Chicken Enchiladas

This Sunday I made a super easy dish that tastes great and makes a ton of food...chicken enchiladas. I even have some in the freezer for another meal and we've had them two night for dinner. Here is how I make mine:

Ingredients

Cooked, shredded chicken (I poached mine in water for about 40 minutes but they were large pieces)

Sauteed onion (I did mine with some garlic and cumin)

Salsa

Fat free refried beans

tortilla shells

Enchilada sauce

Cheese

Sour cream to top them

Once I shredded the chicken I mixed in my onions and added a spoonful or two of salsa so that it wouldn't dry out when baking. Then I got my ingredients set up to assemble.

I spread a layer of refried beans on a tortilla and add a scoop of the chicken mixture.

Then I rolled it up. I fold in the top and bottom then roll. Place it seam side down in a baking dish. Here are mine all ready for the sauce.

I didn't pour it on since I wasn't going to bake them right away. At dinner time I just had to pour on the sauce and add a little cheese. I baked mine at 350 for about 40 minutes, until they were hot inside and the cheese melted. They are also great as leftovers.

We now have a wall

After calling in a contractor to give an estimate on our wall project what they wanted to charge just wasn't in our budget right now. The whole reason we decided to build the wall ourselves was to keep it a low cost project. Thankfully we have some wonderful family who helped us out. Ryan's Uncle actually does hardscaping for a living in New Jersey so he made a trip to help us get our wall completed. At about 10:30pm last Friday night Ryan's mom called us to say he would be here the next morning around 11am to start working. I still can't believe he drove all the way here to work for a day. His results are amazing and we couldn't thank him enough.

Here are the guys getting to work

The first row is on

Its starting to get dark and they are still working.

Thank goodness we have a motion light on the side of the house that points toward the wall so they could keep going.

Ryan working on the back-fill today to finish it up. Our next step is to add a

flower bed behind the wall. The actual planting may wait until next spring because the plant selection is pretty picked over right now.

Making our laundry a little cuter

A few months ago we purchases one of those hampers that has four separate bags so you can sort your laundry as you put it in the hamper. If you have the space its definitely worth the money. Its so easy to just grab the bag and bring it down to the laundry room and just dump it in. On laundry day our basement isn't taken over by piles of sorted clothing. I decided it needed a little something so I added this sign to our hamper

To make this cute plaque I purchased a plaque from the Dollar Tree, I think it had a monkey or something on it, but the edges were finished nicely in cream. I used Modge Podge to cover it in a brown paper then applied the letters with vinyl. I used some extra twine I had from my decor balls to attach it to the hamper.

Personalized Kitchen Plate

This is our newest accessory in our kitchen and it cost me under a dollar! I used a Dollar Tree plate, that I found on clearance there for 50 cents and added some vinyl. I cut the W design using my Make the Cut software for my Cricut. I have two more of these sale plates left, I can't wait to come up with some designs for them.

Yum! Home Grown Tomatoes

Our first tomato from our tomato plant!!!

(accompanied by Spider Man)

Sometimes you just have to call in the professionals

Ryan and I aren't afraid to try projects around the house ourselves, but we do know our limits of what we can do. We thought two small retaining walls would be a project we could easily handle ourselves. At the end of our driveway we had a lot of railroad ties that needed to come out. They are a great attraction for termites, other bugs and rodents so they needed to go. The second wall is on the other side of the garage, made of railroad ties as well (that set is home to a chipmunk that has it out for Ryan).

To prepare we went to Home Depot and picked out our blocks and caps and all our necessary supplies. We choose a gray color with cut edges to match the stone on the outside of the house. Saturday morning we got up early to get to work. After about 6 hours this is what the wall looked like.

A professional is coming by the house tonight to give us an estimate. Hopefully they can fix what we've done and use our supplies.

50 Cent Yard Sale Art

For a total of 50 cents and about a half hour on a Saturday afternoon I took some yard sale frames and made this cute button art for our family room

Here is what I started with, not my taste but the frames were great. Painted and distressed already (and only 25 cents each) I bought them without knowing what I would make, but knew I could think of something.
When I got the frames home I was first thinking I would use my Cricut and some vinyl on the glass to create some signs but decided that wasn't quite what I wanted. For this project I did limit myself to only the supplies I had on hand to make it a super cheap project. When looking through the supplies is the craft closet I found some buttons and white muslin and inspiration struck.

I used the photos from the frames and just wrapped them in the white muslin using shipping tape on the back (no one sees the back so I wasn't concerned about making it pretty)

Then I popped them back into the frames. I used a ruler and created a grid for where I should put my buttons.

I could have sewn them, but I took the short-cut way and used hot glue. It is a 1/2 hour project after all. These frames are thick enough that they are able to stand up on their own, so they can either go on a table or the wall. We placed them on top of our entertainment center. Here is the finished product again.