chicken 'n' mushroom gravy over rice

This is one of my all-time favorite recipes . . but you have to like mushrooms to find it as delicious as I do!

Ingredients:

Chicken (whatever your family will eat . . I use 6 tenderloins for 2 meals for the 2 of us)

1 can Cream of Chicken Soup

1 package mushrooms

Rice (again, whatever amount your family will eat)

Directions:

Put the chicken, Cream of Chicken soup, and mushrooms in a crock-pot and cook on low for 4-6 hours.

Before serving, shred the chicken and cook rice.

Serve the chicken 'n' mushroom gravy over the rice and enjoy the goodness!

quick italian chicken

Ingredients:
Chicken (whatever amount your family will eat . . I use 6 tenderloins for 2 meals for us)

Good Seasons Italian Dressing Mix

1/4 cup milk

1 can Cream of Mushroom Soup

6 oz. cream cheese or Neufchatel cheese

1/4 cup water

1 lb. rotini pasta

Directions:

Place the chicken in a crock pot, pour in the dressing mix and the milk and cook for 4-6 hours on low.

Before serving, cook the pasta according to the directions on the box.

Shred the chicken.

In a small sauce pan, melt together the cream cheese, water, and Cream of Mushroom Soup.

In a large serving bowl, mix together the pasta, chicken, and sauce pan mixture.

One of our easy go-to favorites! :)

baking

I found these really cute cupcake liners at the grocery store the other week and I couldn't wait for an excuse to use them.

I made cupcakes earlier this week and, unfortunately, once they were baked the liner's cute color and polka dots were completely invisible. But the cupcakes were so delicious. Vanilla cakes, vanilla icing. Recipe from Magnolia Bakery.

Today I am baking many, many mini loaves of Poppy-Seed bread. Recipe from Magnolia Bakery again. I am excited to see how it tastes!

easter eggs

Love me a little Monday afternoon Pinterest-inspired crafting!

I found the tutorial here.

tour d'appartement

We are loving Walnut Creek. It is a very beautiful area. We are about 12 minutes from Church, 7 minutes from downtown shopping, 5 minutes from Baskin Robbins, and 3 minutes from the grocery store. There are two county libraries within 10 minutes and I frequent at least one of them once a week. It is a seven minute walk to catch BART and from there Ben has a 40 minute ride into the city and then a 3 minute walk to the EY office. It will be easy for us to go into the city on weekends. There are 3 other families in our ward that live in our same apartment complex, and I am sure like 15 other families within a mile and a half. We are about a 5 minute walk from the Iron Horse Trail which is fabulous for walking, jogging, and (we would love to be) biking. And the Oakland Temple is about 25 minutes away without traffic.

I am getting to know the WC area more and more as I run more and more errands. It feels good to be familiar with the area, make connections as to where things are located, and to know where I am going when I drive around. I have made about 20 trips to Target in the past two months, but I don't mind because a) I love Target, and b) the Target here has an escalator for people and a separate escalator for shopping carts to help transport you between the store and the underground parking. For a Merced girl like me, I think it's pretty sweet.

The ward we have moved into is wonderful. Everyone is so friendly and we feel like we belong already.

Ben is enjoying work. He is pretty darn awesome, if you ask me. I am still looking for work. I had a bit of good luck last week which then turned into bad luck, so I am back on the hunt.

Okay - who's ready for a lot of pictures?! Here is our apartment!

fault-line life

We had our first taste of fault-line life this morning!

At 5:33 AM we both woke up to our bed, ceiling, and lamps shaking. I said "That was totally an earthquake!...I think." And Ben said "Do we need to get our emergency backpack??" Funny. I looked it up later in the morning and we were right. There was a 2.9 quake immediately followed by a 4.0 quake.

Hooray for living in CA!

a 1/4 century birthday

Happy Birthday to my 25-year-old husband! You are growing up! Ha.

We had a great day celebrating! Grandma Rowan gave us her old waffle iron when we were staying at their house in January. She sent a waffle recipe up with my mom last week and I made them for Ben's birthday breakfast . . . mmmm!

Ben and I love popcorn, and in the Myers family tradition, we are very strict in how we make it. Vegetable oil, white popcorn kernels (preferable Orville Redenbacher's), a good pot on the stove, and Kernel Season's Popcorn Salt. Lately we have been thinking about how fun it would be to have his and hers popcorn bowls. (There is absolutely no bowl-sharing in our family because when we share, we are too stressed about getting our fair share, and there is less enjoyment. It's important, people, it is.) So, I took Ben to Color Me Mine today to create his popcorn bowl. In July, we'll go and create my popcorn bowl.

This is what we came up with. (All of the colors will be darker/more vibrant once the bowl is fired.)

An equation: popcorn kernels + oil +

a pot + salt =

Big Ben's Big Bowl of

POPCORN

Ben was the "artistic director" and I handled the detailed painting. We also painted BYU blue stripes along the top and bottom of the bowl.

I was worried that it would be too girly of an activity for Ben, but because we were painting together, and painting such a treasured item, mind you, we had so much fun! We were there for almost three hours and are very proud of our creation.

Then we had an early dinner at Chili's! It was surprisingly very yummy. Even the water was so refreshing. We must have been really hungry.

Tomorrow we will celebrate with Buttermilk Cake with Spiced Vanilla Icing. It is delicious. Click here for the recipe.

Happy Birthday to my sweet husband!