Mouth Watering Beef Tips in the crockpot!

Here's what's making my house smell yummy today!

Crockpot Beef Tips

Ingredients:
2-3 pounds beef stew
1 package dry onion soup mix
1 package brown gravy mix
1 1/4 c. ginger ale
1 can cream of mushroom soup
Optional: sliced mushrooms, sliced onions

Place beef in crockpot.
Mix together onion soup mix, brown gravy mix, ginger ale, and mushroom soup.
Pour over top of beef (and sliced mushrooms and onions if using)

Cook on HIGH 3-4 hours or LOW 5-6 hours.
My crockpot runs VERY hot and was done in 2 hours!

Serve over mashed potatoes or egg noodles!

This recipe also freezes very well. Place all ingredients in plastic ziploc bag and freeze. Thaw for 24 hours then follow cooking instructions.

Upcoming!

Hello everyone! The facebook page is up and running, so you can follow me here or on facebook! www.facebook/rileyscar.com

Upcoming blogs will include Sawyer's Very Hungry Caterpillar 1st Birthday (November), Elf on the Shelf ideas, 24 Days of Christmas and a few decorations for Christmas! Keep you eyes peeled for updates!

Birthday Interview Questions

I've gotten tons of requests to post what the Birthday Interview looked like for my son's 3rd birthday. So, instead of answering each email/post separately, I'll just toss it on here for everyone to view! Happy reading!

1. My favorite color is:
2. My favorite toy is:
3. My favorite fruit is:
4. My favorite TV show is:
5. My favorite thing to eat for lunch is:
6. My favorite outfit to wear is:
7. My favorite game is:
8. My favorite snack is:
9. My favorite animal is:
10. My favorite song is:
11. My favorite book is:
12. My best friends are:
13. My favorite cereal is:
14. My favorite thing to do outside is:
15. My favorite drink is:
16. My favorite holiday is:
17. I sleep with:
18. My favorite breakfast is:
19. I want to eat ______________ on my birthday.
20. When I grow up, I want to be:


I took several variations of the birthday interview and picked and chose which ones I liked the best for Riley's interview. Feel free to change it up to suit your own child's likes! (I didn't realize how many questions revolved around food...what can I say, my boy likes to eat. That's why he's in the 99th percentile on the growth charts!) LOL

I printed it up on Word and then trimmed it to fit on a piece of construction paper, which I then added to a piece of scrapbook paper. I painted his hand as well as 3 fingers so it looked like a cake with 3 candles. I was able to toss the whole thing straight into his scrapbook-voila! Instant page!

Fruit Fly Trap

If you're like me, you've got a lot of beautiful in-season fruit sitting around right now. Now, I don't know where they come from or how they get in my house, but I always end up with lots of the little things flying around my kitchen.

A few years ago I was watching a britsh show, and for the life of me I can't remeber what it's called. The premise of the show was these two older British women went into peoples houses and cleaned them up for them, then went back a month later to see if they were keeping up with the cleaning. Anyways, long story short, this cure-all is from them...

Supplies needed:

*Red wine Vinegar (please don't use your expensive kind. Go to Wal-mart and buy the $1.99 bottle!)
*Dish Soap
*Plastic wrap
*A cup

-Place 1/4 cup red wine vinegar into the cup
-Carefully drop 2/3 drops of dish soap into the vinegar (This breaks up the tension of the vinegar and the fruit flies get stuck instead of flying away)
-Cover top of cup tightly with plastic wrap. Using a knife, poke a few holes in the top of the plastic wrap. Now they can get in but not back out!

-Leave sitting on the counter for a few days. I always set the cup right in the middle of the fruit-it's like a sneaky death trap!
-Come back later and count your success!

My two favorite artists



I recently took down everything I had hanging on my kitchen walls because I was just tired of it. My kitchen is a lovely shade of yellow and my curtains are cream colored with shades of pale green and light coral. I've been looking for a few weeks for something to replace the old stuff and just hadn't found anything that struck my fancy, yet remained in my budget.

While browsing the internet one day, I can across these and couldn't resist. Plus I had a coupon! I already had the paint on hand that matched my kitchen (plain dumb luck!) and the painter's tape as well. So my new art cost me around $7 total!



I set up my two favorite artists with their supplies and let them go to town!

The canvases are 12x24 inches. I taped off Riley's name with painter's tape (I highly recommed the painters tape, I can't vouch for how regular masking tape will perform under layers of acrylic paint) Riley did his in upper and lower case letters because that's how he writes his name now.

