Free Hershey's School Bus Wraps

While surfing the internet this morning I came across this website for a free template for wrappers for Hershey's Nuggets, they are so cute!  You can find the free template HERE.  

If you would like to purchase a template for the school bus that you can put the wrapped nuggets in, you can find it HERE.  Sorry I don't have a picture to share, but you can hop on over to Lorri's blog and see how cute they look together!

Have a great Sunday!!   Mary

Sion Fruit Salad

Hi everyone!  I hope you all had a great week-end with your love ones, I did, but I'm ever so glad to sit yesterday and not do a darn thing too!  Landscaping is hard, hot, dirty work!  But we got it done and the outside of her house looks just a cute as the inside now.  Below are some of things we planted in her yard.  

As you all know I rode the train down on Friday morning, so I told my daughter to leave some things, cooking wise, for me to do.  So when I got there, I made some deviled eggs, cupcakes and Sion Fruit Salad.  Now when my daughters were in high school (school name was Notre Dame de Sion, hence the name), I was on the cookbook committee for salads.  We had to make each recipe and rate them so they could decided if they wanted them to be in the cookbook.  Well this is a recipe I tried and the kids just fell in love with it and when we had an open house for one of the girls when they graduated from high school, I served this recipe and again the kids went crazy for it, so when I made recipe books for my daughters to take with them when they left home, I made sure and included this recipe.  Everyone at the Pampered Chef party liked it too, oh and my daughter had a wonderful turn out and did very well with her party too!!

Sorry I don't have step-by-step pictures, but I don't think you will really need any either, it's that simple!

Sion Fruit Salad

1 -21 ounce can peach pie filling, dump it all in

1- 20 ounce can pineapple chunks, drained

1- 16 ounce box frozen sliced strawberries, thawed

3 large bananas, sliced

Mix all together in a bowl to hold mixture.  Cover and refrigerate overnight.  Now sometimes I will cut the peach slices in half and my daughter likes to add a large can of drained Mandarin oranges to her salad.

That's it, how simple and easy to make and so yummy too eat too!  It's a perfect salad for the upcoming party's that happen at this time of the year too because you can make it the night before.  The bananas will stay nice looking for at least two days too.

Well I hope you try this simple recipe too, you won't be disappointed either!   Mary

Ninja Blender Cover

Hi everyone, I hope your week is off to a great start, it's nice and sunny here today, maybe Spring is here to stay!

I'm sharing with you today the blender cover that I made to cover my daughters' blender with.  I used the same material that I used to make her mixer cover with.  Now her small appliances will stay nice and clean while out on the countertops.  I have no pattern to send you too, I had to make my own.  I did take some packing paper and did a rough measurement and sewed it together, slipped it over the blender and adjusted the size before I cut out my strips of material.  Then I cut out muslin and quilt batting and sewed all three layers together, zig-zag the raw edges and sew it all together.  She is very pleased with how it came out too!  I'm going to her house this week-end and will give it to her then.  She is also having her first Pampered Chef party, if any of you need any PC items you can order them from her website HERE.

Well off to make a birthday card, hope you have a great day tomorrow!  Mary

Mixer Cover

Hi everyone!  I hope you are all doing well, we are plugging along here at my house!

Recently my daughter asked me if I could make a cover for her KitchenAid mixer and I told her that I would have to look around for a pattern.  Well, I found this pattern HERE.  It didn't look to hard but it was time consuming as I had to quilt the material before I could make it.  This one in the picture is actually one I made for my daughter's friend, so by the time I was working on this one, I was an old pro at it, NOT!!  No, really it's not hard to do at all.  After I bought this pattern, naturally I found a free one online, isn't that the way it seems to go.  My daughter took her cover with her before I got a chance to take a picture of it.  Now she wants a blender cover to match her mixer cover.  Oh, that little round thing on the from it suppose to be a rosette, but I'm not sure she will want it on there, I just have it pinned on, so she can easily remove it too.

Well, this is all I have to share for now, see you later!    Mary

Happy Easter

Hope you all have a wonderful day!  Mary

Baked "Fried" Chicken

Hi everyone!  I hope you are all doing well.  I've been busy around here, so sorry for not posting or sharing lately.  I've been "busy" finding new recipes over on Pinterest to "pin" and try, this is one of those recipes.  Hubby just raved on about this chicken and and it's good!

Now it does call for buttermilk but you can use just plain milk and I also baked my tenderloins for 15 minutes on each side instead of 20 and it was good but not dried out.  It's not a very hard recipe to make and my clean up went really fast too.  I put two small potatoes in the oven while I was mixing everything up and they were ready at the same time the chicken was too.  Now when you get ready to turn your chicken, don't use tongs to turn it (crust will fall off), us a thin metal spatula to turn with and also to serve with too.

Well this is my recipe for today, I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!    Mary

Ingredients

• 6 boneless, skinless chicken breast tenderloin
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon seasoned salt (I use Lawry’s Seasoned Salt)
• ¾ teaspoon pepper
• 2 teaspoon paprika
• ½ stick butter (or ¼ cup)
• Buttermilk
• 1 gallon-size Ziploc bag (optional)

Instructions

1. Place thawed chicken breasts in a bowl of buttermilk and let soak 20-30 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
3. Combine and mix thoroughly flour, salt, Season All, pepper, and Paprika in a gallon-size Ziploc bag or bowl.
4. Cut ½ stick of butter into a few pieces and place in a 9- x 13-inch pan. Melt butter in preheated oven.
5. Spread melted butter around the bottom of the pan. Lightly spray the pan with cooking spray, if needed, to make sure that there are no dry spots.
6. Shake excess milk off of chicken and completely coat each piece in flour mixture. Either shake in the bag until coated or dip each piece in the bowl until coated.
7. Place each piece of chicken in the preheated pan
8. Bake for 20 minutes. Turn each piece of chicken over and continue baking for 20 more minutes, or until cooked through.

