Creamy Chicken Dip

Oh my goodness!  This was so easy and so good.  It would be a perfect New Years Eve dip to share with family in friends while ringing in the new year.  Nothing quite says comfort food to me like cheesy nachos.  Topping it with tomatoes, sliced olives and green onions really adds a layer of freshness that takes this dip to the next level.

Let's Get Crafty!
Toss it all in the crockpot and cook on high for an hour:
2 cups shredded chicken
1 can rotel
4 oz cream cheese
1 lb velvetta, cubed (about half of the full block)
3 green onions, chopped
3 tablespoons taco seasoning

Oh the fun colors!

Mix it up, put the lid on and let it cook for an hour

Add to the dip and cook another 15 minutes:
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

Look at all that creamy deliciousness after just one hour of cooking.  It makes my dip loving heart happy.  I like to add the beans towards the end so they get heated through but don't get mushy or break apart when stirring.

Then done!  This was so easy and so good.  I think the cream cheese really adds to the decadent creaminess.

Top yours with whatever you like.  We did tomatoes, black olives, sliced green onions and a little bit of parsley.

Potluck Potatoes

These are known by so many names like Funeral Potatoes and Potato Casserole.  I made them for the first time using a recipe from a cookbook that I bought from a school fundraiser years ago.  I really liked knowing the recipes were local and loved that it came in a 3 ring-binder.  That was especially nice because when you opened it up to a recipe then it would lay flat for you.

My recipe has changed up over the years but didn't land far from the original.  One of the big differences is that I don't use a stick of butter and add more sour cream.  I used to make this a lot and don't make it as much anymore, but I was super surprised that I didn't see it already on my blog.  Maybe that's why it isn't there - because I've always assumed that I would have done it already.

On this particular day I was making a double batch.  My husband was taking a pan with him Elk Hunting and I was going to freeze some to have here at the house one night while he's gone.  I'm going to share the recipe for one batch.  When I made two - I made the same thing twice so I could add green chiles to part of it but not all of it.

Let's Get Crafty!

Preheat oven to 375  

Mix everything together and toss in a pam sprayed pan:

32 oz frozen potatoes (I used the southern but the o'brian and hashbrowns are perfect too)

1 cup sour cream

1 can cream of chicken soup

1 cup shredded cheese (I didn't measure... so it might be more. :D )

(Add in green chilies, if you would like to)

Bake covered for 50 minutes (This is if you are making it right away.  Since I cooked mine from frozen - I started checking it at this point and kept adding time until it was creamy and bubbly.)

Pull it out of the oven and add your crunchy topping:

I generally do French Fried Onions but there are many options.  You can use corn flakes, ritz crackers, a bread crumb topping or nothing at all.

Bake another 10 minutes uncovered

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you have a great day.

Christmas Cards using Tis the Season

I love the dark colors of the Christmas collection this year called Tis the Season. I bought the scrapbooking kit and loved the way those pages turned out and then decided to make some Christmas cards with all the paper I still had leftover.  That's one of the fun things I love about the kits!  There's always leftover paper for more fun projects. 

Truth be known... I'm really horrible about throwing away leftover crafting paper, so using it to make cards makes me so happy.  Especially when it's paper I really like.  In this instance - I started making the card on the left and felt like it was a little dark for me for Christmas so I shifted and used some of the fun red to be the background and it lightened up the presentation.

Knee deep in the project.

I make a few Christmas cards each year and hope that one day I will send out all of my own cards to family and friends.  I'm still many years away from making that a reality but it's still fun to get to make a few each year and look at my stash of cards I've made for when that time comes.

Have a great day!  Thanks for stopping by.

Surprise boxes on a long car trip

We recently drove to Georgia to be with family after my Grandpa passed away.  We tried initially to get flights and couldn't make that work around what we needed for timing and it just so happened to be Thanksgiving week... so that probably impacted the number of last minute flights available.

Connor understood right away what 23 hours one way meant and Emily was frustrated that her brother dared to suggest she didn't understand.  She said "I do too know!  It's like 10 minutes!"  We had never bought DVD players for the car and it felt like this was the time to make that happen.  We did and I really like the set we got that had two screens that could be playing the same thing or each person could pick what they wanted to watch.

We knew that we didn't want them just watching movies all the way and wanted to this also to be a fun trip as much as we could make it be.  I found something similar to this idea on Pinterest and changed it up to work for us.

The gist of the idea is - putting together boxes of goodies made up of snacks and activities to do along the way.  Here's a picture of what went into the boxes.  Turns out my eyes were bigger than our amount of boxes and there's way more here than what was actually put in the boxes, but this was my starting point.  I bought the snacks and treats but most of the games and activities were things we already had (card games, coloring books and mad libs), were lent to us (car bingo) or were bought at some point for a rainy day because I got them on sale.

Fun times filling the boxes!  It was perfect timing because I had about 30 mins or so where it seemed everyone was occupied and I was able to get most of this done before anyone noticed what I was doing.  I was trying to keep most of it a surprise.

This last box ended up being just what we needed two times!   We snacked on the chips and dips at the end of the day on Thanksgiving.  I'm sure everyone knows the feeling... you eat a late lunch and aren't hungry for dinner.  Then it's getting close to bedtime and you realize you're kind of hungry.  Fox box to the rescue!  The second time was when we were headed home the day after Thanksgiving and the kids were excited to see they got $5 each to spend at a gas station picking what they wanted.  I had strategically put the only box with money to be one we didn't open early in the trip.  

The initial idea was that we would open a box every 3 hours on the road.  It wasn't a perfect thing because sometimes at the 3 hour mark we would stop to eat or they might forgot and be in the middle of a movie.  I can remember a time when it felt like someone was going to crack and I got to say - Hey!  Let's open a box early!  I just so happened to notice a couple side glances from my Mark where it looked like he was wondering who was enjoying the boxes more - the kids or me.  :D   

I set aside a couple for the way home as we were packing.  This was fun because I kind of hid them and the kids didn't realize until we were headed home there were still a couple boxes. 

Thanks for stopping by!  I hope you have a great day.