(Riley flat out refused to touch the paint with his fingers, so he used a large paint brush)

Sawyer's was taped off in block letters for two reasons: The S and A were easier to create in block letters, and I had a harder time squeezing his letters onto the canvas)

(S wasn't too keen on the finger painting)

My beautiful new wall art!

(And as my Mom pointed out yesterday-there's still room for one more! <wink wink> LOL)

Needless to say, there's a small stack of canvas in other sizes waiting for my little Picassos to create me some new decor!

How to be a fun Mom, Pt. 1

Over the past few weeks, things have gotten a bit out of hand. Messed up schedules, travel out of town, etc. have led to outbursts, tantrums, and meltdowns. Each missed nap and late dinner was cause for an "end of the world scenario." Instead of being able to enjoy the Boys first stay in a hotel, I was busy trying to get them to bed in a timely manner and make sure they're fed on time. We all know what low blood sugar does to a 3 year old! It was enough to make me want to have outbursts, tantrums and meltdowns!
After reading an article on Pinterest about re-claiming the joy in your children, I was inspired to, how you say, let things go a little.
Tonight, we had our first ever Rock and Roll Dinner Jam. We got a Kids Bop CD at the Library the other day and I put it on while I was cooking dinner. We listened to it while we ate, then while we cleared and washed our dishes, we jammed! Directions follow:

Supplies needed:
*CD player
*Good Dance tunes (Tonights song of choice-Baby by Justin Bieber. Riley loves that song and I'm not sure why. We seriously listen to it 98 times in a row.) (Beyonce's Single Ladies was also on repeat)
*NO INHIBITIONS ALLOWED!

Directions:
1. Insert cd.
2. Press play.
3. Let the good goofy times roll!
4. Dance, march, wiggle, jump, bounce, shake, groove, get down with your bad self!

When you loosen yourself up with your child, they loosen up as well. Dance like no one is watching (Oh Lord I hope no one was watching!)

Riley and I laughed more than we had in several days. Sawyer laughed just watching us!

Who's up for Rock and Roll Dinner Jam, pt. 2???
Comment on what you jammed to! Let's make a Dinner Jam playlist!

Riley's 3rd Birthday-Construction Themed

On May 19, 2012 we celebrated Riley's 3rd birthday. Thanks to all the local construction that's been going on in our town (much right outside our own front door) Riley had developed an obsession with all things digger. So naturally when it came time to plan his party, the construction theme was a first choice! 

I handmade all the invitations using a Cricut and die-cuts from the Dollar Tree!

The inside of the invitations say:

Can you dig it? Riley is turning 3!

Clock in on May 19, 2012 at 1pm.

Job Site: (our address)

RSVP to: (Our phone number)

Juice bottles for Riley and his cousins

I made a vanilla cake that I dyed orange. I went a little overboard with the red food coloring and had to over compensate with the yellow. Thus the fluorescent orange!

More bags from the dollar store! (Imagine my joy at finding a dump truck bag for $1!!)

The silverware and napkins

The wreath for our front door-made entirely from things I already had around the house (extension cord, caution tape, cardboard and scrapbook paper)

The day of his party was sunny and 87 degrees...in May!

I used a color scheme of orange, yellow and black, with hints of dark green thrown in to break it up)

His sign welcoming guests

(It was so hot that the balloons started popping and the letters were peeling off the poster board)

Table decorations: orange tablecloth, construction tape, die-cuts and good old vehicles from Riley's toy box. (He wasn't very happy about having to surrender those for the party!)

The orange buckets are holding the silverware. Yellow and black utensils (again, dollar store) in digger napkins (found on clearance at the Party Store!) and stuck through a paint chip from Lowe's (free!)

Riley's 3 year old interview (upcoming post) with a birthday cake made from his own hand print. The paper on the right is a sheet for guests to sign for his scrapbook.

The Digger cake!

I iced it with chocolate icing (dirt) then cut a chunk out and used chocolate rocks to fill in the space. (From Wal-Mart!)

More of his stash from his toy box

The Birthday Boy and his new big boy bike! He wore a digger shirt that I found on clearance at JC Penny's last summer. His brother also wore a shirt that said "I dig my Dad" with a digger on it-again, found on clearance!)

The Menu:

"Build your own" deli sandwiches

Pasta salad made from wheel pasta

chips and snacks

watermelon

fruit pizza

reuben casserole

stuffed mushrooms/jalapenoes

Pop/water/juice for kiddos

In all, I spent around $150.00 on this party ($85 of which was food) (not counting presents). The majority of stuff came either from my own house or the Dollar Tree. Splurges were the Chocolate rocks-$4 total, Caution tape-$5 and the Bob The Builder juice bottles-$6.

Look how far you've come! I love you Monkey!