HERE is the original recipe

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Crockpot Taco Soup

Hi everyone!  I wanted to share this yummy crock pot soup with all of you.  Basically what it is an open can and dump soup, except for browning your hamburger and onion together.  Now if you don't want to make it in the crock pot, you can always make it on the stove top too, I like the crock pot the best because you can make it in the morning and know dinner is ready in the evening.  I always serve mine with sour cream, shredded Cheddar Cheese and Tostito chips, we like the scoop ones.

It makes a whole crock-pot full of soup, so make sure you have plenty of help to eat it, serves 8.

Crock-Pot Taco Soup

1 pound lean ground beef

1/2 small onion, chopped

1 - 16 oz. can chili beans, with liquid

1 - 15 oz. can kidney beans, with liquid

1 - 15 oz. can whole kernel corn, with liquid

1 - 8 oz. can tomato sauce

2 cups water

2 - 14.5 oz. cans diced tomatoes

1 - 4 oz. can diced green chile pepper

1 - 1.25 oz. package taco seasoning mix

In a medium skillet, cook the ground beef until browned, over medium high heat. Drain, and set aside. Place the ground beef, onion, chili beans, kidney beans, corn, tomato sauce, water, diced tomatoes, green chile peppers and taco seasoning mix in the crock-pot. Mixing well to blend. Cook on LOW setting for 8 hours.

I like to serve mine with sour cream, shredded cheddar cheese and tortilla chips. If you want it spicer, replace one can of diced tomatoes with 1 can of Ro-tel tomatoes.

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I found this recipe on Allrecipes.com

Hope you enjoy it.......Mary

Crock Pot Potato Soup

Hi everyone, I hope you haven't given up on me, I'm still here, just busy!

Today I want to share with you a recipe that I found over on Pinterest, boy is this ever good and very easy to make too.  Now I don't have step by step pictures, but basically your just dump everything into your Crock Pot and go.  

Now when I made this, I did put the chicken broth and cream of chicken soup in first and stirred it really well to incorporate the two ingredients together, then I added the rest of the ingredients, except the cream cheese and let it cook on Low for 5 hours.  So now on to the recipe.

Crock Pot Potato Soup

Ingredients

1 bag frozen hash browns (I used the Southern diced/cubed)
2 (14 oz) cans chicken broth
1 can cream of chicken soup (or your own homemade version)
1/2 c chopped onion (you can used dried onion flakes)
1/2 tsp black pepper
8 oz block of cream cheese, softened

Directions

Add all ingredients except the cream cheese to your crockpot and cook on low for 5 hours. Stir in cream cheese, cook an additional 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Garnish with shredded cheese or bacon bits, or both!

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Well there you have it an easy dinner, must have been good, hubby had two bowls of it!   Thanks for stopping in, Mary.

Chattanooga Chew Chews

Good day to all of you!  Sorry I've been MIA for awhile, but I was busy with getting ready for Christmas and there wasn't always time to grab the camera and take step by step pictures of the recipes. I do want to share a few with you now, maybe you can use them for a New Year's party.  I've got my stuff all ready for my annual New Year's day meal of Black eyed peas!

I got this recipe back in 2008 and everyone seems to really like these bars.  I usually double the recipe and make them in a 9" x 13" pan.

Chattanooga Chew Chews

Crust:
4 Tablespoons softened butter
1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup chopped pecans (sprinkle on top of the crust)

Topping:
1/2 cup (8 Tablespoons) butter
6 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, or less

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line a 8 inch square pan with parchment paper.  Or don't line it with anything.  The bottom isn't that sticky but the sides are, so you'll have to pry them a bit if you don't.

Prepare the crust.  In a mixing bowl, stir together the softened butter and brown sugar until well blended.  Stir in the flour. Mixture will be very dry and border on sand-like.  Pour it into the prepared pan and press down as much as possible.  Sprinkle the pecans over top.  Set aside for now.

Prepare the topping.  Place the butter in a small saucepan and heat over medium heat; when butter is mostly melted, stir in the brown sugar.  Continue heating until mixture begins to boil, boiling for 1 minute, stirring constantly.  Pour the hot mixture over the crust.

Bake for 20 minutes.  Remove from the oven and sprinkle the chocolate chips over top.  Let the chips sit for a few minutes to melt, then gently spread the with a spatula to coat.

Allow the bars to cool for at least 5 hours.  If you want to speed things up, let then cool for about 30 minutes at room temperature, then put then in the refrigerator for another 30 minutes to allow the chocolate to set.  When chocolate is firm but still soft, cut into bars.

I cut these on the small size because they are rich.

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Well I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, we did, but now on to the New Year!   Mary

Merry Christmas

I just wanted to share this cute picture with you that I found on the internet.

Merry Christmas!!!

I hope that you day is one filled with lots of love and laughter and hope you have a Blessed day with whomever you choose to share it with!

Mary