Gimmie Five (or less) - Recipes with 5 or less ingredients

Here are a couple of my stand-by recipes that need only five ingredients (or less!). I am a very, very simple cook and like recipes that have few ingredients and ones that are easy to find.

Apricot Chicken

1 package dry onion soup mix

1 cup apricot jam

1 cup french dressing

6-8 pieces skinless chicken breasts or thighs

Combine first 3 ingredients. Place chicken in crockpot. Pour sauce over top, making sure each piece has sauce on it. Cook on low 7-9 hours. Serve with rice. Makes great sauce! Yum!

Mock Caesar Salad

3 Tablespoons cider vinegar

1/2 cup shredded parmesan cheese

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/3 cup olive oil

7 cups torn romaine lettuce

Mix first 4 ingredients in blender (I use my magic bullet). Pour over greens and mix to cover greens. Serve immediately. YUMMY!

If you'd like some more great recipes with five ingredients or less, head over to Rocks in My Dryer.

Organize and Conquer - Fridge Edition

Here's the problem:

Everything is all jumbled in the fridge and freezer and you can't find anything you need even though you know you bought it and it has to be in there (run on sentence anyone?).

How 'bout this for a solution?:

Round up some plastic organizing baskets (or something that can be used in place of them!). I was in this predicament described above, so...last week I picked up some baskets at the dollar store. I did a SERIOUS clean out of aforementioned kitchen appliance and threw out a lot of food. If you've been hangin' around here for a while, you know I enjoy being frugal, so throwing away food felt like throwin' money in the trash can (except it smelled a lot worse).

I now have a basket in my fridge for meat. When I shop for meat, I buy up a lot when it is on sale. For ground beef, I seperate it into 1 pound ziploc bags and pop it in the freezer (labeled, of course). Sometimes I cook up a bunch, then seperate and bag it up. Then I couldn' t find it when I needed it. Now, I have all bagged up meat (and other things like hot dogs, etc.) in the meat basket.

The other basket holds miscellaneous things like frozen fruit and baked items. I want to begin baking more frequently, so I will soon have a basket just for baked goods.

In the fridge, there is a basket for just yogurt, individual containers of fruit (like mandarin oranges), and puddings. An easy go-to for the kiddos & it keeps that small stuff contained in the fridge.

I know this isn't a new idea, but it seems to be a great one. I am looking forward to enjoying a more organized fridge and freezer and wasting less food.

If you are looking for more kitchen tips, check out Tammy's Recipes.

P.S. You know, I had to sneak in a post about my clean fridge and freezer so you guys could see some pictures of all the hard work I did. I'm a sucker for a pat on the back. I didn't take before pictures, though. That would've been too embarassing. Stay tuned for another fridge tip tomorrow (and yes, another picture!).

Frugal Curtain Rod

So you wanna hang up some curtains and you really want one of those big chunky wood curtain rods, huh? Well, grab a few dollars and head to your closest home improvement store. You'll just need some plastic PVC. You can buy it as skinny or as chunky as you want it. I wanted it chunky.

Most of my guests cannot believe that this curtain rod is made from plasitc PVC pipe. The triple window is kind of large and I wanted the curtains to hang much wider than the window opening. I would be spending a pretty penny to buy a wood rod that size and the style I wanted. I spray painted the white PVC pipe a dark brown color. I used 4 wood brackets to support it due to the length. I am still trying to figure out how to do finials on the ends, since the pipe is hollow. Any ideas?

For more Frugal Friday ideas, head to Biblical Womanhood!

If You Like Decorating Magazines & Good Stories, You'll Love This

I am addicted to a big fan of Google Reader. For those poor souls who don't know about this yet and still manually check all of the blogs you are addicted to so dearly love, let me give you a quick explanation. Basically, you can subscribe to all of your favorite blogs and it updates your reader when any one of them posts a new blog post. You just check in with Google Reader (from any computer with the internet, mind you) and you can read all of the new posts right there. It is ever so convenient. Just go to google.com, click on "more" at the top of the page, and a menu will drop down. Click on "reader" and there you go. You. will. be. forever. thankful. to. me.

I want to share some excellent posts that have come across my Google Reader lately. Hope you enjoy this little tour...

Tip Junkie is a great site. My favorite posts are the ones like this where she shares great projects her readers have sent her. You're bound to be inspired by several of these ladies.

I am already a huge fan of Heather's, even though I just discovered her site yesterday. She has woven a beautiful tale of how she came to meet her husband in fourteen seperate posts. Lucky us, we get to read them all at once, since we don't like to wait.

Always a huge fan of The Nester, she did not fail to impress me with her quick decorating skills. She recently moved into a new house, and everything already looks so lovely. Go check it out. Soon she'll take us on a whole tour...she promised!

(photo source: http://nestingplacenc.blogspot.com/)

The Life Hackery has given us 50 great kitchen tips in one post. Get out your notebooks, then click.

I don't even own a sewing machine, yet I long for creative ways to make my home beautiful with fabric. Let's just say that this post at Restyled Home is wayfreakin'cool. She's my hero.

