Yummies!

I've made 2 desserts in the past 3 days. They are totally different, one is fruity, the other one is chocolatey. I thought I'd share the recipes since they are so yummy!

I made this first one in honor of my most favorite time of year, Fall! Peach Cobbler always reminds me of Autumn. This recipe is one I've eaten my whole life. It's so easy and so good! (Oh, it's actually a Crisp, not a cobbler, but I think it's even better than cobbler.)

Peach Crisp
2 cans (16 oz. each) peaches, drained
3/4 cup Bisquick baking mix
1/2 cup quick-cooking oats
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
3 Tbsp. margarine or butter, softened
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Arrange peaches in 8x8x2 inch dish. Mix remaining ingredients until crumbly; sprinkle over peaches. Bake until peaches are tender, 30-35 minutes.

This recipe doesn't make a whole lot. I haven't tried it yet, but I think next time I make it I'll double it because it is always gone way too fast!


I love to go camping during the summer, but that was when I lived in my home state in the mountains. It is way too hot where I am now to sleep outside. (I really don't know how I've lasted these last 3 summers.) Anyway, I hope we go camping later on this month or the beginning of next month when it is cooler. So instead of roasting marshmallows over a campfire I decided to make this next recipe instead. (There's a lot of instructions, but it's really not that hard to make.)
Smore's Galore
20 graham crackers
6 Hershey chocolate bars or 2 1/2 c. chocolate chips
1 pkg. small marshmallows
6 Tbsp. butter
3 Tbsp. milk

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. In an 11x14 inch. pan lay 12 graham crackers on bottom, filling in any holes with broken up pieces. Toast 2 minutes in oven, let cool. In microwave-safe bowl combine 3 cup marshmallows, 3 Tbsp. butter and 3 Tbsp. milk. Melt in microwave for 1 minute. Stir and add 3 chocolate bars. Whisk really good. Spread mixture over graham crackers.

In another bowl, break up the rest of the graham crackers into quarter/nickel size. Melt 3 Tbsp. butter in microwave and the pour over broken up graham crackers. Mix up with hands. Add the rest of the bag of marshmallows. Spread over chocolate mixture. Sprinkle 1 1/2 c. chocolate chips or the rest of the hershey bars broken up. Bake @ 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. Cut with pizza cutter.

Zesty Roasted Chicken and Potatoes

We had this for dinner last night and it is so good. I love red potatoes. This is one I had in my recipe box from a while ago. Both hubby and M&M gobbled it up.

Zesty Roasted Chicken and Potatoes
6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 lb. small red potatoes, cut into fourths
1/3 c. mayonnaise or salad dressing
3 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp. pepper
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
chopped fresh chives, if desired

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 15X10X1-inch pan with cooking spray.
2. Place chicken and potatoes in pan. In small bowl, mix remaining ingredients except chives; brush over chicken and potatoes.
3. Bake uncovered 30-35 minutes or until potatoes are tender and juice of chicken is clear when center of thickest part is cut (170 degrees). Sprinkle with chives.

I had a few variations with this recipe. I only used 3 or 4 chicken breasts because that is all the people we need to feed around here and we don't eat leftovers very well. I don't know how many potatoes I used, I just guessed at how many looked like could fit in the pan. I usually use dijon mustard, but realized I only had honey mustard last night. I like the Dijon better. I'm not one to chop up garlic cloves so I used the already chopped kind in a jar. I also just used a 13x9 pan because that's what was easiest.

We also had a salad that is our favorite. There's no recipe, just ingredients that we put together that we really like.

Spring mix salad greens
feta cheese
cashews
chopped green apples
chopped green onions
poppyseed dressing

My husband doesn't like the green onions so I rarely put that in. I saw this great idea somewhere on how to chop up green onions. Instead of using a knife, use kitchen scissors! Okay, so many of you probably are like, duh, I knew that already. I'm still a budding chef so anything that makes my life and making dinner easier and faster is wonderful news!

