Photography by HeatherK
4. Victoria of Sew Inspired
5. Melissa of Susie-Homemaker (or so I think)
6. BGIM of BlackgirlinMaine
7. Jennifer of Moving Hands
8. Jen of Jen-Knits
9. Kat of That darn Kat
Ok, so far I've only come up with nine...but I'll work on finding one more and adding those.
Well...last weeks junk drawer cleanup was great. I'm so happy I did it. I do have 2 more drawers I'd like to go through, but all in all I was very pleased with my tackle. This week...the kitchen pantry. I need to rotate some dusty cans from the back and make my overstuffed pantry a bit more user friendly. I don't really have a system in place. But I'm going to get one. I may stop by Walmart or Dollartree and pick up a few baskets to help corral some more of the items. Maybe a couple of glass jars for sugar and rice, too. We shall see...anything is better than what was going on in there before, lol.
Here's the before
Here's the after
What do you think? I'd say it's much better. I moved all the canned goods to one shelf and put all the loose items in baskets. I used these little stackable plastic shelf thingies (technical term) to give me more shelf space on the bottom shelf since in my opinion the builder could have put one more shelf in that space since you end up with wasted space between the bottom two shelves. I couldn't believe how many canned goods I had because I couldn't visualize most of it. Now I can. Luckily I had done a major clean out about 8 month ago so there wasn't a ton to throw out. Anyway...loving the tackle. In fact, I'm now inspired to use this next month to cook from my pantry and freezer.
Next week's tackle? The dreaded hall closet of death, meaning an avalanche of coats could fall out and crush you to death.
I know the holiday's are over, but in my opinion anytime is a good time for pie. One of my coworkers was kind enough to share her mother's pecan pie recipe with me. My absolute favorite pie in the entire world is a pecan pie...I think it's the filling. This has got to be the best one I've ever tasted. Enjoy and thanks LeighAnn for sharing it with me...and everyone else.
Pecan Pie
3 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
2 tbsp flour
8 tbsp evaporated milk
1 stick of butter (or margarine0, melted
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups chopped pecans
1 9-inch unbaked pie shell
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix melted butter and sugar together by hand. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each. Stir in the flour and milk, mix well. Add vanilla and pecans. Pour into the unbaked pie shell and back for about 35 mins or until done.
I can't believe that I finally, finally finished dd's quilt. I have to say I think it came out lovely even with the million mistakes I made. The binding is the wonkiest binding ever...but still it has it's charm. I can't believe I'm going to write this...but I've actually been thinking about doing a king size one for me and dh. I'll have to think about it a bit more and figure out what pattern and fabric I want to use. I think now that I've finished one and I know some things to do and NOT to do...it might not be so torturous to do another one...but not today, today I will just enjoy the satisfaction of having finished my first quilt. Best of all Miss O. loves it so that is really all that matters.
I'll try and get a better picture of it as soon as I figure some way to suspend it. Ahh...how I wish we were allowed to have a clothesline in our neighborhood.