Omelet Muffins

This was the first year that I had to make a good Easter breakfast for the family. I quickly went through recipes trying to find a balance between healthy and sweet. In the end I decided to do two recipes: Omelet Muffins and Baked Oatmeal with Bananas.

Here is the Omelet Muffins. I do not normally eat eggs or sausage but I did eat these, they were delicious! Here is the original recipe from Neat Pins. The only thing I changed was not putting in broccoli. The final product was fluffy (not dry like I was afraid it would be). My 4 year old devoured two in one sitting. And I was also afraid they would stick to the pan and turn into basically scrambled eggs. They popped out really easily and kept their shape!

Ingredients1 pound Italian Sausage (sweet, mild, hot variety depending on your preference)
1 cup broccoli florets
8 large eggs
1/4 cup milk (I  used 2% as that was what was in the house)
1/2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp baking powder
salt & pepper to taste
Freshly grated Parmesan Cheese as needed

Optional: 1 cup broccoli florets

Preheat oven to 375 F. In a large saute pan, over medium high heat, brown Italian Sausage for about 5 minutes, or until the sausage is no longer pink. Remove from heat (if using, stir in broccoli)

In large bowl whisk together eggs, milk, oil and baking powder. Season with salt and pepper.

Lightly spray a 12 count muffin pan using Pam (I used the butter flavored ones). Spoon out the sausage evenly into each muffin.

  Ladle the egg mixture over sausage and sprinkle with parmesan cheese.

After 20 minutes....

Definitely a great recipe and worth a try!

Awesome Tub Scrub

I found this Tub Scrub through Pinterest, but it is a Martha Steward recipe. This is my second time making it. It works really well and smells great!

Put one teaspoon of liquid soap and several drops of an antibacterial essential oil (such as tea tree, eucalyptus, rosemary, or peppermint) to one cup of baking soda. Add just enough water to form a paste, and use it with a sponge or brush to scrub bathtub surfaces.

I replaced the soap and essential oil with Dr. Bonners peppermint soap. Love Love Love this stuff!!! Warning, I do recommend using gloves, as I found it does dry my skin out a bit.

Vinegar

After checking out lots of homemade cleaning recipes on Pinterest, I've decided vinegar is one of my most favorite homemade cleaning ingredients. Yes, the smell kinda sucks at first! But thankfully it does not make your house smell like vinegar once you have cleaned!!

2 of my most favorite uses, do not even leave a scent. I stopped buying a rinse agent for my dishwasher, and instead fill it will vinegar, and it does just a good a job, and I also used vinegar in the fabric softener dispenser in my washing machine. Now I totally did not believe it would work, but my towels came out super soft (with no vinegar scent!). It's cheap and antibacterial - win, win!!

I have some other homemade recipes, some are great and some have failed. Look for those posts coming soon!

Chicken Tortilla Slow Cooker Meal

This meal has become a huge favorite with my family and with anyone I share it with. It originally came from a slow cooker book that I am borrowing from my mother in law. It is a simple crockpot recipe with ingredients you normally have around the house or are easy to store until you need to use. I cut the recipe in half as the original makes 6-8 servings and it is more towards the 8 servings!

Cooking Ingredients:

2 chicken breast

1 can undrained black beans

1 can of undrained stewed tomatoes

7oz of tomato sauce (it is half of the can shown in pic)

1/2 cup of salsa (you chose how spicey, we use mild)

1-2 cups of grated cheese ( I use one of the packs of mixed cheddar and jack)

A few handfuls of tortilla chips

Optional: small can of green chilis

Pour all ingredients exept cheese and tortilla chips into slow cooker and cook on low for 8 hours or on high for 4 hours.

When there is about 30 minutes left of cooking, remove the chicken breast and shred.

Place chicken back in slow cooker and continue cooking.

 To serve, place crumbled chips into a bowl

 Ladel soup on over chip and top with some cheese.

Enjoy!

Beach Glass Mason Jar Vase

Okay so I had these orchid and calla lily stems from vases that were broken. I kept the flowers hoping that one day I could figure out something to do with them. Well I bought a ton of these mason jars for one project that left me with 9 jars in my garage. Here we go....

You need one clear mason jar. These ones I bought at Target and they were fairly inexpensive but hard to find on the shelf, I had to ask two different workers where they were.

Next was some Beach Glass. I bought two bags worth but only used one really. I bought clear and a beige colored one. These you can find a local craft store.

I hot glue gunned the stems to the bottom of the mason jar to prevent moving around while pouring in the beach glass and let dry. Once dry I just poured in the beach glass and viola! A beautiful new piece for a shelf and I get to re-use my flower stems.

Fun Fur Spring Wreath

The beautiful fun fur Spring time wreath! I saw this over and over and over again before I finally decided I needed to do this! The original post was all in another language but here is the link. I bought the wreath and 2 full rolls of fun fur. I was a little disappointed that my local craft store did not have any plain green fun fur but this turned out even more eye catching with the spring color stripes. This wreath turned out awesome, but I need to warn that it takes a very long time to wrap. When I finished up two full rolls and at least 90 minutes later, the fun fur covered about two thirds of the styrofoam wreath! Quick thinking led me to taking some ribbon I already had laying around and alternating pink and purple around the remaining part of the showing green styrofoam.

I had also bought some artificial daisy flowers and some clusters of fake eggs to put around the wreath. Here is what the flowers looked like.

Note, there is wire on the back so you can easily wrap around the wreath. The fun fur does a good job hiding wires.

For the eggs, I just pulled each cluster of 3 apart and stuck the pick into the styrofoam. I do want to also say that I made the cute little flag that is on the original wreath that says, "barefeet welcome". I used a toothpick and wraped a piece of paper around it, cut into a triangle, and wrote the above saying in marker, then wraped scotch tape around it to stick together but also to laminate it. Well, within a month it had faded to this. I suggest using a sharpie if you decide to do this.

Good luck with your wreath! If you decide to do it, it is a lot of work but I think completely worth it! I get tons of compliments when people come over!

Ice Tray Crayons

I've seen this quite a bit on pinterest and have been saving up the broken crayons. I finally found silicone ice trays at Ikea for $1, so though it was the perfect time to try it out!

The hard part was taking the paper off the crayons, my nails got a bit messed up, and I eventually used a kitchen knife to to score the paper and peel it off. I had my son's break up the bigger pieces and put they in the trays. Then we put them in the oven at 200 degrees, it took about 10-15 mins. I checked them after a few mins, and had to add more crayons once it melted a bit. I think I put some non-crayola crayons which we got from a restaurant, and those did not melt as well.

After taking them out of the over, we left them to cool. I used only the star mold, and when I popped out the crayons some of the tips broke off. I should have used the heart molds, which I also bought but I was saving them to make jello jigglers. The kids didn't mind that a few were broken, and enjoyed coloring with them!