Eat Enchiladas!

This morning two of my sisters and I went to downtown LA to go shopping and I was more enticed by the food carts! I wanted to eat sooooo~ bad but my sisters were reminding me to stay focused on the clothes (which I ended up only buying a couple pieces that were too small for me and taking clothes from my parents' wholesale store).

This is what I saw...I didn't want to be too obvious that I was taking pictures of their food but now I wish I took better pictures:

(LEFT) Fresh squeezed OJ. (RIGHT) Pork Quesadillas with home made tortillas!

Danger Dogs! YuMmY! This lady had a bucket of homemade salsa that had fresh avocados chunks in them. MMM, I could taste the bacon wrapped sausages with grilled onions, peppers with mayo and mustard with that salsa in my mouth as I wished I could be in that line.

  I couldn't eat any of that b/c we were limited in our parking and had to stay focused on all the awesome $5 deals for clothes that sell at Forever 21 and Nordstrom and such...

so....~ what did I do when I got home? I made homemade enchiladas! why is there a missing piece?

 

B/c my sister and my brother in-law swiped one while I was cooling it!

 

Verdict: YuMmY!!! They couldn't stop eating it and were late to meet their friends...came back to put red onions on top and took a bite, then came back to add jalapenos and took another bite. I added guacamole and it was delish.

Recipe:

Ingredients: 

Corn tortilla, sour cream (low fat), cottage cheese, garlic salt, pepper, green sauce, and market rotisserie chicken (I like lemon pepper), shredded cheddar or Mexican cheese, olives, onions, green onions, and chopped tomatoes.

Preparation: 

Mix 1 cup (eyeball measures) sour cream and 1 cup cottage cheese with pepper and garlic salt. Pull apart the rotisserie chicken for easy loading into the tortillas. Heat a pan to heat the tortillas so that it gets flimsy. I line the baking tray with green sauce and then I just throw the heated tortillas in the tray to load with the sour cream/cottage cheese mix and chicken with a splash of green sauce.  I roll it up so that the seam is to the bottom and then keep going until the tray is filled. I also keep lining the bottom of the tray with green sauce along the way. Pour green sauce generously on top of the rolled enchiladas. 

Finally, top with shredded cheese, chopped tomatoes, onions, green onions, and olives.

Bake: 

350 degrees for 25 minutes or until cheese is melted and ENJOY!

Does the cottage cheese turn you off? It's healthier for you and you can't taste the difference! I use to use only cottage cheese and it was just as good but the mixed sour cream has a wonderful creaminess to the texture. As Dr. Seuss' Sam I am would say "Try it, try it you will see!"

Eh Batter Batter Batter!~

So my sister and her fiancee announced her wedding venue at her engagement party. Drum roll please...Dodger Stadium! FAQ:
1) wow, that many people? no, limited seating due to the reception club house seating.
2) Do you guys get to be on the field? no, very strict rules and only the bride, groom, pastor and father of the bride will be on the field.
3) Wow, they love the Dodgers that much? I guess so.


So her mother in law-to be is an awesome hostess and she hosted a little over 100 people at her home. I got to help with decorations. Most of the baked goods were home made and SOOOOoooo~ delicious. We started eating at 2:00 and stopped eating 3 days later. Look what we did (I've only featured the dessert table).

 

Cake from my favorite place Beverly's Best

 

Cake pops made from Groom's Auntie filled with cheese cake, red velvet and chocolate!

Poms made at home and the labels and "Batter Up" were inspired by Dimple Prints from Etsy and Creativity by Sam's Concession Stand. My husband is great with graphics also so I asked him to go off of that idea. We decided to do "Batter Up;" batter like dessert batter and/or next up to bat is the Bride and Groom. :) The little flag labels are of the food items and the square tags with the baseball say "2012," the bride and groom's names, and a few are just blank baseballs. 

The backdrop fabric was also sewn together the night before with 3 yards of white fabric. I folded it in half, cut, and sewed the two 1 1/2 yard pieces together. It didn't take too long to put together and I think I could go wider for another party and just add onto it if necessary. I looked all over the place to find black chalkboard vinyl but it was no where to be found. Would've loved to do the scoreboard like Creativity by Sam.

 They took a picture with my little C. DG and I wanted her to sneak in a little Yankee's bit to the party since my hus is a huge Yankee's fan. They fell for the bait and took a picture with her and then realized that NY was represented. He's a quick one.

 

Look how cute the groom to be is. He made these jerseys for my sister and himself to announce their wedding. (I don't know how to edit their names so I'm just going to throw them under the bus for this entry. ...dear sis, you're famous now.)

(...lol, at the last picture I learned how to put captions below the pictures so the font is a little different) Aren't they so~ cute?

Can't wait for their wedding date and their little babies!!!!!!!! 

(ooo, she's going to hate me for putting that)

Photo Credit goes to my awesome hus DG! :*

Gifts to Grow Points

Pampers has a "gifts to grow" rewards program.  You can find the rewards codes on any purchase of pampers diapers and wipes. After accruing a billion points (sarcasm) you can collect free things. I wish I started accruing points from baby #1 but I didn't. Anyways...I thought I'd share a link to a list of codes if you haven't seen this already. I scored so many points that I'm only 50 points away from getting something for free. :) Enjoy.