(photo source: http://restyledhome.blogspot.com/)

Enjoy. Please share some of your favorites with me!

Painting the Easy Way

A number of months ago (I am grossly underestimating here) I got a great deal on some french doors. They were only $15 each and fit perfectly in the doorway leading from my foyer to our home office. My husband and father-in-law hung them for me yay! Well, I am finally getting around to painting them.

I decided to share a few painting tips that I've learned over the years, either from watching decorating shows on TV, reading decorating magazines, so on and so forth. Some of them you may alreaady know, but hopefully you'll learn at least one new idea to make painting easier.

If you are a professional painter or a painting perfectionist of any kind, you may want to stop reading now. Some of these tips may feel like you're taking too many shortcuts. Just warnin' you, I'm just sayin'!

1. Line your metal paint tray. Sure you could buy the fancy-schmancy liners from the store, but why should you when you have a gazillion plastic shopping bags sitting around. Just slip the tray into the bag & wha-la a free liner (remember, free is my favorite price). Just toss the bag when your done.

2. While we're on the subject of your plastic shopping bag collection, why don't you get a few out to cover the rollers once you're done painting today, since you'll be going at it again tomorrow? That way you won't have to wash them twice. I know...genius!

3. And to add to your list of free or almost free painting supplies, do you have any rubberbands? Once you are done painting and have washed your brush, wrap a rubberband around the bristles to keep them nice and neat while they dry? Looks good! No nasty brushes for the next project.

4. Since we are getting this job done the easy way, let's not tape of the ceiling or window/door frames. What? I'm getting a little too crazy for you now? Just use one of those cool gadgets with a wheel and a pad for cutting in. But don't. get. paint. on that little wheel thing. Seriously, have you seen my ceilings? Good. Don't look at them. A painting perfectionist I am not.

5. You're not planning on removing the door knobs or taping off the window panes, are you? I didn't think so. I knew you were planning to wrap the door knob in aluminum foil and rub petroleum jelly on the door hinges and the edges of the window panes. That way you can just rub it off when you're done and no paint will stick.

6. And before you close up that paint can for good, put a little in a small glass jar, airtight plastic container, or an ice cube tray. That way if your child crashes into the wall while rollerblading in the house and chips the lovely paint job, you can whip out a q-tip and touch it up. If you choose to freeze a bit in an ice cube tray, you can touch up the chipped spot with your little frozen paint popsicle. That's right, use it just like a marker. Easy peasy.

Here are some pictures that show how the color you choose for your walls can really effect the feel of the room.

(Photos from Southernliving.com, last is from Ratemyspace.hgtv.com)

I believe what The Nester preaches, "It doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful." So no comments telling me about the proper prep techniques and such, please. It won't get done around here if it has to be done that way. Now stop procrastinating that painting project like me and get it done already. That's what I'm doing tomorrow. I'll send pictures.

So did you learn anything new here today? Please share your favorite painting tips!

If you'd like to read more tips, visit Works for Me Wednesday.

Kid Snacks for Less

Who doesn't love convenience? I know I do. But convenience usually comes with a price. When it comes to individual servings of kid snacks, do the math. With this solution, you still get the convenience of grab and go kid snacks, but don't have to break the bank.

Sometimes it is pretzels, other times it is Chex Mix. Whatever you have that you kids love to snack on, you can use this tip for it. Using sandwich or snack size plastic baggies (one of my can't live without staples), make your own bags of snacks. I use a measuring cup to scoop the snack out of the big bag and into the small bag. This way you determine how much each serving includes. You can also use this trick for homemade goodies as well. Put all of the bags you made into a decent sized basket in the pantry or cabinet. Let the kids know where to look for the snack basket. Mine know where to look in our pantry. :)

For more Kitchen Tips, check out Kitchen Tip Tuesday at Tammy's Recipes.

Trying to Make Our Home a Haven

I'm joining with Crystal over at Biblical Womanhood to share what I did to make my home a haven today.

Make sure to check out my other post from today for some birthday love.

I don't know why, but it seems like my house is a disaster all over on Monday mornings. I guess we just like to relax on the weekends and don't pick up after ourselves like we should. So on Mondays, it is time to restore some order into our home. A home can't really be a haven without some order, right?

1. Straighten all rooms downstairs. - DONE

2. De-Ant the kitchen & clean it. - DONE (We must have a huge sign under our house that says "Ants welcome here" or something. I looked up some remedies online today and have sprinkled offending areas with baby powder, and wiped the counters down with a vinegar/water mixture. We'll see if it works!)

3. Laundry. - Got started, will finish tomorrow.

I ended up having to spend some time on the phone with Sprint, due to a problem with them ordering me a new phone, and with Comcast, because our internet was down. I had to drive over to the Comcast office and exchange our old modem for a new one. We are back online. How could we stand no internet??? :) Those things sucked up some of my time today, but had to be dealt with.

Tomorrow, I will try to follow Crystal's advice on how to begin my day. I know it will go smoother if I do.