Tot School - Letter M

M&M is currently 38 1/2 months old

We did the letter M this week for Tot School. I've gathered a lot of ideas over the past few months and I've realized that I need to scale Tot School down and simplify it for myself. With M&M being in preschool and MDO for 3 days a week I won't have as much time to actually do Tot School with her, but I will have more time to prepare! Maybe it won't be as chaotic because I will have everything set and ready to go when we do have Tot School time here at home. My goal is to at least do the whole alphabet. We've only done 7 letters. Mmm...I thought we've done a lot more than that. We have done Tot School 18 times, but I haven't been prepared with a letter each of those times. We'll see what happens.

On to our activities for the week.
M is for Monkeys. We couldn't do the letter M without doing something with monkeys. This is a mask I found at Ziggity Zoom.


We also did this Monkey M. I got the idea from here. Ours doesn't look as good because I am trying to allow M&M to do more things by herself instead of me trying to make everything look perfect.

M is for Mountain. We also did a Mountain M. This idea came from No Time for Flashcards. There are also some other good M activities on the link as well.


Oh, I just had to showcase one of M&M's lunchtime creations from the week. I just had to laugh at the broccoli on top of the toothpick. Needless to say she didn't eat a lot for that meal, but she sure had fun!


M is for Measure. I knew I had to do something with measuring because M&M is always helping daddy hold the tape measure when he measures things for projects around the house. This idea came from Walking by the Way, a more recent blog find. You can find the cards here and read about how to do the activity on the first link. I think this was too easy for M&M or she just wasn't in a good mood at the time because she didn't enjoy it as much as I thought she would.

M is for Monkey Bread. I found this easy recipe for Monkey bread so I've been saving making it just for this week. It was really good and the recipe I used can be found here.

M is for M&M's. Considering her nickname is M&M for this blog we had to do something with M&M's. This rainbow sheet came from Making Learning Fun. This page would also be good to go with a rainbow theme. This activity didn't get much done on it because the pieces kept disappearing for some reason. Mmm....

M is also for Magnet. I've been saving this activity for a long time. I printed this sheet off a while ago and so I didn't save where I got it from. I got most of the items on the list, but didn't have a few of them. M&M really got into this activity and she loved to circle the correct answer. There were a few of them that had some parts that were magnetic and others that weren't. I didn't think she would understand the concept of how some things are magnetic and other's aren't so I just used this as a fun science experiment (like Sid the Science Kid) and left it at that. She did take the magnetic wand around the house for a little bit after she was done to see what else she could find that was magnetic.

How do you clean?

This is a question for anyone! I'm desperate. I feel like my house is always a pigsty. Stuff is everywhere, counters have caked on food, there's always dirty dishes in the sink and counter and papers everywhere on my computer desk. I've tried many things to lessen the mess, but it doesn't seem to be helping. See, I would consider myself a neat freak, but you would never know that if you walked into my house...ever.

The premise of my blog is that I would share tips on how to run a household and raise kids, etc. to help mother's out there in my same situation. But right now I need advice. I've tried to set up a schedule where I would do one big chore a day, vacuum on Tuesday, sweep on Wed. etc. The problem is I can't seem to get to those chores because I spend all of my cleaning time just trying to get everything back to the places and rooms they are suppose to be in. I run around the house like a madman getting my exercise for the day because I take something to one room, come back and realize I forgot something else. *sigh*

I try to get my 3 year old involved and she loves to help, but after a while she gets bored and wants me to play, but the task isn't finished yet. My husband helps as much as he can after he gets home from work, but he also likes to play with the kids and then we have to give them baths and get them ready for bed. By the time the kids are in bed we don't want to clean we want a couple of hours to ourselves to spend together or do projects of our own.

Growing up, Saturday mornings were always reserved for deep cleaning. I've tried to implement that in my own family, but the kids, 3 years and 8 months, get really bored after a couple of hours of this. We also like to do something fun as a family on Saturday or have other commitments as well. (As a side note: as part of our religion we try not to work on Sundays as we believe this is a day of rest. We like to reserve it for church meetings, scripture study, family time in the home/visiting other family in the area, etc. That is why we'd like to get it all done on Saturday.)