Gift to grow points.

Apple of my eye

 Here's a late post but here's what we did for A and C's school teachers for one of their Teacher Appreciation day.

The little sayings and printables were dowloaded through Skip to my Lou apple of my eye project

Couponing

So due to the new show, Extreme Couponing on TLC, I've become more diligent about taking coupons to go shopping and to use them. Don't get me wrong, I put less than 1 hour into my couponing skills so I'm just a beginner and just someone who is using my resources. I'm a bargain hunter and I use to think that buying coupon items were more expensive b/c of the bulk or the name brand but now I've learned to stack coupons. To stack coupons=to use more than one coupon toward the same item (e.g., target coupon + manufacturer's coupon...did you know that target has mobile coupons?). I learned this from www.couponing101.com

Today, I got my first free item! This doesn't mean I'll start a stock pile at home and stuff things under my kids' beds but it just means that now I see coupons as something worth looking at. I needed new tweezers and clipped the Revolon coupon for $2 off a tool. I later learned that there was a printable coupon for $1 that could be combined. I found tweezers for $2.24 and thought I'd try it out and it worked! I got $0.76 to go toward the rest of my tab. cool huh? Then I got three more coupons for Revolon tools. On my next trip maybe I'll get tweezers again and I"ll have $0.76 and then 76 new tweezers! jk. Today's total savings at Target was $25. :) Share your couponing experiences.

Introducing...

Me.

I'm reading around a few blogs and noticed that most people introduced themselves within the first two posts. I'm a little slow, so here I am after 5 or so posts. :D ...Speaking of 5...I looked on google reader today and I have 5 people subscribed to me! AMAZING! I'm getting famous! :) High 5 to my first 5! Thanks for subscribing!

Going with the theme of 5; I'm the oldest out of 5. Today was my 5th shopping trip with the diligent effort to form a couponing habit so that I can be money wise. My house numbers also add up to the number 5. (I thought of all this just right now!) Let's see how many more we can get...I've been teaching for 9 years in special education and people say I have the patience of a saint but I really don't, I just know how to laugh things off AND I've got really good friends who listen to me complain without holding anything against me (at least, I don't think they do). I have been married for 6 years going on 7 in October and if you add up the ages of my kids it's 5 (3.5+1.5=5) Wow, this 5 thing is going far.

I've gone from xanga blogging to facebook and now I'm here trying to journal all my exciting days with you as my witness. I love my kids, they are the center of my joy and they are so fun! I love my husband, he's so supportive and extremely patient with me. I hope to uplift my family and praise the blessings that I have around me through this window into my life called, a blog.

My next goal: post more pictures. :D

Sew What?!

My friend asked a good question on facebook. "When did you first learn how to sew and how old would it be appropriate to teach how to sew?" I think she wants to teach her 4 year old. I went on to answer that question and deleted it because I didn't think anyone would care for my lengthy journey through sewing. "Sew" what?! So~ I decided to post my story on this blog.

I remember when my mom bought me lacing cards. She later tried to teach me how to sew but it didn't get me further than threading the needle for my grandmother, daily. Girl scouts taught me how to cross stitch and that was about the end of that story. My mom tried again in college with me and my roommates sitting around in a circle like the quilter ladies but I just managed to sew both sides of my pants together and lost interest again. Then after I was preggo with Addy, a friend from church really taught me how to use a machine. (Go figure, my parents own a manufacturing company for women's clothing and I never learned from them). Since then, I've made some baby things, sewn some hair bows and a few projects that are in the "To be continued" pile.

What do you think? What age is appropriate for a sewing lesson? My personal opinion, 4 might be too young...Does it take motivation to blaze the trail? I want to buy my kids a kid's sewing machine one day too.

Happy Mother's Day

My morning began with a great breakfast prepared by my husband, daughters, and sister :) For the record they made me flower shaped pancakes with fruit and egg's Benedict. I say that it's "for the record" b/c my little crumb snatchers ate it right off my plate. :p I love those cuties. I'm truly blessed.

Teacher Appreciation Week

I'm a teacher, so I love cute teachery things and all things that are cute. Cheesy saying are my most favorite things too. I found this blog called http://www.skiptomylou.org/ and I fell in love! Better yet, I entered a blog contest and, no I didn't win but almost better, Cindy from Skip to My Lou wrote to me about how it makes her day when people write comments! I almost flew off my seat, how dorky right? (but I know that my 2 followers understand how fun and exciting that is).  I couldn't wait til the next recess to write her back and then her response to that one was even nicer. :)

Cindy from Skip to my Lou has the cutest things! Check her out. We used the "Thanks a latte" and "Apple of my eye" themes. It got my wheels turning and I also did a little spread of different berries in the teachers' lounge and did a sign saying "Thank you berry much." I will post some of the cute things we did for Adeline and Cadence's teachers.