Tasty Tuesday - Meat Pie

I realized after I had posted last week...my Tasty Tuesday was actually on Wednesday...oops. Maybe I get a pass since I have a newborn and my days run together sometimes :)
So here is another recipe to share...

Meat Pie

1 lb ground beef (cook then drain)
1 can cream of chicken soup
1/2 bag shredded cheddar cheese
Pie crust

Combine all together and season with your choice of seasoning. I use a blend of garlic powder, salt and pepper to season the mixture. You can saute some onions and peppers to add into the meat if desired. Line a pie tin/dish with the pie crust. Add the meat mixture. Cover with the other pie crust. I trim the edges of any crust hanging over the edge and you can even cut out a design in the top of the pie. Your final product should look a little something like this:

Coupon success

I'm a little late with this post b/c this is a deal I got last week, but just wanted to share the possibilities out there with coupons.

If you went to Walmart to buy these same items, you would pay around $2.50 a piece. I got all of them for a total of $3.45 at CVS with coupons and ECB (extra care bucks). I thought that was pretty good!


A tip for shopping at CVS...at the checkout counter there are these green bag tags (see below). They cost .99 and you attach to a reusable bag. When you checkout, scan it and every fourth time it's scanned, you earn $1 ECB. Note: if you check out with multiple purchases, you can only scan it once in that visit and only one per customer.


Unfortunately, I don't have a picture from my Publix trip this week because when we got home, I had to feed Briggs and J unloaded and put away all the groceries before I could take one (which I'm not complaining b/c how many husbands would do that...and then, how many husbands know where all the stuff goes...MY HUBBY IS THE BEST!) Anyway, my grand total this week for Publix was...drum roll please...$70.76 AND I SAVED $55.43!

Tasty Tuesday - Nanny's Chicken

This is a recipe from my friend Debra's Nanny. It's an easy recipe to make.

2 lb cooked chicken, diced
1/4 C melted butter
1 C crumbled ritz crackers (1 sleeve)
1 C sour cream
1 C cream of chicken soup
1/4 C chicken broth

Combine butter/cracker. Spoon 1/2 in 2 qt dish. Top with chicken. Combine sour cream, soup and broth. Pour over chicken. Top with remaining crumbs. Bake 350 x 25 min

Note: I use rotisserie chickens from Walmart and pull the chicken off the bone then chop it up. Makes for good flavor.

Should look a little something like this

Is this possible

Ok..so Briggs is only 6 weeks old. I wasn't able to give him my undivided attention yesterday so he had to "cry it out" for a few minutes. He was crying pretty hard and then just stopped cold turkey. When I finally got to him, this is the face I got. He wouldn't look at me and had his arms folded...is that possible for a 6 week old to get mad at you! It cracked me up.

As soon as I picked him up he was fine. I did think was pretty funny though and even if he was mad, he is SO STINKIN CUTE!

Just wanted to include one more pic of my little man. He had a long day today and was getting in an afternoon nap. So sweet :)

Back to church

Well these two pics are very different...they document the last two times we have been to church.

This is the Sunday before we had Briggs on that Tuesday May 31. I'm so glad we went that night because we haven't been able to go back until tonight.

Tonight was our first church experience with our little family. Briggs was all decked out and we found us a quiet little spot on the back row.


I just knew it was going to be a piece of cake...his belly was full, sleeping in his seat...no big deal. We got through the music with no problem and when Bart started preaching, we got about 5 minutes in and I saw his little face get all scrunched up, then came the shrill little cry. I yanked that baby up faster than you could say "go". I made it to the nursing room and poor little guy was screaming his head off by then. For those of you who know Briggs, know he doesn't do that often. I couldn't do anything to console him, he was arched back, real tears, couldn't catch his breath...it was hideous. I felt so bad for the two moms in the nursing room b/c I couldn't do anything to get him to stop and they couldn't hear the sermon on the audio feed in the room. After about 15 minutes which felt like 2 hours, he had a big "dirty" and finally settled down, ate, and slept the rest of the night away. After church we went to Publix and dinner. Briggs slept the entire time. Poor little guy. Hate that was his ( and our) first church experience, but at least we made it there and will try again next week with hopefully better success.

