Turkey Divan

Mix the following ingredients:

1 can Cream of Chicken Soup

1 can Cream of Mushroom Soup

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1 tsp. lemon juice

Set mixture aside.

Cook and drain 32 ounce package frozen broccoli

Place in flat dish (one 10x14 or two 9x9)

Top with one package (2 lbs.) sliced and baked turkey loaf or left over turkey

than top with soup mixture

than top with buttered bread crumbs (I rip up a couple of slices of bread and mix it with about 1/2 a stick of melted butter)

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes

Serves about 8

Here's the turkey I use. It comes in white meat or white and dark meat. Either one is fine to use. In Walmart you can find it in the open-air freezers kind of in the middle of the hallway. (Does that make any sense?)

I stretched this recipe to make 3 dishes in disposable, aluminum containers about 8x8 each. It was a stretch, but still works and I got one more meal for my money.

*To prepare in order to freeze, I followed the directions up until you put on the bread crumbs and I froze it like that, uncooked. On the day I want to use this for supper, I will thaw it out in the refrigerator and top with the bread crumbs right before cooking. Cook as directed.

*If you are going to half this recipe, just use one can of cream of chicken soup instead of both soups.

This is SO good.

Sanitizing Carriers

I thought these hand sanitizer holder's were so cute and so I just had to try it out. I love the punch of color this brings to my bag and it is so useful when I'm out and about with my baby girl and don't really want to touch her after loading groceries, touching shopping carts, etc. Now I need to make one to fit a small bottle of lotion. This dry winter has finally caught up to my poor hands. Can you believe I never made a button hole before this project? The flower I crocheted and glued on as a last-minute idea.

Freezer Heaven

When my mom came to help when my little girl was born she left us with a freezer full of meals. We have since eaten most of what she prepared, but she left me with the freezer bug. As you can see.

In my freezer right now I have:

chicken noodle soup

split pea soup (thank you mama)

soy chicken

bean and rice tortilla casserole

freezer jam

potato soup

cooked and sliced ham (thank you mama)

meatloaf (thank you mama)

turkey divan

lasagna

red sauce

funeral potatoes

It makes me SO happy to look into my freezer. I feel like a little chipmunk prepared for a long winter, ready to feed my family.

What I'm Reading

1984 by George Orwell

It's one of those books I've been meaning to read forever because it's a classic and everyone refers to it all of the time and I've never read it. And when you tell people you've never read it they are shocked and tell you you must read it. so I am. finally. I also eventually want to read Animal Farm as well. It is suppose to be pretty good.

1984... for those of you like me who have never read it... is a fictional story about a government who is involved in every aspect of a person's life and follows a man who begins to rebel. It is actually pretty interesting and I would recommend it to anyone (Well, anyone over the age of fifteen maybe).

My Kitchen Wall

I have this huge, ugly wall opposite my long, skinny kitchen. We live in an old house which was turned into a four-plex apartment building. Needless to say our kitchen was not meant to be a kitchen. It was meant to be a hallway. So half of the hallway became a kitchen and half became a huge, ugly space that needed some attention. Here is my quick and (almost) free solution. A recipe wall...

And a daily planning wall. The "dry-erase board" was the only thing that actually cost anything. I bought a couple of dry-erase markers and I had to buy one piece of scrapbooking paper, but that was it!

The frames I got free from a friend who moved away and I used black construction paper to border each of the recipes. By the way, the recipes I chose to include were: chocolate chip cookies, chicken tortilla soup, peach cobbler, sweet cornbread, and chicken tetrazzini. All family favorites.

Diaper Pouch

I did this for a friend's baby shower in the middle of the night, the night before the party. So yes, it is far from perfect and I actually made a huge mistake which I couldn't undo because it was a cutting mistake. So lame. Apparently since giving birth I no longer can sew even a simple envelope. But I do love these fabrics, so it doesn't matter that the end result was a little wonky right? Right.

I plan on making at least one more of these for myself, but I may need one for my bag, my car, my bedroom, etc. They are handy little pouches.

a Simple Craft

I saw these pocket tissue holders a few weeks ago and thought they would make the cutest little gift.

And so I ended up making three. They were so easy and used only scraps of leftover material. Who knew tissue holders could be so cute? I think I could enjoy making tons and tons of these...

**A note about the pattern: I found it is easiest if you make your turning hole on one of the long sides so that it gets closed when you sew the sides into a fold on the final sewing step

Happy Beginning of 2011

I feel like it should already be 2012? Time is really weird for me right now. Anyway we are having a wonderful day and are celebrating with a family tradition: waffles and icecream. We are blessed to get to spend it with hubby's parents and his little brother.


I hope the new year is filled with good health and wonderful new memories with our growing family. (And maybe a little warm weather in our future would be nice too)