Southwest Chicken Casserole

Last night I baked a massive steggles chicken (which btw I got on sale for $2.67). I had a fair bit of chicken left over, so I went searching for a new recipe to cook for tonight. Settled on this Southwest chicken casserole, used the leftover chicken, which meant our meat for 2 nights was.... that’s right $2.67!!! Actually, we still have enough leftover for homemade pizzas. Loved this recipe and even miss fussy 7 year old ate it.

Southwest Chicken Casserole

230g pasta, cooked and drained

300g chicken, cooked and shredded

230g sour cream

1 onion, diced

1 Red capsicum, diced

2 tsp minced garlic

1 packet taco seasoning

100g grated cheese

Step 1:  Pre heat oven to 180 degrees

Step 2: Sauté onions, capsicum and garlic until soft.

Step 3: Mix all ingredients except grated cheese.

Step 4: Pour mixture into greased casserole dish.

Step 5: Sprinkle cheese on top.

Step 6: Bake for 20 minutes.

Enjoy!!

Stop by tomorrow as I’m planning to make homemade bread rolls. I have never done this before, so wish me luck! If all goes well, I will post the recipe tomorrowJ

Frugal Sugar Scrub

Hello friends.

I love Pinterest!!! I find all my ideas from there for cooking, parties, gifts, house reno's and the list goes on. Last year I thought I would finally try out one of the gift ideas that I had pinned (it's too easy to pin ideas & never try them). I decided to make some body scrubs to go along with some Christmas gifts that i was giving. There are tons of recipes on Pinterest but this is just the one that I decided to use...it was super easy & super cheap. In fact the most expensive part was the jar to store it in but even that was cheap! 

I love cinnamon, so originally i made a cinnamon scented scrub. Here is the recipe 

http://www.savynaturalista.com/2013/11/15/cinnamon-sugar-body-scrub/

After making it, i decided that the cinnamon smell didn't quite feel right, so i purchased a green tea essential oil. I made a batch of the same recipe, but swapped the cinnamon & cinnamon essential oils for 10 drops of the green tea essential oil and loved it!

As for the jar, i purchased a pack of 12 half pint mason jars off ebay, which cost $30 and was delivered to my door (the best kind of shopping when you have kids)! That means each jar cost $2.50 & i haven't come across them cheaper as yet. You can decorate the jars however you want & they make a cute gift.

That's all for now:)

100+ Cookies Recipe

Afternoon All,
I thought that it might be time to start sharing some good old frugal recipes. So I thought I would start with a well known one, but one that is definitely a favorite in our family. It's the 100+ Cookie recipe and here it is...............

 Ingredients

• 500g butter
• ½ cup white sugar
• 5 cups Self Raising flour
• 1 can condensed milk

Instructions

1. Preheat oven at 180C and prepare baking trays
2. Cream sugar, butter and condensed milk
3. Add flour, slowly mix to combine
4. Divide mixture into 4 portions
5. Add desired ingredients (to flavour) each portion. Such as 100&1000's choc chips, nuts and my all time favorite sultanas & cornflakes.
6. Roll rounded teaspoon of mixture into balls, flatten slightly
7. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden

They are yummy and stay fresh in an airtight container for over a week.

Seeing as you wont need 100 cookies at once, the other great thing about this recipe is that you can freeze them. You can either make up the batter & freeze the portions that your not using straight away, and then bake them when you want them. Or you can bake them all and then freeze them in zip lock bags until you want them. I do the 2nd option as its easy to pull them out of the freezer when you need them and they only take 5-10 minutes to fully defrost.

It costs under $5 to make the batter for the whole 100+ cookies and then you just add whatever you like to it. You definitely wont regret adding these delicious treat to your household! :) 

Princess Mia's Nursery

My gorgeous bubba is now 4 months old and we have just finally finished her room!  Our 4^th bedroom is really tiny, so at first she was going in that room, so we painted it. Then we changed our mind & she was going in with her sister, so we painted that room. Then we changed our mind again and decided to put her in with the study, so we painted it. Then we decided to convert the garage into a man cave & study and give the 2 older kids the bigger bedrooms. Clearly we are not great at making decisions! And now she is back in the original room that she was going in.  The great thing is that 3 of our bedrooms are now painted yay:)!

So our gorgeous little Mia now has the little room again. She still sleeps in a bassinet in our room, so I haven’t been too concerned about getting her room together, but she is getting older now so I thought I better get my butt into action as it won’t be long till she is in there.

So here it is......

I love making bunting and it is cheap as chips. I already had this fabric lying around. I am a very basic sewer and am not great at sewing straight lines, so this design is really easy. I just cut my fabric into flags, placed them back to back and sewed together using a zig zag stitch. Then I got pinking shears and cut along both sides. After that, all that is left to do is sew the binding on top. I used lace. You can either pin the flags to the lace or if you like doing things quickly like me, just place the flags in a pile in the order that you want to use and just pick up and place inside the binding as you go. Remember to leave room at each end of the binding so you can hang your bunting. The lace was $1.99 a metre & I used 2 metres, so this cost me less that $4 to make:)

My beautiful mother in law bought this lamp for our 1^st bubba but the cute lampshade that came with it got destroyed.

 I couldn't part with it so I bought a $10 lampshade from Bunning’s and painted it with some turquoise paint that I bought as a sample pot and decided it was too dark for our wall. Then just attached some pink lace. Decorating cost $0:)

I made her name out of paper mache letters bought from Spotlight for $3.99 each.

I used paint on the sides, scrapbooking paper on the front and then decorated with ribbons, felt and kindy glitz that I already had. When doing a project I often just use things that I already have around the house. It’s amazing the amount of stuff you probably have stashed around the house that you forget about. Total cost $12.

I bought a set of 3 bird frames from Kmart for $5. They were all hanging in a line with ribbon from smallest to largest. I cut them loose and put some coloured scrap booking paper in the photo spaces. The other 2 are hanging elsewhere in the room.

The curtains are block out and the perfect colour for the room. They were from Kmart and were a bargain $29. Sorry they arn't ironed!

There are some gorgeous gifts that we received that hang proudly in Mia’s room.

When she was first born, a friend made this gorgeous frame with all her birth details on it. It also happens to fit with the colour of her room perfectly.

One day I got a package delivered to the door. I was so excited when I opened it. My beautiful friend had ordered a personalised “Mia” baby package and one of the items was this gorgeous blanket. Love that she has a special blanket with her name on it!

My gorgeous sister loves making pretty things, so I asked her if she could make Mia a mobile that i had seen on pinterest. It’s so adorable and I’m not the only one that like it...it is Mia’s favourite thing!:)

So here it is the best view that i can get of most of the room, given that it is so small & i can't get a good angle. But it's the perfect size for a little person.

That's it for now.
Kylie xx