But hey...at least I got to sing some songs. It was so great to be there even if it was a little stressful :)

Reviews

Since Briggs and I have been out and about town...there have been a few things I have learned and experienced that I wanted to share.

I'm sure most of you are wondering what in the world is this picture for...well I'm glad you ask. I never had paid attention to shopping buggy size or wheelchair/stroller access to public venues. This was mine and Briggs first trip to Walmart. His carseat doesn't fit in the top portion of the buggy at Walmart, CVS or Publix! The only place it works is Target. So my only option when shopping is to put his carseat in the big part of the buggy (but where do you put the groceries) OR bring his stroller into the store and pull the shopping cart behind me. Good thing I have some pretty good skills of objects on wheels (from working at the nursing home). So here is the picture of our trip to Walmart. (FYI...I finally got tired of pulling that dumb buggy behind me everywhere so I just left it on an isle and would push Briggs around, pick up stuff I needed and go back to drop it off in the buggy).


One weekly event Briggs and I attend is the nursing classes provided by Brookwood hospital 1-2 times a week. I cannot begin to say how instrumental these women are who take the time with mothers in the community. They assist in any type of breastfeeding issues or are just there to chat about breastfeeding...you can learn a lot just from other mothers who are present and talk about different issues related to kids. It's completely free. The best part is, you get to bring your baby, weigh them before you feed them, nurse them and then weigh them after to see how much they got to eat. Briggs doesn't mind any of it as long as he gets his food. Here he is being weighed and looking at himself in the mirror...cute little guy :)


Last but not least...for those of you who don't have newborns. Your life revolves around a two hour window...not very much time to do anything (b/c they eat every 3 hours from when they start and it takes close to an hour for them to eat). So if you have somewhere to go and you're a nursing mom...it can be difficult to find somewhere to feed your baby. I have been many places and this is by far the best nursing room and smartest design... See below

This would be at Buy Buy Baby and of course they did the smart thing...use their furniture (rocking chairs, changing table, etc) in the room so you can try it out...good marketing idea...so here is a picture of the room


And this is from the angle that I was sitting. They have a really nice changing table and you can't see in the baskets but they are different sizes of diaper in case you forgot yours and disposable changing pads...NICE


And then they have a table next to both chairs with a box of kleenex and advertisement of the sales they have going on. As you can see, I put that to good use with my snack and drink that I brought with me.


Great design for their nursing room. I was VERY impressed.

In summary...I'm learning a lot about the big world out there and how most places are not accomadating to mothers with strollers and who are nursing. But..Briggs and I are making it and learning the places that are baby friendly and we improvise where we have to.

How to kill a fly

This weekend was so much fun! My dad's side of the family is rather large with his two brothers, one sister and their kids. We used to get together for a family reunion each year at the beach but since all the grandkids have gotten older and with conflicting schedules, it's hard for us to all get together like we used to. This weekend was a mini family reunion at mine and Justin's house...which just for the record, I don't think we have ever had 25 people in our house before but it was so great to have everybody together and to have a place for it to happen. The picture below is our whole family who came together this weekend in Birmingham.


Has anybody ever had a pesky fly in their house that they couldn't catch or kill? Well with all the traffic in and out of our house this weekend with all the family (above), needless to say we had a few flies get in from the doors opening and closing. I think at one point we counted 6 flies. So one of the activities of the weekend was how to kill a fly...I wanted to share a few of the options we came up with...


A newspaper or magazine rolled up...most people could probably make that work, but for some reason we were having trouble with this option so we tried...

A shoe...thinking it would help us be quick enough but then again no luck so we moved to, what we all thought was an excellent idea proposed by my mom...

Duct tape with honey on it...we all thought that would work great..of course the flies did not even go near it, just kept bugging us so my husband finally engineered the following...

He cut a manilla folder into the shape of a fly swatter and attached it to a coat hanger bent in the shape of a handle. You might be asking yourself...why not just use a fly swatter...well that would be because we didn't have one. And honestly...who needs one when you have such great success with this homemade contraption. As you can see with the evidence on the floor next to the swatter (small black dot = dead fly) and we were able to kill all those suckers like that :)

So the next time you have a fly problem either create a fly swatter by using the above example or just give us a call...we are thinking about reproducing them in bulk...JOKING :)