Anyway this is a long explanation of my little problem. Do I have too high of expectations or am I stressing out way too much like my husband thinks? This is kind of embarrassing to admit, but I'm desperate for ideas.

My question is: How do you get cleaning done in your home?

Tackle it Tuesday

I did half or some of many projects this week. One thing that I started on (and could have finished) this week was putting labels on the canisters in the pantry. My husband brought home an older label maker from work and I started to get the labels printed out, but then it ran out of paper. So I couldn't finish. It was a good start though. Starting is always the hardest part right? Hopefully I will get a bigger project done for next week. I might just have to buy a label maker, too.

Tot School

M&M is currently 38 months old

M&M did a lot of things on her own this week using her imagination. Everyday her imagination is building and I love to see the things she comes up with. First of all she made a boat out of a laundry basket and stocked it full of toys.


Then she made her own picnic.



Our first activity was this styrofoam and toothpick shape/fine motor skill activity. I got this idea from Chasing Cheerios.

She did most of each of the shapes, but then it ended up like this because she was playing mommy, daddy and baby with them and they needed to lay down because they were going to sleep. Anything small turns into people these days.



I've been meaning to do this one for a while now, but had a hard time finding the suction cup things for a good price until I went to the dollar store. It is a Montessori activity using tongs to put the marbles onto the suction cups. This one came from My Montessori Journey. M&M really liked this activity and asked to do it again after using the tongs to put them back in the bowl. This is great because usually once she finishes something, if she finishes it, she will be all done and won't want to do it again.


For a treat this week we made pink popcorn balls. This would have been a great treat to make last week for P week, but alas I did not find it until later on. I saw it on The Frugal Family Fun blog and I knew it was something we had to make. The recipe is on the link. Ours didn't pour very well and so not all of the popcorn was covered in it. It made it a lot less sweet though which is a good thing! (If you haven't noticed I'm not really good at doing how-to's, tutorials, etc. but I'm good about linking to places that do have them!)

Nice action shot of the popcorn, eh?

M&M had renewed interest in her musical instruments this week. Here she is using her rhythm sticks as drumsticks. We made a drum out of an oat canister since we didn't have one. We'll probably decorate it sometime. You can't see it very well, but she has a microphone in between her legs that she is singing into. She wanted to sing and drum at the same time so that's the solution she came up with!
I thought M&M might like this next activity because it involves water. I found this idea here. I cut the top off of a cleaned out milk carton and a hole in the side. She was suppose to scoop the water out from the hole on the side and put it it the funnel on top. Most of it ended up on the ground. She didn't stick with this very long. I think I cut too much off of the side hole so not a lot of water could fit into it.

Not a lot this week, but we are doing the letter M this week. To check out what others have done in Tot School click here.

Works for Me Wednesday

M&M has always been a momma's girl. She wants to be anywhere I am, doing anything I am doing. Having a shadow all day can get a little bit old at times even though I love my daughter immensely! I just need some breathing room and space every once in a while. I saw a great idea on the Let's Explore blog. She got a little bucket and small pieces of paper where she wrote down all of the toys and craft supplies that they had. Then when the kids get bored they pick out a piece of paper and play with whatever they pick out! She calls them Idea Cards. I gave this a try this past week and it worked out so well. I actually have two buckets. One bucket is for things that M&M has to do alone and the other one is "mommy and me" activities. M&M asks to pick things out now. Examples of some of the things that I put on the cards are:

Color in coloring books, playdough, doll house, blocks, stuffed animals, foam stickers, puzzles, etc. These are all things that are not messy and she can do on her own. It's so funny because if I just suggest these things when she gets bored she says, no! But when she picks it out of the bucket she gets excited and plays by herself for a good amount of time. This has worked really well for us!

(This is another blog carnival that I really like, but I probably won't do it every week.)